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Debt Rattle September 1 2024

Sep 012024
 
 September 1, 2024  Posted by at 8:47 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  54 Responses »


M. C. Escher Order and chaos 1950

 

• Harris Can’t Beat The Dream Team (Flores)
• Ukraine Conflict Can Lead to ‘Global-Ending’ Nuclear War – Ritter (Sp.)
• ‘Getting Along With Russia Is Good’ – Trump (RT)
• Lavrov Warns Russia-Ukraine Talks Will Get Harder With Time (Sp.)
• Lavrov Draws Parallels Between Israel And Ukraine (RT)
• Nancy Pelosi Says The Quiet Part Out Loud To Bill Maher (ZH)
• Switzerland Urged To Rethink Its 500-Year Neutrality (RT)
• US Not Sending Contractors To Service Ukrainian F-16s – WSJ (RT)
• West Knew About The “Surprise” Invasion of Kursk (Van den Ende)
• US Advancing Police State Measures (SCF)
• Musk Vows to Expose Top Brazilian Judge’s Crimes After Suspension of X (Sp.)
• Kamala Is Going To Drive Gold To $10,000 (Hickman)
• End the US Dollar Chokehold on the World (Nomi Prins)
• “France Unbowed” Party Moves to Impeach Macron (Sp.)

 

 

 

 

Finish the story

 

 

 

 

8min

 

 

RFK
https://twitter.com/i/status/1829709020808044898

https://twitter.com/i/status/1830025062352908506

 

 

Trump Elon
https://twitter.com/i/status/1829692483099640145

 

 

Tulsi

 

 

Sacks

 

 

Aykroyd
https://twitter.com/i/status/1829707646540112338

 

 

 

 

“We may arrive at the equation that cringe (C) is equal to the value of vacuity (vac) multiplied by the insincerity (i), squared. Or C = vac(i)2..”

• Harris Can’t Beat The Dream Team (Flores)

Vice President Kamala Harris has become the subject of an ongoing joke in political circles because her speech writers insist on burdening her with trite aphorisms aimed at highlighting her inspirational wisdom, but instead miss the mark so severely that the word ‘backfire’ is more appropriate. In part one, we established that the coup against Biden did not establish the overthrow of his regime of war and dementia, because he was not the central character or mover of the plot which his administration had been (and still is) executing. But in the wake of the failed assassination of Trump – which the FBI has still been silent about (or not; the mach speed cremation of Thomas Crooks’ body speaks quite loudly) – provided the true predicate that led to Biden’s decision to step down.

Had the assassination succeeded, it’s far more likely that Biden would have remained the candidate, and any transfer of nominal authority to Harris would have concluded sometime in 2025 after the presumed victory. But the notion that Harris provides a solution or even a bearable trade-off in the deep-state’s electoral ambitions is furthermore questionable. This attempt has backfired, and it is hard not to connect the near-miracle which was Trump somehow turning his head at just the right time, to the panic which swept across the DNC in the aftermath. Initial MSM headlines sought to question whether an attempt was even made. The subsequent endorsements by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard have turned the panic into a hysteria.

Harris has a knack for mixing metaphors and results in some incomprehensible word salad which had been intended to inspire us. Unlike Trump, Bill Clinton, or Obama, all who could effortlessly speak in a conversational tone, Harris seems unable to communicate plainly. We should also add that even if these failed attempts at profundity had succeeded in the sense of basic syntax and normal human speech, they would still evoke a high degree of relative cosmological cringe equivalent to their vacuity.

We may arrive at the equation that cringe (C) is equal to the value of vacuity (vac) multiplied by the insincerity (i), squared. Or C = vac(i)2. And who said political science was a soft one? But jokes aside, (or not) this has put her handlers in a difficult position. They must choose between two unappealing options: allowing her to struggle with reading the teleprompter or attempting to memorize lines with little success, or letting her ad-lib and risk a complete flop. The coming debate between Harris and Trump – should there still be one coming – will no doubt highlight Harris’ inability across multiple vectors.

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“Russia has made it clear that as a nuclear power, it not only will not, but cannot be defeated strategically..”

So why go to war? Start a forever war. While betting that Russia won’t nuke the US.

Don’t be surprised if they start this before the elections.

• Ukraine Conflict Can Lead to ‘Global-Ending’ Nuclear War – Ritter (Sp.)

Ukraine attacking Russia using long-range weapons provided by the US “might be interpreted by Russia as a direct attack by the US, by NATO, on Russian territory,” former US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter tells Sputnik. Such an attack, Ritter explains, might be regarded as a prelude to a “larger military incursion” meant to accomplish the US’ ultimate goal, “the strategic defeat of Russia.” “Russia has made it clear that as a nuclear power, it not only will not, but cannot be defeated strategically – because if such a possibility manifested itself, Russia would be required to use its nuclear arsenal to ensure that outcome would never, never occur. This means general nuclear war,” he says. Ritter also recalls the warnings made by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov who questioned the US’ apparent belief that a Russia-NATO conflict would be limited to Europe and who said that a Russian retaliatory strike against the United States is possible if such a conflict were to break out.

“This is a very dangerous escalation, one that could rapidly create the conditions conducive for not limited nuclear conflict, but a general nuclear war, a global-ending global disaster, the destruction of the US, the destruction of Russia, the destruction of Europe, the destruction of the world. Why? Because the US and NATO will not be honest about the state of affairs in Ukraine today,” laments Ritter. Ukraine has already “lost the war,” he adds, and nothing that Kiev might do to try and “tip the scales” in its favor is going to change that. “All it will do is provoke Russia into enlarging this conflict so that it’s not just Ukraine that pays the price, but Europe, the US, and the rest of the world,” Ritter says. “Hopefully, the Ukrainian Defense Minister Andrei Yermak will be received by the US, and have their recommendations regarding using long-range weapons to strike deep inside Russia rejected. Because there’s only one outcome if the US greenlights this escalation, and that is total nuclear war.”

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“Getting along with Russia is good, not bad. Remember, getting along with these people is smart.”

• ‘Getting Along With Russia Is Good’ – Trump (RT)

Engaging and “getting along” with Russia and North Korea would be a “good thing,” former US President Donald Trump has argued. Speaking at an election rally in Pennsylvania on Friday, the Republican nominee touted his diplomatic efforts to fix Washington’s ties with Pyongyang, referring to his 2019 meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas. “I got along with Kim Jong-un of North Korea. Remember I walked over… the first person to ever walk over from this country,” Trump claimed. “We also looked at his nuclear capability. It’s very substantial,” he added. “You know, getting along is a good thing. It’s not a bad thing.”

“Getting along” with Moscow is also not “a bad thing,” Trump said. He went on to harshly criticize the incumbent administration, claiming President Joe Biden has a very low IQ “and maybe now it’s nonexistent,” as he has “completely lost his mind.” The Republican nominee repeated his claim that “what is happening now in relations with Russia would not have happened” if he were still in office. Trump’s remarks came in response to accusations from his election rival, Vice President Kamala Harris. In her Democratic nomination acceptance speech in Chicago last week, she criticized the former president for his relations with the North Korean leader – claiming she would not “cozy up to tyrants and dictators like Kim Jong-un who are rooting for Trump.”

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“It was easy to agree in Istanbul, less than a month after the start of our special military operation. But Ukraine did not want it..”

• Lavrov Warns Russia-Ukraine Talks Will Get Harder With Time (Sp.)

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has warned those who are trying to hinder peace talks between Russia and Ukraine that negotiations would become tougher as time passed. “Russian President Vladimir Putin mentioned potential negotiations a year and a half ago. He said we had nothing against them… Opponents must understand that the longer they take, the harder it will be to agree on anything. It was easy to agree in Istanbul, less than a month after the start of our special military operation. But Ukraine did not want it,” Lavrov said in an interview to the RT broadcaster for the documentary Bridges to the East.

The top Russian diplomat stressed that Ukraine’s joining NATO was non-negotiable. Turkiye hosted several rounds of Russian-Ukrainian peace talks in Istanbul in March 2022, which ultimately failed. It also helped mediate the UN-backed Black Sea Grain Initiative in July 2022, which provided for safe maritime exports of Ukrainian food until it expired the following summer. Russian President Putin said in June that Russia would cease fire and start talks with Ukraine as soon as Kiev withdrew troops from regions that Russia saw as its own and abandoned plans to join NATO.

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Both want to create a huge war.

• Lavrov Draws Parallels Between Israel And Ukraine (RT)

Both Ukraine and Israel are trying to spark major regional wars to solve their own problems at the expense of others, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said. The country’s senior diplomat made the remarks in an exclusive interview with RT’s Anna Knishenko, aired on Saturday. Asked about the prospects of the ongoing crisis in the Middle East devolving into a major regional war, Lavrov suggested Israel was effectively the only party seeking such conflict. “It seems that the only one who wants such a development is Israel. Probably the Israeli government, which is rather hard politics-wise, and they do not even hide that,” Lavrov stated. “Probably, they want to take advantage of this situation to once and for all try to solve all their problems with Hamas and with Hezbollah, and with pro-Iranian groups in Syria and Iraq,” the minister suggested, adding that Tehran seems to be avoiding such a conflict and “does not want to get involved in any large-scale military actions.”

Israel’s behavior shares striking similarities to Ukraine’s, with Kiev apparently seeking to drag its Western backers into a direct conflict with Moscow, Lavrov pointed out. “I’m seeing an interesting parallel there, [Vladimir] Zelensky too, who is fully controlled by the US as well, he wants roughly the same thing, only around Ukraine – to unleash a major war here, and to step aside himself, so that the Americans and other NATO members would start fighting for him,” the minister added. These are very similar situations when they want to provoke a big war in the Middle East and on the territory that is directly adjacent to us, and now part of [Russia’s] Kursk Region is under the control of Zelensky’s Nazi regime, with weapons supplied to him by NATO.

The ongoing Ukrainian incursion into Kursk Region, launched by Kiev early this month, was likely approved by its Western handlers, Lavrov suggested. A “large number of Nazi units” as well as foreign mercenaries – who might actually be “regular troops” – are taking part in the hostilities, he noted. “It is difficult for me to tell what the idea was behind this situation, because our Western colleagues have very convoluted minds, they sometimes bend everything in their own way, and then nothing comes of it,” Lavrov stated, invoking questionable results the collective West has achieved in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.

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They are dead set on changing the country beyond recognition. Maybe that should be Trump’s no. 1 focus: They want to take your country away. How many democrat voters want that?

• Nancy Pelosi Says The Quiet Part Out Loud To Bill Maher (ZH)

The southern border invasion, fueled by the Biden-Harris administration’s disastrous open border policies, has been a devastating blow to this nation. Our borders have been flooded with millions of unvetted, unvaccinated illegal aliens (remember, ‘trust the science’ Democrats wanted to jail people for not being Covid vaccinated just a few years ago…), including ISIS terrorists. Iranian assassins are roaming freely, hunting ex-Trump admin officials, while cartel criminals and the Chinese Communist Party wage ‘reverse opium wars’ with fentanyl that has sent the drug death overdose catastrophe just north of 100,000 Americans per year.

In Colorado, armed Venezuelan prison gangs have seized control of entire apartment complexes, and the overwhelming number of illegal aliens across the country has pushed some local governments to the brink of chaos. What’s evident is that Democrats have abandoned the American people (hence why former Democrats, such as Elon Musk and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., jumped ship and now support Trump). Their top priority is to give amnesty to more than ten million illegal aliens. This amnesty program allows illegal aliens to get citizenship and vote in future elections. It potentially ensures Democrats can fulfill their Marxist agenda of pushing forward with a socialist reconstruction of America.

Not happy with the first-world conditions, Democrats have imported the third world to neighborhoods across America – much of which was done against the wishes of their political constituents. Don’t believe the misinformation VP Kamala Harris spews about securing the border. She had 3.5 years to do so (or at least care) under the Biden admin. On the contrary, Democrats want more illegal aliens and offer mass amnesty. On Friday, elderly Nancy Pelosi said the quiet part out loud on “Real Time with Bill Maher,” openly stating her desire to turn all ‘undocumented’ migrants into ‘documented’ ones. She also supported the idea of providing subsidized housing for illegal aliens.

Let’s travel back about 16 years to 2008, when she said, “We certainly don’t want any more coming in.”

So what changed in the last 16 years with some folks in the Democratic Party that support communist price controls, nation-killing open borders, anti-American rhetoric, and mass censorship? Well, the number of high-profile Democrats jumping ship to support Trump is evident that this party is no longer the Democratic Party your parents voted for.

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“It is an open secret that… Amherd wants to destroy Swiss neutrality and throw herself into the arms of NATO and the EU..”

• Switzerland Urged To Rethink Its 500-Year Neutrality (RT)

It is time for Switzerland, which has been neutral since 1515, to redefine its non-alignment status, a group of Swiss experts have said, in a report ordered by the defense ministry in Bern. Critics, in response, have accused the panel behind the paper of bias and insist that neutrality is forever enshrined in the country’s constitution. The study committee, which was set up a year ago, presented a paper on Thursday with 100 recommendations on how to boost the Alpine nation’s security. “The neutrality policy needs to be revised, more focused on its security function and applied more flexibly,” the members of the panel, which is said to include politicians, economists and scientists representing different age groups and regions, suggest in the report. Another key recommendation in it is that Switzerland’s “cooperation with NATO and the EU must continue to be deepened with a view to achieving a common defense capability and becoming a genuine defense cooperation.”

Among other things, the commission urged that the country’s defense budget be increased from 0.75% of GDP to 1% by 2030. It also said that the majority of the members of the panel spoke in favor of lifting the 1998 ban on the re-export of arms to countries that are at war. This legislation previously caused complications for EU states looking to supply Kiev in its conflict with Moscow with weapons that had Swiss-made parts in them. The changes to Swiss neutrality policy are needed due to a “sharp deterioration in the situation in Europe, marked by power politics, increasingly destabilized crisis regions and, above all, the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine,” the paper claims.

The recommendations by the commission are going to be taken into account during work on Switzerland’s new security policy, to be unveiled in 2025. The expert group’s paper had caused controversy even before it came out, with critics claiming that the head of the Federal Department of Defence, Civil Protection and Sport (DDPS), Viola Amherd, had deliberately formed the panel using experts who are against neutrality. On Thursday, the opposition Swiss People’s Party (SVP) again slammed the report, saying that the “politically one-sided” commission behind it has shown “disregard of the constitutionally guaranteed perpetual… neutrality of our country.” “It is an open secret that… Amherd wants to destroy Swiss neutrality and throw herself into the arms of NATO and the EU,” the statement by the SVP read.

Despite not being a member of the EU or NATO, Switzerland has joined nearly all of the Western sanctions imposed on Russia over the Ukraine conflict and has frozen billions of dollars worth of Moscow’s assets. In early 2024, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that, because of this, Moscow does not consider Switzerland to be a neutral country anymore. In June, the Swiss authorities hosted the so-called Ukraine peace conference, to which Russia was not invited. Moscow described the summit, which focused solely on Kiev’s proposals to settle the conflict, as a “parody of negotiations” and insisted that it would not have attended the event if Bern had asked for a Russian delegation to come.

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“The Biden administration has not ruled out sending US contractors to Ukraine completely, but it is not going to happen any time soon, the report read.”

• US Not Sending Contractors To Service Ukrainian F-16s – WSJ (RT)

The administration of US President Joe Biden has rejected a Pentagon plan to send American contractors to Ukraine to maintain Western hardware, including F-16 fighter jets, the Wall Street journal has reported, citing officials in Washington. The longstanding debate about deploying US civilians to Ukraine to service the hardware supplied to Kiev by its foreign backers has intensified since the delivery of the first batch of six F-16s to Ukraine in late July, the outlet said in an article on Friday. The White House National Security Council looked into the proposal coming from the military, but deemed it to be too risky, officials familiar with the discussion told the WSJ. “The intelligence community raised concerns over the prospect of Russia targeting American contractors in Ukraine,” one of the sources told the outlet. The Biden administration has not ruled out sending US contractors to Ukraine completely, but it is not going to happen any time soon, the report read.

For now, Washington expects its NATO allies in Europe to take responsibility for servicing the US-designed jets, it added. The Netherlands, which together with Norway, Denmark and Belgium promised to supply Kiev with more than 80 F-16s, has already announced that it will fund a private contract between a civilian maintenance company and the Ukrainian Air Force. “We support the Ukrainian government financially to make those contracts with private partners to see if they can hold the aircraft up and running in the future,” General Onno Eichelsheim, the Dutch chief of defense, said on Wednesday. The WSJ noted that Ukraine had previously struggled to maintain other US-supplied weapons, such as the Abrams M1 tank, which had to be shipped outside the country for repairs. The outlet pointed out that an F-16 requires “hours of service for every hour of flight time,” with dozens of support personnel usually working on each plane.

Earlier this week, Kiev confirmed the loss of its first F-16, which reportedly crashed on Monday, killing its pilot. The Ukrainian media said the investigators were looking into technical problems and pilot error as the possible reasons for the accident. However, MP Mariana Bezuglaya claimed that the jet was shot down as a result of “friendly fire” from one of Ukraine’s US-donated Patriot air defense systems. Russian reports said that the F-16 could have been destroyed on the ground by an Iskander missile during a strike on an airfield in western Ukraine. In March, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the use of F-16s in the conflict will make them “a legitimate target” for Russian forces, warning that the planes will be struck even at airfields inside NATO countries if they operate from there.

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“..it has violated the Russian soul and there we have landed in a totally different dimension. Perhaps one might say, the “road of no return.”

• West Knew About The “Surprise” Invasion of Kursk (Van den Ende)

In late June 2024, U.S. media reported that American military contractors would be sent to Ukraine, just weeks before the Kursk attack on August 6, 2024. After the attack on the Kursk region of the pre-war Russian Federation, the U.S. and its NATO proxies claimed that the incursion was a surprise offensive by Ukraine alone. The Forward Observation Group, the private U.S. paramilitary company that posted photos of its fighters involved in the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ offensive against the Kursk region, refused to comment on its involvement in the attack on August 6. “The Biden administration is moving toward lifting a de facto ban on American military contractors deploying to Ukraine,” four U.S. officials familiar with the matter told CNN, “to help the country’s military maintain and repair U.S.-provided weapons systems.”

According to CNN, “The change would mark another significant shift in the Biden administration’s Ukraine policy, as the U.S. looks for ways to give Ukraine’s military an upper hand against Russia.” CNN and other U.S. and European news outlets reported in late June about the possible deployment of this private military group. The U.S. has a long history of using mercenaries as cover for official American military troops. Think of Blackwater and the mercenaries in Syria and Iraq, the White Helmets (trained in Jordan), and I even go so far as to say that ISIS (Daesh in Arabic) is a private mercenary army, trained by the CIA and Mossad in Camp Bucca, Iraq. The Foreign Observation Group (ironically, the acronym is FOG) is said to be a private group that claims to have traveled to Ukraine, Iraq and Syria to contact local fighters (jihadists) and take photos and videos of what they and the West call the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Syrian “civil war”.

All those conflicts are in reality proxy wars incited by the West, which is now resulting in a “hot war” between Russia and the U.S. and its criminal NATO partners. Even before Russia’s Special Military Operation (SMO) began in February 2022, Western media published photos sourced from the likes of FOG from the Donbass region of then-eastern Ukraine. The images attracted limited criticism for interviewing (extolling) members of the NeoNazi Azov Battalion. The Nazi insignia of the Azov troops were blatantly displayed and their Nazi affiliation was irrefutable. Western media association with the NeoNazi paramilitaries raised questions at the time about whether they were so-called documentary journalists or a party to the conflict. After the start of the SMO, the Western media whitewashed the NeoNazi image of the Azov Battalion and labeled them as the “good guys” fighting for the liberation of Ukraine.

The FOG group and other NATO private contractors are also active in obtaining medical supplies, equipment and money for Ukrainian fighters and foreign volunteers who have joined the International Legion for the Defense of Ukraine. To be sure, we heard from the Kremlin that many red lines have been crossed. Think of the recent attack with American ATACMS missiles on the beach in Crimea. The day that the U.S. announced that it would give private contractors a free hand, there was the attack on Crimea. Coincidence? No, I don’t think so! Since the attack on Kursk, the battlefield has an extra dimension and we can accurately talk about a tangible confrontation or war between America, its NATO proxies and Russia. One could even argue that the proxy war is over and there is a new phase of direct confrontation going on.

The U.S. government has so far gradually increased its military support to Ukraine. The purpose of this approach is to test the Russian red lines, to see how Moscow reacts to the deployment of each new weapons system or each new Western sanction and, most recently, of course, the donation of frozen Russian assets, mainly in Europe, to Ukraine. The situation has come to a head, in my humble opinion. Regarding Kursk, there has actually been an attack on Russia; Russian people have been killed, and slaughtered whereby civilians have been taken from their homes in trucks and executed. There is even footage of Ukrainian soldiers with SS helmets and with the detachment of Adolf Hitler’s Leibstandarte Regiment on their sleeves, harassing an old man, who was later killed.

The West is trying to push Russia to the limit, knowing that the Second World War is an extremely sensitive subject for Russian society where every family is related to a victim, a fallen soldier, a grandfather, an uncle, a cousin, or aunt who was killed during the Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany, in which more than 26 million people died. The recent action in the Kursk region, where most Russians perceive that the U.S. and its NATO accomplices are involved, is a brazen provocation. Indeed, more than a provocation, it has violated the Russian soul and there we have landed in a totally different dimension. Perhaps one might say, the “road of no return.”

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“Ritter’s case is a clear example that there is no democracy on American soil, as Washington is very close to revealing an open fascist face – similar to that of its Ukrainian proxy.”

• US Advancing Police State Measures (SCF)

According to recent rumors spread by Western media, the U.S. Department of Justice is preparing a series of investigations and legal measures against American citizens who have cooperation ties with Russian TV channels. Like Ritter, several other American analysts have a dissenting opinion on the conflict in Ukraine and other world events, and are constantly invited by the Russian press to speak to the public and present arguments that would be easily censored in mainstream newspapers. Apparently, from now on, all these analysts will be targeted by the American “Justice”. The Justice Department’s decision to initiate criminal proceedings against American collaborators of Russian media outlets is yet another authoritarian move amid a recent wave of dictatorial actions in the U.S. and several Western countries.

The myth of Western democracy, which would be based on liberal principles and individual freedoms, is crumbling, with the authoritarian nature of the American regime becoming clear to the entire global public. Censorship has always been a common practice in Western countries. However, this reality was constantly disguised through the irresponsible actions of big propaganda newspapers. In the era of social networks, alternative media and citizen journalism, it is no longer possible to disguise the criminal actions of the authorities, as various critics emerge willing to show the reality and contradict the semi-state propaganda services provided by the hegemonic media.

However, it is precisely this reality of multiple sources of information that makes Western actions even more aggressive – especially in the American case. The U.S. is extremely reactive to all forms of dissenting opinion, toughening persecutory measures whenever opposing individuals and groups begin to gain ground in public opinion. Social platforms have made the work of people like Scott Ritter even more relevant, reaching an audience that would have been impossible until years ago – when the mainstream media held a monopoly on information (and thus on “truth”). This broad space for informational dissent is causing despair among American authorities, who are reacting with censorship and persecution.

The role of the Russian media in this scenario is extremely important. After being censored in the West, the Russian press began to attract even more attention from the Western public – who understood the censorship as what it really is: a failed attempt to hide the truth. More than that, the Western public began to understand that Russians, unlike the American and European authorities, do not use their media to unilaterally express opinions previously authorized by the state. On the contrary, the Russian press gives space to American and European citizens to express opinions that are censored in the liberal “democracies” of the West. All of this further increased the desperation of the anti-Russian authorities, leading to the current scenario of persecution.

Amid the currently tense domestic political scene, Washington is using the rhetorical excuse of preventing alleged “Russian influence” on the election result. As expected, U.S. officials are claiming that American analysts cooperating with Russian TV could have a negative impact on the elections – favoring Russian interests in the U.S. (as if such interests actually existed). Unfortunately, the persecution is only expected to increase. No American citizen who holds critical views on U.S. foreign policy is truly safe in his or her own homeland. Ritter’s case is a clear example that there is no democracy on American soil, as Washington is very close to revealing an open fascist face – similar to that of its Ukrainian proxy.

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“..he does not need to abide by US law, but he does need to abide by his own country’s laws..”

• Musk Vows to Expose Top Brazilian Judge’s Crimes After Suspension of X (Sp.)

US billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk said on Saturday he would expose the alleged crimes of Brazilian Supreme Court Judge Alexandre de Moraes, who had ordered the nationwide suspension of the X social media network. “We will begin publishing the long list of [de Moraes’] crimes, along with the specific Brazilian laws that he broke tomorrow. Obviously, he does not need to abide by US law, but he does need to abide by his own country’s laws,” Musk wrote on X. Judge Alexandre de Moraes told internet providers in the nation of 200 million to block access to X, saying the platform lacked a “necessary legal representative” in Brazil — a key requirement tied to the suspension of accounts, which X had refused to comply with. In mid-August, X published a letter from de Moraes with demands for censorship and user account information that it said could affect users not only in Brazil, but also in the United States and Argentina.

X is the #1 news app on the AppStore in Brazil, leading both the free and grossing categories. Despite this, the Supreme Court has ordered the AppStore to remove X within 5 days.

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Make inflation go through the roof…on purpose. It’ll make people poor and docile.

• Kamala Is Going To Drive Gold To $10,000 (Hickman)

Gold recently hit $2,500 marking an all time record high. The reality is, there’s a very good case to be made that gold is still quite cheap compared to its trajectory. It’s possible that in a few years, $2,500 gold could look remarkably inexpensive. Not to be overly dramatic, but Kamala Harris is a big reason why. I’m not a D or R kind of guy, but it’s impossible to ignore the impact of the upcoming election on the future of the US. At a press conference a few weeks ago, reporters asked Jerome Powell, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, about the upcoming Presidential election and whether or not the Fed was modeling any potential policy changes depending on the outcome. But the Fed Chairman was almost proud of the fact that the election outcome didn’t factor into their planning at all.

The Fed considers itself apolitical. Powell seemed to think it was somehow wholesome and responsible to completely ignore perhaps the single most important factor that could drive the economy in the coming years—the outcome of the Presidential election. Two people with diametrically opposed views will clearly make a massive difference on the economy. I saw a report yesterday that, since she stole the nomination exactly one month ago, Kamala has raised $500 million. That brings her total campaign war chest to a massive $1 billion. It’s funny because I seem to remember Rep. AOC saying that, “No one ever makes a billion dollars. You take a billion dollars.” In this case, I’m inclined to agree with AOC.

Kamala took a half billion from Biden— the legitimate nominee— and raised another half billion by making the most outrageous claims and lying her ass off, without even bothering to sit for basic interviews or take legitimate questions. She’s been coronated without scrutiny, and only now are we starting to see how she views the economy. She seems to understand that a lot of people are suffering, and she at least partially diagnoses it accurately as the result of inflation. But she has no understanding of where the inflation comes from. There’s no discussion of the government’s role in running multi-trillion dollar deficits, the unprecedented fiscal and monetary stimulus, and continuing to rack up trillions of dollars in debt every year, even though there’s no longer a national emergency.

Her plans will undoubtedly cause higher deficits and more inflation. For example, subsidizing housing is obviously only going to make everything cost more. Giving new home buyers a free $25,000 just means houses will become $25,000 more expensive. It’s exactly what happened during the pandemic when they started handing out stimmy checks— there was no increase in goods and services, just more money floating around, so prices went up. The same thing will happen with housing and everything else the government pours “free money” into. But they have no understanding of this. None of that factors into her thinking. To her, inflation is always and everywhere the result of corporate greed. And her solutions to inflation involve essentially criminalizing “greed” and throwing the full force and weight of the federal government into attacking the private business sector.

Now she’s talking about using the government and the legal system to go after private businesses. She’s attacking grocery store chains, accusing them of being greedy when their profit margins are a measly 2-3%. Apparently, that’s greedy. The Biden Administration has gone out of its way to destroy competition, even though competition is one of the most important factors in keeping prices low. They attack oil companies and prevent the expansion of US energy production. Of course that makes energy prices higher, which in turn makes the price of everything else higher. This is why it’s ultimately very difficult to see the dollar surviving as the global reserve currency through a single term of a Kamala administration. Her policies will create higher deficits, balloon the national debt, and drive up inflation.

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Part of an interview Nomi had with Robert Scheer. Train of thought.

• End the US Dollar Chokehold on the World (Nomi Prins)

[..] central banks outside of the US centric system, China, India, Brazil, to an extent, Turkey etc, are trying to effectively grow their gold reserves again. Why are they trying to grow their gold reserves again? Because they’re looking at any way possible to diversify against the supremacy of the dollar in order to have that autonomy within the global system. It used to be the US, yes, and now China’s saying, Look, we’re developing more quickly the United States, we’re have more technological patents in the United States. We have more nuclear energy and advanced power plants and other forms of energy, and they’ve got negatives on cleanliness, but also are developing, and we’re just moving more quickly in terms of just the general move forward, and we’re going to do that with partners.

And what’s happened is the alliance of nations that needed the US and needed the dollar to trade don’t need it anymore. Saudi Arabia doesn’t need to value petroleum in dollars anymore. They can value it in a block that is continuing to strengthen. I was in Brazil in April, and I’ve done a lot of I did my page down the triangle between Brazil being in the middle of China in the US, and how that’s moving more towards China with, of course, diplomacy with the US still intact, but still from the standpoint of production, of workers, of partnerships. And I was in the capital actually talking about the g20 which is going to be happening in Rio in November. And what was going to be discussed at the g20 it’s going to be big on energy. It’s going to be big on digital platform, currency.

Why? Because it wants to create a digital way of of de dollarization and of creating more, whether it’s a world currency or what’s the currency amongst BRICS and other nations, as simply a method of payment, of securing flows of funds for products and services and trade across these nations. And what was interesting to me, just on a real sort of like basis, is, you know, you take Ubers, we do everywhere, and in the capital of Brazil, Brasilia, the only car that that Uber drivers were driving was a BYD and an EV BYD. It’s called Build. You build your dream. It’s a Chinese company. They’re manufacturing now in the center of or trying to build a plant in the center of Brazil, and Teslas are nowhere to be found. And while I was there, Elon Musk was having a pretty strident argument with Lula, the president of Brazil, about the fact that he was favoring, in his opinion, a Chinese car company. And then you sort of flash back out of that. And the reality is these cars are not just going into Brazil, they’re going into Italy, they’re going into France, they’re going into Germany.

They’re outpacing in trade. Some of what’s happening with with a key new development, key new product that the United States is also competing on through Tesla, and it doesn’t need to have the United States market in order to be successful, and that has been a significant development in de dollarization as well, is that trade and movement and currency has all been shifting, but also there isn’t as much of a need, because the economies are growing so quickly, the alliances are growing so quickly for the United States, and that just diminishes the United States power from from a trade and currency perspective, perhaps not a military perspective, but it, but just it just eat away at that power base.

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The entire New Popular Front alliance (NFP) is joining in.

• “France Unbowed” Party Moves to Impeach Macron (Sp.)

The left-wing France Unbowed party moved on Saturday to initiate the the impeachment of French President Emmanuel Macron after he rejected the candidacy of the New Popular Front’s Lucie Castets for prime minister. “The draft resolution to initiate impeachment proceedings against the President of the Republic, in accordance with Article 68 of the Constitution, was sent to the members of Parliament today for joint signature,” Mathilde Panot, the leader of the France Unbowed group in the parliament, said on X. The party lashed back at Macron for turning down its pick for prime minister despite the leftist coalition winning the most seats in the parliamentary runoff in July.

Under Article 68, the president can only be removed from office over a breach of duties that is clearly incompatible with the exercise of the presidential mandate. France Unbowed has enough seats to initiate the procedure, but it needs the approval of a two-thirds majority in both chambers of parliament. Macron met with parliamentary factions and party leaders in August in a bid to negotiate a new government after the election resulted in a hung parliament. He excluded the New Popular Front, which secured 182 out of 577 seats, from the talks citing concerns about “institutional stability.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Ivermectin

 

 

Lion

 

 

Cowgoats
https://twitter.com/i/status/1829587620109664750

 

 

Caracal
https://twitter.com/i/status/1829826504781623762

 

 

Teamwork

 

 

Family
https://twitter.com/i/status/1829969171238822320

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle August 29 2024

Aug 292024
 
 August 29, 2024  Posted by at 8:46 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  75 Responses »


M. C. Escher Bond of union 1956

 

• Durov Released On €5 Million Bail (RT)
• Durov Under Investigation For Child Abuse – AFP (RT)
• French Paper: Macron Had Invited Durov For Dinner (Sp.)
• CIA Used Telegram To Topple Governments – Mike Benz (RT)
• Kim Dotcom Calls For Boycott Of France Over Durov Arrest (RT)
• Cut the Defense Budget by 97.5% (Rall)
• The Policy Desperation Of Kamala Harris (QTR)
• Several States Refuse To Remove RFK Jr’s Name From Ballots, Hurting Trump (ZH)
• Trump Slams Jack Smith As ‘Deranged’ (RT)
• Trump Suggests Biden And Harris Partly To Blame For Attempt On His Life (RT)
• Ukraine Demands ‘No Strings Attached’ $50 Billion From G7 (RT)
• Banning the “Russian” Orthodox Church (SCF)
• The World Is Heading Towards War, It Will Begin In The Middle East (Sadygzade)
• The World is Devoid of Intelligent Leadership (Paul Craig Roberts)

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1828603996463841417

 

 

Kamala 2019

 

 

Tulsi
https://twitter.com/i/status/1828762295599759749

 

 

Tulsi RFK
https://twitter.com/i/status/1828506544931217835

 

 

Jesse wall

 

 

Tax

 

 

Hawley

 

 

 

 

“The investigation against Durov began in February, the court statement noted. This detail contradicts a statement released by prosecutors on Monday, which described the probe as beginning last month..”

• Durov Released On €5 Million Bail (RT)

A French court has formally indicted Telegram founder Pavel Durov, accusing him of complicity in a litany of offenses and barring him from leaving France until the case against him concludes. Durov appeared before a magistrates’ court in Paris on Wednesday, four days after he was arrested upon arrival in the French capital from Azerbaijan. In a statement released on Wednesday night, the court said that Durov had been formally charged with a dozen offenses, including complicity in “administering an online platform” used by a criminal gang to conduct an illicit transaction, a charge that the court noted carries a maximum penalty of ten years in prison. The rest of the charges, which were announced by prosecutors on Monday, include facilitating fraud, money laundering, and the distribution of narcotics and child pornography, as well as refusal to turn over user data to law enforcement investigations.

The Russian entrepreneur, who also holds the citizenship of France, the UAE, and St. Kitts and Nevis, was released on a €5 million ($5.55 million) bond. He was ordered to remain in France until the investigation against him concludes, and to report to a police station twice a week. Criminal investigations in France are run by special magistrates – judges granted wide-ranging investigative powers. Charges like those leveled against Durov are typically announced before investigators have finished gathering evidence, and can be dropped at any time if they cannot be substantiated. The investigation against Durov began in February, the court statement noted. This detail contradicts a statement released by prosecutors on Monday, which described the probe as beginning last month. It is being led by OFMIN, a French agency tasked with investigating crimes against minors. Telegram, which has almost a billion monthly users, generally refuses to hand over user data or chat records to law enforcement.

However, the company said on Sunday that it complies with local laws, and called it “absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform.” Anti-censorship activists have described Durov’s arrest as part of a wider campaign against free speech waged by Western governments, with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden accusing France of taking the entrepreneur “hostage” in order to access private communications on Telegram. In a social media post on Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron insisted that Durov’s arrest “is in no way a political decision,” and that France “is more than anything attached to freedom of expression and communication.” It is unclear whether Durov has been pressed to hand over user data since his arrest on Saturday. Sergey Naryshkin, the head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), said on Tuesday that the billionaire would likely be coerced into giving up this data. “I really hope that he will not allow this,” Naryshkin told Russia’s TASS news agency.

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Credible?

• Durov Under Investigation For Child Abuse – AFP (RT)

French authorities have launched an investigation into claims that Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov committed “serious acts of violence” against his own son, AFP reported on Wednesday. The investigation is separate from an ongoing probe into his alleged complicity in a wide range of crimes. The 39-year-old Russian, who also holds the citizenship of France, the UAE, and St. Kitts and Nevis, appeared before a Paris court on Wednesday. Though he has not been formally indicted in either French case a decision is expected overnight on Wednesday. Durov could be charged with 12 criminal offenses, including facilitating narcotics distribution, money laundering, and organized crime, and aiding in the distribution of child pornography. According to Paris prosecutors, a “person unnamed” used Durov’s app to commit multiple offenses. Durov’s refusal to turn over the user’s data to law enforcement led to him being investigated, Politico reported on Wednesday.

Shortly after Durov arrived at the court, France’s AFP news agency reported that the entrepreneur was also being investigated on suspicion of “serious acts of violence” against his six-year-old son. Citing “a source close to the case,” AFP claimed that the probe was recently opened by France’s child welfare office. Durov’s son was born in Russia and now resides in Switzerland with his mother, Irina Bolgar. It is unclear whether the investigation is linked to a criminal complaint filed against Durov by Bolgar in Switzerland last year. According to court documents seen by Forbes magazine, Bolgar accused her ex-partner of five instances of violence against his son, before filing a child custody case. Both cases were filed shortly after Durov allegedly stopped paying Bolgar €150,000 ($167,500) in child support per month, Forbes noted. Durov has also claimed to have fathered over 100 children in 12 countries through sperm donation.

In a statement on Sunday, Telegram called it “absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform.” Telegram complies with local laws, including the EU’s Digital Rights Act (DSA) and anti-Russian sanctions, the company added. Neither Durov nor Telegram have commented on the alleged child abuse case. Anti-censorship activists have described Durov’s arrest as part of a wider campaign against free speech waged by Western governments, with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden accusing France of taking the entrepreneur “hostage” in order to access private communications on Telegram. X Owner Elon Musk, American journalist Tucker Carlson, and Silicon Valley investor David Sacks have all condemned Durov’s arrest as an attack on free speech.

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They had had dinner before. Why would he be suspicious?

• French Paper: Macron Had Invited Durov For Dinner (Sp.)

It appears that Paris has tried to trap Telegram founder Pavel Durov for quite a while, Wall Street analyst and investigative journalist Charles Ortel told Sputnik, not ruling out that granting of the French citizenship to the Russian tech prodigy was part of the plan. “It looks very much like a trap,” Ortel said. He also referred to the claim by the French newspaper, Le Canard Enchaine, that the Telegram founder came to Paris to dine with President Emmanuel Macron. The claim was rejected by the Elysee Palace. This apparent plot to entrap Durov could have been initiated by Macron either at the behest of the US “deep state,” or as the French president’s attempt to “curry favor” with American deep state figures, according to the Wall Street analyst. “The essence of the problem is simple: Deep State ‘globalism’ is a fundamentally flawed construct that enriches a tiny minority of connected insiders, and impoverishes the balance of the world,” Ortel told Sputnik.

“Those who play along pretending that unregulated, chaotic globalist plans are actually working are celebrated including the Clintons, Soros, Bill Gates, Mike Bloomberg, Rupert Murdoch and people like Macron, Blair and Obama. Those who wish to punish corrupt globalist actors are targeted. According to the Wall Street analyst, Macron is “a purveyor of trash talk”. The analyst notes that platforms like Telegram are educating “the deluded mass audience,” which could hold corrupt actors— including those within the deep state— accountable. Consequently, the deep state and its allies are targeting Durov’s Telegram and other independent platforms, the analyst maintains. On August 28, the Wall Street Journal reported that Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, had at least one dinner with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, during which the possibility of relocating Telegram’s headquarters to France was discussed. Macron also allegedly put forward the offer of granting French citizenship to the Russian tech mogul.

According to the WSJ, this conversation took place in 2018. Interestingly, a year earlier, Durov had become the target of a French-Emirati intelligence operation code-named “Purple Music.” Sources familiar with the situation revealed that Durov’s iPhone was reportedly hacked by spies at that time. In August 2021, Durov was granted French citizenship through “an exceptional and highly political procedure,” as the French press described it in June 2023, calling it “a surprising choice on the part of the authorities.” That being said, it does not appear that the Russian national urgently required another foreign citizenship. Before obtaining a French passport, Durov became a citizen of the UAE. Additionally, he has held citizenship in Saint Kitts and Nevis since 2013. Likewise, there were no announcements that he planned to move the Telegram headquarters anywhere from Dubai where he has resided since 2017.

The Telegram CEO was arrested on August 24, immediately after his private jet landed at Paris’ Le Bourget airport. When the Russian Embassy in France sent a note to the French authorities, requesting consular access to the detained Telegram founder, Paris made it clear that they arrested Durov as a French citizen. This is how the trap for Durov snapped shut, according to Russian diplomats. “The problem is that… Pavel Durov has French citizenship. Accordingly, for Paris, for France, he is, first and foremost, a citizen of their country,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova told a press briefing on August 25. The German press cited an unnamed investigator as saying that Durov had apparently been aware he was a wanted man in France which makes his flight to Paris “something of a surprise”.

Le Canard Enchaine, however, cites Durov as saying that he was invited by the French president. If the Russian businessman believed he was invited by Macron there is nothing surprising in his decision to go to Paris. According to Ortel, this situation speaks volumes about the French government. The Macron cabinet was lambasted by French politician and head of the Patriot Party, Florian Philippot: “Macron is perfectly capable of this kind of trickery, in order to fulfill the mission demanded by his masters: to jail all those who defend freedom of expression!”

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“..Telegram has been “the darling of the CIA, the State Department, and USAID” for political operations worldwide..”

• CIA Used Telegram To Topple Governments – Mike Benz (RT)

The US and its CIA-controlled “soft power” arm utilized the encrypted social media app Telegram to foment riots and protest movements against foreign governments it deems undesirable, former Trump administration official and free speech activist Mike Benz has said. These statements were made during an interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson on his show Wednesday. Benz, a State Department official under the Trump administration, now runs the free speech watchdog Foundation for Freedom Online. Carlson asked Benz about a potential US role in the arrest of Telegram co-founder and CEO Pavel Durov in France last week. A court in Paris charged Durov on Wednesday with complicity in several crimes perpetrated through his app, as well as failing to cooperate with French authorities. While the former diplomat did not speculate, he noted that Durov’s detention aligns with the pattern of “soft power” tactics the US has pursued in the past.

The US has championed free speech globally for decades, “in large part” because it allows the country to build resistance and political or paramilitary movements “in countries where the US State Department seeks political control,” the former official said. Durov’s end-to-end encrypted social media app Telegram has been instrumental in this effort, Benz claimed. The reason “26 US-government-funded NGOs” condemned Russia for attempting to ban Telegram in 2018 was that “the US State Department was using Telegram,” utilizing its encryption and local popularity “to foment protests and riots within Russia – just as they did in Belarus, Iran, Hong Kong, and attempted to do in China,” the former State Department official stated. The app’s encryption is a powerful means of evading state control over media and allowing “US-funded political groups or dissidents to garner tens of thousands of supporters with relative impunity,” he added.

Benz asserted that Telegram was the “main channel” when the US was “effectively orchestrating a color revolution in Belarus” in 2020. “The National Endowment for Democracy NED was actually paying the main administrators of the Telegram channels that orchestrated those riots,” he noted, calling the NED “one of the most prolific CIA cutouts in the arsenal.” This practice is part of a long-running campaign by the US, UK, and other NATO partners to gain political control over the territories of the former Soviet Union and their resources, according to Benz. He concluded that Telegram has been “the darling of the CIA, the State Department, and USAID” for political operations worldwide, due to its billion users and the ease with which they can be directed to necessary channels for recruitment.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1828962108349792457
https://twitter.com/i/status/1828929910490182140
https://twitter.com/i/status/1828941145055084682

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“If you want to fight for free speech, this is the way..”

• Kim Dotcom Calls For Boycott Of France Over Durov Arrest (RT)

The founder of the Megaupload file sharing service, Kim Schmitz, more commonly known as Kim Dotcom, has called for a boycott of France over the recent arrest of Telegram creator and CEO Pavel Durov in Paris. Writing on X on Wednesday, Dotcom urged people to “boycott France until Pavel Durov is released” and called on people to stop spending money on French products and refrain from traveling to the country. “If you want to fight for free speech, this is the way,” Dotcom wrote. The 39-year-old Russian entrepreneur was arrested on Saturday upon arriving at the Paris-Le Bourget Airport on a private jet. The Paris public prosecutor’s office has stated that Durov was arrested as part of a broader criminal inquiry against an unnamed person and a French judge has already twice extended his detention.

According to prosecutors, Durov, who also holds French, Emirati, and St Kitts and Nevis citizenship, could face charges ranging from complicity in drug dealing and money laundering, to facilitating the distribution of child pornography. The possible charges reportedly stem from what prosecutors believe to be insufficient moderation of Telegram and Durov’s failure to prevent misuse of the messenger app by bad actors. French President Emmanuel Macron has also claimed that the Telegram founder’s detention was part of “an ongoing judicial investigation” and was “in no way a political decision.” Telegram, meanwhile, has stressed that the app “abides by EU laws, including the Digital Services Act” and has called it “absurd” to claim that the company or its owner are responsible for the misuse of the platform.

Durov’s sudden arrest has sparked a wave of backlash against French authorities from across the globe. Many, including billionaire Elon Musk, American journalist Tucker Carlson, and Silicon Valley investor David Sacks, have described the move as a direct attack on free speech. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has also accused France of holding Durov “hostage” in order to gain access to the private communications of Telegram users. The app currently has approximately one billion active monthly users around the world. Durov previously stated in an interview with Carlson that he had consistently refused to provide user data to any authorities, including US intelligence services, or to install a surveillance “backdoor” in the app.

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“Like the hippo, the U.S. started out small and vulnerable to aggressors like England, which re-invaded in 1812. But things have changed for both the hippo and us. Can’t we be smarter than a hippo?”

• Cut the Defense Budget by 97.5% (Rall)

Because effective lawmaking requires bipartisanship and members of Congress are, like their constituents, at their most ideologically divided point in a half century, cooperation is in increasingly short supply. As a result or, more precisely non-result, the U.S. Congress passes fewer bills every year. There is, however, one consistent area of agreement on Capitol Hill: defense spending. Each year for the past six decades, the massive National Defense Authorization Act—Washington-speak for the federal defense spending bill has passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. Defense appropriations are so sacrosanct that the press often describes the NDAA as “must pass”; it is routine for Congress to add in hundreds of millions of dollars of extraneous spending that the Pentagon does not want or request.

In the U.S. Congress, even “antiwar” voices support the military. Obama’s 2008 campaign was primarily predicated on his opposition to the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq. Yet even his GOP opponent John McCain didn’t care call out Obama on the fact that when he had six chances to vote on the Iraq War—he wasn’t in the Senate yet when it voted on the measure authorizing President George W. Bush to attack the government of Saddam Hussein—he voted to send the cash each time. Bernie Sanders has repeatedly voted to fund the military and sending weapons for wars being waged by U.S. proxies like Israel and Ukraine. Vice President Kamala Harris, whom Republicans describe as Marxist, socialist and communist, is thoroughly committed to the cult of American militarism. “As Commander-in-Chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world,” she said in Thursday’s nomination acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention.

The idea that military expenditures are “must pass” relies on the assumption that the U.S. faces existential threats to its safety and/or sovereignty. This is crap. As Statfor’s classic 2011 assessment of the United States and its geopolitical position noted: “The American geography is an impressive one.” Consider Russia. It has thousands of miles of land borders, most of it without significant natural barriers like mountain ranges or large bodies of water to deter a potential invader, millions of square miles of fairly flat lands that can quickly and easily be traversed, with numerous neighbors that are hostile and have posed a historical threat. Given its situation, Russia’s rulers have traditionally relied on friendly buffer and vassal states around its perimeter.

“The U.S. Atlantic Coast possesses more major ports than the rest of the Western Hemisphere combined,” Stratfor observed. “Two vast oceans insulated the United States from Asian and European powers, deserts separate the United States from Mexico to the south, while lakes and forests separate the population centers in Canada from those in the United States. The United States has capital, food surpluses and physical insulation in excess of every other country in the world by an exceedingly large margin.” Canada and Mexico are friendly vassal states. “Red Dawn” was just a movie. Gun nuts who think they’ll need AR-15s to arm a Resistance against alien invaders are deluded. No one wants to invade us. No one wants to take away our freedoms. No one can.

We are acting like the hippopotamus. Hippos are the most dangerous land animal on the planet, killing 500 human beings every year. They’re nervous and high-strung because they rapidly evolved from a much smaller creature that made easy prey. Poor things! They don’t realize that they’ve become huge, grown fearsome teeth and no longer need to be aggressive and territorial. Like the hippo, the U.S. started out small and vulnerable to aggressors like England, which re-invaded in 1812. But things have changed for both the hippo and us. Can’t we be smarter than a hippo?

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“..an interview from Dana Bash on CNN this Thursday — but it’ll be with Tim Walz by her side, ready to step in should she put her foot in her mouth. It’ll also likely be pre-recorded and edited.”

• The Policy Desperation Of Kamala Harris (QTR)

While Donald Trump spent last week continuing to advocate for the same policies he ran on the first time he was president, Kamala Harris was advocating for the opposite of what her administration has done for the last 3.5 years and was adopting another one of Trump’s policies she previously railed against: building a border wall. Axios reported on Tuesday morning that Harris was now considering spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a wall on the southern border. The report said: If she’s elected president, Kamala Harris pledges to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on the wall along the southern border — a project she once opposed and called “un-American” during the Trump administration. Harris had also previously called a wall ““a medieval vanity project”, as well as repeatedly calling it “racist”, “useless”, a “stupid use of money”, “a complete waste of taxpayer money” and “wasteful”.

“On the subject of transnational gangs, let’s be perfectly clear, the President’s medieval vanity project is not going to stop them,” she said in 2019, talking about Donald Trump’s wall-building ambitions. This humiliating and hypocritical change of stance by Kamala Harris marks the second major Trump policy she’s stolen from her Republican competitor since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee barely 40 days ago. As my readers know, just days ago I wrote about how Harris, whose IRS during the Biden administration was actively trying to crack down on taxing tipped employees, miraculously changed her mind and adopted Donald Trump’s “no tax on tips” policy that he had been advocating for, with success, over the last few months. Further, economist Peter Schiff skewered her ideas as “socialism” in a wide ranging interview I held with him just days ago about Harris’ economic plan.

And while Harris may have been able to write off the “no tax on tips” policy theft as a one-off in the name of adopting common sense, her repeated railing against the idea of a border wall, combined with the fact that she has allowed millions of illegal immigrants to cross the border during her tenure as Vice President and “Border Czar”, makes this policy change look like pure desperation. It is an appalling, unfathomable stance to take all of a sudden — after 3.5 years of the Biden-Harris administration willingly allowing millions of illegals through the southern border and even actively fighting against the state of Texas to prevent it from sealing its border. If people didn’t catch on that Harris has no good ideas when she stole Trump’s “no tax on tips” policy, they’re going to catch on now.

To try to wave another massive policy flip-flop in the face of the voters that matter—swing state independents and centrists—is just going to look ridiculous at this point. The pivot is so stark and stands in such contrast to Harris’s past rhetoric that even the most uninformed voters are going to have to take notice. Compounding the idiocy of running her campaign on an increasing number of Donald Trump’s policies (to boot, Harris also said Tuesday she wouldn’t mandate electric vehicles), Kamala Harris still refuses to do a live, solo in-person interview or press conference. On Tuesday night it was announced she’d sit down for an interview from Dana Bash on CNN this Thursday — but it’ll be with Tim Walz by her side, ready to step in should she put her foot in her mouth. It’ll also likely be pre-recorded and edited.

Read more …

“Minor party candidates cannot withdraw, so his name will remain on the ballot in the November election..”

• Several States Refuse To Remove RFK Jr’s Name From Ballots, Hurting Trump (ZH)

After Robert F. Kennedy Jr. dropped out of the presidential race last week and threw his support behind former President Trump, several states have refused to remove his name from the ballot after he announced he would do so in about 10 swing states. “Our polling consistently showed that by staying on the ballot in the battleground states, I would likely hand the election over to the Democrats, with whom I disagree on the most existential issues,” Kennedy said just before endorsing Trump, Insider reports. Three key states have dug in and are refusing to remove his name; Michigan – a key battleground state, said it was too late for Kennedy to withdraw as the nominee of the Natural Law Party. Wisconsin – whose Elections Commission voted 5-1 on Tuesday against removing his name, citing a law which says “any person who files nomination papers and qualifies to appear on the ballot may not decline nomination.” Colorado – which, while less competitive for Trump than Michigan or Wisconsin, also refused to remove Kennedy’s name.

“Minor party candidates cannot withdraw, so his name will remain on the ballot in the November election,” said Cheri Hardmon, a spokesperson for Michigan Secretary of State in a statement to the Detroit News. “The Natural Law Party held their convention to select electors for Robert Kennedy Jr. They cannot meet at this point to select new electors since it’s past the primary,” she added. Nevada notably allowed RFK Jr. to remove his name after his legal team came to an agreement with DNC lawyers who were suing to keep him off the ballot. As The Conservative Treehouse notes; “RFK Jr is gone from ballots in the battleground states of Arizona, Pennsylvania and now Nevada. Not Michigan and Wisconsin. Florida, Texas and Ohio have also removed Kennedy, but those are generally Red. The state to watch is now North Carolina, where ballots would have to be reprinted quickly if the RFK Jr intent is to withdraw. The Kennedy team have not requested to remove their candidate from North Carolina.

(VIA NPR) – “Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been nominated by the We The People Party as that party’s presidential candidate to be listed on the ballot,” North Carolina State Board of Elections public information officer Patrick Gannon said. “That party has not informed the State Board of any plans to change its nomination.” Gannon said that if We The People withdrew Kennedy’s nomination, state officials would have to consider if it would be practical to reprint ballots. As of Friday, nearly a third of North Carolina’s 100 counties had started the printing process.

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“Trump claimed that the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling should have seen the entire case being dismissed..”

• Trump Slams Jack Smith As ‘Deranged’ (RT)

Former President Donald Trump has lashed out at the US administration and the Department of Justice over their latest attempt to prosecute him for alleged interference in the 2020 presidential election. The Republican candidate in this year’s race for the White House has described the legal campaign targeting him as “a direct assault on democracy” and a case of actual election interference. Trump’s statements follow a new indictment filed against him by Special Counsel Jack Smith, accusing the former head of state of illegally trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. The new document is a stripped-down version of last year’s criminal case against Trump, which alleged that he “spread lies” of “outcome-determinative fraud” in the election by insisting that he had won the race at the time instead of Joe Biden. Trump launched an appeal in that case, claiming immunity from prosecution as president, and the initial indictment was dismissed last month by the Supreme Court.

The revised document, which is shorter and lacking part of the original that had accused Trump of trying to force the Justice Department to overturn his election loss, still lays out the same four charges that prosecutors initially brought against the former president. Among them are conspiracy to defraud the US, conspiracy against the voting rights of citizens, and charges relating to the disruption of Congress’ certification of the electoral vote by a mob of Trump’s supporters on January 6, 2021. Trump, who has repeatedly denied wrongdoing and denounced the case as an attempt to prevent him from returning to power, slammed the new indictment in a slew of posts on his Truth Social platform on Tuesday, calling it a “resurrection of a dead witch hunt.”

What they are doing now is the single greatest sabotage of our Democracy in History…. This is for Third World Countries and Banana Republics, not for the USA! Trump claimed that the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling should have seen the entire case being dismissed, and lambasted the “deranged” Jack Smith for bringing it up again “in an act of desperation, and in order to save face.” “This is merely an attempt to interfere with the election, and distract the American people from the catastrophes [Vice President] Kamala Harris has inflicted on our nation,” Trump wrote. He also accused the Department of Justice of breaking its own 60-days policy, which prohibits it from taking any action that could influence the race in the two months preceding the presidential election.

Read more …

“..Harris and Biden portrayed him as a “threat to democracy,” which “can get assassins or potential assassins going.”

• Trump Suggests Biden And Harris Partly To Blame For Attempt On His Life (RT)

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has suggested that his Democratic rival and current vice president, Kamala Harris, and President Joe Biden are partly responsible for the assassination attempt against him last month. The GOP firebrand alleged that the pair had been making it more difficult for the Secret Service to protect him, while pedaling the kind of rhetoric that could have encouraged the shooter. Trump narrowly escaped death when 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire on him during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13. The would-be assassin had taken position on a nearby rooftop that gave him an unobstructed view of the Republican candidate. One of the bullets grazed the former president’s right ear, with one attendee killed and two others injured as a result of the shooting. The shooter was subsequently killed by Secret Service agents.

In an interview on Tuesday with Phil McGraw, better known as Dr Phil, Trump said: “I think to a certain extent it’s Biden’s fault and Harris’s fault.” He accused the pair of “weaponizing government” against him and bringing in the “whole DOJ to try and get me.” “They weren’t too interested in my health and safety,” the Republican nominee added, claiming that Biden and Harris “were making it very difficult to have proper staffing in terms of Secret Service.” According to the former president, Harris and Biden portrayed him as a “threat to democracy,” which “can get assassins or potential assassins going.” “Maybe that bullet is because of their rhetoric,” Trump suggested.

In late July, Democrats and Republicans in the House of Representatives unanimously voted in favor of creating a bipartisan task force to probe the attempted assassination of Trump. Made up of seven Republicans and six Democrats, its intended goal is to examine potential security lapses on federal, state and local levels of law enforcement that led up to the incident. Several days prior, Kimberly Cheatle stepped down as director of the Secret Service. Her resignation was preceded by an acrimonious congressional hearing that saw lawmakers accuse her of withholding information and refusing to take responsibility for security failures at the rally. She was forced to acknowledge that “on July 13, we failed” in a manner not seen in decades.

Read more …

Ask Trump.

• Ukraine Demands ‘No Strings Attached’ $50 Billion From G7 (RT)

Ukraine has demanded that no conditions be attached to a $50 billion loan by G7 members to the country which is reportedly backed by seized Russian assets. Speaking at the ‘Ukraine 2024. Independence’ forum on Tuesday, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmigal stated that while G7 leaders agreed to lend $50 billion in June, Kiev insists on a certain “political framework” related to the funds. “Ukraine should receive them by the end of this year at the latest. These funds should be provided to Ukraine without any conditions,” he insisted. This loan also “should be interest-free and not affect an increase in the state debt,” Shmigal went on, adding that Kiev must be able to use the funds for any of its needs, primarily to compensate for the damage the country has suffered during the conflict.

The prime minister noted that Kiev and the G7 had reached an agreement on this point, but said he wants Ukraine to be able to use the funds to finance the budget and the military. Shmigal conceded that providing Ukraine with this loan “is a difficult task.” “The G7 countries and the EU must find a consensus on how to provide this money. These funds will be compensated for our partners by revenues from frozen Russian assets, the total amount of which is $300 billion,” he said, adding that the annual interest on this sum is $3-4 billion annually. The prime minister acknowledged that Ukraine remains in dire financial straits, pointing to a $35 billion deficit in next year’s budget, $15 billion of which still has to be covered in some way.

“Our goal is to get all $300 billion which is frozen,” Shmigal stressed. He added, however, that for the time being, Ukraine also intends to raise funds by increasing internal borrowing and taxation. While Western nations have discussed outright confiscation of the $300 billion in sovereign Russian assets, mostly stashed in Belgium, they have so far refrained from doing so due to legal and public image concerns. However, G7 members have agreed to use the profits from these assets to finance Ukraine. Moscow has denounced the asset freeze as “theft.” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the West’s decision to use profits from Russian money to help Ukraine is “criminal, cynical, and another blow to international law.”

Read more …

“Ukraine, for obvious reasons, has always been part of the canonical jurisdiction of Moscow and never wanted to stop being so..”

• Banning the “Russian” Orthodox Church (SCF)

Recently, Ukraine finally passed a total ban on the Orthodox Church, making the faith of more than 80% of the Ukrainian people illegal. The decision did not surprise anyone, as several laws restricting the Church’s activities had already been approved in the country since 2022 – in addition to the de facto persecution of Orthodoxy taking place since the Maidan coup in 2014. However, even so, the Western media continues trying to soften the crimes of its proxy regime. The current main narrative in the Western media is that Ukraine has banned the “Russian Orthodox Church”. By calling the Orthodox Church on Ukrainian soil “Russian”, the media induces public opinion to believe that the ban only affects a specific religious group linked to Moscow, and does not harm the Orthodox faithful as a whole. However, this is an easily refutable lie.

Unlike the Catholic Church, Orthodoxy does not have a “universal bishop” – like a “Pope” – and its administration is therefore divided into regional jurisdictions. Each jurisdiction of the Church is absolutely sovereign, with Orthodoxy being a Communion of Faith between different Autocephalous Churches. Each Autocephalous Church administers a canonical territory, with no Church being authorized to interfere in the internal affairs of another’s territory. The canonical territory of an Autocephalous Church is not necessarily restricted to the borders of nation states. Canonical territorial delimitation concerns the historical development of Orthodoxy in a region. State borders are much more unstable than canonical borders – which, although they can change, require much more time to develop such reconfigurations. In the case of the canonical territory of the Moscow Patriarchate, Russian jurisdiction extends to almost the entire post-Soviet space, in addition to some regions of Far Asia, such as China and Japan.

Ukraine, for obvious reasons, has always been part of the canonical jurisdiction of Moscow and never wanted to stop being so. There are even reports that canonical autocephaly was already offered to Ukrainians by the Russians, being rejected. In the case of very large canonical territories, such as Russia’s, it is common for there to be division into local “sub-jurisdictions”. These sub-jurisdictions sometimes correspond to the specific territories of some nation states. This is precisely the case with the Orthodox Church of Japan and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, for example – both sub-jurisdictions subordinate to the Moscow Patriarchate. These regional churches have broad administrative autonomy, but do not have canonical sovereignty (autocephaly). It is important to emphasize how these divisions are purely administrative in nature, although they correspond to historical, cultural and political factors.

There is no such a thing as an “ethnic division” of Orthodoxy, being this type of segregationist mentality – known as “phyletism” – banned as a heresy in the Orthodox Communion. So, it must be said very clearly that by banning the canonical Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) on Ukrainian soil, the Kiev regime simply banned the Ukrainian Orthodox Church itself. In other words, the faith of 80% of the Ukrainian people has become illegal in the country. Zelensky did not simply banish the Church. He also called the Orthodox Christians of the Moscow Patriarchate “Muscovite demons” in his speech on Ukraine’s “independence day.” Furthermore, Artyom Dmitruk, a Ukrainian parliamentarian who voted against the Church ban, is being persecuted by the regime, having even suffered attacks on members of his family. The police are also reacting with violence against all demonstrators protesting against the ban on the Church, having then an official situation of religious persecution in the neo-Nazi regime.

It is also interesting to mention that there are efforts by the Western media to promote an ultranationalist Ukrainian schismatic sect – the so-called “Kiev Patriarchate”. The group was created by some former Ukrainian ultranationalist clerics in the 1990s following unsuccessful minority demands of autocephaly for Kiev. Since 2014, the sect has become a kind of Ukrainian “state church”, receiving strong support from the Maidan Junta – including the handover of canonical Church assets confiscated by the Ukrainian state. This sect is known for venerating as saints the so-called “national heroes” of Ukraine, such as SS member and Holocaust collaborator Stepan Bandera. Furthermore, the group carries out several blasphemous acts against Orthodox Christianity, preaching a kind of Russophobic “anti-Orthodoxy”.

Unfortunately, however, political interference in religion has been strong in Ukraine, mainly from external actors. The “Kiev Patriarchate” was recently “recognized” by the Patriarchate of Constantinople in an illegal intervention maneuver in the canonical territory of Moscow. Constantinople is fortunately isolated in its decision, being supported only by the Autocephalous Churches of Athens and Alexandria.

Read more …

“..Iran is not interested in a war that could further undermine its economy and increase social tensions within the country.”

• The World Is Heading Towards War, It Will Begin In The Middle East (Sadygzade)

With each passing day, the Middle East inches closer to a full-scale, devastating war. Multiple regional powers are involved, each being pushed by its own internal and external pressures further away from peace. The situation intensified following the events of October 7, 2023, when Hamas launched an attack on Israel, prompting a fierce response from the Israeli military. Palestinians continue to insist on a return to the 1967 borders and the establishment of their own state with East Jerusalem as its capital, while Israel refuses to make these concessions. Tensions remain high, severely complicating any attempts at a diplomatic resolution. Some Western officials, however, particularly in the US, claim that a ceasefire agreement is imminent, and optimism about these statements is buoyed by Iran’s restraint in not yet retaliating for the assassination of Hamas Politburo chief Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31, 2024. Iran seems to be holding back, perhaps in hopes of stabilizing the region.

However, there are forces within and beyond the region that continue to exert a destructive influence, seemingly unaware that their actions could lead to the deaths of hundreds of thousands, the collapse of several states, and disastrous consequences for the entire world. This is precisely what Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov addressed during a press conference on August 27. He expressed the view that some parties involved in the Middle Eastern conflict are not interested in a resolution. According to him, these parties prefer to continue the hostilities, betting on potential changes in the global political landscape. Lavrov noted that it appears some of these actors are deliberately maintaining violence to achieve their political goals. Lavrov also highlighted the connection between the situation in the Middle East and political processes in other countries, particularly the upcoming election in the US.

He suggested that the Israeli leadership might be hoping for changes in American policy that would reduce international pressure on Israel concerning its military operation in Gaza. The foreign minister expressed concern that these expectations could delay a resolution of the conflict. Furthermore, Lavrov stressed that Russia, like many other countries, condemned the terrorist attacks that occurred on October 7. However, he pointed out that a response involving collective punishment of the civilian population violates international humanitarian law. He criticized approaches that cause suffering to innocent people and exacerbate the humanitarian catastrophe. Lavrov paid special attention to statements by Israeli military officials who claim there are no civilians in Gaza, suggesting that all its residents are terrorists. He called this rhetoric dangerous, noting that it further inflames tensions.

In recent weeks, negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas have failed to produce any concrete agreements on a ceasefire. While the talks in Cairo were described as constructive, no agreements were reached. This situation illustrates that, despite the efforts of the international community, the parties to the conflict are not yet ready for peace. The recent assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, a prominent leader of Hamas, has raised numerous questions about Iran’s response, given its longstanding support for Palestinian resistance groups and the fact that the man was killed in Tehran. Iran has yet to strike back against Israel, which at first glance might seem surprising. The reasons for this restraint lie in Iran’s strategic interests and its desire to avoid a large-scale conflict.

First and foremost, the Iranian leadership understands that a war with Israel could have catastrophic consequences. The situation in the Middle East is already highly volatile, and an open conflict involving Iran would only exacerbate the crisis. Furthermore, Iran’s new president, Masoud Pezeshkian, a representative of the reformist bloc, is focused on normalizing relations with the West. The primary reason for this is Iran’s dire economic situation. In 2024, the Iranian economy continues to face significant challenges: Inflation has reached 40%, unemployment has risen to 15%, and the national currency continues to depreciate. Under these conditions, Iran is not interested in a war that could further undermine its economy and increase social tensions within the country.

Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has repeatedly expressed a willingness to negotiate a return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, also known as the Iran nuclear deal) under fair terms. These statements indicate that Iran is pursuing diplomatic solutions and recognizes the need for international cooperation. Tehran is aware that the outcome of a war with Israel, backed by NATO, is unpredictable. Thus, the delay in responding to Israel’s actions is more of a political tool than a sign of weakness. Iran seeks to use this pause to exert diplomatic and political pressure on Israel and the US to achieve a ceasefire in Gaza.

Read more …

“I am more convinced than ever that we are headed for nuclear Armageddon..”

• The World is Devoid of Intelligent Leadership (Paul Craig Roberts)

As readers know, I admire Russian President Putin, but the reasons I admire him make him a failed war leader. Putin is a product of an old conception of foreign affairs as a rational enterprise conducted by gentlemen who relied on agreement rather than on the imposition of power. Consequently, when faced with non-gentlemen, Putin finds he played his cards wrong and lacks power. By this I mean conventional power. He went to war in Donbas without an army, and he still doesn’t have one. Therefore, the defense of Russia now resides in tactical nuclear weapons. Once they are used, it goes full scale. Putin failed to understand that the conflict in Ukraine provoked by Washington had to be quickly won. He has failed to comprehend reality since 2014 when Washington overthrew, while Putin did nothing, the Ukrainian government.

He still hasn’t built the massive Russian Army that would cause second thoughts among Washington’s NATO puppets. How a leader of Putin’s quality fails in this way is beyond my understanding. Perhaps Putin is a Western liberal created by decades of Voice of America and Radio Free Europe propaganda beamed into the Soviet Union. So many Russian intellectuals, known as Atlanticist Integrationists, are a product of Washington propaganda and thus a threat to Russia. Putin has never enforced any of his red lines. Consequently, every one has been crossed with zero consequences to the West. The latest Western audacity was the American led invasion of Kursk. Putin said the attackers would be held accountable, but the very limited strikes on some Ukrainian military and civilian infrastructure hardly count as acts of war.

If we turn to the Middle East, we see the same inability to recognize reality. Israel used the moronic George W. Bush (really Dick Cheney) Regime to eliminate the countries opposing Israel’s expansion in the Middle East–Iraq, Syria, Iran. Washington knocked off Iraq for Israel, pretending it was a “war on terror” and “weapons of mass destruction,” and the dumbshit Americans fell for it. But before the Obama Regime could deliver its attack on Syria, Russia was there, thus saving the country. Now Israel has Washington focused on Iran. Why? Because Iran finances and arms the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, which has successfully defeated two Israeli invasions. If Israel can get Washington to get rid of Iran, Israel can grab southern Lebanon and perhaps the entire country. Once Israel’s forces were committed to Gaza, it was a perfect time for Syria to retake the Golan Heights and for Hezbollah to overrun northern Israel.

Iran could have knocked out the Iron Dome and destroyed Israeli air bases and military sites. But nothing happened. Seeing nothing but indecision and weakness, Israel began a campaign of attacking Syria, Hezbollah, and assassinating people in Iran. Following an assassination in the Iranian capital, the Iranian leader said he was going to teach Israel a lesson. But he didn’t. All Iran did was to reveal to Israel that it had the capability to breach the Iron Dome and bring destruction to Israel, but Iran brought no destruction. Instead, Iran stupidly revealed its capability, thus in an act of total stupidity put Israel on alert. Syria, allegedly, has the Russian S-300 air defense system. Either it doesn’t work or the Russians won’t let Syria use it to deter Israeli and US air attacks on Syria, which continue unabated. Makes one wonder why Russia bothered to intervene..

One can’t help but wonder if Putin and the almost equally unrealistic Chinese leader are sitting on Iran and Hezbollah, thinking that they are preventing an outbreak of a larger war. To the contrary, they are contributing to the outbreak of wider war. From all indications, neither the Russian, Chinese, or Iranian governments have sufficient awareness of the situation to understand that a lack of effective response to aggression leads to more and worse aggression. There are on the Iranian scene two of Washington’s carrier task force groups, US soldiers, and US jet fighters. Why are they there? Certainly not to rescue Israel from Gazans. What does this tell us? There are no Russian or Chinese forces in the area. What does this tell us? Just as there is no effective response to Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians, there is no effective response to Washington’s aggression against Russia, China, and Iran.

It would be so easy to stop this dangerous aggression. Only one simple thing is needed–a public statement by Russia, China, and Iran that the three countries have signed a mutual defense treaty, and an attack on one is an attack on all. That would end the Middle East conflict, and it would end the otherwise certain increase of NATO attacks, if only with long range missiles, on mother Russia that, unless Putin surrenders, will result in nuclear World War 3. Where is the necessary treaty that will stop the road to nuclear Armageddon? Why are the leaders of Russia, China, and Iran unable to act?

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Elvis
https://twitter.com/i/status/1828689517210968437

 

 

RFK 30 min
https://twitter.com/i/status/1828517649875189949

 

 

MAHA

 

 

Wedding

 

 

Cat snake
https://twitter.com/i/status/1828660201836204525

 

 

Workout
https://twitter.com/i/status/1828667904809701597

 

 

Grey wolf

 

 

Pyramid

 

 

Oasis

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle August 28 2024

Aug 282024
 
 August 28, 2024  Posted by at 8:40 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  51 Responses »


Francisco Collantes The Vision of Ezekiel 1630

 

• Durov May Be Banned From Leaving France If Charged (Sp.)
• Macron Invited Durov in 2018 to Move Telegram Headquarters to Paris (Sp.)
• Pavel Durov: The Quixotic Free Speech Hero of Our Time (Karganovic)
• EU to Telegram – We’re Coming to Get You (Pepe Escobar)
• Musk Asks Macron To Explain Durov Arrest (RT)
• Durov’s Arrest Is ‘Hallmark Of Dictatorship’ – Tucker Carlson to RFK Jr (RT)
• Durov’s Arrest Represents A New Level Of Desperation From Western Elites (Jay)
• Harris Agrees To Debate Rules – Trump (RT)
• Trump Slams Harris ‘Flip Flop’ On Border Wall (ZH)
• Will Kennedy Save Trump? (Bridge)
• Jack Smith Files Revised Indictment in Trump Federal Election Case (ET)
• Trump Lawyers Urge Appeals Court to Disqualify Fani Willis (ET)
• The Western Way of War – Owning The Narrative Trumps Reality (Crooke)
• Macron Rejects Left-Wing Government (RT)
• Poland In ‘State Of Hybrid War’ – Deputy Defense Chief (RT)
• US Nuclear Missile Project At Least 5 Years Behind Schedule – WSJ (RT)

 

 

 

 

How on earth can the polls be so close if most people Lemon talks to don’t know who Kamala is? I’m not buying it. It takes time to build name and face recognition. But Kamala just spent her first 40 days hiding from the press. Those polls are lying.

Lemon

 

 

RFK
https://twitter.com/i/status/1828219047407706539
https://twitter.com/i/status/1828245686845927504

 

 

Trump Dr. Phil
https://twitter.com/i/status/1828599617216209031

 

 

Tulsi
https://twitter.com/i/status/1828382219125301584

Biolabs
https://twitter.com/i/status/1828150312265547911

 

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1828268100040700374

 

 

 

 

“..the arrest warrant was issued by France’s OFMIN, the agency tasked with combating violence against minors..”

But

“..the investigation of his case has been entrusted to the National Anti-Fraud Unit..”

What links violence against minors to fraud?

• Durov May Be Banned From Leaving France If Charged (Sp.)

Telegram founder Pavel Durov, who was detained in France, may be banned from leaving the country if charged, the Financial Times newspaper reported, citing an informed Paris-based lawyer. Investigators may try to obtain additional information from Durov for the investigation or put pressure on him by extending his detention, the report said on Tuesday. If Durov is charged “it will be interesting to see what measures a judge imposes, as he lives abroad,” the lawyer was quoted as saying by the newspaper, adding that house arrest or a ban on leaving the country could be imposed. Durov may be in custody at the National Anti-Fraud Unit in the suburbs of Paris, a source told RIA Novosti.

“Considering that the investigation of his case has been entrusted to the National Anti-Fraud Unit, Durov may be there,” the source said. Russian-born Durov, who is a citizen of multiple countries, including France, was detained at an airport north of Paris on Saturday on charges linked to criminal uses of his Telegram app, including terrorism, drug trafficking, money laundering and fraud.

Read more …

Macron detests not having hi tech industry in France.

• Macron Invited Durov in 2018 to Move Telegram Headquarters to Paris (Sp.)

French President Emmanuel Macron invited Telegram founder Pavel Durov to move the app’s headquarters from Dubai to Paris in 2018, but he declined, US media reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter. Macron made the proposal during a lunch, which had not been previously reported, the people said. The French leader also discussed granting French citizenship to Durov at the time, the newspaper reported. Russian-born Durov, who holds citizenship in several countries including France, was detained at a Paris airport on Saturday on charges related to the criminal use of his Telegram app, including terrorism, drug trafficking, money laundering and fraud, which could land the 39-year-old billionaire in prison for up to 20 years. Macron has said that Durov’s arrest was not a political decision and promised that the decision on the businessman’s case will be made by judges.

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“..enormously gifted, focused, eloquent, engagingly modest, and above all supremely principled..”

• Pavel Durov: The Quixotic Free Speech Hero of Our Time (Karganovic)

It seems that over two hundred years after the Revolution, in France the Liberté part of its celebrated slogan has not really stuck. On Saturday 24 August, Russian social media platform entrepreneur Pavel Durov was arrested by the French police at La Bourget airport near Paris on trumped-up charges. The French authorities went about it in a sneaky third-world manner that does them no honour. They waited for Durov’s plane to enter French air space before issuing the arrest warrant. In it Durov was charged with a slew of “ham sandwich” offences, including such absurdities as “promotion of terrorism, paedophilia, fraud, drug trafficking, organised crime, and cyberbullying”. As soon as Durov departed the plane, he was surrounded and led off by police agents. The actual reasons for this arrest have nothing to do with the allegation in the charge sheet and they are bound to resonate with partisans of freedom everywhere.

Firstly, it is Durov’s resolute and principled refusal to share on demand with security agencies information that would compromise the privacy of Telegram users. Durov’s firm position in this regard collided directly with legislation which obligates social platforms operating on European Union territory to do precisely that. Secondly, the same legislation requires social media platforms to institute a humiliating system of what euphemistically is called “monitoring.” This amounts to directed censorship of opinions expressed by users in their Telegram posts. Durov wanted none of it. But in the EU, platform management is under orders to engage in this odious practice on behalf of and according to the directives of the totalitarian EU political elite. The firm rejection by Durov of that invasive demand, as we just saw, had dire consequences for his personal liberty.

All collective West based social platforms have willingly succumbed to these unethical demands and have more or less meekly agreed to act as extensions for their countries’ security services, to the detriment of users’ privacy. Attentive readers will easily connect the dots and recall that far from being an isolated occurrence this arrest follows a pattern of repression targeting non-systemic public figures in all major collective West “democracies.” Tucker Carlson a few months ago performed a huge public service by broadcasting an immensely informative interview with the thirty nine year-old Russian Wunderkind, recorded at Durov’s office in the United Arab Emirates.

The fascinating interview unveils the portrait of an enormously gifted, focused, eloquent, engagingly modest, and above all supremely principled person. Durov and his equally accomplished brother were the driving force behind VK, the Russian version of Facebook characterised by a much greater degree of sophistication, and later on of the Telegram social media platform which, at last count, had a global following of over nine hundred million users. But the key takeaway that emerged from Tucker Carlson’s interview, and it was with providential timing to counteract the deluge of media calumnies that is sure to follow Durov’s arrest, is something entirely different. It is the glaring contrast between the Russian genius, unmoved by the temptations of wealth and fame, and the avarice, vanity and emptiness of his Western counterparts who have been trying to compete with him in the same line of work.

With all that being said, like many members of the Russian intelligentsia, from A. Herzen in the 19th century on to the present day, Pavel Durov fell pray to his compatriots’ standard infantile misperception of where the grass is greener. At an earlier stage of his career he sadly failed to strike a reasonable balance between his passionate and laudable commitment to freedom and privacy and the conscientious fulfilment of his patriotic duties which, in their broad sweep, override fidelity to narrower principles, no matter how fundamental in their significance. Had he acted more flexibly then, and in the interview with Tucker Carlson the circumstances of that episode are fully revealed, he would not have turned into a stateless global nomad and most likely would not have fallen into the trap so treacherously sprung on him in Paris.

The legal situation arising from the detention of Pavel Durov, with the preposterous charges concocted against him and the harrowing possibility of twenty years’ imprisonment, is tailor made for maître Jacques Vergès but, unfortunately, he is no longer with us. One hopes that Durov will secure competent and uncorrupted representation and that his legal counsel shall grasp the self-evident fact that the case against him in its entirety is political, with criminal elements maliciously contrived and grafted on for propaganda effect.

The Assange case now having been settled, Pavel Durov is certain to become the new global privacy and freedom of expression icon. Freedom loving people world-wide will mobilise to show support in order to extract him from the clutches of the pathetic Macron regime and its overseas “partners” who, from the background, are undoubtedly pulling the strings. That is well and good. But one simply wishes that once and for all liberty would triumph. Icons are uplifting, but we could easily do with one fewer if that were the price that we should have to pay in order to secure the freedom to which Pavel so admirably dedicated his passionate idealism and irrepressible creativity.

Read more …

“Durov though got drunk on NATOstan’s “freedom and democracy” propaganda, rebuffed Russia, and left.”

“There’s one thing that Putin never tolerates: betrayal of Russia. And that applies to the letter to Durov.”

NOTE: he was free to leave.

• EU to Telegram – We’re Coming to Get You (Pepe Escobar)

The Pavel Durov saga is a gift that will keep on giving for a long time to come. This is what hot information war is all about. So let’s attempt to connect several loose ends. A high-level Russian analyst makes the case that Durov’s arrest is connected with “anti-French protests in its former colonies, withdrawal from its traditional ‘sphere of influence’ where Telegram infrastructure was used to push anti-colonial and anti-Macronist narratives”. Add to it an “attempt to influence narratives on Ukraine both in Russian and the international media field, which is highly dependent on Telegram infrastructure.” Paris is indeed desperate to make itself relevant when it comes to psy ops and influencing/special warfare in Ukraine. However, as the analyst notes, the French don’t have the tech means to accomplish it.

So this may have led to Macron deciding to “exercise a personal pressure campaign against Durov himself. French authorities must be rather desperate in trying to keep their heads in the game of global politics. And Telegram today is global politics.” Paris was just waiting for a big break. When the pilot of Durov’s Embraer private jet submitted his flight plan, there was no warrant for his arrest in France. Only when the jet was on its way to Le Bourget, Paris filed the warrant in haste. Durov was clueless all along. In a nutshell: Paris got a fateful heads up he was flying into France – could have been via Durov’s Dubai-based, post-obsessive, social climbing girlfriend – and laid out the trap in a flash. There’s a myth that the FSB in the past asked Durov for Telegram’s encryption keys. False. The FSB wanted Telegram to provide top access on investigations of serious crimes, on a case-by-case basis.

That’s an enormous difference compared to what the US Government does with Meta or Twitter/X via their totally open backdoors. Durov though got drunk on NATOstan’s “freedom and democracy” propaganda, rebuffed Russia, and left. And that brings us to President Putin. Putin had better things to do than to meet Durov in Baku, and the Kremlin has gone on the record to deny the meeting. Durov was doing a tour of Central Asia and the Caucasus, they happened to cross their paths in Azerbaijan. There’s one thing that Putin never tolerates: betrayal of Russia. And that applies to the letter to Durov. When Durov went to the US, the Americans, predictably, demanded Telegram’s backdoors to surveil everybody. So he set up shop in Dubai and later applied for French citizenship.

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“The Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office has stated that he was arrested as part of a broad criminal inquiry against an unnamed person.”

• Musk Asks Macron To Explain Durov Arrest (RT)

US tech mogul Elon Musk has asked French President Emmanuel Macron to shed light on the reasons behind the arrest of Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov. The Russian entrepreneur was detained last week upon arriving at Paris-Le Bourget Airport. The French judicial authorities have twice extended Durov’s detention. The Paris Public Prosecutor’s Office has stated that he was arrested as part of a broad criminal inquiry against an unnamed person. “It would be helpful to the global public to understand more details about why he was arrested,” Musk wrote in a comment under Macron’s post on X (formerly Twitter). On Sunday, the French leader took to X to deny having any political motive for detaining Durov. He insisted that the arrest is part of “an ongoing judicial investigation” in which the courts will decide the entrepreneur’s fate.

Durov has said he has faced pressure from the US. In an interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson in April, he claimed that he received “too much attention” from the FBI and other law enforcement agencies while on US soil. According to the prosecutors, Durov could face charges ranging from complicity in drug dealing and money laundering, to facilitating the distribution of child pornography. French media had previously reported that the arrest of the 39-year-old Russian citizen, who also holds French, UAE, and St. Kitts and Nevis citizenship, was related to alleged offenses regarding Telegram. Reports suggest that the authorities believe Durov is complicit in a range of crimes allegedly committed via the social media app due to insufficient moderation.

Born in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in 1984, Durov left Russia in the mid-2010s and has since mainly lived in the UAE. In 2021, he was granted French citizenship. In July, Durov wrote on his Telegram channel that the number of active monthly users of the messaging platform had grown to 950 million. Durov’s arrest has been denounced as an infringement upon rights enjoyed in both the EU and the US. Carlson, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, former CIA and NSA contractor Edward Snowden, and Silicon Valley investor David Sacks have spoken out in support of the entrepreneur. Shortly after the arrest, Musk, who launched the hashtag #FreePavel, suggested that the pressure on freedom of speech could worsen.

Read more …

“We’ve lost Europe,” Kennedy replied. “Europe now does not have free speech.”

• Durov’s Arrest Is ‘Hallmark Of Dictatorship’ – Tucker Carlson to RFK Jr (RT)

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov’s arrest in France, along with the US administration’s encouragement of it, bear “the hallmark of dictatorship,” American journalist Tucker Carlson has said. The comments were made during an interview with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has recently announced the suspension of his campaign as an independent candidate for US president. Durov was arrested in Paris last week, and is being held for questioning in connection to a broader cybercrime probe into illicit activities on the billionaire’s end-to-end encrypted social media platform, the French authorities have said. Telegram generally refuses to share user data and chat logs with law enforcement, and Durov has claimed that this privacy-first approach has drawn attention from intelligence agencies around the world.

In the interview on Monday, Kennedy said the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which protects the right to freedom of expression from government interference, should also protect “misinformation,” as well as information that “no one wants to hear.” Carlson replied that the administration of US President Joe Biden currently views anything that criticizes the “job that they’re doing” as misinformation. “With that in mind, you see the Biden administration encouraging France, [French President Emmanuel] Macron to arrest the owner and founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov, who is, as of now, in a French prison,” Carlson said, adding: “that’s the hallmark of dictatorship.” “We’ve lost Europe,” Kennedy replied. “Europe now does not have free speech.”

He went on to draw a comparison between Durov and X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk, blasting the Democratic Party for its lack of actual democratic values. “Elon Musk should be the hero of the Democratic Party,” Kennedy said. “He was actually the only one that would allow free speech on his platform, and he’s now become a villain because of it.” Russia’s top human rights official, Tatyana Moskalkova, said Durov’s arrest is a blow against free speech, claiming it is “an attempt to shut down Telegram, the platform where you can find the truth about world affairs.” Telegram’s official statement on the arrest of its CEO noted that the platform complies with EU laws, and that its content-moderation policies are in line with industry standards.

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“..while Musk himself shuts down Egyptian comedian Bassem Youseff who had 10m followers on X..”

• Durov’s Arrest Represents A New Level Of Desperation From Western Elites (Jay)

The arrest of Pavel Durov marks a new low point on the scumline of the side of the bath – the tub being western democracies and the line being their desperation to stay in power at the costs of controlling social media. Durov, who owns Telegram and lives in Dubai, could be in jail for months and possibly years on the trumped-up charges which the French state has conjured up simply because he refuses to allow any government to have a back door into Telegram. He has fought this tooth and nail for years with the west, in particular the U.S., playing every dirty trick in the book to get access to the platform for its own nefarious purposes – to destroy opposition figures, their strategies etc. – rather than what it is dressed up to be, identifying terrorists and international criminals.

As the UK ponders how its own state has sunk to a new totalitarian level in recent days with the arrest of its citizens who merely like a posting on a social media platform, the West has arrested this French Russian dual national genius who is charged with the crimes of those criminals active on Telegram. And so charges of terrorism and trafficking in minors, drugs and whatever else they can find on the platform will be made against him as someone abetting in the crimes. Of course, the same rules will not be levelled against Elon Musk who surely has criminals on his platform or for that matter any of the other social media platforms.

But how many of these platforms are also taking the same stand as Durov? We are led to believe that most of them aren’t but in light of his arrest we should assume that many of them have already allowed some sort of access to them for the deep state. Elon Musk likes to brag about his refusal to comply with the EU’s demands that he “moderates” who he allows onto X, adding that other social media platforms accepted the deal offered to him by Brussels: comply with our requests and we grant you some leniency on future antitrust fines. This offer, which he claims was happily accepted by other platforms is a close as you can get to the EU offering a brown envelope stuffed full of cash to a man in a pub. It’s a bribe and gives a clue as to how anti-democratic the EU is and how it operates in the shadows.

The French arrest however goes deeper in that we can assume that it was not France operating alone to nab Durov. We can assume that the FBI and CIA had probably pushed Macron to do this appalling dirty work but perhaps also Israel had a hand in it. Just recently, Netanyahu complained that data which was stolen from the government was being exchanged on Telegram and asked Durov to step in and retrieve it. He got not reply. Did Mossad have a hand in the arrest of Telegram’s boss? It seems credible given that it is hard to believe the Durov would fly into French airspace eyes wide open. Was it a kidnapping operation to get his plane and his pilot to land in Paris? French TV channel TF1 said Dubai-based Durov had been travelling from Azerbaijan and was arrested at around 8 p.m. (1800 GMT) on Saturday 24th of August but did not state whether the plane’s ultimate destination had been France.

The details around the arrest are very sketchy, but according to Reuters, Durov, whose fortune was estimated by Forbes at $15.5 billion, said some governments had sought to pressure him but the app should remain a “neutral platform” and not a “player in geopolitics”. Another question which arises from the arrest is whether it is an international effort by western countries led by the U.S. – with Israel very much part of it – to test the waters for other arrests. Pundits have been dismissed as conspiracy theorists for weeks now suggesting Elon Musk will be arrested at some point, or charged in his absence, by UK authorities for some of the more controversial posts he has made about the political situation in the UK, or even by the EU which appears to have started a legal battle with him after he refused to respond to two letters sent to him by a French European Commissioner.

Perhaps even the Democrats in the U.S. might play the same card given that Musk has lost all credibility as this neutral player in U.S. politics after he has so openly supported Trump who has promised him a position in a new government if he were to enter the Oval Office. There is no such thing really as free speech. It comes at a very high price for those who want to protect and cherish it and now France will test the political landscape to see how the arrest of Durov will affect Macron’s ratings. The French president has made outstandingly poor judgment in the past in calling for parliamentary elections immediately after EU ones which gave so much power to far-right groups, so he seems to be good at falling on his own sword. He may well have factored that Durov does not have the popularity of say Assange who didn’t stir so much political anger when he was banged up for years in a filthy, dank cell in the UK on trumped up charges from the U.S.

What is especially worrying is that locking up powerful people who have huge followings on the internet is becoming a trend which people are getting used to. The war between those who want to control the perceived truth and those who hold the actual one is hotting up. Scott Ritter, Andrew Tate, Richard Medhurst all arrested within days of one another, while Musk himself shuts down Egyptian comedian Bassem Youseff who had 10m followers on X. What we are witnessing is a new level of desperation that western elites are more afraid than ever that after wasting hundreds of billions of dollars in Ukraine and starting a world war in the Middle East that voters have no confidence any more in their decision-making, as they, the public, struggle more and more to pay for groceries or even heat their houses. It’s a new milestone in the blind dogma of elites to resort to tactics which we would have scorned China or North Korea for using just a few years ago. It’s a new level of panic which we haven’t seen before.

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“..neither side will be given the questions in advance,” he continued, adding “no Donna Brazile!”

• Harris Agrees To Debate Rules – Trump (RT)

Former US President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have agreed to a set of rules for their upcoming presidential debate, Trump announced on Tuesday. Harris allegedly wanted to use a “cheat sheet” during the ABC-hosted showdown, but was apparently denied. The debate will take place on September 10 in Philadelphia, and will be hosted by ABC News anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis. “The rules will be the same as the last CNN debate, which seemed to work out well for everyone except, perhaps, Crooked Joe Biden” Trump wrote in a post to his Truth Social platform. “The debate will be ‘stand up’, and candidates cannot bring notes, or ‘cheat sheets’. We have also been given assurance by ABC that this will be a ‘fair and equitable’ debate, and that neither side will be given the questions in advance,” he continued, adding “no Donna Brazile!”

Before the 2016 presidential election, CNN contributor and Democratic National Committee (DNC) vice-chair Donna Brazile gave Hillary Clinton a list of questions ahead of her town hall event with the network. Trump has long maintained that CNN and other mainstream media outlets openly favor Democrats. However, he praised the objectivity of CNN hosts Jake Tapper and Dana Bash after they moderated a debate between him and President Joe Biden in June. The debate was an unmitigated disaster for Biden, who appeared frail and confused throughout, and ended his reelection campaign three weeks later.

Trump pulled out of the September 10 debate after Biden withdrew from the race, calling on Harris to face him in a September 4 head-to-head on Fox News instead. However, Harris insisted on September 10, and Trump agreed, before calling on the vice president to accept a total of three debates, including the Fox News date and a third showdown hosted by NBC News. Harris has only agreed to the ABC News debate. The Trump and Harris campaigns argued this week over rules and technical details governing the debate, with Trump’s team pushing for each candidate’s microphone to be muted while the other speaks, and Harris’ staff lobbying for open mics.

Harris “is ready to deal with Trump’s constant lies and interruptions in real time. Trump should stop hiding behind the mute button,” a spokesman for the vice president said on Monday. Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller replied that the Republican candidate had “accepted the ABC debate under the exact same terms as the CNN debate,” before claiming that Harris asked for “a seated debate, with notes, and opening statements.” Before announcing that he had reached an agreement with Harris’ team, Trump said on Sunday that he was considering backing out of the debate entirely due to ABC’s “ridiculous and biased” coverage of him. “Why would I do the Debate against Kamala Harris on that network?” he wrote on Truth Social, adding that ABC’s journalists “have a lot to answer for.”

O’Leary

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That’s one whopper of a flip flop.

• Trump Slams Harris ‘Flip Flop’ On Border Wall (ZH)

After presiding over the worst illegal immigration crisis in US history, failed ‘border czar’ Kamala Harris has now pledged to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to build a wall at the southern US border – a plan she called “un-American” during the Trump administration. According to Axios, which calls it the “latest example of Harris flip-flopping on her past liberal positions,” Harris is now embracing a ‘more hawkish’ immigration policy while the Trump campaign spends tens of millions of dollars on attack ads over the Biden-Harris administration’s failed border policies. Last week, Harris told the Democratic National Convention that she would sign a recent bipartisan border security bill negotiated by Sens. James Lankford (R-OK) and Chris Murphy (D-CT), which calls for hundreds of millions of dollars of unspent funds to be used to continue Trump’s wall.

“It requires the Trump border wall,” Lankford told Axios. “It is in the bill itself that it sets the standards that were set during the Trump administration: Here’s where it will be built. Here’s how it has to be built, the height, the type, everything during the Trump construction.” In 2017, then-Senator Harris called Trump’s border wall project a “stupid use of money,” and committed to blocking funding for it. Then, under her watch as the so-called “Border Czar,” illegal crossings on the southern border spiked (at least) 140% compared to numbers seen during the Trump administration, according to the House Committee on Homeland Security.

After Democrats gained control of the House in 2019, they opposed the large-scale funding Trump requested for the wall – leading to a government shutdown. Eventually, some funding was approved – but was far less than what Trump had requested. In response, Trump declared a national emergency in February 2019 to divert funds from other federal projects to the wall’s construction, which led to various legal challenges. Last week Harris came under fire for a campaign video which prominently featured images of Trump’s partially built US-Mexico border wall, boasting that her credentials as a “border-state prosecutor” would allow her to get the job done.

Update (1153ET): The Trump campaign has responded to Axios reporting that Kamala Harris now supports a border wall. “How much longer will the mainstream media allow Kamala Harris to hide and use staff to speak on her behalf? It’s DAY 37 of ZERO interviews and Kamala’s anonymous campaign sources are now claiming she supports President Trump’s border wall – this is a preposterous and false claim.” “Kamala’s ACTIONS speak much louder than the WORDS of the anonymous staff she is cowering behind.”

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Trump doesn’t need saving. The polls are lying.

• Will Kennedy Save Trump? (Bridge)

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign got the boost it desperately needed when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. joined forces with the former president in an effort to ensure the defeat of Kamala Harris. It was undoubtedly a painful sight for millions of diehard Democrats to behold: On Friday, the estranged Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr. shared the stage with former President Donald Trump at a sprawling rally in Arizona, hours after he’d suspended his independent presidential campaign and announced that he was endorsing the rabble-rousing Republican. The 70-year-old independent, showing that he has not completely lost his presidential ambitions, emphasized that he is suspending his campaign — “not ending it.” “I am not terminating my campaign, I am simply suspending it and not ending it. My name will remain on the ballot in most states,” he said.

Importantly for Trump in his grueling showdown with Kamala Harris, Kennedy said he would drop his name from the ballot in 10 battleground states where his presence could have stolen electoral college votes from the former president. Will the entrance of Kennedy into the equation make a profound difference for the Trump campaign come November? It’s difficult to say. When the campaign was down to a contest between two elderly white men, many voters seemed happy to consider a third voice, as reflected in Kennedy’s relatively high poll numbers earlier in the year. However, once Joe Biden was sent back to the basement and Kamala Harris was catapulted to the political forefront amid heavily scripted, media-generated enthusiasm (the same media, by the way, which Harris stubbornly refuses to talk to), Kennedy’s popularity began to wane.

While Kennedy’s performance in the polls has been steadily declining – a recent CBS News poll measured his support at just 2% – even this limited number could spell the difference between victory and defeat in a race that promises to be razor-close. However, with regard to the critical swing states, the picture improves dramatically for Kennedy. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll showed him with 6% support in Arizona and Nevada and 5% in Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. And let’s not forget that Arizona and Georgia were decided by fewer than 12,000 votes each in 2020. Wisconsin has been decided by fewer than 23,000 votes in the last two presidential elections.

So now the question for the Republicans is: how best to utilize a scion from one of the most famous political dynasties of modern American history? How about as the future CIA Director or District Attorney? Trump tossed out juicy bait to the conspiracy theorists when he said Kennedy could be granted access to “all of the remaining documents pertaining to the assassination of John F. Kennedy,” as part of a proposed executive commission on presidential assassination attempts, including the one that nearly killed him last month in Butler, Pennsylvania. RFK Jr. has made it clear that he believes that the CIA and associated actors of the ‘deep state’ were directly involved in the assassination of his uncle, former President John F. Kennedy. A recent poll by Gallup showed that over 60 percent of Americans believe that JFK was killed as the result of a well-planned government conspiracy. The CIA has repeatedly denied that it had any involvement in the murder.

Another Kennedy talking point that could help herd voters into the Republican camp is his extreme skepticism of Covid vaccines, mask mandates, lockdowns and the individuals who pushed these controversial measures on the public in the first place, namely Anthony Fauci and company. Trump teaming up with the anti-vaxxer Kennedy seems to fly in the face of conventional wisdom. After all, it was Donald J. Trump who was initially responsible for delivering – right or wrong, the jury is still out on the matter – the Covid-19 vaccine to an unsuspecting public through “Operation Warp Speed.” However, Trump’s unbridled enthusiasm for the Covid vaccine failed to trickle down to his army of conservative constituents, who are intrinsically wary of any government overreach in their lives. In other words, Trump drastically misread his base, which is loaded with vaccine skeptics.

On one memorable occasion at the height of the Covid pandemic, Republicans admonished Trump during a rally with rare boos and heckling when he encouraged members of the audience to get their shots. So here is another area – government enforced medical interventions – where Kennedy’s presence on Team Trump could lend some much-needed balance to the worn-out narrative, although it does have the potential to attract more “weird” accusations from the left.At the same time, Kennedy, much like Trump, has spoken out fiercely against the “media organs” that have severely throttled his message on the campaign trail, while engineering the rise of Kamala Harris based upon “nothing.” “No policies, no interviews, no debates, only smoke and mirrors and balloons in a highly produced Chicago circus.”

This is a concern that will resonate with those voters who remember how intensely unpopular Harris was before pulling out of the 2020 presidential race with her opinion poll numbers in the lower single digits. And here is the crux of the matter: do they remember Harris’ intense unlikability and lack of presidential qualities, or has the media successfully brainwashed the entire Democratic camp into believing that the vice president is the ‘second coming of Abraham Lincoln,’ as JD Vance feared? While we may never know to what degree RFK Jr. will influence the outcome of the election, it seems undeniable that he will attract many disaffected voters from across the political spectrum who now understand what a controlled and pathetic sham the entire US political process has become, largely due to overwhelming leftist control of the media machinery. That may give Donald Trump just enough of a grudge vote to enter the White House a second time.

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Exercise in futility. If Trump wins the election, he’ll throw out these lawfare cases. If he loses, they’ve beaten him, no more need for lawfare.

• Jack Smith Files Revised Indictment in Trump Federal Election Case (ET)

Special counsel Jack Smith filed an updated indictment against former President Donald Trump in Washington on Aug. 27 following the Supreme Court’s ruling that he enjoyed some presidential immunity from criminal prosecution. “Today, a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia returned a superseding indictment, charging the defendant with the same criminal offenses that were charged in the original indictment,” an Aug. 27 filing from the special counsel’s office reads. “The superseding indictment, which was presented to a new grand jury that had not previously heard evidence in this case, reflects the government’s efforts to respect and implement the Supreme Court’s holdings and remand instructions in Trump v. United States.” The new indictment narrows the allegations against the former president by removing allegations involving his interactions with the Justice Department.

It no longer lists as a co-conspirator former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark. Trump’s co-conspirators were not named in either indictment, but they have been identified through public records and other means. Smith’s superseding indictment still contains four charges against the former president, including those from the financial reform law the Supreme Court addressed in Fischer v. United States. In Trump v. United States, a majority of the Supreme Court held that presidents enjoyed several tiers of immunity from prosecution: absolute immunity for acts that fall within their “conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority,” a presumption of immunity for their official acts, and no immunity for unofficial acts. Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion grouped the allegations into three categories: those surrounding Trump’s work with the Department of Justice (DOJ); those involving his communication with state electors and his communications on Jan. 6, 2021; and his urging Vice President Mike Pence to not certify the election results in the Senate.

Trump received absolute immunity from prosecution of the first category. For the second, the Court remanded the issue to the district court to determine whether his actions were official. His communications with Pence are “presumptively immune,” but the DOJ can rebut that presumption in court. It’s unclear how much of the superseding indictment will survive. D.C. Judge Tanya Chutkan will likely receive briefings from both the special counsel and former Trump’s legal team advocating their view of which charges should be dropped or maintained in the indictment. The Supreme Court has left her with the task of parsing former Trump’s actions and determining which were official and which were unofficial. Judge Chutkan has scheduled a status conference for Sept. 5.

Experts have told The Epoch Times that the prosecution will extend past the election. If Trump wins the presidency, he’s expected to withdraw the case. Even if he loses, however, the case could face additional appeal and potentially make its way back to the Supreme Court. Last year, Trump’s legal team filed a motion to dismiss on statutory grounds and alleging that the initial indictment failed to “state an offense.” More specifically, it alleged the indictment failed to allege the type of deceit or trickery needed for the first count, which focused in both indictments on an alleged conspiracy to defraud the United States. On Aug. 3, Judge Chutkan denied the motion without prejudice and stated that Trump “may file a renewed motion once all issues of immunity have been resolved.”

The superseding indictment came just a day after Smith asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit to affirm the legitimacy of his office. Florida Judge Aileen Cannon had dismissed his classified documents case against Trump on the grounds that Smith’s appointment violated the constitution. That case too could reach the Supreme Court where at least one justice — Justice Clarence Thomas — expressed concern about Smith’s office. That came in his concurrence for Trump v. United States. None of the other justices joined that opinion, but Justice Brett Kavanaugh expressed concern about the special counsel’s power during oral argument on April 25. Cannon limited her decision to the documents case, although it raised questions about the legitimacy of his other prosecutions.

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“The Georgia appeals court will hear an appeal by Trump and several co-defendants on Dec. 5..”

• Trump Lawyers Urge Appeals Court to Disqualify Fani Willis (ET)

Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers on Monday submitted a court filing against Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis in the Georgia Court of Appeals, arguing that she should be removed from the case for committing a “severe violation” of the state’s legal guidelines. In a reply brief, the former president’s team wrote that Trump was “aggrieved by Willis’ church speech,” referring to comments she made in January that suggested there was a racial animus at play when a co-defendant filed a motion to have her disqualified over a relationship she had with her then-special prosecutor. The legal team said that her speech was “a severe violation of the Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct,” claiming that her comments at the church were allegedly designed to increase public condemnation of Trump and the other co-defendants in the eyes of potential jurors. On those grounds, according to the lawyers, Willis should be removed from the case.

“Pretermitting fairness, President Trump was injured by Willis’ … speech because national and local media outlets broadcast and reported Willis’ claim as an attack against the defense,” the filing said. Willis, it added, also asserted that “allegations against her stemmed from racism,” which his legal team said were unfounded. The Georgia appeals court will hear an appeal by Trump and several co-defendants on Dec. 5, it previously ruled, over whether Willis should be disqualified from the case due to her relationship with former special prosecutor Nathan Wade. Earlier this year, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee ruled that either Wade or Willis must leave the case, prompting Wade to leave and allowing Willis to stay on board. Trump and the other defendants quickly sought to appeal the case.

In his March ruling, McAfee chided Willis for her church speech but said it is not grounds for her disqualification. He also said there wasn’t enough evidence to remove her based on the Wade relationship, although he signaled that an “odor of mendacity” was permeating the case. Fulton County prosecutors had said that her speech at the church was vague, and she was not speaking about anyone in particular. “Isn’t it them who’s playing the race card when they only question one?” Willis said during her speech, in part. “Isn’t it them playing the race card when they constantly think I need someone from some other jurisdiction in some other state to tell me how to do a job I’ve been doing almost 30 years?”

Her office filed a motion to dismiss the appeal in August, arguing there wasn’t enough evidence to back up their claims that she had a conflict of interest due to her prior relationship with Wade. “Unsatisfied, the Appellants now seize upon the trial court’s criticisms of the District Attorney to distort its actual findings and overstate their case,” the district attorney’s office wrote. “They ask this Court to second guess the trial court’s factual conclusions and apply standards of disqualification that no Georgia court has ever authorized or employed.” The conflict started in January when co-defendant Michael Roman, a former Trump campaign aide, alleged in court papers that the pair were in a relationship, a claim that the two later confirmed during a contentious hearing before McAfee in February.

However, they disputed key allegations made by lawyers for Roman and his co-defendants, including that they improperly benefitted financially from their arrangement. They also refuted claims made by a witness that their relationship started much earlier than they had said. The case was brought by Willis against Trump and more than a dozen other co-defendants, accusing them of conspiring to overturn the election results in the county after the 2020 election. In part, her office’s indictment focused on a Trump phone call in January 2021 with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which the president asked him about votes and ballots. Trump and the majority of the other co-defendants, including former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, have pleaded not guilty, although several have entered guilty pleas as part of deals with the prosecution. Due to the appeals process, the case likely will not proceed to trial before the November election.

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“Reading the runes of Bill Burns message says prepare for war with NATO.”

• The Western Way of War – Owning The Narrative Trumps Reality (Crooke)

War propaganda and feint are as old as the hills. Nothing new. But what is new is that infowar is no longer the adjunct to wider war objectives – but has become an end in and of itself. The West has come to view ‘owning’ the winning narrative – and presenting the Other’s as clunky, dissonant, and extremist – as being more important than facing facts-on-the ground. Owning the winning narrative is to win, in this view. Virtual ‘victory’ thus trumps ‘real’ reality. So, war becomes rather the setting for imposing ideological alignment across a wide global alliance and enforcing it via compliant media. This objective enjoys a higher priority than, say, ensuring a manufacturing capacity sufficient to sustain military objectives. Crafting an imagined ‘reality’ has taken precedence over shaping the ground reality. The point here is that this approach – being a function of whole of society alignment (both at home and abroad) – creates entrapments into false realities, false expectations, from which an exit (when such becomes necessary), turns near impossible, precisely because imposed alignment has ossified public sentiment.

The possibility for a State to change course as events unfold becomes curtailed or lost, and the accurate reading of facts on the ground veers toward the politically correct and away from reality. The cumulative effect of ‘a winning virtual narrative’ holds the risk nonetheless, of sliding incrementally toward inadvertent ‘real war’. Take, for example, the NATO-orchestrated and equipped incursion into the symbolically significant Kursk Oblast. In terms of a ‘winning narrative’, its appeal to the West is obvious: Ukraine ‘takes the war into Russia’. Had the Ukrainian forces succeeded in capturing the Kursk Nuclear Power Station, they then would have had a significant bargaining chip, and might well have syphoned away Russian forces from the steadily collapsing Ukrainian ‘Line’ in Donbas. And to top it off, (in infowar terms), the western media was prepped and aligned to show President Putin as “frozen” by the surprise incursion, and “wobbling” with anxiety that the Russian public would turn against him in their anger at the humiliation.

Bill Burns, head of CIA, opined that “Russia would offer no concessions on Ukraine, until Putin’s over-confidence was challenged, and Ukraine could show strength”. Other U.S. officials added that the Kursk incursion – in itself – would not bring Russia to the negotiating table; It would be necessary to build on the Kursk operation with other daring operations (to shake Moscow’s sang froid). Of course, the overall aim was to show Russia as fragile and vulnerable, in line with the narrative that, at any moment Russia, could crack apart and scatter to the wind, in fragments. Leaving the West as winner, of course. In fact, the Kursk incursion was a huge NATO gamble: It involved mortgaging Ukraine’s military reserves and armour, as chips on the roulette table, as a bet that an ephemeral success in Kursk would upend the strategic balance. The bet was lost, and the chips forfeit.

Plainly put, this Kursk affair exemplifies the West’s problem with ‘winning narratives’: Their inherent flaw is that they are grounded in emotivism and eschew argumentation. Inevitably, they are simplistic. They are simply intended to fuel a ‘whole of society’ common alignment. Which is to say that across MSM; business, federal agencies, NGOs and the security sector, all should adhere to opposing all ‘extremisms’ threatening ‘our democracy’. This aim, of itself, dictates that the narrative be undemanding and relatively uncontentious: ‘Our Democracy, Our Values and Our Consensus’. The Democratic National Convention, for example, embraces ‘Joy’ (repeated endlessly), ‘moving Forward’ and ‘opposing weirdness’ as key statements. They are banal, however, these memes are given their energy and momentum, not by content so much, as by the deliberate Hollywood setting lending them razzamatazz and glamour. It is not hard to see how this one-dimensional zeitgeist may have contributed to the U.S. and its allies’ misreading the impact of today’s Kursk ‘daring adventure’ on ordinary Russians.

‘Kursk’ has history. In 1943, Germany invaded Russia in Kursk to divert from its own losses, with Germany ultimately defeated at the Battle of Kursk. The return of German military equipment to the environs of Kursk must have left many gaping; the current battlefield around the town of Sudzha is precisely the spot where, in 1943, the Soviet 38th and 40th armies coiled for a counteroffensive against the German 4th Army. Over the centuries, Russia has been variously attacked on its vulnerable flank from the West. And more recently by Napoleon and Hitler. Unsurprisingly, Russians are acutely sensitive to this bloody history. Did Bill Burns et al think this through? Did they imagine that NATO invading Russia itself would make Putin feel ‘challenged’, and that with one further shove, he would fold, and agree to a ‘frozen’ outcome in Ukraine – with the latter entering NATO? Maybe they did. Ultimately the message that western services sent was that the West (NATO) is coming for Russia. This is the meaning of deliberately choosing Kursk. Reading the runes of Bill Burns message says prepare for war with NATO.

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Macron lost the parliamentary election in July. But he’s still president.

• Macron Rejects Left-Wing Government (RT)

French President Emmanuel Macron has refused to accept the left-wing New Popular Front’s candidate for prime minister, saying it would be a threat to “institutional stability,” according to a communique released by the Elysee Palace on Monday. The parliamentary election in July gave the left-wing alliance more seats in the National Assembly than the competitors, but not enough to govern, forcing the president to conduct successive rounds of talks to appoint a new prime minister and form a new government. As president, Macron is responsible for confirming the new head of the government. However, he dismissed the idea of allowing the left-wing coalition to hold the office of prime minister, leaving the nation in a political deadlock.

“My responsibility is that the country is not blocked nor weakened,” Macron said in a statement, claiming that a left-wing government “would be immediately censored by all the other groups represented in the National Assembly” and “the institutional stability of our country therefore requires us not to choose this option.” The parliamentary election in July left 577 seats in the National Assembly divided between the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) alliance with over 188 seats, followed by Macron’s centrist alliance at around 161, and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally at 142. The Republicans received 48 seats, while the remaining 38 were divided between minor parties.

Launched in June as a broad left-wing alliance, the NPF comprises France Unbowed (LFI), the Socialist Party, the Greens, the French Communist Party, and other political parties, composing the majority of the left wing in France. The alliance has put forward Lucie Castets, a 37-year-old economist and director of financial affairs at Paris City Hall, as its candidate for prime minister. After Macron’s announcement, Jean-Luc Melenchon, the LFI leader, accused the president of creating an “exceptionally serious situation.” Commenting on the move, the secretary-general of the Greens, Marine Tondelier, said the decision is “a disgrace” and “dangerous democratic irresponsibility,” adding that Macron is ignoring the election results. LFI also called for protests to urge Macron to “respect democracy,” and said it would present a motion of impeachment of the president.

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A nation hell-bent on war.

• Poland In ‘State Of Hybrid War’ – Deputy Defense Chief (RT)

Poland has slipped into a state of “hybrid war” amid soaring tensions with Russia and its key ally Belarus, Polish Deputy Defense Minister Cezary Tomczyk has said. Tomczyk made the remarks on Monday while speaking at a high-level panel on Poland’s security situation, suggesting that his country had already entered a state just below the level of actual war. “What we are facing in Poland today is de facto hybrid warfare. And we can say directly that Poland is in a state of war today, but in a state of hybrid warfare,” he stated, as quoted by PAP news agency. He pointed to the situation on the border with Belarus, as well as incidents where weather balloons appeared in Polish airspace. Warsaw has for years accused Minsk of trying to pressure it by sending illegal migrants across the border.

Belarus has denied the allegations while accusing Polish authorities of brutal treatment of the migrants. In recent months, Polish authorities also reported several cases of Russian balloons straying into national airspace. Officials in Warsaw investigated the incidents, but concluded that the craft posed no threat to national security. One of the most recent cases occurred in late June, when Poland reported that they had been warned by their Russian counterparts that they had lost control of one of their balloons protecting airspace in the exclave of Kaliningrad. The aircraft strayed into Polish airspace for four and a half hours. Polish authorities said they deliberately did not shoot it down because of “possible negative consequences.”

Tomczyk, however, suggested that the balloon incidents are still intended to promote Russia’s political agenda. “It is de facto a tool for a few hundred dollars, which can be used to influence all of us in a very simple way… It is enough to put a few words in Cyrillic on them, and all portals in Poland will write about it.” He added that the purpose of such tactics is to trigger discussions in Polish society and undermine public trust in the government. The deputy minister said cyberattacks are another facet of the hybrid warfare, which he estimated at about 5,000 a year.

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“It could be “five years or more before work starts”.

If you can’t get Elon to do it, just close it down.

• US Nuclear Missile Project At Least 5 Years Behind Schedule – WSJ (RT)

Refurbishing the decades-old missile silos will cost billions of dollars more than originally thought and may not start for five years, the Wall Street Journal has reported, citing Pentagon officials. The US Department of Defense decided last month to press on with the Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program, even though its estimated cost has almost doubled from the original $78 billion. Replacing the aging Minuteman III missiles has no alternative, the Pentagon said. It could be “five years or more before work starts” on modernizing some 450 existing silos for the new missiles, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing a recent town meeting in Kimball, Nebraska. The community of less than 3,000 residents is surrounded by “one of the biggest missile fields” in the world. “There are a lot of unknowns here, and I understand the frustration,” Brigadier-General Colin Connor told residents earlier this month.

Minuteman III missiles entered service in the early 1970s and were supposed to be replaced after a decade. Washington finally greenlit the Sentinel program in 2020, awarding the initial $13.3 billion contract to Northrop Grumman, after Boeing dropped out. The Sentinel project manager, Colonel Charles Clegg, was sacked in June for unspecified reasons. Along with the new missiles, which are still on the drawing board, the project envisions modernizing the 50-year-old silos and command centers. Construction involves, among other things, laying down thousands of kilometers of fiber-optic cables. However, shutting down the silos or the command facilities is impossible, because the nuclear doctrine requires them to be available at a moment’s notice. Some silos may also need to be rebuilt from scratch.

The scale, scope and complexity of the Sentinel project is “something we haven’t attempted as a nation for over 60 years,” Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Bill LaPlante told reporters last month, insisting that it had to be done nonetheless. The US Air Force is looking for ways to reduce the project’s complexity, but it might take up to 18 months to decide on the changes, LaPlante said, hoping for sometime in early 2025. Such delays may cause problems of another kind for the Pentagon, according to the WSJ. The US government has already negotiated about a third of the real-estate deals needed for laying down thousands of kilometers of fiber-optic cables. But some of them may need to be redone in light of the new timeline. Meanwhile, the rising costs of construction and raw materials have made early cost estimates “be unreliable and unrealistic,” Pentagon officials have said.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Nut splitter

 

 

Happy
https://twitter.com/i/status/1828308193467855004

 

 

Attack
https://twitter.com/i/status/1828563078113362089

 

 

Baby bat

 

 

First toy

 

 

Heroes

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle August 27 2024

Aug 272024
 
 August 27, 2024  Posted by at 8:45 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  86 Responses »


M. C. Escher Development II 1939

 

• A Period of Great Uncertainty – Martin Armstrong (USAW)
• France Extends Durov Arrest – Media (RT)
• Rumble Boss Flees EU After Durov Arrest (RT)
• #FreePavel: Telegram CEO Becomes Latest Target of European Censors (Turley)
• Telegram Founder Finds Out That ‘Freedom’ Isn’t Free (Marsden)
• The Undemocratic Party (Miles)
• Trump Suggests He Might Pull Out of ABC Debate With Harris (ET)
• “RFK, Jr. Murders Whale with Chainsaw!” (Kunstler)
• Secret Service Rescinds Protection For RFK Jr. After Trump Endorsement (ET)
• The Agenda Is To Elect Kamala (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Another Former Democrat Joins Trump Campaign (RT)
• Trump Suggests Consulting Role for Musk in Cabinet If Elected (Sp.)
• This Election Is a Referendum on Free Speech (RCP)
• Trump Lauds Russia’s ‘Winter Fighting’ (RT)
• America’s Reckoning With Reality (Douglas Macgregor)
• Is President Putin Preparing For Istanbul-II? (Helmer)
• Hezbollah Could End Normal Life in Israel, Drive Israelis ‘Underground’ (Sp.)

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1827776519625949331


https://twitter.com/i/status/1827851477366505802
https://twitter.com/i/status/1827778206365098106

 

 

Cut the fat
https://twitter.com/i/status/1827860033268498585

 

 


– 2016: 51% of young men identified or leaned Democrat
– 2023: This number dropped to 39%

 

 

Promo
https://twitter.com/i/status/1827865650624413853

 

 

Sequel

 

 

Salad

 

 

Debate 1,2

 

 

 

 

 

 

“I am very concerned they will start WWIII before the end of the year and maybe by September.”

• A Period of Great Uncertainty – Martin Armstrong (USAW)

Almost everything you see and hear with the Lying Legacy Media and the government is a lie. Just this past week, the Biden Administration backtracked about employment as it was widely reported, “US economy added 818,000 fewer jobs than first reported in year that ended in March.” A huge miss or a huge lie–take your pick. Other big lies we have been told in recent years: “Trump is colluding with Russia,” “Hunter Biden’s laptop is Russian disinformation, and the “CV19 vax injections are “safe and effective.” That is just scratching the surface of the lies we are told on a daily basis. The lies, which people realize are becoming preposterous, are adding to the public’s lack of confidence in everything, including the economy. Martin Armstrong says, “We are in a period of great uncertainty. . .. When people are uncertain, they don’t spend. They save. That’s what happens in a depression and a recession. . ..

So, if you have no confidence in the future because of all this crazy stuff going on, what do you do? You don’t borrow, and you pull back and say let me see what is going to happen.” Armstrong says another big lie told to the public is the approval rating of Kamala Harris. The so-called polls say Harris is running neck and neck with Donald Trump in the presidential race. Don’t believe it. Armstrong says a recent data dive on his Socratees computer program shows, “Kamala’s approval rating came in around 10.5 %. (A second confidential source says Kamala’s approval rating is 8.5%.) Confidence in government is 7%. So, how can Kamala possibly be 40%, 50% and 60%? It’s illogical. . .. The polls are really propaganda at this point. They were propaganda back in 2016. They all said Hillary would win, and she would sweep Trump under the carpet.”

On news RFK Jr. suspending his campaign and endorsing Trump, Armstrong says, “I was always pushing RFK Jr. to be Attorney General. I think I got his eyes to light up when I said if you take the Attorney General job, you could even indict Pfizer.” Armstrong says the Trump camp is seriously considering RFK Jr. for AG, and Armstrong says he has been in contact with top Trump advisors. We will see, but we do know RFK Jr. is going to be a part of Trump’s Administration. On Trump winning in November, Armstrong says, “Look, the computer says Trump should win. I don’t know how the hell they allow that to happen.

They have to trap Trump into a war or they kill him, one or the other. These people are unconscionable. . .. We are looking at serious civil unrest regardless of who wins in November. Neither side is going to accept it.” On gold at $2,500 an ounce, Armstrong says it’s not about inflation, it is about the fear of a US debt default. This is why central banks are buying. Armstrong says, “If there is a big war, the US will default on it’s debt. . .. I am very concerned they will start WWIII before the end of the year and maybe by September.”

Read more …

Tomorrow the judge must press charges or let him walk.

“..the arrest warrant was issued by France’s OFMIN, the agency tasked with combating violence against minors..”

• France Extends Durov Arrest – Media (RT)

The judicial authorities in France confirmed on Sunday the arrest of Pavel Durov, the CEO and founder of the Telegram messaging app, extending the detention of the Russian tech entrepreneur, AFP has reported, citing a source close to the investigation. The detention of the 39-year-old dual Russian-French national was reportedly extended beyond Sunday night by the investigating magistrate who is handling the case. The detention period for initial interrogation is limited to 96 hours in France; however, it can be extended to 144 hours for serious offences such as drug trafficking and terrorism. During the detention phase, the judge must either press charges and remand in further custody, or release the detainee.

Officials speaking on condition of anonymity told the news agency that the arrest warrant was issued by France’s OFMIN, the agency tasked with combating violence against minors, to conduct a preliminary probe into alleged fraud, drug trafficking, cyberbullying, organized crime, and promotion of terrorism. Reuters reports, citing unnamed sources, that a cybersecurity gendarmerie unit and the national anti-fraud police are leading the investigation. The Paris prosecutor’s office told RT that a press release concerning the case will be issued later on Monday. French media had previously reported that Durov’s detention at Paris-Le Bourget Airport on Saturday was related to alleged offenses regarding Telegram.

The reports indicated that the authorities believe he is complicit in a range of crimes allegedly committed via the social media app due to insufficient moderation. Telegram, which has nearly reached 1 billion active monthly users, was created by Durov and his brother in 2013 in Russia. The entrepreneur, who is also a citizen of the UAE and St. Kitts and Nevis, left Russia in the mid-2010s and settled in Dubai. He was granted French citizenship in 2021. Commenting on Durov’s arrest, Telegram said the platform “abides by EU laws, including the Digital Services Act – its moderation is within industry standards,” adding that claims that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse committed by users are “absurd.”

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Probably a smart move.

• Rumble Boss Flees EU After Durov Arrest (RT)

France has crossed all boundaries by arresting Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov, Chris Pavlovski, the CEO of video-sharing platform Rumble, has said, adding that he left Europe after the news broke. Durov was taken into custody at a Paris airport on Saturday evening after arriving from Azerbaijan by private jet. While the French authorities have yet to publicly announce the reason for detaining the Russian tech mogul, reports indicate that the charges are related to his alleged complicity in drug trafficking, pedophilia offenses, fraud, as well as failure to address criminal activity on the messenger. Telegram has denied any wrongdoing, adding that it is “absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform.”

In a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday, Pavlovski said he had “safely departed from Europe” in the aftermath of Durov’s arrest. He slammed the move by France, saying it “crossed a red line,” while noting that the country had already threatened Rumble. ”Rumble will not stand for this behavior and will use every legal means available to fight for freedom of expression, a universal human right. We are currently fighting in the courts of France, and we hope for Pavel Durov’s immediate release,” he added.

Pavlovski’s platform, which has positioned itself as a free speech alternative to YouTube, has been embroiled in its own legal battle with the French authorities. It began in November 2022 after officials in Paris banned Rumble over its refusal to comply with a request to remove Russian media accounts blocked in the EU due to sanctions over the Ukraine conflict. Though Durov’s arrest occurred in France, a number of opinion leaders, including American entrepreneur David Sacks, have suggested that the US was behind the move. In April, Sacks also predicted that Washington could go after Telegram, X, and eventually Rumble, given that the US passed a law that would ban the video-sharing platform TikTok if its Chinese-based developer, ByteDance, refused to sell it within 12 months.

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“Social media is now the dominant form of communication between people. It surpasses telephones.”

• #FreePavel: Telegram CEO Becomes Latest Target of European Censors (Turley)

Elon Musk put it simply: “#FreePavel.” For many, a hashtag of one billionaire calling for the release of another billionaire is hardly a compelling cause. Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, 39, is neither a familiar nor sympathetic figure for most Americans. However, for free speech advocates, Durov’s arrest is a chilling escalation of global censors in using European laws to control speech on the Internet. The press and pundits heralded the arrest and played up the allegations that Durov is under investigation for fraud and child abuse. Some might think from the headlines that Durov is himself being investigated for committing such crimes. While we have not seen anything akin to a charging sheet, reports indicate that French authorities took the action because of his refusal to yield to their demands to censor content on his messaging app.

Others have been ecstatic that censors could soon come for Musk. Retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, who testified in the Trump impeachment proceedings, declared “There’s a growing intolerance for platforming disinfo & malign influence & a growing appetite for accountability. Musk should be nervous.” Social media is now the dominant form of communication between people. It surpasses telephones. There is, however, a major difference in how such communications are protected. There would be an outcry if AT&T broke into a telephone call to object to the views of the parties and cut off access to the telephone lines until they moderated their views. The Europeans have been threatening to hold executives liable for how others use their sites. Imagine if a mobster used a telephone to do business and the FBI arrested the CEO of AT&T.

The implication of this case goes far beyond Durov. Social media sites allow large numbers of people to communicate and to associate. They share values or viewpoints, including some that most of us find offensive or repulsive. However, free speech should protect the right of people to associate so long as they do not commit crimes. Under free speech principles, those crimes should not include viewpoints or ideology. If individuals are engaging in child pornography or human trafficking, they should be arrested. That is conduct, not just speech. While the media emphasizes the allegations that there are people engaged in fraud or child porn, officials add that Durov has failed to remove viewpoints that they consider extreme or offensive. French officials have cited the failure to engage in greater “content moderation,” the euphemism of censorship.

We have been discussing how countries like France and the United Kingdom have been ramping up anti-free speech crackdowns. Recently, the European Union threatened Musk that he could be charged if he did not censor political speech in this election, including any information deemed by the EU to be false in his interview with Donald Trump. European Commissioner for Internal Markets and Services Thierry Breton issued a threatening message to Musk, “We are monitoring the potential risks in the EU associated with the dissemination of content that may incite violence, hate and racism in conjunction with major political — or societal — events around the world, including debates and interviews in the context of elections.”

The law behind these threats is the Digital Services Act. The act bars speech that is viewed as “disinformation” or “incitement.” European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager celebrated its passage by declaring that it is “not a slogan anymore, that what is illegal offline should also be seen and dealt with as illegal online. Now it is a real thing. Democracy’s back.” In addition to Musk, Robert Kennedy Jr. has denounced the arrest. This action is not due to the encryption capacity or child porn rationales. European officials have been making the same threats against other sites over the failure to censor views that they deem unacceptable. Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski wrote “France has threatened Rumble, and now they have crossed a red line by arresting Telegram’s CEO, Pavel Durov, reportedly for not censoring speech.”

Read more …

“Russia could actually start looking not too bad by comparison the minute that his new pals decide that they’re fed up with him..”

• Telegram Founder Finds Out That ‘Freedom’ Isn’t Free (Marsden)

French officials have sprung into action with an arrest warrant that seemed to have been scribbled on the back of a napkin when they realized that the founder of the globally-popular online chat app, Telegram, was about to make the colossal mistake of landing in France, despite his company being based well out of the EU’s reach in Dubai. Russian Pavel Durov mysteriously managed to get French citizenship in 2021 without ever even living in the country. Normally, French citizenship requires proof of five years of residency, and seemingly more importantly to French authorities, five full years of paying income tax in France. Instead, Durov managed to get fast-tracked citizenship through a French Foreign Ministry initiative that awards naturalization based on some kind of action that contributes to the image, prosperity, and international relations of France.

No one has been able to actually articulate what exactly Durov has contributed to France beyond badmouthing Russia, or having created the chat app that French media have long qualified as the top choice of French President Emmanuel Macron and his entourage since at least 2016. Just as equally puzzling is the fact that just three years later, the judicial branch of the same French government that gifted him with a highly political shortcut to citizenship is now suddenly accusing him of taking an overly laid-back approach to his platform’s content. French press reports have been citing anonymous judicial sources close to the case, alleging that the app has turned into a giant free-for-all for assorted scum of the earth (in addition the aforementioned elites): terrorists, money launderers, drug traffickers, pedophiles.

No explicit mention of people who happen to just have opinions that the establishment doesn’t particularly like, and whose online proliferation European officials are always whining about and threatening these platform operators about publicly – the most recent being X platform owner Elon Musk. TikTok, owned by China? National security threat that the West wants to ban – unless they hand over data management and access to the US. Huawei? National security threat, mostly for honing in on the turf of Western competitors who struggled to compete. RT and other Russia-linked platforms? National security threat offering alternative views and information to the EU’s official narrative on Ukraine. Now we’re down to French media outlets like C8 and CNews being threatened like they were Russian – because they haven’t fallen in line with the French regulator’s content demands.

Durov’s arrest was apparently enough to incite the Canadian founder of another free speech platform, Rumble’s Chris Pavlovski, to grab his go-bag and get the heck out of dodge. “I’m a little late to this, but for good reason – I’ve just safely departed from Europe,” Pavlovski wrote on the X Platform.”France has threatened Rumble, and now they have crossed a red line by arresting Telegram’s CEO, Pavel Durov, reportedly for not censoring speech.” Pavlovski previously opted to outright geoblock Rumble across France rather than censor content that the French government had asked him to – like RT for example. But Durov was singing a tune that the West really liked for a while, about how he was pressured by the Russian government over content control and backdoor access and how he basically just flipped them off heroically.

His persecution by Russia was such that he was never actually arrested or charged with anything there, and Telegram is still operational in Russia while Durov is free to go around the world promoting himself as a professional victim of his homeland. Durov even fell right in line with top-down EU demands to censor RT and other Russian media. But there has been a significant shift recently. He had started to change his tune to one that probably wasn’t such a crowd pleaser for the Western establishment, suggesting a few months ago in an interview with Tucker Carlson that the FBI tried to convince one of his engineers to basically start installing Western-friendly backdoors that would allow intelligence services easy access to encrypted Telegram content. He added that they seemed particularly interested in infiltrating groups that opposed Covid mandates and jabs.

Former Russian President Dimitry Medvedev said in the wake of Durov’s arrest that he previously warned him that he’d have problems in virtually any country where he didn’t want to cooperate with the authorities on major crimes. Not that people denouncing Covid mandates are committing major crimes, which makes you wonder how much of this is really just France playing up the major crime element in order to tackle much lesser things that they consider a threat to their own power rather than to society. Durov may now be on the verge of learning that despite his anti-Russian rhetoric, Russia could actually start looking not too bad by comparison the minute that his new pals decide that they’re fed up with him – and your app goes from being the toast of the Elysee to the trash bin.

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“..observers worry about the precedent set by the Democrat Party’s end run around its own voters.”

• The Undemocratic Party (Miles)

“For the first time since 1968, the Democratic nominee will win the nomination without winning a single primary vote… it would be a culmination of the elite-oriented trends that have shaped the nominating process since 1984, in which party elites have played an increasingly large role in shaping the presidential nomination,” [Beth] Daley warned. “If Democrats truly want to make this election about democracy, they might start by looking at the recent trends in their own house.” Analyst Richard Morgan considered America’s democratic deficit as demonstrated during previous presidential administrations, such as that of Gerald Ford in the 1970s. Ford was selected to be Richard Nixon’s vice president after the resignation of Spiro Agnew in 1973 then became president the following year when Nixon stepped down amid the sprawling Watergate scandal. He is notable for having served as both president and vice president of the United States without winning a single vote.

Harris has also come under scrutiny for her political track record, with critics accusing her of opportunism. “Her record as a [San Francisco District Attorney]… sounds spotty, with her embracing two different extremes at different times – from strong against drugs and crime to weak,” said former US Justice Department prosecutor Ronald Sievert in an interview with Sputnik. Harris has received criticism from some in the Democratic Party who accuse her of running as a self-styled “tough on crime” politician in the years before Black Lives Matter and a string of high-profile police shootings brought a renewed focus to criminal justice reform. She was famously criticized by former Democratic Party Rep. Tulsi Gabbard during a primary debate in 2020 for her record as District Attorney and California’s attorney general during which she enforced heavy penalties for drug possession.

“When you were in a position to make a difference and an impact in these people’s lives you did not, and worse yet in the case of those who were on death row, innocent people, you actually blocked evidence from being revealed that would have freed them until you were forced to [turn it over],” said Gabbard during an exchange often credited with ending Harris’s previous run for president. “There is no excuse for that and the people who suffered under your reign as prosecutor, you owe them an apology.” Harris’s acceptance speech during the final night of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago has been slammed by many within the party for its hawkish tone. The Democratic candidate signaled strong support for Israel’s military operation in Gaza and the Western proxy war in Ukraine while also receiving an endorsement from controversial former CIA director Leon Panetta.

Panetta delivered a speech praising Harris during which he claimed he was “proud” to have served in the US Army and as head of the CIA. US military aggression throughout the Middle East during the so-called “War on Terror” is estimated to have caused the deaths of at least 4.5 million people while the CIA has been implicated in numerous coups and human rights violations. “In her speech [Harris] was talking about how [former US President Donald] Trump supposedly coddled [foreign leaders] like Putin, and that’s totally false,” said CovertAction Magazine managing editor Jeremy Kuzmarov on Sputnik’s The Final Countdown program recently. “Trump had a pretty hardline policy toward Russia. He pulled out of the INF Treaty. He ramped up weapons supplies to Ukraine. So that’s just like an extreme right-wing position that they’re adopting.”

“They’re celebrating this war in Ukraine [that] siphoned off billions of hard-earned taxpayer dollars into a sinkhole just like Afghanistan, and a lot of those weapons have been stolen. And this party is cheerleading for that. So that’s where they are.” The 2024 presidential campaign cycle represents the third in a row during which Democratic Party leaders have intervened heavily to boost their favored candidate. Leaked DNC emails revealed the extent to which party officials sought to subvert Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ candidacy during 2016’s party primary while former President Barack Obama intervened to once again undermine Sanders in 2020. 2024 marks the first year in decades that a major US political party’s presidential candidate has been chosen without a democratic primary process, and observers worry about the precedent set by the Democrat Party’s end run around its own voters.

Read more …

“The Vice President is ready to deal with Trump … in real time,” Fallon said. “Trump should stop hiding behind the mute button.”

In the Biden debate the Dems insisted on the mute button.

• Trump Suggests He Might Pull Out of ABC Debate With Harris (ET)

Former President Donald Trump suggested on the evening of Aug. 25 that he may skip a Sept. 10 ABC News debate with Vice President Kamala Harris amid dueling statements issued by both campaigns about whether the microphone should be muted. Trump wrote on Truth Social that he did not like how the network’s Jonathan Karl handled an interview with Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) on Aug. 25, questioning ABC’s capacity to be impartial. Trump then wrote, “Why would I do the debate against Kamala Harris on that network?” On Aug. 26, Trump told reporters inside a Vietnamese restaurant in Falls Church, Virginia, why he didn’t like how the network handled the Cotton interview. “When I looked at the hostility of that, I said, ‘Why am I doing it? Let’s do it with another network,’” the former president said. “I want to do it.”

When asked directly whether he will participate in the September ABC debate, he said, “We’re thinking about it. We’re thinking about it. They also want to change the rules. You know, the deal was we keep the same rules. Now, all of a sudden, they want to make a change in the rules.” He did not elaborate on the proposed rule changes but said he wants to have a fair debate and is seeking “tough questions.” He argued that the Disney-owned channel should not be holding the debate. “I‘d much rather do it on NBC. I’d much rather do it on CBS. … And certainly, I‘d do it on Fox. I’d even do it on CNN. I thought CNN treated us very fairly the last time,” Trump said. Statements issued by both campaigns on Aug. 26 indicated that there was an impasse over microphones and whether they should be turned on or off. Trump told reporters in the Virginia press conference that he would prefer to have his microphone switched on.

During his CNN-hosted debate with President Joe Biden, his microphone was muted much of the time. “Doesn’t matter to me. I’d rather have it, probably, on. But the agreement was that it would be the same as it was last time,” the former president said. “I’m not spending a lot of time on it. I think my whole life I’ve been preparing for a debate. “You can’t cram knowledge into your head, for, you know, 30 years of knowledge in one week. So, you know, there’s a little debate prep, but I’ve always done it more or less the same way.” In response to Trump campaign comments and his Truth Social post, Harris spokesperson Brian Fallon said in a statement that their campaign wanted ABC News to keep their microphones on for the full event and not be muted. “The Vice President is ready to deal with Trump … in real time,” Fallon said. “Trump should stop hiding behind the mute button.”

Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller said in a statement that the team already agreed to the same terms as the debate hosted by CNN in June. “We said no changes to the agreed-upon rules,” he said. Harris obtained the Democratic Party’s nomination after Biden stepped aside last month, and she had said that she would do the Sept. 10 debate hosted by ABC News previously agreed to by Biden and Trump. Trump had floated another debate hosted by Fox News on Sept. 4, which he said would become a televised town hall with just himself and host Sean Hannity if Harris didn’t accept. The Harris campaign said it was not interested. The vice presidential candidates, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, are scheduled to debate on Oct. 1 on CBS News.

Read more …

“..it’s become obvious that Mr. Trump’s aims and ideas are more in-tune with those forsaken principles of Mr. Kennedy’s father and his uncle, JFK.”

• “RFK, Jr. Murders Whale with Chainsaw!” (Kunstler)

The raptures of “joy” tend to obscure the idea that there is a future to be concerned about. Enter Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. He explained his view of the situation and his role in it with unsurpassed clarity last Friday in a powerful and moving speech outlining a decision that must have been very painful for him. As I averred he would do last Friday morning, he denounced the party of his ancestors in unequivocal terms for coming to militate against its own traditional principles — opposing war, fighting for free speech, helping poor working people, and against weaponizing government agencies. He threw his support to Mr. Trump because it’s become obvious that Mr. Trump’s aims and ideas are more in-tune with those forsaken principles of Mr. Kennedy’s father and his uncle, JFK.

And now he’ll campaign on behalf of Mr. Trump, with the expectation that he will play an important, well-defined role in the next Trump administration — in charge of a range of public health issues that he is deeply familiar with from decades of litigation and researching the books about pharmaceutical racketeering actually written by himself. It’s Monday after the convention. What’s on the candidates’ campaign schedule today. CNNs “Campaign Latest” page says that Mr. Trump will give a speech in Detroit today to the National Guard Association where he is expected to greet the endorsement of former Rep. (and Lt. Col. In the National Guard) Tulsi Gabbard. Kamala Harris has no public appearances scheduled, but CNN reports that she has raised a fabulous $540-million since her launch a few weeks ago. Isn’t that nice? Boolah boolah, lotsa moolah. On Wednesday, Ms. Harris and her veep sidekick, Tim Walz, embark on a bus tour around Georgia. Bus tours will be the signature of their campaign.

Let me tell you what that means: instead of flying expeditiously between campaign stops where they might have to state some positions on public issues, Harris & Walz will eat up many hours on long bus rides from Point-A to Point-B, hiding from the public and the press. Bobby Kennedy, meanwhile, is cramming as many media appearances as possible into his schedule, submitting to questions about everything, including the latest barrage of accusations about his fully-disclosed personal history. Fox has had him on several programs, though the other cable news stations are ignoring him, as are The New York Times and the WashPo, except to publish scurrilous stories from his mindfucked siblings and cousins — the latest being that he cut the head off a dead whale on the beach at Cape Cod with a chainsaw. Readers are supposed to construe that to mean he murdered a whale with a chainsaw.

Read more …

They want them both dead.

• Secret Service Rescinds Protection For RFK Jr. After Trump Endorsement (ET)

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will no longer receive Secret Service protection after he announced on Aug. 23 that he was suspending his campaign in 10 battleground states and urging voters in those states to support former President Donald Trump instead. “Mr. Kennedy no longer has USSS protection,” Kennedy’s press secretary, Stefanie Spear, told The Epoch Times on Aug. 25. Anthony Guglielmi, Secret Service chief of communications, confirmed that Kennedy “is no longer a protectee given he suspended his campaign,” in an Aug. 25 statement to The Epoch Times. Kennedy was denied Secret Service protection five times before the Department of Homeland Security granted it shortly after the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump on July 13.

Thomas Michael Crooks was identified by authorities as the gunman. Trump’s ear was grazed by the gunfire, former fire chief Corey Comperatore was killed, and two others were injured. Following the attack, Trump said that Kennedy should “immediately” get Secret Service protection. “In light of what is going on in the world today, I believe it is imperative that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. receive Secret Service protection—immediately,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Given the history of the Kennedy Family, this is the obvious right thing to do!” On July 15, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas authorized Kennedy’s Secret Service protection.

“We are in a heightened and very dynamic threat environment. The United States’ Secret Service, we—including the FBI and our other partners across the federal government—take the threats very seriously and adjust security measures as warranted, maintaining the safety and security of the president, the former president in their campaign events is one our most vital priorities,” Mayorkas said. “In light of the weekend’s events, the president has directed me to work with the Secret Service to provide protection for Robert Kennedy Jr.” It’s standard procedure for the Secret Service to end protection when a presidential candidate drops out of the race. Kennedy said that he has suspended his campaign in 10 battleground states but will be on the ballot in the other 40 states during his Aug. 23 address. He encouraged voters to support him in states where he would not be considered a “spoiler” and detract backing for their Trump or Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris.

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“What the Russians will end up destroying is a Sodom and Gomorrah Tower of Babel. No one will miss it.”

• The Agenda Is To Elect Kamala (Paul Craig Roberts)

Dear American, this is your next presidential administration: It will be anti-white, anti-family, pro-open borders, pro-legalization of sexual perversity, pro-sexualization of young children, and pro-war. It cannot be deterred by your votes, because the election will be stolen. In the swing states the methods used by Democrats to steal the 2020 and 2022 elections have been legalized. Moreover, if news reports are correct, in some, perhaps all, of the swing states it is now illegal to challenge election outcomes. If you will remember, when Kamala Harris competed for the presidential nomination in 2020, she was immediately eliminated. She had zero support. If you will remember, she has been an unpopular vice president. Yet today the media presents her as leading Trump, who continues to turn out massive attendance at his appearances, as the likely next president.

The media uses rigged polls and positive coverage of Kamala and negative coverage of Trump to create in the voting public’s mind the expectation of a Kamala victory. The polls are rigged by overweighting Democrats in the polled population. Google Kamala and you will find 90% of the information is favorable. Google Trump and 90% is unfavorable. By creating the expectation of a Kamala victory, the ground is laid for stealing the election. It is not possible to steal an election unless the election is close or the person for whom the election is stolen is presented as the leading candidate. Ask yourselves, how did Kamala go from zero support among Democrats to the leading presidential contender? She did not win the primary election as there was no primary. She has not had any debates, much less triumphed in one.

She represents everything but white Americans, families, sexual morality, peace, law as a shield of the people instead of a weapon in the hands of government, nationhood instead of a tower of babel, truth instead of lies, the Constitution instead of a woke agenda- based rule. The media have made it completely obvious that the election is going to be stolen. Why else the rigged polls and biased coverage? The public is being prepared to accept a stolen election. And Republicans are silent. If Trump raises the issue, the media will say that Trump has already admitted that he is going to lose and is already raising the theft issue prior to the election. Obviously, Trump cannot be the one who raises the obvious issue in front of our eyes that the Democrats are going to steal the election. The theft has to be raised by Republican governors, US Senators, US Representatives, and that small part of social media where free speech is still possible.

Try to imagine Republican wimps raising a real issue. Republicans are incapable of fighting. As they have never done it, they don’t know how. Moreover, even if they were capable of fight, they wouldn’t, because it would cast aspersion on the purity and sanctity of “American democracy.” Republicans regard any effective self-defense as a reflection on the American myth. The “USA USA USA” crowd would get upset. Americans need to try to understand what life is going to be like under a Kamala regime. Federal marshals and FBI SWAT teams are going to be sent house to house in red states seizing firearms. Once disarmed, legions of immigrant-invaders will be sent to throw you out of your homes and move in. It will be treated as a rental issue and be decided in favor of the tenant, the underdog favored by the Democrat regime. Your unrealized capital gains, which you were relying on for your retirement, will be taxed. You will have to sell retirement funds in order to pay the tax. When the market falls, you will not be compensated for the disappeared capital gains that you paid taxes on.

You will lose all control over your children, who will be groomed in public schools for pedophiles and gender change. Not too far into this process of “transformation to a diverse, equitable, and inclusive society,” white people, as in The Camp of the Saints which we are now living, will not be permitted to marry and to procreate. The white people you see in the video of the DNC convention are so utterly stupid, or brainwashed, or insouciant that they cannot realize that they are supporting their own elimination. They signify the inability of white Americans to recognize their peril and to defend themselves. Defense is impossible, because not even the Republican Party will say a word about the election theft that has so obviously been set in place. The border remains wide open.

Critical race theory continues to be taught in public schools. Transgender promoters are gaining parental authority over children. The attempted assassination of Trump remains non-investigated and has disappeared from the media. Free speech has been labeled “a threat to democracy.” My advice to young white heterosexual Americans stands: Get out of the country. You have no future here. White women who remain can expect to be used for the sexual comfort for the immigrant-invaders, just as they are in Sweden, Norway, UK, Germany, France, and the rest of what was once Western civilization. What the Russians will end up destroying is a Sodom and Gomorrah Tower of Babel. No one will miss it.

Read more …

Join in, Tulsi. Many more will follow.

“..describing the ex-president as the only candidate who can walk the US back from “the brink of nuclear war.”

• Another Former Democrat Joins Trump Campaign (RT)

Former Democratic lawmaker Tulsi Gabbard has endorsed Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, describing the ex-president as the only candidate who can walk the US back from “the brink of nuclear war.” Trump brought Gabbard on stage during a speech at the National Guard Association’s annual conference in Detroit on Monday, introducing the former Hawaii congresswoman as a “true American patriot” with “great common sense” and “great spirit.” Gabbard, a 17-year National Guard veteran who served two combat tours in the Middle East, praised Trump’s isolationist brand of foreign policy. “We saw this through his first term in the presidency when he not only didn’t start any new wars, he took action to de-escalate and prevent wars,” she said, adding that Trump had “the courage to meet with adversaries, dictators, allies and partners alike in the pursuit of peace.”

“The same can not be said about Kamala Harris,” Gabbard continued. “In fact the opposite is true, and we’re living through this reality today as this administration has us facing multiple wars on multiple fronts in regions around the world, and closer to the brink of nuclear war than we ever have been before.” “This is one of the main reasons why I’m committed to doing all that I can to send President Trump back to the White House,” she told the crowd. “Because I am confident that his first task will be to…walk us back from the brink of war.” Gabbard left the Democratic Party in 2022, arguing that it had fallen “under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers” and social-justice ideologues. Three years earlier, Gabbard was widely credited with ending Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign with a single debate performance.

In the 2019 Democratic primary showdown, Gabbard slammed Harris’ record as California’s attorney general, criticizing her for jailing thousands of marijuana offenders “and then laughing about it,” for her use of prison labor, and for blocking evidence that would have freed innocent men on death row. “There is no excuse for that and the people who suffered under your reign as prosecutor, you owe them an apology,” Gabbard said, leaving Harris unable to respond. Gabbard has long opposed US involvement in and funding of foreign conflicts. During her four terms in office from 2013 to 2021, she advocated dialogue with America’s rival superpowers, coupled with a hardline policy on Islamic terrorism. Like Trump, she has faced accusations of being a “Russian asset,” most notably from failed 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.

Gabbard responded to Clinton’s 2019 jab – likely a reference to her past praise for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fight against terrorism in Syria – by calling Clinton “queen of the warmongers” and suing her for defamation. Gabbard is the second high-profile former Democrat to endorse Trump in recent days, after Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspended his third-party campaign and backed the former president on Friday. Gabbard and Kennedy have both cited President Joe Biden’s funding of the Ukrainian military and “weaponization” of the justice system and intelligence agencies against Trump as key factors behind their decision.

Read more …

Musk can pick his own role.

• Trump Suggests Consulting Role for Musk in Cabinet If Elected (Sp.)

US presidential candidate Donald Trump has said that SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk would likely be too busy to serve in his cabinet but suggested that the entrepreneur could play a consulting role in his administration if he wins the November election. “He wants to be involved. Now look, he’s running big businesses and all that, so he can’t, really, I don’t think he could be cabinet… He can sort of, as the expression goes, consult with the country and give you some very good ideas,” Trump told The Shawn Ryan Show, as quoted by US media. Trump emphasized that he had an excellent relationship with Musk, who stated earlier that he was willing to take up a position in the White House. The entrepreneur also posted an image of himself behind a podium, with the caption “Department of Government Efficiency.”

Read more …

“The Supreme Court had multiple opportunities during the last term to end the censorship of conservatives by social media. It chose a different path.”

• This Election Is a Referendum on Free Speech (RCP)

The Supreme Court had multiple opportunities during the last term to end the censorship of conservatives by social media. It chose a different path. Now, Democrats are free to double down on the Biden-Harris administration’s massive censorship enterprise. There is every indication they intend to do so. The bedrock of American democracy, the First Amendment, prohibits Congress from making laws “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” The prohibition also applies to executive actions and state governments. Until recently, there was bipartisan agreement on the centrality of free speech to American liberties. Today, nearly a third of Americans believe free speech rights go too far. When Donald Trump was elected president, Democrats in Congress threatened social media platforms with antitrust actions and repeal of the libel protections in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act if they failed to rein in conservative speech.

When Joe Biden took office, the federal government institutionalized a censorship enterprise that coerced and collaborated with social media platforms to censor, suppress, and demonetize disfavored views. The New York Times acknowledges the left has long sought to limit “unfettered speech.” Former president Barak Obama told a Stanford University conference that government controls must be imposed to stop so-called “disinformation.” Vice President Kamala Harris announced a White House task force to block disinformation involving women’s issues. Democrat vice presidential candidate Tim Walz told MSNBC, “There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech.” In fact, both are generally protected by the First Amendment. The Democrat platform sees controlling disinformation as a priority.

By contrast, in July, the Republicans adopted a platform that states: “We will ban the Federal Government from colluding with anyone to censor Lawful Speech, defund institutions engaged in censorship, and hold accountable all bureaucrats involved with illegal censoring. We will protect Free Speech online.” In Murthy v. Missouri, healthcare professionals, Missouri, and Louisiana sued to block the Biden-Harris censorship regime. During discovery, officials testified that they knowingly sought to end-run the prohibitions on government interference in free speech by working with and through third parties, including Stanford, non-profit associations, and social media companies. After reviewing extensive discovery, U.S. District Court Judge Terry Doughty found that the Biden-Harris administration had engaged in “a broad pressure campaign designed to coerce social media companies into suppressing speakers, viewpoints, and content disfavored by the government” and issued an injunction to stop it.

A unanimous panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the findings but tailored the injunction to eliminate ambiguities and exclude some agencies. Florida and Texas then passed laws to make it more difficult for social media platforms to ban political speech. The 11th Circuit struck down Florida’s law, finding that it impermissibly limited editorial discretion, while the Fifth Circuit upheld Texas’ law, concluding that content moderation activities are not speech.

Read more …

“He also promised to have it “settled” as president-elect and not wait for the January inauguration.”

• Trump Lauds Russia’s ‘Winter Fighting’ (RT)

Former US president and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has expressed admiration for the Russian military’s warfighting skills and vowed to end the Ukraine conflict before the end of the year, if elected. Trump addressed the Russia-Ukraine conflict as part of an hour-long interview, posted on Monday. Advertised as “unfiltered stories of heroic events and current world issues,” the show is hosted by the former US Navy SEAL and CIA contractor Shawn Ryan. “Russia’s a great winter fighter,” Trump told Ryan. “They beat Germany and they beat Napoleon. They’re not easy to beat. And they are a massive military, and Ukraine isn’t. But Ukraine has us giving them a lot of money.”

The US and its allies have channeled more than $400 billion in aid to Kiev since the conflict began in 2022, including over $120 billion in direct military aid, according to estimates from the Kiel Institute, a German think-tank tracking the contributions. Without going into the details, Trump objected to the US accounting for the lion’s share of the military aid, arguing the European members of NATO needed to “equalize” their contribution. “That war is much more devastating than people understand,” Trump said in the interview. He also promised to have it “settled” as president-elect and not wait for the January inauguration. Trump has repeatedly argued that the conflict would not have broken out had he stayed in the White House, instead of being replaced by Joe Biden in 2021. He has also claimed he would end the fighting within 24 hours.

The Shawn Ryan show was not the first time Trump has praised the Russian “war machine,” either. He first brought it up during a Fox News town hall in February, then again in July, recounting a phone call with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky. Asked by Ryan what he would spend the $175 billion that the US Congress has appropriated for Ukraine aid, Trump pointed out that the US has over $30 trillion in national debt. The former president also lamented the fact that the Pentagon has managed to empty the stockpile he had worked so hard to replenish during his time in office. “These guys gave it all to Ukraine,” Trump told Ryan. “Now we have no ammunition again.”

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“As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

• America’s Reckoning With Reality (Douglas Macgregor)

Why would the Uniparty inflict this damage on the American People? The Uniparty knows that, without common identity or kinship, democracy is replaced with tribal anarchy, a societal condition that leads to nihilism, drug abuse, criminality, and worse. The goal is painfully obvious. It is the denationalization of the United States, the fundamental destruction of national identity and the social cohesion that supports it. The process involves the conversion of Americans into an amorphous mass of sedated consumers. The transformation of the U. S. Armed Forces into mercenary military formations staffed by illegal migrants is an enormously important step in the direction of denationalization. After all, before Americans won their independence, their national identity rested on the shoulders of the Continental Army.

If General Washington could hold the Continental Army together despite fearful odds, our country and its governing body—congress—existed. The Continental Army was, and today’s Armed Forces still are, the repository of American national Identity. The Uniparty rejects these charges. Instead, the Uniparty tells us how fortunate we are to welcome tens of millions of foreigners into our country where they will enhance our culture, society and way of life. Really, how many “Rs” are there in “fat chance?” Meanwhile, the Uniparty promotes the sexualization of children in our public school systems. Naturally, the Uniparty pretends to care for the workingman or woman, and it promises everything to everyone for nothing in perpetuity—tuition-free college, free health care, free housing, free everything. The Uniparty is giving non-paying, illegal immigrants access to our healthcare system.

How the Uniparty will pay for these things is a question no one answers. Servicing the national debt on an annual basis already involves a sum larger than the defense budget. Are the presidential candidates aware? Do they care? For the Uniparty, none of these concerns matters. The daily life of the Uniparty is about self-enrichment, sensual pleasure, and social prestige. The Uniparty motto is “When in doubt, print more money.” Equally troubling is the Uniparty’s enthusiasm for war. In fact, the Uniparty sees enormous benefit to war, even to the point of turning over control of the U.S. Armed Forces to the direction of a foreign power for use in a major war that will escalate to involve other nuclear-armed powers.

But Americans are not stupid. Americans know that open borders are not a net benefit, and they know that modern war is not a game or an event that occurs only on foreign soil. The new, emerging constellation of potential adversaries in Eastern Europe and the Middle East is no longer a loose collection of hapless opponents without armies, air forces, navies, air defenses, or persistent surveillance from seabed to space. President Abraham Lincoln was right: “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” The time for Americans to halt the destruction is upon us. The question is whether Americans will remain bystanders or intervene to save the Republic.

Read more …

“Moscow sources believe it was the Kremlin which was taken by surprise by the Kursk attack on August 6, but not the General Staff and the military intelligence agency GRU..”

• Is President Putin Preparing For Istanbul-II? (Helmer)

Remember the old adage — sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never harm me. In the war by the US and its Anglo-European allies to destroy Russia since 1945, the propaganda war has been lost by the Russians many times over. That war is still being lost. But for the first time since 1945, the battlefield war is being won by the Russian General Staff. The uncertainty which remains is whether President Vladimir Putin will continue to restrict the General Staff’s war plans in order that Putin can go to negotiations with the Americans on terms which will forego the demilitarization and denazification of the Ukrainian territory between Kiev and the Polish border, and concede to the Kiev regime unhindered control of the cities to the east — Kharkov, Odessa, Dniepropetrovsk.

Call those terms Istanbul-II. As with the draft terms initialled in Istanbul at the end of March 2022, Istanbul-II amounts to an exchange of dominant Russian military power for US and Ukrainian signatures on paper with false intention and temporary duration. The US administration says it believes Putin will concede. It also believes that by staging its war of pinpricks — that’s the drone, artillery and missile barrages fired by the Ukrainian military, directed by the US and UK – in the Black Sea and Russia’s western border regions, Putin’s red lines and threats of retaliation are exposed as empty bluff. The same interpretation of Putin, and confidence that he will accept US terms, are the foundation of the Ukraine “peace plan” of Donald Trump’s advisors. The Trump plan’s offer of “some limited sanctions relief” reflects the conviction in Washington that Putin’s oligarch constituency can be bribed to push Putin into the same “frozen war” concessions as Roman Abramovich got Putin to accept at Istanbul-I – until the General Staff stopped them both.

Putin’s restrictions on the General Staff’s proposals for neutralizing the US and British air surveillance and electronic warfare operations; and his orders to stand by while the Ukrainians have assembled several thousand forces, first to cross into Kursk, and then into Bryansk and Belgorod, are now as visible in Moscow as they have been in Washington. Moscow sources believe it was the Kremlin which was taken by surprise by the Kursk attack on August 6, but not the General Staff and the military intelligence agency GRU. They understood the battlefield intelligence as it was coming in and requested Putin’s agreement to respond. In retrospect, they say “we told you so”; they imply their hands were tied by the Kremlin orders.

“My understanding for now,” says one of the sources, “is that these are pinpricks that feel painful but they are not life threatening. Russia will not take any land, for now, other than the four regions. It should be the eight regions but it’s obvious Putin doesn’t have the will and the military does not have the capacity to hold. So we will see Ukrainians inside Kursk for a while. But it should be downplayed because it should not be allowed to be a bargain chip in negotiations the other side is aiming at.” Putin said this himself, the source points out at his meeting on August 12 with the Chief of the General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, and others. “These [Kursk] actions clearly aim to achieve a primary military objective: to halt the advance of our forces in their effort to fully liberate the territories of the Lugansk and Donetsk people’s republics, the Novorossiya region.”

Putin also said: “It is now becoming increasingly clear why the Kiev regime rejected our proposals for a peaceful settlement, as well as those from interested and neutral mediators…. It seems the opponent is aiming to strengthen their negotiating position for the future. However, what kind of negotiations can we have with those who indiscriminately attack civilians and civilian infrastructure, or pose threats to nuclear power facilities? What is there to discuss with such parties?” “It’s obvious at this point,” comments a military source, “that the Americans and Ukrainians have decided that Putin will come to terms if they snatch enough Russian territory and keep up their strikes behind the Russian lines…The Ukrainians are going for broke in the north while the centre collapses. But they know, no matter how expensive it is, the longer they remain on the attack, the worse it looks for the Russian leadership. They also have the measure of Putin who gives orders for half measures.”

This is also obvious in the Security Council in Moscow. The Council’s deputy secretary, ex-president Dmitri Medvedev, made the point explicitly in his Telegram account declaration on August 21, implying that until he had said it, no one else dared: “In my opinion, recently, even theoretically, there has been one danger – the negotiation trap, into which our country could fall under certain circumstances; for example. Namely, the early unnecessary peace talks proposed by the international community and imposed on the Kiev regime with unclear prospects and consequences.” Medvedev was referring to Istanbul-I. “After the neo-Nazis committed an act of terrorism in the Kursk region, everything has fallen into place. The idle chatter of unauthorized intermediaries on the topic of the beautiful world has been stopped. Now everyone understands everything, even if they don’t say it out loud. They understand that there will BE NO MORE NEGOTIATIONS UNTIL THE COMPLETE DEFEAT OF THE ENEMY! [Medvedev’s caps]”

Read more …

“Hezbollah has the “will and the ground resources it needs [to] have a very, very, very large impact on Israeli soil..”

• Hezbollah Could End Normal Life in Israel, Drive Israelis ‘Underground’ (Sp.)

Tensions between Hezbollah and Israel have boiled over amid a series of increasingly powerful back-and-forth attacks. But neither side, nor their allies truly want a full-scale war, since it would end any semblance of normal life in Israel, sink Tehran’s hopes on the diplomatic front, and stretch US resources to a breaking point, observers say. Major airlines began canceling and diverting flights to and from Beirut and Tel Aviv over the weekend amid fears of all all-out war between Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Israel. The cancellations came in the wake of large-scale preemptive aerial attacks by as many as 100 Israeli warplanes against suspected Hezbollah targets across southern Lebanon, with the militia launching a barrage of hundreds of drones and rockets at 5 am Sunday morning in retaliation to Tel Aviv’s assassination of senior Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut last month.

Smaller follow-up targeted back-and-forth air-drone and rocket attacks have been reported, with scores Hezbollah fighters, Israeli soldiers and civilians killed or injured in the latest escalation. In a televised speech Sunday, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah cited the militia’s successful targeting of Israeli military and intelligence sites. Nasrallah said the delay in the militia’s response to Shukr’s July 30 murder was meant to provide time for the Gaza ceasefire talks to bear fruit – a chance he said was squandered by Prime Minister Netanyahu and the United States. “Our goal…is to end the aggression on Gaza, so we gave it [the ceasefire process, ed.] enough of an opportunity, but after all this time, it is clear that Netanyahu is putting in new conditions and the Americans are working with him and this is all a waste of time, so there was no reason to delay any longer,” Nasrallah said.

“Regional and international actors indirectly involved in this war such as the US and Iran have no intention to directly be involved,” American University of Beirut Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy international affairs section coordinator Yeghia Tashjian told Sputnik, commenting on the escalating tensions between Hezbollah and Israeli. Pointing to the factors of the upcoming US presidential election, plus Iran’s attempts at diplomatic rapprochement with Western countries following July’s elections, Tashjian said he believes the recent back-and-forth strikes, serious as they are, remain “managed clashes,” signaling that neither side is “ready to shift the current status into a major war.” There are other reasons Israel and the US in particular don’t truly want a full scale conflict, says Furkan Halit Yolcu, an academic and Middle East Institute faculty member at Turkiye’s Sakarya University.

Hezbollah, unlike Hamas, isn’t “a small-scale non-state actor,” but a force to be reckoned with approaching national armies in terms of its ground strength, and has missile and air defense power that can do great “harm and hurt” to any army attacking it, the observer told Sputnik. Hezbollah has the “will and the ground resources it needs [to] have a very, very, very large impact on Israeli soil,” Yolcu warned, noting that ordinary Israelis may literally be driven into underground bomb shelters their government has prepared for them, and see their day-to-day lives disrupted completely thanks to Hezbollah’s ability to saturate Israeli air and missile defenses.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Sprinkler

 

 

Daughter
https://twitter.com/i/status/1828077033567469633

 

 

Elephant

 

 

Ride
https://twitter.com/i/status/1827958010389352673

 

 

BaldEagle

 

 

Pickup
https://twitter.com/i/status/1828057315645559188

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle August 26 2024

Aug 262024
 
 August 26, 2024  Posted by at 8:16 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  60 Responses »


M. C. Escher Symmetry Drawing 1948

 

• US Orchestrated Durov Arrest – Former Spokesman (RT)
• How The EU Tightened The Noose On Telegram (RT)
• Durov’s Arrest ‘In Spirit Of EUs Digital Services Act’ (RT)
• “Musk Should Be Nervous” (ZH)
• US Trampling On Free Speech – David Sacks On Durov’s Arrest (RT)
• Durov Arrest Exposes ‘Tyrannical Face’ Of France – Party Leader (RT)
• Russia Demands France Explains Durov Arrest (RT)
• How Democrats Make Republicans: RFK Should Be A Wake Up Call (Turley)
• The Seduction of Kamala Harris: How the Democrats Are Attracting Voters (Pinsker)
• Democrats Avoid Any Concrete Policy Issues at Convention (Sp.)
• Dems Scramble To Walk Back Harris’ Price Control Scheme (ZH)
• The Fed Returns to Liquidity. Will It Elect Kamala? (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Hungary Accuses Brussels Of Disrupting Oil Supplies From Russia (RT)
• Pope Francis Condemns Ukraine’s Ban On Country’s Largest Orthodox Church (ZH)

 

 

 

 

 

 

More Dems
https://twitter.com/i/status/1827762158341644409

 

 

Dore deep state


https://twitter.com/i/status/1827454580537328111

 

 

MSNBC RFK

 

 

Benz

 

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1827379854192603573

 

 

 

 

A trap, prepared well in advance.

“Pavel Durov was put on the wanted list literally minutes before landing in Paris and an arrest warrant was issued.” Durov reportedly used to get along fine with Macron. Why he became a French citizen.

“..complicity in drug trafficking, pedophilia offenses, and fraud..”

• US Orchestrated Durov Arrest – Former Spokesman (RT)

Telegram founder Pavel Durov wouldn’t have “disregarded his own safety” and landed in Paris if he thought the French authorities were serious about arresting him, his former press secretary Georgy Loboushkin has told RT. Loboushkin believes that the order to detain Durov likely came from Washington. Durov was arrested at Paris-Le Bourget Airport on Saturday, immediately after arriving from Azerbaijan by private jet. According to French media, prosecutors in Paris plan to charge the 39-year-old with complicity in drug trafficking, pedophilia offenses, and fraud, arguing that Telegram’s insufficient content moderation, its strong encryption tools, and its alleged lack of cooperation with police allow criminals to flourish on the app. “It’s a big mystery why he disregarded his own safety and decided to land in Paris,” Loboushkin told RT on Sunday.

“He has shown throughout his history that he is a pretty cautious person in that sense. He has said many times that there is no point in going to jail.” According to Loboushkin, the Russian-born businessman must have been unaware that a warrant was being prepared for his arrest, or thought – given Telegram’s compliance with local laws and sanctions – that he wouldn’t be in serious trouble. “I think the attack is coming neither from the EU nor from France,” Loboushkin said. “It’s most likely an attack from the United States, which has been after Pavel Durov for a long time, and Durov has always talked about it.”

“He said, for example in an interview with Tucker Carlson, that he and his employees are under pressure, or at least there’s some kind of surveillance conducted by the FBI,” the former spokesman continued. “I think the root causes are there, so it doesn’t make any sense to discuss the intentions of the French authorities who arrested him, because they don’t play any role here at all.” In an interview with Carlson in April, Durov said that he drew “too much attention” from law enforcement any time he visited the US, and claimed that American intelligence agents had attempted to recruit one of his employees to install a backdoor in the app that would have allowed them to spy on Telegram users.

Loboushkin is not the only commentator to suggest that the US was behind Durov’s arrest. “The Americans are behind the situation as a whole,” Ekaterina Mizulina, the head of Russia’s Safe Internet League, said on Sunday, alleging that Washington wanted both to restrict the free flow of information and attack TON, a blockchain platform originally developed by Telegram’s creators. With major Russian companies investing in TON, the arrest is essentially “a continuation of the US’ sanctions policy,” Mizulina wrote on Telegram. American investor David Sacks claimed on Sunday that Durov’s commitment to free speech and user privacy made him a target in Washington. Writing on X, Sacks declared that “using allied countries to circumvent First Amendment protections is the new Rendition,” referring to the US’ use of foreign airports and military bases to transport terror suspects in the years following the September 11 attacks.

Read more …

“..Telegram’s insufficient content moderation, its strong encryption tools, and its alleged lack of cooperation with police allow criminals to flourish on the app..”

• How The EU Tightened The Noose On Telegram (RT)

The arrest in France of Telegram founder Pavel Durov is the latest escalation in an EU-wide campaign against the Russian entrepreneur and his privacy-focused messaging app. After limited bans in some member states, officials in Brussels announced earlier this year that they would bend their own laws to force censorship rules onto the platform. Durov was arrested at Paris-Le Bourget Airport on Saturday, immediately after arriving from Azerbaijan by private jet. According to French media, prosecutors in Paris plan to accuse the 39-year-old of complicity in drug trafficking, pedophilia offenses, and fraud, arguing that Telegram’s insufficient content moderation, its strong encryption tools, and its alleged lack of cooperation with police allow criminals to flourish on the app. In the years leading up to Durov’s arrest, EU officials and individual member states have targeted Telegram with bans, regulations, and threats of legal action.

2021: Germany calls for action
After a group of radical anti-vaxxers were arrested for allegedly plotting on Telegram to kill the governor of the state of Saxony in 2021, German Justice Minister Marco Buschmann called for an EU-wide effort to restrict the platform. Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, governors and regional interior ministers in Germany had expressed displeasure with Telegram’s refusal to ban anti-lockdown protesters, and Buschmann argued that common EU action would “make a bigger impression” on Telegram than “each country trying to do that on its own.” Telegram was and still is headquartered in Dubai, and Durov reportedly refused to communicate with the German authorities. German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser warned at the time that Berlin was “not going to put up with” Durov’s refusal to cooperate.

2022-2024: Bans and restrictions
The Ukraine conflict gave national and local governments across the West an excuse to throttle Telegram, with the Norwegian Justice Ministry citing the platform’s “Russian origins” when it forbade government employees from installing the app on their work devices last year. Amsterdam’s municipal government also invoked the alleged threat of “foreign espionage” when it issued a similar ban for employees of the Dutch city last week, while France last year ordered civil servants to switch from Telegram and other messaging apps to locally-developed alternatives over security fears. In March of this year, Spain’s high court ordered the country’s mobile providers to block access to Telegram, while claims of copyright violations could be investigated. Although the ruling was overturned within days, the investigation is ongoing.

2024: Censorship crackdown
The EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which came into force earlier this year, lists platforms with more than 45 million monthly users as ‘Very Large Online Platforms’, requiring them to comply with a host of data protection and advertising-related rules. Such platforms are also required to “address the spread of disinformation,” a term that the DSA mentions more than a dozen times without providing a definition. While Telegram claims to have 41 million monthly users in the EU, European Commission Vice President for Values and Transparency Vera Jourova told Bloomberg in May that the platform is a “special case,” and would be investigated and potentially placed on the list anyway.

Jourova accused Telegram of enabling the spread of Russian “disinformation,” and called it “an issue” that the platform is “especially active in the eastern member states where we have a Russian-speaking minority.” Ahead of this potential regulation, Telegram has appointed a Brussels-based company as its legal representative in the EU, meaning that Belgian authorities will be responsible for enforcing EU law against Durov’s company. Last week, the Belgian Institute of Post and Telecommunications (BIPT) announced that it still could not prove that Telegram had more than 41 million monthly users. The DSA allows the EU to fine platforms as much as 6% of their global annual turnover if they break its rules. The law also allows repeat offenders to be banned from operating in the bloc.

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“..the DSA “does not contain personal or criminal liability, which means that the prosecution in France went much further.”

• Durov’s Arrest ‘In Spirit Of EUs Digital Services Act’ (RT)

The arrest of Telegram CEO Pavel Durov in France is in line with the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which stipulates that service providers are responsible for the content shared on their platforms, TASS reported on Sunday, citing a source in the bloc’s legal system. The Russian tech entrepreneur – who is also a citizen of France, the UAE, and St. Kitts and Nevis – was detained upon landing in Paris-Le Bourget Airport on Saturday. He is reportedly being accused of failing to curb criminal activities on his platform. Durov’s arrest is “fully in line with the spirit and the principles” of DSA, the TASS source said. “If the operator wants to avoid penalties, it must automatically take down the content banned by the European regulator. The source added, however, that the DSA “does not contain personal or criminal liability, which means that the prosecution in France went much further.”

The source added that Durov’s legal team would face “additional difficulties,” since the allegations against him could be tied to the issue of French national security and that it would be harder to arrange a public campaign in his support given his Russian origin. Durov left Russia in the mid-2010s over a disagreement with the government and has since mostly lived in the UAE. In 2021, he acquired French and Emirati citizenship. He insisted that it is his “principled position” to keep user data private and that he “would rather be free than take orders from anyone.” In an interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson in April, Durov said he faced pressure from the US government to install a surveillance “backdoor,” which he refused to do.

Telegram issued a statement on Sunday, saying its content-moderation policies were “within industry standards.” Multiple public figures in Russia and abroad have condemned Durov’s arrest, describing it as an attack on freedom of speech and the free flow of information. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the consulate in Paris has demanded access to Durov.

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“Liberté Liberté! Liberté?”

• “Musk Should Be Nervous” (ZH)

Russia is demanding answers following the arrest Pavel Durov, the billionaire co-founder and CEO of messaging app Telegram. He was detained by French authorities at the Bourget airport outside of Paris Saturday evening after arriving in his private jet. The Russian embassy in Paris has demanded that the French government explain itself, and has so far said that French authorities are being uncooperative. The latest reports say Durov is expected to appear before a judge Sunday evening. The embassy said of the 39-year-old Russian-born billionaire that “as soon as the news of Durov’s arrest broke, we immediately addressed the French authorities for clarification on the reasons for it and demanded that they ensure the protection of his rights and provide consular access to him.” He not only has Russian citizenship by virtue of his birth there, but also holds dual citizenship in France and the UAE.

Russian diplomats say there has been no reply from Paris: “The French side has so far been avoiding cooperation on this issue,” a statement said. Russian lawmakers have gone so far as to say he is now a “political prisoner”. Russian member of parliament Maria Butina said on Sunday, “Pavel Durov is a political prisoner – a victim of a witch-hunt by the West. “The arrest of Pavel Durov means there is no freedom of speech – it means that freedom of speech in Europe is dead,” she continued. “Now basically they have a hostage and they will try to blackmail Russia, they will try to blackmail all the users of Telegram and not only try to get control but also try to block the network here in Russia.” Additionally, deputy speaker of Russian parliament, Vladislav Davankov, described that the tech entrepreneur’s arrest “could be politically motivated and used to gain access to the personal information of Telegram users.”

And Dmitry Medvedev, who is the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, said Durov is being targeted because he’s Russian. “He miscalculated,” Medvedev said. “For all our common enemies now, he is Russian – and therefore unpredictable and dangerous.” Medvedev asserted, “Durov should finally realize that one cannot chose one’s the fatherland.” One interesting angle is that the app, well-known for being highly secure as it provides end-to-end encryption, is widely used among the Russian military, as well as the common population. Durov was detained by the National Anti-Fraud Office (ONAF), over the alleged facilitation of various crimes including terrorism, narcotics trafficking, and fraud. “On his platform, he allowed an incalculable number of offences and crimes to be committed, for which he did nothing to moderate or cooperate,” a source told TF1 TV.

The arrest was characterized by Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom as part of the “crackdown against free speech.” Other prominent figures have voiced alarm over what this means for free speech, or even the question of who is next to be targeted by Western governments… And Elon Musk has been highlighting the implications of Durov’s arrest through Sunday… “Liberté Liberté! Liberté?” Musk added in another post. “Dangerous times.” Musk added a “FreePavel” hashtag when he shared a video of Durov praising Musk and his pro-free-speech outlook during an interview with Tucker Carlson earlier this year. “It is vital to the support of free speech that you forward X posts to people you know, especially in censorship-heavy countries,” Musk wrote on X on Sunday. And in case you wondered, none other than deep state bagman Alexander Vindman makes it clear who the real target is…

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This adds “cyberbullying” to the list.

• US Trampling On Free Speech – David Sacks On Durov’s Arrest (RT)

The US has violated its own constitutional freedoms by forcing its NATO ally France to arrest Telegram CEO Pavel Durov, American investor David Sacks has suggested. Writing on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday, Sacks slammed the detention of Durov at a Paris airport, reportedly on charges related to his alleged complicity in fraud, drug trafficking, cyberbullying, and promoting terrorism. In an apparent nod to the rumored US role in the arrest, Sacks wrote: “Using allied countries to circumvent First Amendment protections is the new Rendition.” The US Constitution expressly protects freedom of speech and makes no distinction between citizens and people from other countries. In April, Sacks denounced a US law that would ban the video-sharing platform TikTok if its China-based developer ByteDance refused to sell it within 12 months. At the time, the investor suggested that after the crackdown on TikTok, Telegram, X and the video platform Rumble could end up in Washington’s crosshairs.

Meanwhile, the French move to arrest Durov was also criticized by Tesla and Space X CEO Elon Musk, who launched the hashtag #FreePavel, suggesting that the pressure on freedom of speech could worsen. “POV: It’s 2030 in Europe and you’re being executed for liking a meme,” he quipped. He also agreed with a user who wondered if X could be the next to come under fire. In an interview with conservative American journalist Tucker Carlson which was released several months ago, Durov recalled that he had been getting “too much attention” from US law enforcement agencies while he was in the country. He said that while he was not under any legal scrutiny, he had to regularly deal with US authorities eager to get more insight into how Telegram worked. The tech entrepreneur also claimed that law enforcement had attempted to recruit one of his employees to install a backdoor in the messenger that would allow them, or any other government, to spy on Telegram users.

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Not France, Macron.

• Durov Arrest Exposes ‘Tyrannical Face’ Of France – Party Leader (RT)

Florian Philippot, the leader of France’s Patriots (Les Patriotes) party, has slammed the government of French President Emmanuel Macron as “lunatics” over the detention of Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov. According to French media, the Russian entrepreneur, who also has French and UAE citizenship, was detained at Paris-Le Bourget Airport on Saturday and is set to appear in court on Sunday evening. The French authorities had reportedly issued an arrest warrant for Durov, arguing that insufficient moderation allows for Telegram to be widely used by criminals. “France offers its tyrannical face to the world,” Philippot said of Durov’s arrest in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday. “We must free ourselves from these lunatics,” he added, referring to Macron’s government.

The politician also wondered if X owner and CEO of Tesla and SpaceX “Elon Musk is [also] thrown in jail if he sets foot in France, for disobeying the European DSA (Digital Services Act) censorship regulations.” The head of Russia’s Safe Internet League, Ekaterina Mizulina, suggested earlier that the French authorities hadn’t acted independently in their decision to detain Durov. “It is obvious that the arrest is an attack on TON (a blockchain-based platform originally developed by Telegram’s creators) in which major Russian companies have invested. That is, in part, a continuation of the US sanctions policy” against Russia, she said. Also on Sunday, the deputy speaker of the Russian parliament, Vladislav Davankov, called upon the French authorities to release Durov. The tech entrepreneur’s arrest “could be politically motivated and used to gain access to the personal information of Telegram users,” which Moscow cannot allow, he warned in a post on Telegram.

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“Moscow has sent an official note to Paris with a demand for consular access to Telegram’s founder. “But he [Durov] has French citizenship, which France perceives as precedential..”

• Russia Demands France Explains Durov Arrest (RT)

The Russian embassy in Paris swiftly demanded that French authorities explain the reasons for the arrest of Telegram messaging app founder and CEO, Pavel Durov, a senior diplomat has said. According to French media, the Russian tech entrepreneur, who also has citizenship of France, the UAE, and Saint Kitts and Nevis, was detained after landing at Paris-Le Bourget Airport on Saturday and is set to appear before a judge on Sunday evening. The French authorities had reportedly issued an arrest warrant for Durov, arguing that insufficient moderation on his platform allows for Telegram to be widely used by criminals. The Russian embassy said in a statement on Sunday that “as soon as the news of Durov’s arrest broke, we immediately addressed the French authorities for clarification on the reasons for it and demanded that they ensure the protection of his rights and provide consular access to him.”

However, there has been no reply from Paris yet, according to the diplomats. “The French side has so far been avoiding cooperation on this issue,” they stressed. The embassy also said that it remains in contact with Durov’s lawyer. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said later that Moscow has sent an official note to Paris with a demand for consular access to Telegram’s founder. “But he [Durov] has French citizenship, which France perceives as precedential,” she told RIA-Novosti news agency. Also on Sunday, Zakharova called upon international human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International to stand up for free speech and put pressure on France to release the Telegram founder.

The deputy speaker of the Russian parliament, Vladislav Davankov, also urged Paris to release Durov. The tech entrepreneur’s arrest “could be politically motivated and used to gain access to the personal information of Telegram users,” which Moscow cannot allow, he warned. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev suggested that the clampdown on Telegram’s founder could cost the French authorities dearly. “[French President Emmanuel] Macron, get out of France now! Durov’s army is out to get you,” he said in a post on X (formerly Twitter).

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GOP becomes the big tent party.

• How Democrats Make Republicans: RFK Should Be A Wake Up Call (Turley)

The withdrawal of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from the presidential race and his endorsement of former President Donald Trump was yet another extraordinary moment in an election that has been anything but predictable. Only a year ago, it would have been unthinkable that a sitting president would be effectively forced off a ticket and replaced by a candidate who did not secure a single vote for president. Now, the nephew of John F. Kennedy and son of the Robert F. Kennedy has not just withdrawn from the Democratic Party but endorsed the Republican nominee. Amidst all of the claimed “joy” of the Democratic National Convention, there is a sobering reality that is being ignored by the ecstatic press and pundits: this is how Democrats make Republicans. There is an old expression that “a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged.” Irving Kristol explained the neoconservative movement was built by Democrats “mugged by reality.”

Kennedy has not become a Republican but rather joined the roughly half of Americans now identifying as independents. While this country is solidly under the hold of a duopoly of power in the two main parties, only 25% of the country identify as Democrats, and 25% as Republicans. Kennedy’s departure from the Democrats has been mocked in the press. However, when he spoke on his withdrawal, many of us who have been lifetime members of the party identified with his remarks. I come from a politically active liberal Democratic family in Chicago. I spent much of my life working for liberals since I first came to Washington as a Democratic House page in the 1970s. I did stints on the Hill or on campaigns with Democrats ranging from Rep. Sid Yates (Ill.) to Sen. William Proxmire (Wis.) to Mo Udall (Arz.). I even worked on the campaign and ran for delegate for RFK Jr.’s uncle, Sen. Ted Kennedy.

Then the party changed. Where once they defended free speech, Democrats have rallied behind censorship and blacklisting of those with opposing views. They have sought to block dozens of Republicans from ballots, including former President Trump. To make matters worse, they have done so in the supposed name of democracy. Those actions were raised by Kennedy in his powerful and poignant withdrawal speech. He detailed how the Democratic party moved to stop him from running against President Biden in the primary, including efforts to block him from ballots. It was an ironic moment. After harassing candidates like RFK and Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips, the Democratic leadership then simply installed their choice at the convention in an unprecedented bait-and-switch. There could have been a substantive primary that exposed the diminished mental state of Biden and allowed for a democratic choice on the best nominee.

Instead, the Democrats prevented such choices from being made and selected a leader with all of the transparency and deliberation of a party Congress in China. Kennedy said that the Democratic Party has virtually shoved him and other voters into the arms of Donald Trump and the Republican Party. Kennedy observed that “I began this journey as a Democrat, the party of my father, my uncle, the party which I pledged my own allegiance to long before I was old enough to vote.” He said that his party was the one that championed free speech, government transparency, and opposed unjust wars. “True to its name, it was the party of democracy.” He said that the party has turned its back on all of the values that once defined it. For former Democrats like Kennedy, running on “joy” is no substitute for these profound changes in the party.

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“If you’re pro-Israel, great! So is she! And if you’re pro-Palestinian, great! So is she!”

“..their vacuous battle cry “We won’t go back!” With all due respect, what the hell does that mean? Kamala Harris already works in the West Wing! If she doesn’t want to go back, then why is she running for the job?”

• The Seduction of Kamala Harris: How the Democrats Are Attracting Voters (Pinsker)

Kamala Harris might not be as boring as a bookshelf, but until Biden dropped out a few weeks ago, nobody viewed her as a dynamic, engaging communicator. Even in a political party that cares mightily about personal identification, she was long on bio and short on charm. Thus, the entire Democratic National Convention was a protracted sales pitch — the launch of a new marketing campaign — where they reworked their messaging. They primarily relied on mirroring, which is a technique common in dating circles. We unconsciously mimic the people we admire and find sexually attractive. When she tilts her head, you tilt your head; your voice, tone, and even how often you breathe and blink will parallel the other person. It’s a psychological tool for establishing empathy and building trust.

Whoever you are and whatever you are, Kamala Harris is your mirror: When you look at her, she wants you to see yourself. If you’re pro-Israel, great! So is she! And if you’re pro-Palestinian, great! So is she! Salesmen love mirroring because it’s a cheat code for quickly cultivating a strong sense of intimacy. “Hey, you can trust me — I’m just like you! In fact, it’s really us against them, isn’t it? So yeah, you should definitely buy this beautiful Dodge Dart. Woo, what a ride!” But not just salesmen: Mirroring is a favorite tool of narcissists. There’s been a lot of literature about the linkage between the two. Among the highlights: “Mirroring is a tactic many narcissists and other manipulative people often employ to ingratiate themselves. They reflect idealized versions of their targets back to them. In a way, they get you to fall in love with a simulacrum of the best version of yourself.”

“Mirroring is how people learn to connect with others. …Narcissists are excellent at control and manipulation. While they lack a strong sense of self, one strength they do have is the ability to watch others closely and use this information in their favor. A narcissist seems to always know what you like, and they give this to you.” “Narcissistic mirroring is a manipulation tactic used by narcissistic individuals to create a false sense of connection with another person by mimicking their thoughts, feelings, interests, or behaviors.” Watch Kamala Harris and her messaging closely. She’s not making policy-based arguments. She has no ideological center. She’s not even attempting to campaign on anything substantial. Instead, she’s the ultimate Rorschach candidate: When you look at her, you can see whatever or whoever you want — just as long as you still see yourself. For the Harris campaign, policy positions only get in the way of their marketing.

In 2016, Donald Trump ran on big ideas: Drain the swamp! Build the wall! Free the economy! Make America great again! Agree or disagree, Trump’s shortcomings certainly weren’t a lack of ambition. In 2024, Kamala Harris is running on a platform of platitudes, identification, and empty sentiments. It’s the political version of Apple’s “I’m a Mac!” “And I’m a PC” campaign from nearly 20 years ago. In the Apple version, being a Mac was cool and awesome, whereas being a PC was for dorks in an uncomfortable business suit. Kamala ripped a page from the Apple playbook, but this time, the PC is an evil, scary, Hitlerish Orange Man. And the Mac is… you. The utter unseriousness of their platform is revealed in their vacuous battle cry, “We won’t go back!” With all due respect, what the hell does that mean? Kamala Harris already works in the West Wing! If she doesn’t want to go back, then why is she running for the job?

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It just gets in the way of the “joy”.

• Democrats Avoid Any Concrete Policy Issues at Convention (Sp.)

The Democrats have projected an image of unity at the national convention in Chicago this week, going all-in on spectacle and positive vibes while avoiding real policy issues in order to win voters. However, it is unclear whether they will be able to maintain this momentum until November, experts interviewed by Sputnik believe. The US presidential election is scheduled for November 5. In July, President Joe Biden said he was withdrawing from the race in the best interest of the Democratic Party and the nation. On Tuesday, delegates at the Democratic National Convention (DNC) officially made Harris their nominee following a ceremonial vote. “The DNC accomplished its main objective — nominate the Presidential candidate and present a united front. But, there remain deep divisions in the party. The party is now under the control of the Progressive wing and there are many Americans who reject that agenda. They hope is that those who object don’t look too closely at the details,” Robert Weissberg, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, said.

Political analyst Keith Preston suggested that the Democrats are planning to sway voters with positive energy as US elections are often decided by independent and non-ideological voters who are often motivated by personalities, appearances and vibes, rather than deeply held opinions on issues. “The Democrats are shrewdly turning their campaign into a hybrid of the Super Bowl, the Academy Awards, and Coachella. Likewise, they are trying to present an aura of positivity and optimism instead of the negative campaigning and personal attacks of Donald Trump and J.D. Vance. Strategically, this is a very wise move on the part of the Democrats … The question is whether they can maintain this energy for the next few months before the election,” Preston said. Wilfred Reilly, political science professor at Kentucky State University, noted that it featured very little in terms of actual policy, with Harris talking a great deal about her family and background, giving the floor to her sister, calling the Republicans “weird” and other things of that sort.

“I do think that this will be typical of of the party’s focus until the election. Powerful Dem. figures have already said things like “you have to elect her – then we see the full platform.” My actual take here is that the Kamala Harris position on immigration, policing, abortion, and much else is very likely to be unpalatable to the median voter in (say) Iowa, and her staffers know that. I would expect as little detail as she can get away with until Election Day,” Reilly explained. Thousands of protesters demonstrated outside the DNC during the week to call for an end to US support for Israel’s war in Gaza, creating analogies with the last time the party held its national convention in the Windy City, when protests against the Vietnam War turned violent. When asked if the Democrats are more unified now than back in the late 60’s, Preston observed that many of the protesters are political outsiders, usually way to the left of the Democratic Party, which possess a high level of internal discipline.

[..] When Biden announced his withdrawal from the race, some questioned whether Harris will be a good replacement, citing her poor performance during the previous Democratic primaries as well as abysmal ratings during her vice presidency. However, recent polls show Harris doing well against Trump, meaning that the race is far from decided. “I think she is a fairly competent candidate. She is better than Joe Biden, who — as the U.S. joke goes — has been ‘dead for two years’ … Her DNC speech was good — B+. But, she is famously not all that impressive. She ran for President before, polled at 2%, and was lucky to be rescued even as VP by Biden – and that had a racial element to it. The media sensationalism around her is a new phenomenon based around hate of Trump,” Reilly said, adding that “if the honeymoon can last two months and a half, Harris will likely be President.”

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“..a solution in search of a problem.”

• Dems Scramble To Walk Back Harris’ Price Control Scheme (ZH)

Democrats are in damage control mode after Kamala Harris’ communist price control scheme received a harsh rebuke – including from the Washington Post, which characterized it as “populist gimmicks.” Facing pressure to defend the plan, Democratic lawmakers are downplaying it as a pipe dream that has no chance of passing Congress, Politico reports. The plan, unveiled as part of Harris’ first big economic policy speech, has become a focal talking point for Donald Trump and allies, who continue to frame it as “communist price controls.” Meanwhile, food industry officials and some left-of-center economists have warned that price controls could be detrimental, according to the report. Central to the plan is a call for congress to pass the first-ever federal price gouging ban on food and grocery stores – mirroring legislation reintroduced by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) earlier this year, for which Warren was taken to task by CNBC’s Joe Kernen.

Now, six Congressional Democrats and five Democratic aides tell Politico that they’ve been privately telling critics that the plan isn’t viable – and is instead a messaging tactic to to divert blame over inflation from the Biden-Harris administration. Even many Democrats remain skeptical, or at least uncertain about how Harris would carry out her proposal, if elected. They’re still working on getting details, but many have left that for after the DNC. -Politico. “It’s clear to me these are very general, very lofty goals,” said one of the Democratic lawmakers. “I honestly still don’t know how this would work,” said a second Democratic lawmaker. According to Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, “I think people are reading too much into what has been put out there,” adding that the proposal was intended to address the issue in “broad strokes.”

Harris has been under pressure to provide more detail on her policy priorities, after four years largely toeing the line set by President Joe Biden and his aides. The rollout of her plan to combat food inflation, however, has sparked concerns among business leaders over which economic advisers are driving her policy decisions. Pieces of her plan, like increasing competition in the meat sector, are straight from the Biden playbook under his former top economic adviser Brian Deese — who is now advising Harris’ campaign. But the broad price gouging language that’s triggered so much backlash signals a more progressive agenda. That backlash has tempered Harris allies’ initial push to paint the proposal as a bold, progressive idea.

Since introducing the price gouging plan, her advisers have sought to soften criticism of the proposal by downplaying its overall impact on the market — and emphasizing that the goal is simply to target a small cohort of potential “bad actors,” rather than generate the kind of sweeping overhaul suggested by the plan’s initial rollout. -Politico Harris’ plan does have its defenders, including Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) and Progressive Caucus Chair Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA). Top Harris economic adviser Brian Nelson told reporters at the DNC in Chicago that the plan was ‘simply’ aimed at matching federal standards with so-called price gouging guardrails that already exist in 37 states – something Warren attempted to argue with Kernen. That said, the existing rules only apply during emergencies such as the COVID pandemic. “She’s going to work with Congress to ensure that it is directed at bad actors, bad activity,” said Nelson.

“It’s not meant to set prices or price levels or anything like that. And that is not the way current state laws around price gouging are.” When pressed during a Bloomberg News roundtable to elaborate, Nelson failed to provide any specific examples of price gouging – and deflected by describing Harris as simply trying to outline her own principles on the issue. “One of the principles is really to make sure that the federal legislation aligns with those state laws,” he said. Meanwhile, the National Grocers Association – an industry group that represents the independent supermarket sector, called Harris’ plans “a solution in search of a problem.” “Rather than proposing new legislation far-off in the future,” the government should focus on enforcing antitrust laws already on the books, the group said. “I’m sure it polls well,” said one food industry official granted anonymity. “But it’s an obvious effort to deflect blame from her administration on inflation.”

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“If you try to find the American economy, it is not here. It has been moved to China and other parts of Asia..”

• The Fed Returns to Liquidity. Will It Elect Kamala? (Paul Craig Roberts)

[..] in America truth no longer matters. The narrative, not truth, is in control, and the narrative was that a hot job market driven by 818,000 non-existent jobs was driving inflation. I pointed out that shortages cannot be rectified by high interest rates. High interest rates simply raise the cost of production. High interest rates contribute to inflation when businesses are destroyed and supply chains are disrupted and destroyed by lockdowns. Supply reductions cannot be immediately rectified, and high interest rates are the last thing that helps. Economists should understand this, but they also understand that going against the official narrative is bad for their career.

Now that the Bureau of Labor Statistics has erased 818,000 jobs from its data list, thus deleting the excuse for high interest rates, the Federal Reserve says that in the US employment and inflation depict a changing situation in the economy, which the Fed says indicates that “the time has come for Fed policy to adjust.” Fed chairman Powell and Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank president Raphael Bostic announce interest rates cut as our future. Suddenly the job market is “no longer overheated,” and the Fed is concerned about unemployment. What is the stock market’s response to the Fed’s concern that the economy is weakening and the job market is worsening? The market goes up. Why? Not from the prospect of a good economy, but from the injection of liquidity that makes lower interest rates possible. In other words, it is liquidity, not reality, not performance, that drives the stock market. Or to put it differently, liquidity is reality.

Liquidity is the reason price/earning ratios rise, because where else can money go except into stocks and real estate. So the main result of Fed liquidity is to drive up stock prices and home prices. This is great for those who own these assets, but it prices non-homeowners out of the market, because house prices rise faster than their service sector incomes. Policymakers, principally the Federal Reserve and the Jews on Wall Street who imposed offshoring of manufacturing jobs, have destroyed the ladders of upward mobility in the US economy–small businesses and manufacturing jobs. While the ladders that permitted people to rise were destroyed, the Democrats’ Open Borders Policy imports yearly a minimum of 3.6 million illegal immigrant-invaders whose job prospects do not extend beyond the chicken and cattle slaughter houses, and these jobs will disappear when we are restricted to a diet of bugs.

The Democrats’ DEI policy tries to elevate them, but there just aren’t that many who speak English and are sufficiently educated to be cabinet secretaries and CEOs of Fortune 500 corporations. This is a prescription for a Third World Economy, not for a superpower. If you try to find the American economy, it is not here. It has been moved to China and other parts of Asia. Years ago I explained how to get it back, and no one payed the slightest attention. As time passes America loses a disciplined work force that knows how to get up in the morning, report to work on time, and perform competently the expected tasks. Supply chains, such as local machine shops disappear from lack of manufacturing customers. The ability to produce is lost, and the country becomes Third World.

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Screwing up your own member states.

• Hungary Accuses Brussels Of Disrupting Oil Supplies From Russia (RT)

The European Commission (EC) is behind the stoppage of flows of Russian crude oil to Hungary and Slovakia through Ukraine, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Saturday, citing Brussels’ refusal to mediate in their dispute with Kiev over the blockage as proof that the EC wants the stoppage. In June, Ukraine halted the transit of crude supplied by Russian energy giant Lukoil via the Druzhba pipeline, citing its own sanctions on the company. The measure has directly hit landlocked Hungary and Slovakia, depriving them of oil previously exported by the company through Ukrainian territory. I think that the fact that the EC has declared its unwillingness to help Hungary and Slovakia to resolve the issue of securing energy supply proves the fact that Brussels instructed Kiev to cause challenges and problems in the energy sector for the two nations, Szijjarto said, during an address at the political festival Tranzit, held in Hungary.

On Friday, the Commission declined Hungary and Slovakia’s request to intervene in the dispute between Budapest/Bratislava and Kiev, saying that Brussels had no indication that Ukraine’s sanctions had caused a risk to the security of Europe’s energy supply. “Commission services have preliminarily concluded that urgent consultations do not appear to be warranted,” the spokesperson said, adding that Russian oil was still flowing through the Druzhba pipeline that connects Russia with the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary via the territory of Ukraine. “It appears that the sanctions imposed by Ukraine on Lukoil do not affect ongoing oil transit operations via Druzhba carried out by trading companies, as long as Lukoil is not the formal owner of the oil,” the spokesperson said. Last week, Politico reported that Budapest proposed a solution for the restoration of halted Russian oil flow by rebranding Lukoil’s products.

That way the crude shipped via Ukraine could be officially sold to Hungarian energy giant MOL before it crosses the border. The arrangement could reportedly mean paying an additional $1.50 per barrel to secure transit outside of previous agreements. Brussels prohibited transport of Russian crude oil by sea in December 2022 as part of the EU large-scale sanction campaign against Moscow. Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic have been granted exemptions by Brussels as they source alternative supplies. Slovakia and Hungary are the only EU member states that have rejected the bloc’s policies on supplying Kiev with military aid amid the ongoing conflict with Moscow. Both states have repeatedly called for the crisis to be solved through diplomacy.

Last month, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Moscow is unsurprised that the EU has failed to resolve the issue for its member states surrounding Russian oil supplies to them, claiming that Brussels is using energy resources to blackmail Bratislava and Budapest.

Read more …

There’s only one church. The one Zelensky invented is not real.

• Pope Francis Condemns Ukraine’s Ban On Country’s Largest Orthodox Church (ZH)

Pope Francis has condemned the Ukrainian government’s move to ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC) which maintains communion with the Moscow Patriarchate. His Sunday remarks emphasized that “churches are not to be touched” and come the day after President Volodymyr Zelensky signed parliament’s newly passed bill into law identified as Bill 8371. “In thinking of the law recently adopted in Ukraine, I fear for the liberty of those who pray,” the pope said. He explained that the state must not be involved in religion. “One does not commit evil by praying. If someone commits harm against their people, they will be guilty of that, but they cannot have done harm because they prayed,” Pope Francis said following a Sunday service. “Let those who wish to pray in what they consider their Church be allowed to do so,” Francis added.

Throughout the war Pope Francis has consistently called for the two sides to immediately enter peace negotiations, while saying that ultimately the winners are the arms manufacturers and those who don’t care about the suffering of innocent people. He has come under criticism, including from Kiev officials, for not just condemning one side (the Russians) like the West does. As for Christianity in Ukriane, Orthodox clergy members have seen jail time or have been placed under house arrest, or else harassment by mobs of far-right Ukrainian nationalists, for merely calling for peace between the two countries. According to Ukrainian media: Over 100 UOC-MP clergy members have come under criminal investigation since the outbreak of the full-scale war, the Security Service of Ukraine’s (SBU) press service told the Kyiv Independent. Almost 50 of them have been charged, and sentences have been issued in 26 cases, the SBU said.

Likely these numbers are about to be a lot higher, as the new law targeting the UOC is expected to enter force 30 days after its publication. The UOC is being pressured (and now forced) to join a state-sponsored church approved by Zelensky, despite the fact that the majority of the population is loyal to the UOC. Even a remote or potential ‘Russian connection’ – be it related to culture, music, language, or religion – has put ordinary Ukrainians under the suspicion of the state and the military of late. This despite that some one-third of the country has always spoken Russian as their first language, especially in the east and parts of the south. All of this has also gone hand in hand with the Zelensky government’s efforts to eliminate the Russian language altogether from public life.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

RFK food
https://twitter.com/i/status/1827434772756623760

 

 

Bull

 

 

Goose
https://twitter.com/i/status/1827778014530380136

 

 

Hammer

 

 

Engineer
https://twitter.com/i/status/1827407511210668071

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle August 25 2024

Aug 252024
 
 August 25, 2024  Posted by at 8:50 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  72 Responses »


M. C. Escher Still life and street 1937

 

• RFK Jr. Takes a Flame Thrower to the Entire System (Kevin Downey Jr)
• Trump Is Back On His A-Game (C.A. Skeet)
• RFK Jr. & Trump To End War On Small Farms, Save Nation’s Food Supply Chain (ZH)
• RFK Jr. Blames Biden For Ukraine Conflict (RT)
• Putin Outplayed US Neocon Plan to Balkanize Russia (Sp.)
• Putin Has Chosen Response To Ukraine’s Incursion – Envoy (RT)
• US In Agony Over Ineffectiveness Of Sanctions – Moscow (RT)
• US Announces New Sanctions On Russia (RT)
• Trump Invited To J6 Awards Gala’ Celebrating January 6 Rioters (RT)
• ‘End of Empire’: US Ruling Class Fatally Out of Touch (Sp.)
• US Hesitant Over Kursk Incursion Aid – WaPo (RT)
• Ukrainian Attack On Kursk Is ‘Wrong’ – Hungary (RT)
• Hungary May Send Migrants To Brussels To Avenge Asylum Fine (ZH)
• SpaceX To Rescue Stranded Astronauts After NASA Dumps Boeing (ZH)
• ‘Darkness Descending’: Tucker Carlson Reacts To Telegram Founder’s Arrest (RT)

 

 

 

 

Weinstein

 

 


https://twitter.com/i/status/1827137160694124558
https://twitter.com/i/status/1827252696157712393

 

 

Gutfeld

 

 

Vivek Van
https://twitter.com/i/status/1826998015694913973

 

 

Dipshizzy
https://twitter.com/i/status/1827035655244828965

 

 

So good
https://twitter.com/i/status/1827172947280249138

 

 

 

 

They will have had elaborate conversations, and RFK will have made many demands, most of which Trump will have said yes to.

We haven’t forgotten those who say he’s an intel asset, but we’ll have to see..

• RFK Jr. Takes a Flame Thrower to the Entire System (Kevin Downey Jr)

Robert Kennedy Jr.’s highly anticipated speech on Friday was much more than the third-party candidate bowing out of the race and endorsing Trump. Kennedy laid waste to the deep state, big pharma, big food, the military-industrial complex, Democrat censorship, and how most, if not all, of these institutions may be working together for sinister reasons. Kennedy apologized for taking the stage 40 minutes late and then immediately jumped into action. “I attended my first Democratic convention at the age of 6 in 1960, and back then, the Democrats were the champions of the Constitution, of civil rights,” Kennedy stated. “The Democrats stood against authoritarianism, against censorship, against colonialism, imperialism, and unjust wars. We were the party of labor, of the working class. The Democrats were the party of government transparency and the champion of the environment.

Our party was the bulwark against big money interests and corporate power. True to its name, it was the party of democracy. As you know, I left that party in October because it had departed so dramatically from the core values that I grew up with.” That was the nicest thing Kennedy would say of his former party. “It had become the party of war, censorship, corruption, big pharma, big tech, big AG, and big money. When it abandoned democracy by canceling the primary to conceal the cognitive decline of the sitting president, I left the party to run as an Independent.” Kennedy then spoke of how the Democratic Party and the mockingbird media mudpuppies unitedly turned on him to chase him out of the 2024 election. After thanking the people who worked on his campaign, RFK Jr. took out his Zippo and went to work. “Now, in an honest system, I believe that I would have won the election, in a system that my father and my uncles thrived in.

A system with open debates with fair primaries… and with a truly independent media untainted by government propaganda and censorship, in a system of nonpartisan courts and election boards, everything would be different,” Kennedy declared. “I’m sorry to say that while democracy may still be alive at the grassroots, it has become little more than a slogan for our political institutions, for our media, and for our government, and most sadly of all for me, the Democratic Party.” “In the name of saving democracy, the Democratic Party set itself to dismantling it, lacking confidence in its candidate that, that its candidate could win in a fair election at the voting booth, the DNC waged continual legal warfare against both President Trump and myself.” He spoke of “DNC-aligned judges” whose job was to throw Kennedy and “other candidates off the ballot and to throw President Trump in jail.”

Kennedy railed over what he called a “primary that was rigged to prevent any serious challenge to President Biden” and the now infamous Trump-Biden debate, which he suggested was a “predictably bungled debate performance,” which resulted in “the palace coup against President Biden.” He then blamed “shadowy DNC operatives” for appointing Kamala Harris without a primary election. He lashed out at Harris for going 35 days without an unscripted interview. Kennedy then set his sights on Biden’s censorship campaign. When a US president colludes with or outright coerces media companies to censor political speech, it’s an attack on our most sacred right of free expression and that’s the very right upon which all of our other constitutional rights rest. President Biden mocked Vladimir Putin’s 88% landslide in the Russian elections, observing that Putin and his party controlled the Russian press, and that Putin prevented serious opponents from appearing on the ballot.

RFK lawfare

Read more …

Not yet.

• Trump Is Back On His A-Game (C.A. Skeet)

But even his critics agree that Trump is a master showman, an indefatigable fighter, and certainly not one to let inept campaign management derail his reelection. By getting in front of the cameras, by doing the hostile interviews, on a near daily basis, Trump has slowly but steadily blunted Harris’s momentum by the simple fact that people see him and they don’t see her. Trump is effectively regaining control of the narrative. Since Kamala refuses to outline her policy positions, Trump went ahead and outlined her policy positions for her online. He is defining her because she won’t define herself. Trump is regaining control of the narrative. While Trump’s interview at the National Association of Black Journalists has been criticized, the fact is that people will remember not so much the pissing match he got into with “moderator” Rachel Scott.

They’ll remember he had the courage to face a tough audience and a lying, prejudiced interviewer. He did the same thing with the Libertarians. Kamala will never, ever agree to speak to, much less sit down for an interview for, a gathering of the Federalist Society or the NRA. Trump is regaining control of the narrative. While Harris picked up endorsements of this union boss or that celebrity pop star, Trump picked up the endorsement of Robert Kennedy Jr., who just suspended his campaign to throw his support behind him. The optics of a Kennedy supporting a Republican presidential nominee are worth a hundred Cheneys and a thousand Hutchinsons supporting the Democrats. The strategic timing of the announcement, meant to disperse any lingering euphoria from the DNC, has Trump’s style written all over it. Trump is regaining control of the narrative.

When Trump controls the narrative, he’s unstoppable. And it looks like, as of now, he is at least partially successful in wresting it back from the Democrat media machine. To this end, Trump should rightly continue trying to win over traditionally Democrat minorities rather than waste too much time with independents. As I’ve previously pointed out in these pages, “independents” are mostly closet liberals, and the lowest informed ones at that. Wasting precious time and resources trying to make them see reason is like wasting a division trying to claw across a quarter mile of no-mans-land on the fields of Flanders. By appealing to Democrat minorities, Trump is bypassing this futile war of attrition and hitting them right in the trenches. To this day, Democrats still don’t know how to counter Trump’s inexplicable (to them) rise in popularity among minorities other than to scream “RACIST!” ever louder and to accuse these minorities of being race traitors.

You’ll always have your Oprah Winfreys, the billionaire sellout who spoke to the field workers from the loftiest porch on the DNC plantation, warning them against “the old tricks and tropes that are designed to distract us from what actually matters” by talking about…segregation in the 1950s. You’ll always have your John Shapiros, the almost-VP pick turned kapos guard, passed over solely because he is Jewish, who nonetheless stood before a frothing crowd of antisemites in Chicago and told them to vote for the pro-Hamas candidate. But, as evidenced by Trump’s rising popularity among minorities, their rank-and-file is slowly but surely souring on the empty promises of racist, divisive identity politics. If Trump can continue to (1) drive the narrative, (2) keep making inroads with minorities, and (3) maintain the same discipline that he showed in his debate against Biden in his upcoming debate(s) against Harris, he might be able to not only hold onto his slim lead, but to expand it beyond the margin of cheat.

Read more …

Mere hours after the Friday announcement, RFK was already doing a press-op about this.

• RFK Jr. & Trump To End War On Small Farms, Save Nation’s Food Supply Chain (ZH)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spent decades as an environmental lawyer fighting polluters and supported ‘green’ organizations for environmental justice. He is now setting his crosshairs on the pharmaceutical industry and cleaning up the nation’s food supply chain of ultra-processed foods and seed oils that poison consumers. He has determined that suspending his presidential campaign to team up with former President Trump will be necessary for the strongest success rate in making Americans healthier again, not through big pharma’s Ozempic shots but instead revitalizing small farms and shaking up corrupted federal agencies. Lifelong liberals like RFK Jr. backing Trump is one of the strongest indicators of just how extreme the ticket, unoriginal Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrats have become. Harris’ team recently announced their first proposed economic policy, which was rooted in communism and included disastrous price controls. It appears the far-left ticket is being advised and heavily influenced by Marxists.

Between RFK Jr’s special announcement earlier Friday and his speech at Trump’s packed campaign rally in Glendale, Arizona, the liberal with millions of supporters nationwide appears to have made a deal with Trump to join the campaign with a shot at waging war against corrupt federal health and food agencies, resetting the nation’s poisonous food supply chain, and launch a crusade against big pharma if the Trump team wins in November. RFK Jr. informed journalists at his special press conference in the early afternoon of Friday that America’s health crisis stems from ultra-processed foods pushed by giant food/pharma companies that have corrupted various federal agencies: “Autism rates were about one in 10,000 in my generation – in my kids Generation 1 in 34. I’ll repeat in California 1 and 22. Why are we letting this happen? Why are we allowing this to happen to our children? These are the most precious assets that we have in this country, how can we let this happen to them.

About 18% of American teens now have fatty liver disease, that’s like one out of every five – that disease when I was a kid only affected late stage alcoholics who were elderly. Cancer rates are skyrocketing in the Young and the old young. Adult cancers are up 70 79%. One in four American women is on anti-depressant medication. About 40% of teens have a mental health diagnosis and 15% of high schoolers are on Aderall, and half a million children on SSRIs. So what’s causing this suffering? I’ll name two culprits first and the worst is ultra-processed food. About 70% of American children’s diet is ultra-processed that means industrial manufacturing – these Foods consist primarily of processed sugar, ultra-processed grains, and seed oils. Scientists who, for many of them, formerly worked for the cigarette industry, which purchased all the big food companies in the 1970s and 80s, deployed thousands of scientists to figure out chemicals new chemicals to make the food more addictive, and these ingredients didn’t exist a 100 years ago.

Humans aren’t biologically adapted to eat them. Hundreds of these chemicals are now banned in Europe but ubiquitous in American processed foods. The second culprit is toxic chemicals in our food and our medicine and our environment pesticides food additives pharmaceutical drugs and toxic waste permeate every cell of our bodies. The Assault on our children’s cells and hormones is unrelenting – name just one problem many of these chemicals increase estrogen – because young children are ingesting so many of these hormone disruptors, America’s puberty rate is now occurring at age 10 to 13, which is six years earlier than girls were reaching puberty in 1900 our country has the earliest puberty rates of any continent on the Earth and no this isn’t because of better nutrition – this is not normal – breast cancer is also estrogen-driven and it now strikes one in eight women. We are mass poisoning all of our children.”

RFK Jr. then touched on the processed food industry lobbyists who have corrupted Washington, resulting in a food supply chain filled with poison that is killing Americans. He said several federal agencies that are supposed to protect consumers have also been corrupted. He pointed out that the processed food industry has been “destroying small farms, and they’re destroying our soils.”

Read more …

“The Biden White House repeatedly spurned Russia’s offers to settle this war peacefully..”

• RFK Jr. Blames Biden For Ukraine Conflict (RT)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has accused US President Joe Biden of disrupting peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in 2022, because Washington “wanted the war.” Kennedy made the statement on Friday during a speech in Arizona, where he announced the suspension of his third-party campaign for the White House in the swing state and endorsed Republican Donald Trump. According to Kennedy, Washington had deliberately drawn Moscow into the Ukraine war with the objective of regime change in Russia. “President Biden sent [then-UK Prime Minister] Boris Johnson to Ukraine to force President [Vladimir] Zelensky to tear up a peace agreement that he and the Russians had already signed, and the Russians were already withdrawing troops,” said the son of the 1960s-era Democratic US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and nephew of President John F. Kennedy.

Moscow has previously blamed London for blocking the Ukraine peace deal. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in April that Kiev abandoned a proposed peace treaty with Russia, approved by negotiators in Istanbul, in 2022 under British pressure. Boris Johnson visited Kiev in April of that year, and reportedly told Zelensky to “just fight,” prompting the latter to pull out of the discussions. The former prime minister has since denied derailing the peace talks. Kennedy also accused the US government of staging a coup against the democratically-elected government of Ukraine in 2014 and rejecting the Minsk Agreements, a series of peace protocols negotiated between Ukraine, Russia and the European nations in 2019, pushing Kiev into a conflict with Moscow. “The Biden White House repeatedly spurned Russia’s offers to settle this war peacefully,” Kennedy claimed.

The US has sought to exhaust the Russian Army and degrade its capacity to fight, he added, arguing that the objectives of the US government “had nothing to do” with protecting Ukraine’s sovereignty. Kennedy has described Ukraine as a “victim of the West” and “a proxy in a geopolitical struggle initiated by the ambitions of the US neocons for American global hegemony.” He went on to explain that Trump’s promise to reopen negotiations with Russia and end the war as soon as he takes office were among the reasons for him to endorse the former president’s campaign. Kennedy made clear that he wasn’t formally ending his bid for the White House and called on his supporters to continue to back him in other states where their votes are unlikely to sway the outcome.

Read more …

“They feel that they’re in the position they were 30 years ago. And the world has changed.”

• Putin Outplayed US Neocon Plan to Balkanize Russia (Sp.)

During his August 23 speech in Arizona Robert F Kennedy Jr., a nephew of President John F. Kennedy, endorsed Republican nominee Donald Trump and accused the Biden administration and the US foreign policy establishment of provoking the Ukraine conflict. “Tiny Ukraine is a proxy in a geopolitical struggle initiated by the ambitions of the US neocons for American global hegemony,” Kennedy said. “In April 2022, we wanted the war. President Biden sent [then-British prime minister] Boris Johnson to Ukraine to force President [Volodymyr] Zelensky to tear up a peace agreement that he and the Russians had already signed,” he added. “That peace agreement would have brought peace to the region.” Kennedy noted that Donald Trump’s decision to reopen peace negotiations with President Vladimir Putin on Ukraine “alone would justify my support for [Trump’s] campaign.”

Kennedy “stated correctly the neocons are in control of [US] foreign policy,” Earl Rasmussen, a retired lieutenant colonel with over 20 years in the US Army and international consultant, told Sputnik. “We basically are looking for confrontation.” The commentatior said Kennedy has a real grasp on the ongoing situation and the historical background of the unfolding conflict. “Biden is not interested in peace,” Rasmussen said. “They’re not interested in democracy. They don’t care about Ukraine. And Georgia, for that matter, has always been looked at as a mechanism to further encircle and weaken Russia,” the expert said. Washington made preparations for the proxy war with Russia in Ukraine for years, the retired lieutenant colonel argued. He said the scheme probably originated in the 1990s, when the infamous ‘Wolfowitz doctrine’, aimed at retaining Washington’s sole superpower status, was formulated. The US-backed 2014 coup d’etat in Kiev was the continuation of this policy, the expert said.

“Now that we know that Minsk agreements were never meant to be implemented based on statements made by [former German chancellor Angela] Merkel and [former French president François] Hollande,” Rasmussen said. “We also know up to 50,000 Ukrainian troops were trained by NATO during that eight year period,” he added. “So this is a planned thing.” Anti-Russia sanctions, intended to halt Moscow’s energy cooperation with Western Europe, and the Nord Stream sabotage were not formulated overnight, the pundit said. The end goal was to foment regime change in Moscow and then “balkanize Russia,” he believes. “I think Putin saw that,” Rasmussen said, adding that the West completely underestimated Russia. “They didn’t understand the Russian people and the Russian culture and how the Russian would react to the situation. I think they thought Putin would just back down.” Rasmussen condemned the arrogance of US foreign policy: “They feel that they’re in the position they were 30 years ago. And the world has changed.”

Read more …

“This is impossible. There will be no buffer zone on the territory of Russia..”

• Putin Has Chosen Response To Ukraine’s Incursion – Envoy (RT)

President Vladimir Putin has decided on how to respond to Kiev’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region and everyone responsible will undoubtedly be punished, Moscow’s Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov told journalists on Thursday. Earlier this month, Kiev launched its largest cross-border attack to date on Russia, sending in some of its best-equipped and most experienced soldiers in to Kursk Region in an attempt to seize Russian territory. The Ukrainian government has expressed hope that the operation will relieve pressure on its forces elsewhere on the front line, and strengthen Kiev’s position at eventual peace talks with Moscow. However, Russia’s Defense Ministry has reported that the incursion has effectively been halted and, while Kiev’s troops still hold a number of territories in the region, they have been experiencing heavy casualties throughout the fighting.

Moscow has estimated Ukrainian losses at some 4,700 servicemen as well as hundreds of pieces of heavy weaponry, including 68 tanks, since the start of the incursion. Commenting on Moscow’s future steps in response to the invasion, the ambassador stated that president Putin has already “made a decision.” He also said that he is “firmly convinced that everyone will be severely punished for what happened in Kursk Region.” Kiev has stated that it intends to create a “buffer zone” through its incursion into Russian territory. These plans have also been confirmed by Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Sabrina Singh. Antonov, however, insisted that the Ukrainian operation will fail in establishing this zone. “This is impossible. There will be no buffer zone on the territory of Russia,” the envoy stressed.

He also claimed that Washington could put an end to Kiev’s incursion into Kursk Region with “a snap of the fingers” but that it apparently doesn’t deem such a move “expedient or necessary.” “I am firmly convinced that Kiev does nothing without an okay from its [Western] masters,” Antonov told TASS. “Given how many advisers are around Zelensky, and what power is given to Zelensky’s regime, to say that [Washington] does not know about anything… [Kiev] simply would not dare to lift a finger, to point a machine gun in our direction without Washington’s consent! Or at least they wouldn’t be sure that any of their actions would be supported by Western countries,” the ambassador added.

Read more …

“The US and its allies have imposed a record 22,000 sanctions on Moscow since 2014..”

• US In Agony Over Ineffectiveness Of Sanctions – Moscow (RT)

Washington’s latest round of sanctions against Moscow is aimed at underscoring US Vice President Kamala Harris’ “anti-Russian essence,” Ambassador Anatoly Antonov has said, dismissing the “fruitless” measures as ineffectual. On Friday, the US State and Treasury departments announced additional restrictions against 400 individuals and companies in Russia, Asia, Europe and the Middle East which Washington accuses of supporting Moscow’s military-industrial supply chains. “The administration [of US President Joe Biden] is in agony. The fruitless Russophobic ‘salvos’ are multiplying,” Antonov wrote in a Telegram post on Saturday. By introducing the new sanctions, the White House is trying to underline its “anti-Russian essence against the backdrop of the boiling election campaign,” he stressed.

“The negative aspects of US actions are obvious to everyone. The administration’s reckless steps lead to a crisis, but not to something creative,” the ambassador said. The restrictions “are harming not only domestic consumers, but also America’s partners in third countries,” he added. “It is obvious that in order to achieve true independence in the economic sphere, it is high time to abandon the hegemony of the dollar in the international monetary and financial system,” Antonov stressed. The US and its allies have imposed a record 22,000 sanctions on Moscow since 2014, when Crimea rejoined Russia and a conflict between Ukraine and the Donbass republics broke out as the result of a Western-backed coup in Kiev. Moscow deemed the curbs illegal, responding with travel bans on Western officials and other moves.

“Sanctions against Russia have been so multifaceted that we essentially don’t care what else the administration comes up with to ‘punish the Russian people’,” the ambassador pointed out. According to Antonov, the Russian authorities will act “to ensure that our citizens feel at ease and do not look back at American attacks.” Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal said that the “biggest ever sanctions” have failed to stop Russia’s military operation in Ukraine. Western officials have been forced to acknowledge that the restrictions “hit more slowly than they hoped,” the outlet stressed.

Read more …

And what do you do when sanctions don’t work?

• US Announces New Sanctions On Russia (RT)

The US government has sanctioned almost 400 individuals and companies in Russia and around the world, including Russian Defense Minister Andrey Belousov’s son and his wife. Departments of State and Treasury announced the measure on Friday, on the eve of Ukraine’s independence day, to signal Washington’s ongoing support to Kiev in the conflict with Moscow. The sanctions also extended to entities and individuals in Asia, Europe and the Middle East. In keeping with the practice of sanctioning family members of Russian officials, the US has blacklisted Pavel Belousov and his wife Yevgenya, as well as a consulting company in their ownership. Belousov’s father Andrey became the Russian defense minister in May.

“Companies, financial institutions, and governments around the world need to ensure they are not supporting Russia’s military-industrial supply chains,” Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said in a statement. According to the Treasury, there are “almost a dozen distinct networks” consisting of over 100 individuals and entities across 16 jurisdictions, including China, Switzerland, Türkiye, and the United Arab Emirates. Notably, 18 companies based in Hong Kong have been accused of ties to the Russian military industry. Treasury and State also warned financial institutions in other countries to “be cautious about any dealings with overseas branches or subsidiaries of Russian financial institutions,” including those that have not yet been sanctioned.

Friday’s designations mean that any property or interests in property of the listed individuals, directly or indirectly, have been blocked and must be reported to the government. Any transactions between US citizens – or foreign nationals within the US – are forbidden. Washington and its allies have placed over 22,000 sanctions on Russia since 2014, when Moscow responded to the US-backed coup in Kiev by welcoming Crimea’s reunification. Russia has called the blacklist illegitimate and responded with travel bans for Western officials and activists.

Read more …

“While the announcement lists Trump as an “invited guest speaker,” the former president will not attend the event in person..”

“..inclined to pardon many of them.” “I can’t say for every single one, because a couple of them, probably they got out of control..”

• Trump Invited To J6 Awards Gala’ Celebrating January 6 Rioters (RT)

Former US President Donald Trump has been linked to a gala event aimed at raising funds for a group of January 6 Capitol rioters who are currently on trial. The ‘J6 Awards Gala’ at Trump’s Bedminster Golf Club will be held on September 5 to “honor and celebrate” the defendants, with ticket options starting at $1,500. A crowd of Trump’s supporters descended on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 in an attempt to prevent lawmakers from certifying what they believed to be Joe Biden’s fraudulent victory in the presidential election the previous November. The demonstration quickly devolved into a riot, with US Capitol Police taking hours to restore order. Biden and his fellow Democrats characterized the events as an “insurrection.” The authorities arrested and charged 1,358 participants, most of whom received misdemeanor trespassing offenses, although 127 have faced more serious charges.

The gala announcement appeared on the website of ‘The America Project’ political group, and invited people to “join us for an unforgettable evening as we honor and celebrate the twenty defendants who contributed to the powerful ‘Justice For All’ song.” The latter was recorded last year by a group of defendants comprising the so-called ‘January 6th Prison Choir.’ The track features them singing the Pledge of Allegiance and the Star-Spangled Banner, overlaid with excerpts of Trump’s speeches. The event is meant as a “night of recognition, solidarity, and support” as well as a “crucial fundraiser to provide much-needed assistance to the January 6th defendants who continue to face significant challenges,” the organizers explained. While the announcement lists Trump as an “invited guest speaker,” the former president will not attend the event in person, the New York Times reported, citing an unnamed person familiar with the politician’s plans.

In a post on his Truth Social platform in March, Trump vowed: “My first acts as your next President will be to Close the Border, DRILL, BABY, DRILL, and Free the January 6 Hostages being wrongfully imprisoned!” The Republican has repeatedly referred to the rioters as “political prisoners” and “hostages.” At a CNN town hall event last year, Trump revealed that he was “inclined to pardon many of them.” “I can’t say for every single one, because a couple of them, probably they got out of control,” he added. The Republican presidential nominee himself is facing federal charges for allegedly instigating the riot by urging his supporters to “fight like hell” against congressional certification of Biden’s victory. Trump’s lawyers insist that he was well within his rights to make such a statement, noting that he also encouraged his supporters to act “peacefully and patriotically.”

Read more …

“It’s almost like we’ve wandered into a Tower of Babble and come out on the other side babbling…”

• ‘End of Empire’: US Ruling Class Fatally Out of Touch (Sp.)

America’s political class is unable to address or even speak to voters’ most pressing needs. “The political class, Washington, DC, people inside the Beltway – they’ve grown more and more estranged from everyday people like you and me,” claimed journalist Jon Jeter on Sputnik’s The Critical Hour program Friday. The author joined hosts Garland Nixon and Wilmer Leon to break down Democratic Party presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s acceptance speech on the final night of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, during which she advocated a hawkish foreign policy to the exclusion of focus on the material needs of working-class Americans. “I thought that speech was ridiculous and if I were a betting man I would say that it lost the election for the Democrats in November,” said Jeter.

“I don’t know who she thinks her audience was when she attacks Vladimir Putin. If I may paraphrase Muhammad Ali, Vladimir Putin ain’t never called me the N-word.” “Most people, particularly in the states and particularly the people who she’s depending on to win this election, Blacks and particularly Black men, particularly in Philadelphia and Detroit and Milwaukee – I don’t think they care so much about Kim Jong Un, about Vladimir Putin, about the threat from China,” he continued. “I think they care a lot about jobs, wages, debt reduction, things like that. So I thought that speech was almost odd and that it seemed to lack self-awareness about exactly who the Democrats are and who they need.” The analyst claimed the Democratic party is in the habit of abusing its voters, constantly attacking its activist base.

“I think people are ultimately going to feel like they’re being gaslit,” said Nixon, claiming voters are more likely to be concerned with inflation and the cost of living. The media outlet Bloomberg calculated the rise in the cost of basic goods and services in 2023, finding that the cost of natural gas has risen by 29% while the costs of groceries and electricity have risen by 25%. “I have to admit, I have very, very low expectations of our political class,” said Jeter. “This was a stunning speech for its lack of self-awareness. The Democrats’ problem is that they are unresponsive, wholly unresponsive to their base, to labor unions.” “It’s almost like we’ve wandered into a Tower of Babble and come out on the other side babbling. We don’t even speak the same language anymore. This is just a bewildering turn of affairs which I can only attribute to the end of empire.”

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“Washington is still assessing how Kiev’s offensive “fits into their strategic objectives on the battlefield itself..”

• US Hesitant Over Kursk Incursion Aid – WaPo (RT)

President Joe Biden’s administration is not convinced by Ukraine’s strategy in Kursk Region and fears a possible escalation with Moscow, the Washington Post reported on Saturday, citing sources. Kiev launched its largest incursion to date into internationally-recognized Russian territory on August 6. The Russian Defense Ministry said the advance into Kursk Region had been halted; however, Kiev’s forces continue to occupy a number of settlements there. Kiev has said it intends to establish a “buffer zone” on Russian soil and has touted the land it occupies as a potential bargaining chip for future peace talks. Moscow, however, ruled out negotiations with Kiev following the incursion, citing “indiscriminate” attacks on civilians by Ukrainian troops. The US remains unsure whether to help Kiev hold and perhaps even add to the land it now occupies, an unnamed diplomat told the Washington Post.

The Pentagon has, however asked the Ukrainians what they need to make their offensive a success, US officials have claimed, adding that no concrete decisions have been made. The Ukrainian Armed Forces has lost over 5,000 soldiers since the start of the incursion, as well as 69 tanks, 27 infantry fighting vehicles, 55 APCs, 350 armored combat vehicles, 34 artillery units, five anti-aircraft missile systems, and 11 MLRS launchers (including three US-made HIMARS), among other pieces of heavy equipment, the Defense Ministry reported in an update on Friday. The US announced the same day that $125 million worth of supplies, including howitzer and artillery ammunition, TOW antitank missiles, and unmanned aerial systems and ammunition would be provided to Ukraine.

As discussions continue over new aid amid the Kursk offensive, however, Washington reportedly says it’s uncertain of Ukraine’s goals in seizing territory inside Russia, and has no idea if it intends to hold or expand upon the territory it has seized. “They may have a plan, but they’re not sharing it with us,” the paper wrote, citing an anonymous US official. Washington is still assessing how Kiev’s offensive “fits into their strategic objectives on the battlefield itself,” Pentagon deputy spokesperson Sabrina Singh said on Thursday. “We’re still working and still have some questions,” she added.

US Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said earlier this week that Washington’s ammunition stockpiles are now “empty” due to aid provided to Ukraine. In June, Trump also made it clear that he would stop donating tens of billions of dollars’ worth of handouts to Ukraine. While US and Ukrainian officials “publicly tout a strong relationship”, the paper wrote, their ties have been “repeatedly tested by frustrations and fundamental disagreements about strategy and the level of support the West should provide.” Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov claimed earlier this week that Washington could put an end to Kiev’s incursion with “a snap of the fingers” but that it apparently hasn’t deemed such a move “expedient or necessary.”

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“Anything that stands in the way of a diplomatic settlement of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev is “wrong..”

• Ukrainian Attack On Kursk Is ‘Wrong’ – Hungary (RT)

Hungary does not approve of Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region because the government in Budapest remains “pro-peace,” Gergely Gulyas, the head of the Hungarian prime minister’s office, has said. Gulyas became the most high-ranking Hungarian official to date to comment on the ongoing Ukrainian attack when asked about the issue during a briefing on Thursday. “Ukraine is not only defending, but also attacking. We want a ceasefire and peace,” Gulyas stated. Anything that stands in the way of a diplomatic settlement of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev is “wrong,” including a “spillover of the hostilities into Russian territory,” he added. Gulyas’ statement on the Ukrainian incursion into Kursk Region is in stark contrast to those from other officials in the EU and NATO.

The bloc’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said he had “reiterated the EU’s full support to the [Ukrainian] people’s fight” when he met with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba last week. Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo has insisted that “Ukraine has the right to self-defense and it is clear that they can do their operation in Kursk,” while Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal has wished luck to the Ukrainian troops involved in the attack. Hungary has taken a neutral stance since the escalation between Russia and Ukraine in February 2022. It has provided Kiev with humanitarian aid, but has refused to send weapons, allow other EU states to ship military supplies through its territory, or to train Ukrainian troops, despite strong pressure from Washington and Brussels. The government of Viktor Orban has also criticized EU’s sanctions, arguing that they hurt the bloc more than Russia.

Moscow has repeatedly voiced readiness for dialogue with Kiev throughout the conflict. However, shortly after the launch of the incursion into Kursk Region, Russian President Vladimir Putin stressed that there can be no talk about negotiations with Ukraine. Russia’s Defense Ministry said on Thursday that Ukraine has already lost more than 4,700 troops and several hundred units of military equipment, including 68 tanks and 53 armored personnel carriers, since the start of the incursion in Kursk Region on August 6.

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“We should find an agreement as soon as possible because we wouldn’t like to pay large amounts on a daily basis,” Gulyas said. “But if Brussels wants to take in migrants, we can help.”

• Hungary May Send Migrants To Brussels To Avenge Asylum Fine (ZH)

Several years ago, Texas had a brilliant idea: take the millions of illegal immigrant that were flooding its territory as a result of policies adopted in faraway places like DC, and bus them to places like New York and DC, other so-called sanctuary cities and, best of all, Martha’s Vineyard where those who run New York and DC tend to go on vacation. The result was an immediate revulsion by the false virtue-signaling NIMBY crowd, which cried foul at having to suffer the consequences of its actions. Turns out Texas’ idea was so good it is now being adopted across the Atlantic, where another illegal alien invasion has been taking place for the past decade, slowly replacing the indigenous population with millions of immigrants from northern Africa and the middle east.

Now, one European country has decided it also has had enough: Hungary suggested that it might – like Texas – start transporting migrants who show up at its border straight to Brussels, unless it can resolve a dispute with the European Union on penalties for its asylum policies, Bloomberg reported. The European Court of Justice has slapped a €200 million ($223 million) penalty, plus an extra €1 million daily fine, on the country for Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s non-compliance with the court’s earlier judgment on the protection of asylum seekers. Orban already promised retaliation in June for the ruling, one of several issues clouding the start of his stint in the rotating presidency of the EU in the second half of 2024. Negotiations with the European Commission will start in September, Gergely Gulyas, the minister in charge of the prime minister’s office, told reporters in Budapest Thursday.

Should those talks fail, Hungary will start handing migrants “one-way tickets to Brussels,” Gulyas said. “We should find an agreement as soon as possible because we wouldn’t like to pay large amounts on a daily basis,” Gulyas said. “But if Brussels wants to take in migrants, we can help.” Though Gulyas provided no details on how such a scheme would work, the idea echoes disputes not only among US states over migrants – like those being bused to New York from the Texas border – but also elsewhere in Europe. In the UK, socialist Prime Minister Keir Starmer has vowed his new Labour government would scrap predecessor Rishi Sunak’s plan to deport asylum-seekers to Rwanda.

Separately, Hungary was criticized by human rights groups this week for withdrawing state-funded shelter from Ukrainian refugees arriving from regions not directly affected by the fighting on the frontlines with Russia. A group of Hungarians from Ukraine’s western Transcarpathia region temporarily became homeless after the move, though Gulyas said aid groups helped provide accommodations for them. The EU’s executive arm is looking into the decree, according to a spokesperson but said the EU is united in providing protections, including accommodation, for those fleeing the conflict.

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Another 6 months… For what was a weeklong trip… Bye bye Boeing..

• SpaceX To Rescue Stranded Astronauts After NASA Dumps Boeing (ZH)

NASA said it has selected Elon Musk’s SpaceX to bring home the US astronauts who were forced to extend their stay at the International Space Station because of the latest debacle plaguing the woke DEI disaster that is Boeing, whose space capsule suffered major technical issues. Boeing’s spacecraft will return without people on board, the US space agency said during a Saturday news conference announcing its decision, in which it said that it was too risky to bring two astronauts back to Earth in Boeing’s troubled new capsule. What should have been a weeklong test flight for the pair will now last more than eight months. The contingency plan means that NASA astronauts Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams will hitch a ride home on SpaceX’s rival Crew Dragon capsule during a mission slated to launch in late September. That would put them back on US soil in February, when that capsule is slated to return and months later than originally planned.

Their empty Starliner capsule will undock in a week or two and attempt to return on autopilot. The seasoned pilots have been stuck at the International Space Station since the beginning of June. A cascade of vexing thruster failures and helium leaks in the new capsule marred their trip to the space station, and they ended up in a holding pattern as engineers conducted tests and debated what to do about the trip back. As Starliner’s test pilots, the pair should have overseen this critical last leg of the journey, with touchdown in the U.S. desert. It was a blow to Boeing, adding to the safety concerns plaguing the company on its airplane side. Boeing had counted on Starliner’s first crew trip to revive the troubled program after years of delays and ballooning costs. The company had insisted Starliner was safe based on all the recent thruster tests both in space and on the ground.

Retired Navy captains with previous long-duration spaceflight experience, Wilmore, 61, and Williams, 58, anticipated surprises when they accepted the shakedown cruise of a new spacecraft, although not quite to this extent. Before their June 5 launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, they said their families bought into the uncertainty and stress of their professional careers decades ago. During their lone orbital news conference last month, they said they had trust in the thruster testing being conducted. They had no complaints, they added, and enjoyed pitching in with space station work. Wilmore’s wife, Deanna, was equally stoic in an interview earlier this month with WVLT-TV in Knoxville, Tennessee, their home state. She was already bracing for a delay until next February: “You just sort of have to roll with it.” There were no other options.

The SpaceX capsule currently parked at the space station is reserved for the four residents who have been there since March. They will return in late September, their stay extended a month by the Starliner dilemma. NASA said it would be unsafe to squeeze two more into the capsule, except in an emergency. The docked Russian Soyuz capsule is even tighter, capable of flying only three — two of them Russians wrapping up a yearlong stint. So Wilmore and Williams will wait for SpaceX’s next taxi flight. It’s due to launch in late September with two astronauts instead of the usual four for a routine six-month stay. NASA yanked two to make room for Wilmore and Williams on the return flight in late February. NASA said no serious consideration was given to asking SpaceX for a quick stand-alone rescue. Last year, the Russian Space Agency had to rush up a replacement Soyuz capsule for three men whose original craft was damaged by space junk. The switch pushed their mission beyond a year, a U.S. space endurance record still held by Frank Rubio.

Starliner’s woes began long before its latest flight. Bad software fouled the first test flight without a crew in 2019, prompting a do-over in 2022. Then parachute and other issues cropped up, including a helium leak in the capsule’s propellant system that nixed a launch attempt in May. The leak eventually was deemed to be isolated and small enough to pose no concern. But more leaks sprouted following liftoff, and five thrusters also failed. All but one of those small thrusters restarted in flight. But engineers remain perplexed as to why some thruster seals appear to swell, obstructing the propellant lines, then revert to their normal size.These 28 thrusters are vital. Besides needed for space station rendezvous, they keep the capsule pointed in the right direction at flight’s end as bigger engines steer the craft out of orbit. Coming in crooked could result in catastrophe.

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“POV: It’s 2030 in Europe and you’re being executed for liking a meme..”

• ‘Darkness Descending’: Tucker Carlson Reacts To Telegram Founder’s Arrest (RT)

The arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov in France is a warning to platforms that stand up to censorship, American journalist and political commentator Tucker Carlson has said. According to French media, the Russian-born entrepreneur was detained at Paris-Le Bourget Airport on Saturday and will appear in court on Sunday evening. The French authorities had reportedly issued an arrest warrant, arguing that insufficient moderation allows for Telegram to be widely used by criminals. The news of Durov’s apparent prosecution has raised concerns online, including suggestions that it could be politically motivated.

“Pavel Durov left Russia when the government tried to control his social media company, Telegram. But in the end, it wasn’t Putin who arrested him for allowing the public to exercise free speech,” Carlson wrote on X (formerly Twitter) on Saturday. “It was a Western country, a Biden administration ally and enthusiastic NATO member, that locked him away.” Durov’s arrest is “a living warning to any platform owner who refuses to censor the truth at the behest of governments and intel agencies,” Carlson argued. “Darkness is descending fast on the formerly free world.”

Carlson recorded a rare interview with Durov in April, in which the Telegram owner spoke about his disagreements with the Russian government, as well as the pressure he faced in the US. He said that the American government had wanted him to set up a surveillance “backdoor” on his messaging service, and he refused. X owner Elon Musk also condemned the reported arrest. “POV: It’s 2030 in Europe and you’re being executed for liking a meme,” he wrote in a comment to the news story. Telegram was launched in 2013 and currently has more than 950 million active monthly users. Durov is a native of St. Petersburg, Russia, but has been mostly been living in the UAE since the mid-2010s. He became a French and an Emirati citizen in 2021.

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Houthi
https://twitter.com/i/status/1827074505505960328

 

 

Bad parrot
https://twitter.com/i/status/1827284727381778524

 

 

Collie

 

 

Cup

 

 

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Debt Rattle August 24 2024

Aug 242024
 
 August 24, 2024  Posted by at 8:50 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  50 Responses »


Salvador Dali Galatea of the Spheres 1952

 

• I Throw My Support Behind Donald Trump – RFK Jr (ZH)
• The 2024 DNC In 2 Words – ‘Not Trump’ (ZH)
• RFK Jr Addresses The Nation (ZH)
• Why Kamala Harris Won’t Sit For An Interview (Bridge)
• End of Hoaxes (Jim Kunstler)
• CIA Endorses Harris as Democrats Promise More War, Foreign Intervention (Sp.)
• US Running Out Of Ammo – Trump (RT)
• US Preparing To Lift Ban On Strikes Deep Inside Russia – Moscow (RT)
• India Is Not Neutral But Stands For Peace, Modi Tells Zelensky (RT)
• Crackdown on Ukraine’s Largest Church Is ‘Full-fledged Satanism’ – Medvedev (RT)
• Ukraine Sells Its Orthodox Heritage Out to West. But Wait, It’s Russian (Sp.)
• Confusion And Chaos At Factory That Built Two Doomed 737 MAX Planes (ZH)
• Tale of Two Pipelines… Europe Loses, China Gains (SCF)
• US House Oversight Asks TSA Why Tulsi Gabbard Is on Terror Watchlist (Sp.)
• JK Rowling Reportedly Sued by Olympic Boxer Over Gender Criticism (Turley)

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1826765855008719103
https://twitter.com/i/status/1826721580367380515

 

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1826835677759013348
https://twitter.com/i/status/1826812669640462518

 

 

Vivek will be a force
https://twitter.com/i/status/1826796581129240651

 

 

RFK jr

 

 

 

 

 

 

Who needs a policy if you hate Donald Trump?

• I Throw My Support Behind Donald Trump – RFK Jr (ZH)

“Democrats have become the party of war, censorship, corruption, big pharma, big tech, big ag, and big money wanting to abandon democracy by canceling the primary to conceal the cognitive decline of the sitting president. I left the party to run as an independent… The DNC and its media organs engineered a surge of popularity for VP Harris based upon nothing. No policies, no interviews, no debates. Only smoke and mirrors.””A Chicago circus that is based on NOTHING. Who needs a policy if you hate Donald Trump?” “How did the Democratic Party choose a candidate that has never done an interview or debate during the entire election cycle?” Kennedy asked. “We know the answer: They did it by weaponizing the government agencies. They did it by abandoning democracy. They did it by suing the opposition and by disenfranchising American voters.

What most alarms me isn’t how the Democratic Party conducts its internal affairs or runs its candidates. What alarms me is the resort to censorship and media control and the weaponization of the federal agencies.” Kennedy refuses to be a spoiler… “Many months ago, I promised the American people that I would withdraw from the race if I became a spoiler… In my heart, I no longer believe that I have a realistic path to electoral victory in the face of this relentless, systematic censorship and media control.” “I am simply suspending it and not ending it. My name will remain on the ballot in most states. I encourage you to vote for me. In an honest system, I believe that I would have won the election. After all, the polls consistently showed me beating each of the other candidates. In about 10 battleground states where my presence would be a spoiler, I’m going to remove my name.”

[..] I throw my support behind Donald Trump.” Kennedy said that in a series of meetings with Trump and his team, he realized he shared more in common with the former president than he thought. He compared their potential partnership to President Lincoln’s famous “Team of Rivals,” which saw him stock his Cabinet with former foes. “In a series of long, intense discussions, I was surprised to discover that we are aligned on many key issues. In those meetings, he suggested that we join forces as a unity party. We talked about Abraham Lincoln’s team of rivals. That arrangement would allow us to disagree publicly and privately and fiercely if need be on issues over which we differ while working together on the existential issues upon which we are in concordance.” “I was a ferocious critic of many of the policies during his first administration, and there are still issues and approaches upon which we continue to have very serious differences.”

“But we are aligned with each other on other key issues like ending the forever wars, ending the childhood disease epidemics, securing the border, protecting freedom of speech, unraveling the corporate capture of our regulatory agencies, getting the US intelligence agencies out of the business of propagandizing and censoring and surveilling Americans and interfering with our elections.” “Suspending my candidacy is a heartrending decision for me. But I’m convinced that it’s the best hope or ending the Ukraine War and ending the chronic disease epidemic that is eroding our nation’s vitality from the inside and for finally protecting free speech.” “I feel a moral obligation to use this opportunity to save millions of American children above all things.” Most notably, RFK Jr. admitted in front of the nation that he attempted to contact VP Harris first and that she neither wanted to talk or meet with him is a strong message to Independent voters:

“Following my first discussion with President Trump, I tried unsuccessfully to open similar discussions with Vice President Harris. Vice President Harris declined to meet or even to speak with me.” “Democrats want nothing to do with you, Republicans will at least give you a seat at the table.” RFK addressed details on the Russia-Ukraine war (via Kyle Becker): “We have pushed Russia closer to China and Iran. We are closer to the brink of nuclear exchange than at any time since 1962. And the Neocons in the White House don’t seem to care at all.” “Our moral authority and our economy are in shambles. And the war gave rise to the emergence of BRICS, which now threatens to replace the dollar as the global reserve currency.” “This is a first class calamity for our country.” “Judging by her bellicose, belligerent speech last night in Chicago, we can assume that President Harris will be an enthusiastic for this and other Neocon military adventures.”

“President Trump says he will reopen negotiations with President Putin and end the war overnight as soon as he becomes president.” “This alone would justify my support for his campaign.” “Last summer, it looked like no candidate was willing to negotiate a quick end to the Ukraine War, to tackle the chronic disease epidemic, to protect free speech, our Constitutional freedoms, to clean corporate influence out of our government or to defy the Neocons on their agenda of endless military adventurism.” “But now, one of the two candidates has adopted these issues as his own to the point where he has asked to enlist me in his administration.” “I am speaking, of course, of Donald Trump.”

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‘Kamala Harris, for the people.’

• The 2024 DNC In 2 Words – ‘Not Trump’ (ZH)

Objectively, if prediction sites can be trusted in any way (perhaps more so than biased polls), the last four days of speeches, musical performances, and delegate celebrations were a ‘failure’ of sorts for the Democratic Party as during the DNC, Kamala Harris odds of success in November dropped while Trump’s improved (though we note the incumbent VP remains a favorite)… Perhaps, ‘we the people’ realized that the goal of the whole week was for party lawmakers, community leaders, past presidents, and cultural figures to convince Americans that Kamala Harris is not Joe Biden… and has not been in The White House for the last almost-four-years… is the not the lowest-approval-rated VP in history… and is not in any way responsible, or tied to any of the policies that left the vast majority of Americans questioning the direction of the country just a week or two before the mainstream media anointed her ‘Mamala’

Most directed pointed attacks at former President Donald Trump, tying his candidacy and campaign to the controversial Project 2025, which Trump has disavowed, while illustrating differences between a potential second Trump term and a Harris White House. While light on specific domestic and foreign policy discussions, the convention highlighted the Democratic Party’s commitment to ensuring abortion access after the 2022 Dobbs decision overthrew Roe v. Wade. For four straight days, protesters rallied in the streets against the Biden/Harris administration’s support for Israel during the Israel–Hamas war, pushing for a Palestinian speaker at the Chicago convention. As Jacob Burg and Nathan Worcester detail below via The Epoch Times, here are the key takeaways from the 2024 Democratic National Convention.

After securing enough delegate support to become the party’s presidential nominee earlier this month, the convention served as a coronation ceremony for Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. With a little more than 70 days remaining in the election, Harris is moving fast to define herself, her platform, and her vision for America. Speaking about her family and their impact on her life, she said it was those who loved and believed in her the most that “told us we could be anything and do anything.” In her acceptance speech, Harris described her parents meeting at a civil rights gathering and attorneys like Thurgood Marshall and Constance Baker Motley, who inspired her to become a lawyer. When Harris’ best friend revealed sexual abuse by a parent, Harris set out to be a prosecutor.

“And every day in the courtroom, I stood proudly before a judge, and I said five words, ‘Kamala Harris, for the people.’” She added, “And to be clear, my entire career. I’ve only had one client, the people.” “On behalf of the people, on behalf of every American, regardless of party, race, gender or the language your grandmother speaks … I accept your nomination to be president of the United States of America,” Harris said. In a coalition-building effort as her campaign inches closer to election day, Harris vowed to unite a divided country. “Our nation, with this election, has a precious, fleeting opportunity to move past the bitterness, cynicism, and divisive battles of the past, a chance to chart a new way forward. Not as members of any one party or faction, but as Americans.”

Read more …

Articles were updated on the fly last night as things happened. This is one of the older parts of the opening article.

• RFK Jr Addresses The Nation (ZH)

While Richard Truesdell and Keith Lehmann point out that RFK Jr. was never a serious candidate, he had a famous name (to those of us old enough to remember), a tinge of legitimacy, and a wealthy billionaire running mate to keep the train going. It wasn’t enough to reach office but it got his foot in the door after RFK Jr. was shunned by Democrat Party insiders in their initial effort to prop up husk of a president, Joe Biden. Now they are stuck with Biden’s insurance policy, Kamala Harris. It terrified the Dems to have RFK Jr. in the running, so they rigged the rules, banned him from state ballots, and vilified him as extreme. And to dampen his impact on the Harris-Walz ticket, after trying to deny him ballot access and remove RFK Jr. from the state ballots he made his way to, Democrats will now attempt to keep him on ballots to hurt Trump. Such hypocrites.

He’s an environmental attorney, about as Lefty Democrat as you can get! He was expected to capitulate, kiss the crown, and get in line with everyone else. Instead, he went rogue. He showed them by unexpectedly running as an Independent. In exchange for his potential endorsement, what can Trump promise? A cabinet post? Being named director of the FBI to clean up that mess? Or ironically, heading up the CIA? Maybe after six decades, we’ll find out exactly what was the role of the agency in assassinating his uncle and if it had any role in his own father’s assassination. He’s now rumored to be ready to endorse Trump and is expected to announce his campaign suspension in Phoenix, where Trump is scheduled to hold a rally nearby. Coincidence? Unlikely. If this happens, it will take much of the post-DNC momentum away from Harris-Walz and focus attention on the PR value of RFK Jr.’s endorsement.

Imagine the son of RFK and the nephew of JFK, endorsing a Republican candidate for the presidency, Donald Trump no less. It will be a net positive gain for Trump, although not much and only for so long. But it could make all the difference in a race that’s expected to be tight in the all-important swing states—especially Pennsylvania. After spending millions to keep him off the ballot, the Democratic National Committee released a memo Friday dismissing the potential impact Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s endorsement of Donald Trump will have on the presidential race. The DNC claimed, without evidence, that the only reason Kennedy was in the race was to be a spoiler candidate to help former President Trump, but derided him as “a near-negligible factor” with “no meaningful base of support.” The DNC memo purported, again without evidence, that Trump was “at a low point and acting out of desperation.”

“Embracing RFK Jr. now —when he has nothing to offer but months of disqualifying revelations—is not a decision a campaign makes when they’re acting from a position of strength.” The memo went on to accuse RFK Jr. as having an “unsavory and reckless past, ties to MAGA donors, and MAGA-lite positions on abortion bans and January 6th pardons,” and assert that “his support has dwindled to make him a near-negligible factor.” “The little support that remains is soft, split across ideologies, and disproportionately among lower propensity voters. With no meaningful base of support and sky-high negatives among Democrats, RFK Jr.’s threat to VP Harris was neutralized,” the DNC memo stated. The DNC memo argued Kennedy could actually hurt Trump because of his allegedly “controversial” positions on the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, the Sept. 11 attacks and vaccines. Right now, in their post-DNC euphoria, Democrats believe that they have positioned Harris to win.

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It would end her campaign.

• Why Kamala Harris Won’t Sit For An Interview (Bridge)

The US media has once and for all proven that it is in the pocket of the Democratic Party. It continues to fawn over the greatly flawed Kamala Harris while the presidential candidate has steadfastly refused to do interviews or press conferences for weeks. Taking the lead in this media-backed coup d’état is Time magazine, whose latest issue features a powerful portrait of Kamala Harris on the cover bearing the glowing caption “Her Moment.” Unfortunately, it wasn’t ‘her moment’ for a little chat with the media, although it was certainly the perfect opportunity. In one of the only lines of criticism against Harris in the 3,000-word puff piece, Time writer Charlotte Alter admitted that “Harris has yet to do a single substantive interview or to explain her policy shifts.” Shockingly, Harris even refused a single comment to Time, despite offering gratuitous promotion of the vice president.

That speaks volumes about Harris, who refuses to speak to a publication that is absolutely committed to providing kid-glove treatment to the Democrats. Alter’s description of Harris provided little substance on the vice president’s track record and oceans of ink spewing vacuous allusions to the carnivalesque atmosphere that now accompanies Harris’ political rallies. Many have suggested that this is the only way she is able to fill stadiums and inject a feeling of enthusiasm. “The soundtrack suggested a Beyoncé concert,” Alter opened in the very first paragraph of her article titled ‘The Reintroduction of Kamala Harris’. “The light-up bracelets evoked the Eras Tour. And the exuberant crowd – more than 14,000 strong, lining up in the rain – resembled the early days of Barack Obama.” The name Taylor Swift, certainly no political scientist, popped up several paragraphs later: “More than 38,000 people registered on Vote.org in the 48 hours after she became the presumptive nominee, eclipsing the voter-registration surge encouraged by Taylor Swift last year.”

And if that wasn’t enough, Alter came up with this ridiculous allusion to Hollywood starlets in an effort to explain Harris’ inexplicable rise: “Mass enthusiasm for a woman is nothing new: Harris’s run comes just a year after the blockbuster summer of Barbie, Beyoncé, and Swift.” Finally, Time provided an absurd quote from Senator Cory Booker, who invoked Star Wars imagery to argue that Harris has “mastered the art of ‘arm twisting’ required to pass major legislation” for Democrats. “She has gone,” he said, “from being a Padawan to a Jedi master.” Too bad the force was not with Harris when it came to securing the southern border, or helping working class Americans survive some of the worst inflation the US has experienced in decades. Compare all of that mindless puffery to Donald Trump, who Time interviewed for a cover story in April that was an 83-minute read, while the nitpicking factchecking following the piece took over 20 minutes to digest.

Eric Cortellessa, the journalist who conducted the interview, asked Trump a dozen questions about the Trump prosecutions, five questions about the January 6 ‘insurrection’, four on battling the ‘deep state’, three on his “dictator for a day” joke, two about the possibility of right-wing violence if Trump loses the election, and four on whether he’d seek to overturn the 22nd Amendment to serve a third term in office. It seems that the only reason Trump agrees to sit through these tortuous liberal inquisitions is to have the ability to say he is doing what Kamala Harris conspicuously refuses to do – talk to the media. Whether this strategy will work in his favor is highly debatable given the overwhelming support Harris receives regardless of what she does or doesn’t do. Yet even the Democrats must understand that the media are the gatekeepers to our aspiring politicians. Without the ability of journalists to sit down and grill officials on policy matters, the American people will remain in the dark.

Moreover, sitting in the media hot seat allows the audience to determine if a person has the mettle required for leadership. Many believe that Harris, who has demonstrated an inability to convey complex ideas – ‘word salads’, as they’ve been called – without the assistance of a teleprompter, is perfectly aware of her personal shortcomings, and that is why she is content to remain in the shadows while the media pumps her up into a political tour de force. This could also explain why the Democrats waited until the 11th hour to replace feebleminded Joe Biden with Harris on the presidential ticket – the less time the American people have to listen to Harris’ convoluted arguments (and grating cackle), the better. The rise of Harris from basement-level popularity ratings just four years ago to some sort of political genius proves the undeniable power of the corporate media complex to turn the greatest mediocrity into anyone they like.

“The way the US corporate media transformed Kamala Harris from a national embarrassment to a transformative pioneer overnight – without even pretending to care about anything that she thinks or believes – is a powerful testament to how potent the science of propaganda is,” journalist Glenn Greenwald posted on X (formerly Twitter). [..] Trump and Harris are set to debate on ABC on September 10, an event that the former president, barring some unforeseen disaster, has essentially already won. The final result, however, will depend on whether the audience will side with the snake-oil media and ‘believe their lying ears’, or will they be able to think past their media mind controllers and make an honest judgement of Harris’ performance. The future of the United States hinges on that question.

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“..this year’s Democratic Convention, their Cluster-B personality disorder freak show..”

• End of Hoaxes (Jim Kunstler)

Get this: there is one thing, one lurking terror, behind every fake and desperate move the Democratic Party has made this dire election cycle: the fear that hundreds of high officials might have to pay for their crimes of recent years if they lose on November 5. That’s why they lie about everything, and work so hard to construct false narratives, and struggle to obliterate the memory of Joe Biden’s ruinous term in power. Of course, they can’t talk about it. It’s like the darkest secret in a wrecked human soul that has lost itself in mental illness, some abscess of shame and guilt sealed off in the mind’s attempt to protect itself — like the memory of an incest or an unsolved family murder — which explains the rich show of various derangements actually highlighted at this year’s Democratic Convention, their Cluster-B personality disorder freak show. It is an anguished, guilt-ridden collective mind leaking clues to its own disordered debasement.

So, the deed is done now. The odious “Joe Biden,” fake president, is dumped in the ditch of history, and a mighty operation is mounted to put over Veep Kamala Harris, who ignored “JB’s” incapacity to head the US government for four years, carrying out no duties meanwhile, hiding from the public, answering nothing, going nowhere, abetted by a treasonous news media bent on hiding her as she drank away the months in the old Naval Observatory. The conventions are over and the contest is on. Have you heard enough of their fake war-cry: “defending our democracy?” From a party that has tortured the law to jail and silence its critics and scrape its challengers off every ballot. The pretense is perfect. Their “democracy” is actually a colossal “spoils” system — to the victor goes the spoils! — a grotesque political machine funneling trillions of federal dollars to their client voter groups, and especially to the non-profit orgs and NGOs that form a sinister secondary bureaucracy accountable to nobody.

And all done with direct connivance of the federal intel blob at war with everyone outside this matrix of turpitude. And, by the way, the money is gone. Trillions. And nothing to show for it. This is what Mr. Trump opposes, and has been fighting against since 2016. No wonder it wants to stuff him in prison or kill him. It is a mighty enemy because it holds the levers of official power, especially the federal prosecutors and the state and county prosecutors put in place by the Democrats’ chief “influencer,” the George and Alex Soros NGO empire. And the big picture includes the monumental crime against our country — against all the countries of Western Civ, really — which was the Covid-19 operation that left millions disabled or dead from a phony, poisonous “vaccine.”

And now we hear — as I write early this Friday morning, hours before any official announcement — that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is about to suspend his campaign, kneecapped by the Democratic Party so busy “defending our democracy,” and perhaps throw his support to Donald Trump in order to defeat this mafia of the mentally ill. I hope he does that. And I hope he denounces the party of his ancestors in the most vividly opprobrious terms so that no one can misunderstand the gravity of what has been going on. I’d also look forward to Mr. Kennedy playing an important role in the second Trump government. Mr. Kennedy knows probably better than anyone in America exactly how the gigantic racketeering operation was constructed that grafted pharma onto the US public health agencies, the FDA, CDC, NIAID, and others.

This monster that has left so many Americans dead and injured, and wrecked the health of the nation’s young people especially, must be slayed. It must be disassembled and its pieces reconstructed into institutions that actually serve the public. This includes the hospital holding companies, the private equity pirates out to asset-strip medicine, the insurance-driven, overgrown doctors’ practices, and the mendacious medical boards, professional orgs, and journals that unjustly punished dissident doctors and nurses who tried to oppose the extralegal Covid-19 vaxx mandates. If it happens that Mr. Kennedy joins forces with Mr. Trump, it could be a momentous turn in an election so far marred by Democratic Party hoaxes, coups, and lawfare ops. Naturally, The New York Times played the story this morning in a tiny headline below-the-fold, saying nothing about the rumored stunning alliance between the Kennedy and Trump campaigns.

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Leon Panetta. Sweet Jesus.

Trump wants peace. Kamala wants whatever the Deep State wants.

• CIA Endorses Harris as Democrats Promise More War, Foreign Intervention (Sp.)

A former chief of the controversial intelligence agency voiced his support for the vice president at the Democratic National Convention Thursday. US Vice President Kamala Harris signaled she would continue her predecessor’s hawkish foreign policy in Gaza and Ukraine Thursday as an ex-CIA director publicly endorsed the Democratic presidential candidate. “As president I will stand strong with Ukraine and our NATO allies,” Harris declared during her acceptance speech, voicing strong support for Kiev’s US-backed proxy war against Russia. Former intelligence chief Leon Panetta also delivered a speech praising Harris during which the controversial figure claimed he was “proud” to have served in the US Army and CIA director. US military aggression throughout the Middle East during the so-called “War on Terror” is estimated to have caused the deaths of at least 4.5 million people while the CIA has been implicated in numerous human rights violations.

“The Democrats really showed that this is a hawkish party and really neoconservatives are in charge of the party,” noted CovertAction Magazine managing editor Jeremy Kuzmarov on Sputnik’s The Final Countdown program. “I mean, they brought out Leon Panetta earlier tonight. He’s a former CIA director who was a key mastermind of the drone war and a key figure behind Russiagate and a key supporter of Hillary Clinton and chief of staff in the Bill Clinton White House.” “In her speech [Harris] was talking about how [former US President Donald] Trump supposedly coddled [foreign leaders] like Putin, and that’s totally false,” he continued. “Trump had a pretty hardline policy toward Russia. He pulled out of the INF Treaty. He ramped up weapons supplies to Ukraine. So that’s just like an extreme right-wing position that they’re adopting.”

“They’re celebrating this war in Ukraine [that] siphoned off billions of hard-earned taxpayer dollars into a sinkhole just like Afghanistan, and a lot of those weapons have been stolen. And this party is cheerleading for that. So that’s where they are.” Corruption has long been recognized as endemic in Ukraine, which experts have noted is “the most corrupt nation in Europe.” Earlier this year, a massive corruption scandal was uncovered that saw almost $40 million in US aid stolen by officials in the country’s defense ministry. In June, it was revealed that Western military-grade weapons supplied to Ukraine have been sold on the black market, ending up in the hands of terrorists and European drug cartels. Various neoconservative figures such as Iraq War architect Bill Kristol have shifted allegiances to the Democratic Party in recent years as Republicans have become increasingly critical of foreign intervention under the banner of Trump’s “America First” ethos. Recent polling shows increasing numbers of Americans believe the US has spent too much money funding Ukraine’s quixotic proxy war on Russia.

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“You know why. We gave it all up to Ukraine and various other places. We gave them everything.”

• US Running Out Of Ammo – Trump (RT)

The US military is running out of ammunition as President Joe Biden’s administration has bled stockpiles dry to arm Ukraine and other nations, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has claimed. The GOP firebrand pledged to turn the tide and make a “historic investment in rebuilding” the American military, if elected. Speaking by phone to Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky last month, Trump reiterated his long-standing promise to swiftly end the conflict between Kiev and Moscow if elected in November. Back in June, the former US president also made it clear that he would stop donating tens of billions of dollars’ worth of handouts to Ukraine. Addressing his supporters, along with his vice presidential pick, Senator J.D. Vance, in Asheboro, North Carolina on Wednesday, Trump lamented: “They released a report talking about all of the vulnerable areas… we’re weak here, we’re weak there.”

“That’s like saying: ‘We have no ammunition,’” he said. “You know why. We gave it all up to Ukraine and various other places. We gave them everything.” According to the former president, billions of dollars’ worth of weaponry and ammunition has been donated free of charge. While it is not clear what report exactly Trump was referring to, experts on the congressional Commission on the National Defense Strategy released a 312-page assessment in late July, warning that the US military “lacks both the capabilities and the capacity required to be confident it can deter and prevail in combat.” According to the report, in a hypothetical future conflict with China, the latter would likely be aided, at least economically and possibly also militarily, by the likes of Russia, Iran, or North Korea. This would make the odds of a US victory increasingly slim, military experts predicted.

“Unclassified public wargames suggest that, in a conflict with China, the United States would largely exhaust its munitions inventories in as few as three to four weeks, with some important munitions (e.g. anti-ship missiles) lasting only a few days,” the document concluded. Experts on the commission attributed the current state of affairs to serious inadequacies in America’s defense industry that they said would require significant investment to rectify.

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“..Russia must therefore “act decisively, increasing our military-industrial potential, because only our army and navy will protect our country..”

• US Preparing To Lift Ban On Strikes Deep Inside Russia – Moscow (RT)

Claims by Washington that it has banned Ukraine from using US-supplied long-range weapons for strikes deep inside Russian territory cannot be trusted, Moscow’s ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, has said. Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has resumed his calls for the country’s Western backers to allow long-range strikes on Russian territory during Kiev’s ongoing incursion into Kursk Region. The Pentagon stated last week that its stance remains unchanged, and that Ukraine is still banned from using US-supplied ATACMS missiles, which have a range of up to 300km (186 miles), for attacks deep inside Russia. Speaking to journalists on Friday, Antonov claimed that the US authorities “seem to be constantly teasing us by saying that today it is allegedly not allowed to use long-range systems to strike at Russian territory.” “But in reality, they are essentially preparing the ground to simply remove all existing restrictions, at a certain point,” the Russian envoy added.

Judging by Washington’s previous assistance to Kiev, including its training of pilots to fly F-16 jets, it is almost certain that Ukraine will “fight with US-made [long-range] weapons against us,” the ambassador said, as cited by TASS. “Where exactly will it happen? We cannot say or foretell,” he stressed. According to Antonov, the administration of US President Joe Biden is becoming increasingly unpredictable. “There is no guarantee that the whole world will not change tomorrow when you and I wake up. How the Americans will behave in this situation is very hard to tell,” he said. Russia must therefore “act decisively, increasing our military-industrial potential, because only our army and navy will protect our country,” the ambassador insisted.

Antonov also made a live appearance on Russia’s Channel One on Thursday, where he rejected claims by the US authorities that they had been unaware of the Ukrainian plans to attack Kursk Region.“I am firmly convinced that in Kiev they do nothing without the go-ahead from their masters… They wouldn’t have dared to move a finger… in our direction without consent from Washington,” he said. Commenting on the fate of Ukrainian troops who have entered Russian territory, the ambassador insisted that “no one has any doubts that they will be destroyed, not pushed back, but destroyed.” Russia’s Defense Ministry estimated on Thursday that Ukraine has lost more than 4,700 troops and several hundred units of military equipment, including 68 tanks and 53 armored personnel carriers, since the start of the incursion in Kursk Region on August 6.

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“New Delhi stopped short of signing the joint communiqué emerging from the Swiss-hosted event, as the event didn’t include Russia..”

• India Is Not Neutral But Stands For Peace, Modi Tells Zelensky (RT)

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Kiev on Friday, marking the first visit by an Indian premier to the country. During a meeting with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, Modi stated that India has not been “neutral or an indifferent bystander” as the Russia-Ukraine conflict persists, and has always been “on the side of peace.” The joint communique issued by the two sides after the leaders’ meeting noted that Modi reiterated its “principled position and focus on peaceful resolution through dialogue and diplomacy.” According to Indian foreign minister S. Jaishankar, who briefed the media in Kiev, Modi and Zelensky had a detailed and open discussion and New Delhi promised it was ready to make proactive contributions towards efforts for peace. The joint statement noted that India had attended the ‘peace summit’ hosted by Switzerland in June this year as part of this commitment.

However, New Delhi stopped short of signing the joint communiqué emerging from the Swiss-hosted event, as the event didn’t include Russia. On Friday, Jaishankar noted that Modi called for “practical engagement” between all stakeholders” to work out “innovative solutions” that could lead to peace. “President Zelensky knows we mean well by Ukraine, we want this conflict to come to an end. If there is anything we can do in any way in sort of upfront, behind or supporting anybody, we are willing to do whatever we can. This conflict must end, we believe,” Jaishankar said. Modi’s visit was the first-ever visit by an Indian premier to Ukraine since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Upon his arrival in Kiev, he was greeted by members of the Indian diaspora there. Later, he and Zelensky honored the memory of children who died in the conflict in a visit to the Martyrologist Exposition tribute, and paid tribute to Mahatma Gandhi in the ‘Oasis of Peace’ park in the capital.

Modi’s Ukraine visit comes nearly six weeks after he traveled to Russia for a bilateral summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Since the beginning of the conflict, India has abstained from condemning Moscow over the conflict or from downgrading trade and diplomatic ties with it, despite pressure from the West. New Delhi has maintained robust ties with Russia despite the West’s scrutiny of the relationship. Bilateral trade crossed $60 billion last year, largely bolstered by Indian imports of discounted Russian coal and oil. The premier’s visit to Moscow in July came under intense scrutiny from Washington and other global capitals. Biden administration officials were uncomfortable with the optics of the visit, which coincided with a crucial NATO summit that featured Zelensky. Ukraine’s leader himself termed Modi’s meeting with Putin a “huge disappointment” and a “blow” to peace efforts, prompting New Delhi to summon the Ukrainian envoy over the remark.

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A 10 year old regime vs a 1000 year old religion.

• Crackdown on Ukraine’s Largest Church Is ‘Full-fledged Satanism’ – Medvedev (RT)

Kiev’s Western backers are supporting its “satanic” crackdown on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev claimed on Friday. On Tuesday, the Ukrainian parliament passed a law that prohibits “Russia-linked” religious organizations. The self-governed UOC, which has historical and spiritual ties with the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC), is understood to be the primary target of the legislation. Medvedev, who serves as deputy chair of the Russian Security Council, said he holds Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky accountable for the crackdown. Pyotr Poroshenko, Zelensky’s predecessor, caused a major religious schism in Ukraine when he orchestrated the creation of the so-called Orthodox Church of Ukraine in late 2018 as part of his failed reelection campaign, Medvedev pointed out.

Under Zelensky, however, “the destruction of the Orthodox faith in Ukraine and the persecution of Christians for their faith started,” culminating in the new law, the former Russian leader argued. Zelensky “has no religious identity” and the crackdown is “full-fledged satanism” supported by people in his government, Medvedev alleged. “The civilized West” backed both Poroshenko’s ploy and the ongoing persecution “to inflict maximum damage to Russia and its citizens,” he added. Ukraine “will be destroyed, like Sodom and Gomorrah were, and the demons will inevitably fall,” Medvedev said, referring to the Old Testament story of two cities obliterated by divine intervention for their wickedness. He added a biblical quote describing the Jewish conquest of Canaan and the punishment that Joshua exacted on the leaders of conquered tribes.

Viktor Elensky, the head of the Ukrainian service for ethnic policy and freedom of conscience, claimed on Thursday that the new law “has the legitimate goal of stopping the subversive activities of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine.” Kiev has no intention of forcing clerics and the faithful to join any other denomination, but if the UOC wishes to exist, it has to abide by the new rules and disavow any ties with Moscow, the official added. Clement, the UOC bishop who serves as the spokesman for the church, wondered if schismatic leaders would have to overcome bureaucratic barriers to prove their loyalty. Among other things, the law demands public affirmation by Ukrainian clerics that they have cut all ties with the Russian church. The UOC will “keep living as a true church recognized by the majority of practicing Ukrainian believers and the world’s independent Orthodox churches,” he told the media. Any attempt to ban it will merely tarnish the reputation of the people pushing for it, Clement argued.

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The church is rich. Ukraine is corrupt.

• Ukraine Sells Its Orthodox Heritage Out to West. But Wait, It’s Russian (Sp.)

The Kiev regime tends to view its common religious heritage with Russia as exclusively Ukrainian and sells to the West invaluable Christian artifacts, religion expert Roman Lunkin told Sputnik. Historical and cultural artifacts, including Orthodox icons, are taken out of Ukraine and transferred to Western countries where some of them are sold, according to Roman Lunkin, head of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society of the Institute of Europe at the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS). “It is not rational and not at all ethical to treat the heritage this way,” Lunkin told Sputnik. Last year, the rarest 6th and 7th-century Byzantine icons were secretly transferred from the territory of Ukraine to France under the pretext of safety issues, and then displayed at the Louvre Museum in Paris. All in all,16 invaluable artifacts were brought to France through Poland and Germany.

Still, the crux of the matter is that these Christian Orthodox icons were gifted to the head of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem by the Sinai Monastery of St. Catherine in the mid-19th century, according to Bishop Porfiry, a Russian theologian and byzantinologist. In 1940, the Soviet government transferred the icons to the Kiev Museum of Western and Oriental Art (now known as the Khanenko Museum of Art), where they were kept after the Great Patriotic War. It is unclear whether and when the icons will be returned. On June 26, 2023, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) reported on Kiev’s plans to remove Christian valuables and relics from the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, and send them to Europe under the pretext of “saving them from Russian missile attacks”, despite the fact Russian forces are not targeting civilian facilities, let alone Orthodox holy places.

Still, there is more to the Kiev regime’s readiness to squander its heritage, and the West’s eagerness to keep Ukraine’s Christian valuables under the auspices of the International Alliance for the Protection of Heritage in Conflict Areas (ALIPH), chaired and overseen by US billionaires. Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova last year linked the alleged plot, described by the SVR, as well as the secret removal of Byzantine icons from the Kiev museum, to the old Western colonial trend: “Western countries have stolen national valuables throughout the world, and their museums can be described as the ‘safekeepers’ of valuables stolen from their colonies, as you can see in the Ancient Egypt exhibit in the Louvre or the British Museum… The West has always plundered its colonies. Ukraine is no exception. There is no doubt that no one was going to return the valuables they had taken away from other countries,” Zakharova stressed.

The problem is that the Kiev regime considers this historical and cultural heritage “exclusively Ukrainian”, regardless of its true origin, Lunkin underscored. “Icons that are kept in the [Kiev-Pechersk] Lavra and other museums, including cultural monuments in Ukraine, are the common property of Russian culture and the culture of Kievan Rus, which was created from the moment of the Baptism of Russia more than 1000 years ago. Accordingly, this is the common and inseparable heritage of our countries because it was created at a time when Rus existed, before Ukrainians and Ukraine did. Therefore, it is wrong to call these icons exclusively Ukrainian,” the pundit said. The Kiev-Pechersk Lavra was founded in 1051, during the rule of the Russian Duke Yaroslav the Wise, who reigned in Rostov, Novgorod, and later in Kiev. The Lavra has always been considered part of the common historical and religious heritage of Russians and Ukrainians.

However, in the aftermath of the 2014 coup in Ukraine, which illegitimately brought to power Western-backed nationalist authorities, the Kiev regime doubled down on creating a separate “Ukrainian history” to “appropriate” the Kievan Rus history. In May 2017, then President Petro Poroshenko claimed that Duke Yaroslav and his daughter, Anna, who became Queen of France in 1051 upon marrying King Henry I, were “Ukrainians”, regardless of the fact that this East Slavic ethnic group had not been formed at that time. Volodymyr Zelensky has gone even further, according to Lunkin. In addition to creating a myth about a separate Ukrainian history and a separate Ukrainian Orthodoxy, “the Ukrainian authorities and the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), which they created [in 2018], are trying to separate the saints, who were born on the territory of modern Russia,” the pundit pointed out.

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When Boeing merged with McDonnell Douglas, the entire new company became focused on cost saving. Accountants for engineers.

• Confusion And Chaos At Factory That Built Two Doomed 737 MAX Planes (ZH)

New documents released Thursday reveal that ‘confusion and chaos’ reigned in the company’s Renton factory that built two 737 MAX planes that later crashed, killing 346 people in 2018 and 2019, the Seattle Times reports. According to a prominent whistleblower Ed Pierson, production issues from back then still affect MAX planes flying today. The new documents reveal multiple electrical issues that were discovered as Boeing assembled the Ethiopian Airlines jet that crashed in 2019. The Times notes that in 2018, the FAA found that employees in another Boeing facility in Everett, WA – where electrical components for integration – had been pushed to move to fast, and produced defective pieces. Communications between Boeing and Ethiopian Airlines show the plane that later crashed experienced an in-flight safety incident months before the fatal accident. Boeing told the airline that the December 2018 incident was likely the result of an electrical error, the records show.

The whistleblower, Pierson, said the records and the earlier safety incident bolster his view that the deadly crash of the Ethiopian jet may have been initiated by an electrical problem. That problem traces back to production issues with electrical wire bundles that Pierson has highlighted. Pierson, who worked at Boeing for more than a decade and served as a senior manager coordinating fixes for assembly problems on the 737 program, released the new documents through an advocacy group he formed after the crashes, the Foundation for Aviation Safety – and said that Boeing withheld the documents from regulatory investigators looking into the two deadly crashes. Following the deadly incidents, he repeatedly alleged that manufacturing defects played a role. The FAA, NTSB, and international regulators are in disagreement over the cause.

In both crashes, an error with then-new software — the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System or MCAS — caused the plane to nosedive. Boeing recently pleaded guilty to misleading safety regulators about MCAS and how much training pilots would need to fly safely. In the case of the Ethiopian crash, the NTSB and its French counterpart concluded that it wasn’t an electrical error but a bird strike damaging a sensor that likely triggered the MCAS software. The U.S. agency disputed a report from Ethiopian authorities that said the sensor was triggered by “production quality defects.” Pierson sent the newly disclosed records to the NTSB, the FAA and the Department of Justice in July, he said. Meanwhile, the FAA and NTSB are playing hot potato over the new documents, and have suggested that questions should be directed to Ethiopian authorities.

Boeing, in a statement, said that it “fully cooperated and provided relevant information to the investigation” regarding the Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 crash, adding “We defer to the investigative agencies for further information.” The new documents also reveal that from communications between Boeing and Ethiopian Airlines, in December 2018, the airline’s 737 MAX experienced an “uncommanded roll”—a situation where the plane rolls unexpectedly, potentially disorienting the pilot and risking loss of control. This incident occurred just weeks after Ethiopian Airlines took delivery of the aircraft, and only a few months before it tragically crashed, killing all onboard.

Boeing’s communication with the airline at the time indicated that the uncommanded roll was likely caused by an electrical fault. The company advised Ethiopian Airlines to inspect the plane’s wiring for issues, raising questions about the broader electrical integrity of the 737 MAX fleet. Further complicating matters, the Foundation for Aviation Safety released a copy of Boeing’s Shipside Action Tracker from the 2018 production of the ill-fated Ethiopian Airlines plane. This internal database, used by Boeing to document and resolve issues during aircraft assembly, revealed a series of misinstalled and mislabeled electrical components. The records also pointed to significant miscommunication among Boeing employees regarding the work performed on the aircraft.

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Power of Siberia.

• Tale of Two Pipelines… Europe Loses, China Gains (SCF)

The Power of Siberia pipelines transporting natural gas from Russia to China were back in the news this week, as was the ill-fated Nord Stream pipeline, the Russian-European counterpart. First, it was announced the Power of Siberia 2 was on track for completion this year. When operational, the new pipeline will augment existing trans-Siberian delivery to China, bringing the total gas supply from Russia to 100 billion cubic meters per year. That awesome gas supply figure is significant. For not too long it was projected that the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines would have a combined capacity to deliver 100 bcm to Europe. Alas, that energy project was sabotaged in September 2022 when the gas pipes were blown up on the Baltic seabed.

Veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh and other writers have provided the most compelling account of the sabotage. It was carried out by American military and CIA operatives with the approval of President Joe Biden. See our weekly editorial published on September 30, 2022, days after the incident in which we outlined strong evidence inculpating Washington. It was an audacious act of international state terrorism carried out by the Americans to destroy the decades-old energy trade between Russia and Europe. In particular, Germany’s postwar economic prowess was powered by relatively cheap and abundant Russian hydrocarbons. Now, the United States has stepped in as a supplier of much more expensive Liquefied Natural Gas to Europe. Incredibly, no serious investigation has been carried out by European states to find the culprit.

Russia, which was the main owner of the multi-billion euro project, has offered to cooperate with European states to investigate the blast, but all of Moscow’s offers have been rebuffed. You could hardly make this criminal farce up. For years, the Americans enviously griped about Russia being the strategic energy supplier to Europe. With the escalation of the proxy war against Russia in Ukraine in February 2022, the Americans and their European NATO lackeys had a convenient pretext for blowing up the Nord Stream pipes. The net result is that Germany’s economy – once the powerhouse of the European Union – has been dragged to its knees from the loss of its vital energy input from Russia. Germany is teetering on recession and its famed export-led industries are no longer competitive.

Yet despite this blatant crime, the political establishments in Germany and other countries directly affected by the Nord Stream vandalism – Sweden and Denmark – remain pathetically beholden to Washington. Two years after a huge transgression against Europe and Russia by the obvious culprit, the European authorities have dissembled and procrastinated. Last week, Germany issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian diver whom it claims was involved in the undersea attack. This is a variant of previous claims in the American media that the Nord Stream sabotage was carried out by Ukrainian operatives. This narrative is absurd and an obvious distraction from the real story. There is no way that such a difficult operation could have been achieved by a bunch of amateurs. The Nord Stream sabotage required state-level expertise. The Americans also had an imperative motive – to force their way into the lucrative European energy market.

All of this is a tragicomedy. Russia’s fair and advantageous services have been perversely spurned by Europeans under the malign spell of American overseers. The European governments and media can’t even muster the courage or independence to conduct a proper investigation into the wanton destruction of their economies. However, Russia has not been deterred or undermined. Far from it, unlike Germany and other recession-hit European states, Russia is growing at a robust rate. A large part of the benefit stems from the Russian energy trade now being directed to Asia. China is gaining where Europe lost. The expanding Power of Siberia projects represent the loss of Nord Stream.

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We know why this is happening. Insulting Kamala is not tolerated.

• US House Oversight Asks TSA Why Tulsi Gabbard Is on Terror Watchlist (Sp.)

US House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer sent a letter on Friday to Transportation Security Administration (TSA) chief David Pekoske regarding whistleblower allegations that the agency placed former US Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard on a terror watchlist. A whistleblower from the Federal Air Marshals Service (FAMS) disclosed to Congress that the TSA allegedly targeted Gabbard under its Quiet Skies program, which is designed to mitigate threats posed by higher risk passengers, the letter said. The TSA added Gabbard to the Quiet Skies program on July 23, 2024 – one day after she criticized the Biden administration in an interview, the letter said. A whistleblower also disclosed that his wife was targeted with “special mission coverage” because she attended former US President Donald Trump’s January 6, 2021 speech in Washington, but was “nowhere near” the US Capitol that day, the letter said.

Moreover, the whistleblower claims that the TSA classified the protected disclosures as a leak and initiated a retaliatory investigation. “It is alarming that TSA is wasting its resources to surveil an air marshal’s wife and Ms. Gabbard – a high-profile, American public figure – when the threat of terrorist attacks on the United States is high,” the letter said. The letter requests information from TSA on actions taken with respect to employees linked to the disclosures regarding Gabbard and the air marshal’s wife, as well as all information related to Gabbard and the Quiet Skies program. The letter also requests a briefing for committee staff no later than August 30.

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“..My objection, and that of many others, is to male violence against women becoming an Olympic sport.”

• JK Rowling Reportedly Sued by Olympic Boxer Over Gender Criticism (Turley)

We have previously discussed the cancel campaigns targeting JK Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series. Rowling was not only the greatest selling author of all time but a wildly popular writer until she publicly opposed certain transgender policies as inimical to the advances in feminism. Now, she is the target of a lawsuit by Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, the gold-medal winning athlete who had previously failed a gender test to confirm that she is a female fighter. We previously discussed that global debate, but Khelif is now accusing Rowling out of many thousands of critics of being a cyberbully. X owner Elon Musk has also been named in the lawsuit. Rowling has been the target of a global campaign due to her rejection of transgender laws and policies. Many on the left have unleashed book bans and burnings. I have been critical of that campaign.

Even third parties who have supported Rowling’s right to free speech have been targeted in cancel campaigns. She held her ground after Scotland passed a draconian law, the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021. The new crime under the law covers “stirring up hatred” relating to age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity or being intersex. That crime covers insulting comments and anything “that a reasonable person would consider to be threatening or abusive.” Rowling previously posted various responses to the controversy on her X account on August 7, including: “For the record, bombarding me with pictures of athletic women to ‘teach’ me that women don’t all look like Barbie is like spamming me with pics of differently-shaped potatoes to prove rocks are edible. I can still see the difference and you look frankly bonkers.”

She later also posted: “Commentators pretending critics of the IOC’s reliance on documents rather than sex testing think Khelif is trans are straw-manning. I don’t claim Khelif is trans. My objection, and that of many others, is to male violence against women becoming an Olympic sport.” She further wrote on X how she was concerned over both boxers challenged over their gender at the Olympics: “What will it take to end this insanity? A female boxer left with life-altering injuries? A female boxer killed?” France has eviscerated free speech protections over the last few decades with speech criminalization laws. There is some question whether the French laws would apply to tweets made outside of the country. These laws criminalize speech under vague standards referring to “inciting” or “intimidating” others based on race or religion. For example, fashion designer John Galliano has been found guilty in a French court on charges of making anti-Semitic comments against at least three people in a Paris bar.

At his sentencing, Judge Anne Marie Sauteraud read out a list of the bad words used by Galliano to Geraldine Bloch and Philippe Virgitti, including using ‘dirty whore” in criticism. In another case, the father of French conservative presidential candidate Marine Le Pen was fined because he had called people from the Roma minority “smelly.” A French teenager was charged for criticizing Islam as a “religion of hate.” The question of the extraterritorial application of such laws is the question. Conversely, the United Kingdom and the European Union are asserting the right to regulate speech in any country, including political speech in American presidential elections. Rowling has every right to be heard on the Olympic boxing controversy. This debate raises core issues that touch on a wide array of political speech. Khelif has the ability to refute these claims through the exercise of her own free speech. As in the past battles fought by Rowley, her effort to advocate for women’s rights is also a major test over free speech in Europe.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Legend

 

 

 

 

Tantrum

 

 

Rottweiler

 

 

Caprice No. 24 Paganini
https://twitter.com/i/status/1826647804141601268

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle August 22 2024

Aug 222024
 
 August 22, 2024  Posted by at 9:13 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  57 Responses »


Salvador Dali Landscape with butterflies 1956

 

• Trump Defeats Harris By Landslide In Musk’s Poll On X (RT)
• Polling Showing Harris In Lead Flagged By Industry Experts (JTN)
• RFK Jr To Endorse Trump On Friday Morning (ZH)
• Two Minutes of Hate: Unhinged Attack Montage On Loop At The DNC (DB)
• Biden, Harris Have No Strategy for Ukraine, Trump Does – Congressman (Sp.)
• No, Biden and Harris’ Border Crisis Is Not Over (ZH)
• Biden’s Aides ‘Hid His Decline’ – WaPo (RT)
• Justice Department Steps In for Trump in George Floyd Protests Case (ET)
• West Risking WWIII – Salvini (RT)
• US Could Charge, Search More Americans Tied To Russian State News (Sp.)
• Germans Lying About Nord Stream Exchange – Moscow (RT)
• Biden’s Desperation for ‘Foreign Policy Win’ (Sp.)
• Biden Approved New Nuclear Strategy Refocusing on ‘Chinese Threat’ (Sp.)
• Beijing Has ‘No Intention’ Of Nuclear Arms Race With US – FM (RT)
• X’s New Gun Emoji Fights ‘Woke Mind Virus’ – Musk (RT)

 

 

 

 

Flynn

 

 

Trump bullet
https://twitter.com/i/status/1825911229035978756

 

 

Transfer
https://twitter.com/i/status/1826061624303825233

 

 

Sachs
https://twitter.com/i/status/1826137316135461335

 

 

Joan Rivers

 

 

Beck

 

 


Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, July 31, 2024 © Getty Images / Stephanie Keith

 

 

 

 

“Since a lot of people have asked, here goes a super unscientific poll..”

• Trump Defeats Harris By Landslide In Musk’s Poll On X (RT)

Former US President and Republican nominee Donald Trump has resoundingly trounced his Democrat competitor for the November election, Kamala Harris, in a poll which billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk ran on X (formerly Twitter). Vice President Harris accepted her party’s official nomination earlier in August after President Joe Biden announced he was dropping out of the race; she later tapped Minnesota Governor Tim Walz to be her running mate. On Tuesday, Elon Musk ran his own, smaller election on X. “Since a lot of people have asked, here goes a super unscientific poll,” the billionaire posted on his account. According to the results as of Wednesday, out of the 5.8 million votes, almost three quarters would vote for Trump in November, while more than a quarter would see Harris elected.

Earlier this month, the Republican nominee told Reuters that he would consider the billionaire and tech entrepreneur for a role in his administration, when asked whether he would take Musk for an advisory or cabinet job. “If he would do it, I certainly would. He’s a brilliant guy,” he said. Musk, replying later on X, wrote that he is “willing to serve.” Last week Elon Musk interviewed former US President Donald Trump on Spaces. They engaged in what Musk said was an “unscripted” dialogue with “no limits”; the interview has garnered more than 275 million views to date.

Trump called Harris “third rate,” “incompetent” and a “left lunatic” during the talk. The Harris campaign issued a fiery response to Trump’s two-hour Musk interview denouncing the Republican candidate’s “extremism and dangerous agenda.” She also slammed “self-obsessed rich guys who cannot run a livestream in the year 2024” as the talk was marred by technical issues. According to Musk, the stream was attacked by a large-scale DDoS (dedicated denial of service) attack, leading to technical problems. According to set of polling averages posted by The New York Times, as of Wednesday, Harris leads Trump by two percent in two swing states: Wisconsin and Michigan. Meanwhile, Trump leads by four percent in Georgia, with both candidates are about even in Arizona and Pennsylvania, according to the newspaper’s poll collation data.

Read more …

But is Musk’s poll really that more unscientific than, say, the NYT’s?

“So what they’re doing is they’re polling fewer Republicans. They’re polling a disproportionate number of Biden 2020 voters in these states that were dead even..”

“..most voters strongly oppose the idea of letting biological males compete in women’s sports..” [..] hardly anybody knows that Vice President Harris is a strong advocate of letting those biological males compete in women’s sports.”

“RealClearPolitics currently projects Trump to win 287 electoral votes to Harris’s 251 based on its state-by-state averages..”

• Polling Showing Harris In Lead Flagged By Industry Experts (JTN)

Vice President Kamala Harris has enjoyed a noticeable surge in the polls – particularly national polls – since becoming the Democratic standard bearer, but the rapid shift in her position has left some industry analysts questioning the apparent boost in the formerly quite unpopular vice president’s standing. In her 2020 run, she struggled to break 3% before dropping out, according to The Hill. Prior to becoming the Democratic nominee, Harris suffered from decidedly poor approval ratings and Trump initially held the lead over her in a head-to-head matchup. The average quickly flipped, however, in the wake of several surveys showing Harris ahead. Those surveys, however, have attracted scrutiny from an array of pollsters either due to their lack of transparency about the sampling methodology or from oversampling Democrats. “So what they’re doing is they’re polling fewer Republicans. They’re polling a disproportionate number of Biden 2020 voters in these states that were dead even,” pollster John McLaughlin said this week [..]

“They’re saying the Biden 2020 voters should be four or five points higher. It’s ridiculous. So what they’re doing is they’re trying to pump Harris up. They’re trying to suppress our vote. And this is, you know, there’s smart people doing this, so I think it’s intentional.” Harris currently leads Trump by 1.5% in the RealClearPolitics polling average, with 48.2% support to his 46.7%. She leads by the same margin in a five-way race including the Green Party’s Jill Stein and independents Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and [..] Cornel West. At present, the only polls showing Trump ahead in the two-way race average come from Fox News, Rasmussen Reports, and CNBC. All others show Harris with a one-to-four-point lead. Trump led Harris in the RCP average until Aug. 5 and has not reclaimed the lead since. Neither RCP average includes survey data from McLaughlin & Associates.

After Harris became the de facto Democratic nominee, Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio distributed a memo forecasting a so-called “Harris Honeymoon” in which the vice president would see a surge in the polls due to an uptick in favorable coverage. “The coverage will be largely positive and will certainly energize Democrats and some other parts of their coalition at least in the short term. That means we will start to see public polling – particularly national public polls – where Harris is gaining on or even leading President Trump,” Fabrizio wrote in late July. Fabrizio also asserted that the electorate’s positions on critical issues such as inflation, crime, and inflation, were unlikely to change with the Democratic ticket, saying “the fundamentals of the race stay the same.” [..] pollster Scott Rasmussen called the polling boost a “sugar high” and concurred with Fabrizio based on his own data that voter opinions on issues appeared split from their opinion of the topline candidates.

He further insisted that voters remained largely ignorant of Harris’s actual positions and that increased awareness of her stances on key issues could sway the electorate. Even famed Democratic pollster and campaign veteran James Carville warned Democrats about their “giddy elation” over Vice President Harris’s presidential campaign. “It’s very much a sugar high… Right now, when we look at all the issues and we ask what voters know about Vice President Harris? Well, they know that she’s very pro-choice on abortion. They don’t really know anything else about her,” Rasmussen said. “One of the issues we’ve highlighted because of the events of last week in the Olympics is that most voters strongly oppose the idea of letting biological males compete in women’s sports,” he went on. “In fact, only 21% of Harris’s voters – her own supporters think that should be allowed, and yet hardly anybody knows that Vice President Harris is a strong advocate of letting those biological males compete in women’s sports.”

[..] A critical factor in determining a poll’s final results are the characteristics of the survey group and how closely they align with the broader population. The Washington Post released a survey last week in conjunction with ABC News and Ipsos. The topline figure showed Harris with a four-point lead over Trump, 49% to 45%, representing one of the largest Harris leads of recent surveys. In the five-way race, Harris led by three points. The survey questioned 2,336 U.S. adults, including 1,975 registered voters, from Aug. 9-13. The registered voter sample featured a +/- 2% margin of error. Notably, the survey did not release the demographic questions about the sample. The sample came from the KnowledgePanel, which the poll says matched “U.S. population benchmarks” for myriad demographic characteristics based on the March 2023 population survey from the Census Bureau.

“When you saw the Washington Post Ipsos poll, there’s no transparency,” McLaughlin said. “They say it’s weighted according to the census. It’s picked from their in-house panel, and it’s all done online, and there’s an obvious bias.” The survey did not disclose a breakdown of respondents by party affiliation. Statewide polling, moreover, has also been difficult for Trump, albeit to a lesser extent. Exit polls from the 2020 election may provide a benchmark for estimating the partisan affiliations of voters. But at least some surveys have deviated significantly from that breakdown and crafted survey groups that overrepresent Democrats or under-represent Republicans. “And you’re seeing polls like, for example, like the New York Times… their Siena polls over the weekend, where in Georgia… CNN exit polls in 2020 had 38% Republicans, this [is] 5% fewer Republicans… in the New York Times/Siena poll,” McLaughlin said.

Thirty-three percent of respondents in the NYT/Siena College poll’s Georgia survey self-identified as Republicans. Trump led Harris 50% to 46% in the Peach State’s polling results. “[S]ame thing in North Carolina, 5% fewer Republicans,” he went on. That iteration of the NYT/Siena survey showed Harris leading Trump in the Old North State 49% to 47% and was an outlier among North Carolina surveys in the RealClearPolitics polling average. “Michigan… They [were] 38% in the 2020 exit polls, Republicans, their poll it’s 29. Now nine fewer,” he added. The latest NYT/Siena survey in Michigan shows Harris with a four-point lead of 50% to 46% in the Wolverine State. That survey also saw only 27% of registered voters self-identify as Republicans in Michigan. In Wisconsin, the 2020 exit polls had 37% Republicans. In the recent New York Times poll, Siena had 27% Republican. Ten points fewer,” he also said. Harris led Trump with 50% to 46% in the state.

[..] RealClearPolitics currently projects Trump to win 287 electoral votes to Harris’s 251 based on its state-by-state averages, several of which show only single-digit margins for either candidate. That no-toss-ups projection currently shows Trump winning Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona. Harris currently leads in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Virginia. A majority of 270 electoral votes is required to elect the President.

Read more …

“..with some speculating that RFK would make a great head of Trump’s CIA..”

• RFK Jr To Endorse Trump On Friday Morning (ZH)

As we speculated earlier, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. indeed plans to end his independent presidential campaign and endorse former President Donald Trump, NBC news reported citing two sources familiar with the plans. The sources cautioned that talks are ongoing, but there will be clarity by the end of the week. One of the sources said the campaigns are working toward a joint appearance. The decision to drop out will end the most prominent third-party candidacy in the 2024 race. Kennedy announced Wednesday that he will give a campaign speech addressing “his path forward,” days after his running mate said the campaign faced a choice about staying in the 2024 election or dropping out to back Donald Trump. Kennedy’s campaign announced he will hold the event in Phoenix on Friday. Trump, meanwhile, is also set to host an event on Friday night, in Glendale, a Phoenix suburb.

Nicole Shanahan, Kennedy’s running mate, said Tuesday that the ticket was weighing two options. One was to stay in the race and “risk” a Harris-Walz presidency, as she put it in a podcast interview, while the other option was to drop out of the race and “join forces” with Trump. Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, told NBC News in an interview Wednesday that “there’s been a lot of communication back and forth” between Kennedy and his campaign. “I haven’t spoken to RFK personally, but I know there’s been a lot of communication back and forth between RFK, between the campaign, between this campaign,” Vance said. “Look, our argument to RFK, and I’ll make it right now, because, of course, he hasn’t dropped out yet, is, look: If you want a Democratic Party that protected American workers and stood for strong borders, maybe disagreed with Republicans on things like tax policy, that party doesn’t exist anymore.”

* * *
Amid a flurry of speculation that he will endorse Donald Trump (following news reports – which he since denied – that he failed to clinch a cabinet job with Kamala Harris in exchange for his endorsement there), Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. said he will make a speech in Phoenix on Friday, his campaign announced, as the independent presidential candidate considers whether to drop out of the race and endorse former President Donald Trump. The campaign said Kennedy will “address the nation” Friday morning, without sharing details of what he will be speaking about. Kennedy’s speech will come days after his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, said in a podcast interview on Tuesday that the campaign is considering whether to “join forces” with Trump to prevent the “risk” of Vice President Kamala Harris winning the election.

Overnight, in an interview Trump said that he would certainly consider a cabinet position for RFK Jr in exchange for an endorsement. “I would love that endorsement because I’ve always liked him” Trump said. Then when asked if he would also consider adding him to the administration, Trump responded that “I like him a lot I respect him a lot uh I probably would if something like that would happen… He’s very different kind of a guy, very smart guy, and yeah I would be honored by that endorsement certainly.” “He’s a brilliant guy he’s a very smart guy I’ve known him for a long time I didn’t know he was thinking about getting out but if he is thinking about getting out certainly I’d be open to it” On Friday we will learn if RFK Jr is also open to it, with some speculating that RFK would make a great head of Trump’s CIA, which would be ironic considering what the CIA did to JFK…

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“The profanity laden video depicts political opponents as cockroaches (could you imagine the reaction if a conservative made that comparison?), and sprinkles in sexualized images, including Elon Musk deep throating a phallic object labeled “MAGAsickle”.”

• Two Minutes of Hate: Unhinged Attack Montage On Loop At The DNC (DB)

In George Orwell’s prophetic and seminal work, 1984, the Two Minutes of Hate was a daily ritual of operant conditioning, in which a video reel depicting enemies of the state was broadcast throughout society with the express aim of whipping the masses into a frenetic state of loathing towards anyone who opposed Big Brother. Since the appearance of the “Dark Brandon” entity, the non-brainwashed have been wary of the nasty turn politics has taken in the United States, and elsewhere. If four years of unhinged Trump Derangement Syndrome from the MSM wasn’t enough, now the President and incumbent party was channeling unrestrained animus at roughly half the U.S. population. While constantly professing to be the party for “preserving democracy” and “inclusivity”, the US Democratic Party is channeling ominous and blatant overtones of repression, dare I say, even hatred toward their fellow citizens who may not be so like-minded. So far the Democratic National Convention has been a dumpster fire of cringe, disrespect and hypocrisy but one takeaway, posted on twitter takes the cake:

The profanity laden video depicts political opponents as cockroaches (could you imagine the reaction if a conservative made that comparison?), and sprinkles in sexualized images, including Elon Musk deep throating a phallic object labeled “MAGAsickle”. If there was any doubt that the Democratic Party has been captured by far-left lunatics, the big takeaways were:

• America is evil (MAGA literally stands for restoring the country to its former grandeur)
• Wealth is evil (“F*CK BILLIONAIRES”), and
• Literal communism (“REDISTRIBUTE THAT SHIT”)

(Hypothetically speaking, should the Dems win in November, how soon would you think that “B” gets swapped out for an “M”?) In case you were wondering what you’re really voting for if you tick the box for the Dems this November – it’s looks like some kind of deranged mutation of Orwell’s 1984 and Ayn Rand’s “We The Living”, replete with wealth redistribution and re-education camps. Remember – it’s always relatively easy to vote your way into communism – but you have to fight your way out.

Read more …

“It is rare for a Republican congressman to attend the Democratic National Convention. On his Instagram* page, Waltz joked that “Green Berets go behind enemy lines.”

• Biden, Harris Have No Strategy for Ukraine, Trump Does – Congressman (Sp.)

The administration of US President Joe Biden and Kamala Harris has suffered a failure due to the absence of a strategy for the Ukrainian conflict, member of the US House Committee on Armed Services Michael Waltz (R-FL) told RIA Novosti on the sidelines of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. “We have yet, and I have asked publicly, privately and even in classified settings to really get a strategy out of this administration. And I think it’s been a real shortcoming,” Waltz said, speaking about the current administration’s lack of a strategy for Ukraine. In contrast, US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump does have a strategy to urge Russia and Ukraine to sit down to the negotiating table to end the Ukrainian conflict.

“He’s made it clear that he will tell the Ukrainian government they need to come to the table or that’s it. So I think he has an overall strategy in mind to get both sides to the table in a reasonable way to diplomatic talks to bring this to a resolution,” Waltz said when asked about Trump’s ability to help end the conflict in Ukraine. It is rare for a Republican congressman to attend the Democratic National Convention. On his Instagram* page, Waltz joked that “Green Berets go behind enemy lines.” Waltz is a Retired colonel in the US National Guard and served in combat as a member of the US Army Special Forces, colloquially known as the “Green Berets.”

The Kyiv Independent, citing a source close to Volodymyr Zelensky, reported Wednesday that the Ukrainian authorities want to prepare the ground this fall for potential peace talks with Russia. Russia has been conducting a special military operation in Ukraine since February 24, 2022. President Vladimir Putin has said the operation aims to “protect people subjected to genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years.” According to the president, the ultimate goal of the operation is to liberate Donbas and create conditions that guarantee Russia’s security.

Read more …

“.. the millions they have already allowed into our country have done damage that will take decades to remedy.”

• No, Biden and Harris’ Border Crisis Is Not Over (ZH)

Ever since early 2021, Americans have watched as illegal aliens have flooded across the Southwest border unimpeded. They have read with horror the accounts of innocent Americans victimized by those here unlawfully. They have seen family and friends die after being poisoned by fentanyl coming across the border. And the Biden-Harris administration has largely done nothing. Yet now, following a few months of somewhat-reduced numbers of apprehensions between ports of entry along the Southwest border, the Biden-Harris administration is taking a victory lap. Such premature celebration, however, ignores the reality of the continuing nature of this crisis. Before explaining why, Americans must understand that even if not one more inadmissible alien crossed our borders for the remainder of Biden and Harris’ term, the millions they have already allowed into our country have done damage that will take decades to remedy.

For many families, like those of Laken Riley, Rachel Morin, and Jocelyn Nungaray, the damage can never be undone. But if Biden and Harris want to talk about numbers, the president and his “border czar” will find no exoneration. On their watch, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has recorded more than 10 million encounters nationwide, plus another two million known “gotaways” who have crossed our borders uncaught. Many on the left like to appeal to the history of Ellis Island as an excuse for mass immigration – despite the fact that these individuals arrived in accordance with then-existing law. However, the number of people who came through Ellis Island was also roughly 12 million – in the 62 years between 1892 and 1954. The number of inadmissible aliens who have been encountered at our borders or crossed uncaught since the start of Fiscal Year (FY) 2021 is unprecedented.

Claiming victory now due to temporarily reduced border crossings displays a willful ignorance of the nature of this ongoing crisis, because these numbers alone do not tell the full story of what Americans are experiencing. First, there are the continuing financial impacts. As of mid-June 2024, more than 205,000 illegal aliens had arrived in New York City since the spring of 2022. Mayor Eric Adams has declared that these arrivals and the resultant costs “will destroy New York City.” Small towns will also be struggling for years with the consequences of unchecked crossings. Springfield, Ohio, home to 60,000 people, has seen roughly 20,000 Haitians arrive since the crisis began, putting major strain on housing and other services.

Whitewater, Wisconsin, a town of just 15,000 people, has been overwhelmed by the arrival of 1,000 illegal aliens “often lacking basic English skills.” According to one official in Sanford, Maine last year, “We’re tapped. … We’ve been overrun,” after costs to care for illegal aliens tripled. DHS has reported that more than 80% of illegal aliens who are “neither expelled or repatriated directly by CBP nor continuously detained by ICE” remain in the United States years later. These communities, and thousands more like them, are going to be dealing with these costs for years. Second, consider the ongoing public safety implications of what’s happening at the Southwest border. Border Patrol arrests of illegal aliens with criminal histories since FY2021 have more than doubled from FY2017-2020.

Worse, criminals and individuals with possible ties to terrorism have been, and continue to be, released into the interior. In fact, news recently broke that the Biden-Harris administration actually released into the interior 99 individuals whom they knew were on the terrorist watchlist. According to one DHS source, ICE officials have been “discouraged from deporting even illegal immigrants who had final deportation orders and were linked to gangs.” Former ICE Field Director John Fabbricatore has said, “I was being forced to release people that should not have been allowed on the street.” How many other threats to our safety and security have likewise been unwittingly released or entered as gotaways? How many more, who either did not commit crimes in their home country or were never caught, will do so for the first time against American victims?

Read more …

“..the Democrats’ platform still promises “a second Biden term,” mentioning him 287 times over its 92 pages, while Harris is brought up only 32 times..”

• Biden’s Aides ‘Hid His Decline’ – WaPo (RT)

US President Joe Biden should not have sought reelection to begin with, but his staff concealed his infirmity until they could no longer do so, the Washington Post editorial board has said. The Post made the admission in an editorial on Tuesday, which praised Biden’s “profoundly selfless decision” to drop out of the race and let the Democrats replace him with Kamala Harris. “In retrospect, Mr Biden should not have sought reelection. The June 27 debate was worse than just a bad night, as the president maintained afterward. The 81-year-old had shown signs of slipping for a long time, but his inner circle worked to conceal his decline,” the Post editors wrote. The US would have been better off, they argued, had he bowed out after the “surprisingly good showing” of the Democrats in the 2022 midterms. Had he stayed in the race, they continued, “a diminished Mr Biden, at the head of a dispirited party, would likely have lost in November.”

According to the Post, Biden “deserves recognition” for surrendering power and giving a chance to a new generation of leaders, “albeit via internal party machinations rather than the ballot box.” Biden may have exited the race but he remains president through January, the outlet noted, and the Democrats’ platform still promises “a second Biden term,” mentioning him 287 times over its 92 pages, while Harris is brought up only 32 times. The oldest-ever US president at inauguration, Biden was already dogged by claims of senility and dementia during the 2020 campaign. His physical and cognitive decline has only grown while in office, only to be dismissed by White House staff – and most of the legacy media – as the remnants of a childhood stutter. The president was “sharp as a tack,” his supporters continued to argue even after the June 27 debate. Biden vowed that only God could make him quit.

In mid-July, however, he was flown out of Las Vegas to his Delaware home, reportedly with Covid-19. At the end of that week, a letter posted on his personal X (formerly Twitter) account announced his exit from the presidential race. In a follow-up post, the same account endorsed Harris as Biden’s replacement. Insider sources credited former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, for this turn of events. “They staged a coup against the president of the United States,” former president and current Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, told Fox News in early August. “It’s like you’re in a fight with somebody, and you’re really winning, and they take him out and they put somebody else in,” he continued. “Nobody ever heard of this before. This is a coup.”

Read more …

“..the United States shall be substituted as the defendant with respect to those claims.”

• Justice Department Steps In for Trump in George Floyd Protests Case (ET)

The Justice Department has intervened for former President Donald Trump, asking a federal court in Washington to dismiss a civil complaint brought over a clash between protestors and police that took place in the city following George Floyd’s death. Black Lives Matter D.C. and others brought the original lawsuit in June 2020, just days after police used crowd control tactics in Lafayette Square before Trump was set to appear at a nearby church. The case has seen court filings for years, with a group of plaintiffs filing an amended complaint in April this year. On Aug. 19, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a notice that it was substituting itself for Trump because he was acting within the scope of his office that day. Its decision was based on the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA).

In its notice, the DOJ said the law “provides that upon certification by the attorney general that a federal employee was acting within the scope of his office or employment at the time of the incident out of which the plaintiff’s claim arose, any civil action or proceeding commenced upon such a claim and arising under state law shall be deemed an action against the United States, and the United States shall be substituted as the defendant with respect to those claims.” James G. Touhey, who leads the torts branch of DOJ’s civil division, certified that Trump “was an employee of the government acting in the scope of office or employment at the time of the incident out of which the plaintiffs’ claims arose.” The amended complaint had named Trump in his individual capacity and requested damages.

It alleged Trump was liable for intentional infliction of emotional distress, assault, battery, and negligence in purported violation of a district law surrounding free speech. A separate motion to dismiss, also filed on Aug. 19, argued that the court lacked subject matter jurisdiction over the plaintiffs’ claims because they failed to exhaust administrative remedies. It added that the plaintiffs had failed to show that their claims fell within the limited waiver of sovereign immunity offered by the FTCA. The complaint alleged that the agencies involved with the suit had failed to respond within a six-month timeframe specified under the FTCA. “Plaintiffs have therefore exhausted their administrative remedies under the FTCA,” the complaint read.

Read more …

“I strongly ask for a vote against the war, to isolate dangerous bombers like Macron..”

• West Risking WWIII – Salvini (RT)

Ukraine’s Western backers could trigger World War III by providing Kiev with weapons that can be used to strike targets on Russian soil, Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini has said. Russian officials have claimed that the Ukrainian military has been using Western-supplied weapons in their incursion in Kursk Region. Several Western media outlets have published articles with similar claims of late. A number of Kiev’s backers have also publicly given the green light to use the weapons they have provided on Russian soil. Speaking to Il Sussidiario media outlet on Wednesday, Salvini, who is also the minister of infrastructure and transport and leads the Lega Nord (Northern League) party, said the “sending of weapons to strike and kill also on Russian territory would be a disaster, the antechamber of a dramatic world conflict.”

The deputy prime minister added that his right-wing party has nothing against providing “humanitarian and military aid to give Ukraine the possibility to defend itself.” Ahead of the European Parliament elections in June, Salvini urged Italians to not let left-wing parties win, as they, together with French President Emmanuel Macron, would make the prospect of a third world war dangerously real. “I strongly ask for a vote against the war, to isolate dangerous bombers like Macron,” he said at the time. Salvini also praised the Italian government for its firm position against those in Europe who speak about potentially deploying Western troops to Ukraine, having previously criticized the French president for refusing to rule this out. The deputy prime minister also stated in June that “we will no longer approve sending any type of weapon unless we have the certainty that those weapons will not be used to attack and kill inside Russia.”

“It would be the incident that takes us straight towards the Third World War,” he said at the time. In late May, Defense Minister Guido Crosetto cited the Italian constitution, stressing that the weapons Italy supplies to Ukraine can only be used within the territory of the country. Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani echoed this, telling reporters: “we are not fighting against Russia. We are defending Ukraine, [it] is not the same.” Around the same time, Salvini described NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg as a “dangerous gentleman” after he proposed allowing Kiev to strike targets deep inside Russia with Western weapons. Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, too, expressed incredulity as to “why Stoltenberg said such a thing.”

Read more …

Ritter.

• US Could Charge, Search More Americans Tied To Russian State News (Sp.)

The US Justice Department could conduct further searches and bring criminal charges against Americans who have worked with Russian state television networks, The New York Times reported, citing US officials briefed on the matter. Earlier this month, FBI agents conducted searches at the homes of former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter and journalist Dimitri Simes. However, prosecutors have not revealed any criminal charges against the two men. Investigators are expected to conduct more searches soon and prosecutors could also bring criminal charges, the report said. The Biden administration has alleged that Russian state news organizations are working with the country’s intelligence agencies to influence elections worldwide. The investigations have focused on possible violations of the sanctions regime imposed on Russia and a law mandating the disclosure of foreign government lobbying efforts, the report said.

Ritter said that he believes the search of his home was an “act of intimidation” triggered by his cooperation with Russian news organizations like Sputnik and RT. Ritter said that he has not committed any crimes and denied accusations that he is acting as a foreign agent. Ritter told Sputnik that his passport was likely confiscated by authorities in connection with the FBI investigation. Simes told Sputnik that he was not notified in advance of the search of his property and that he has not been in the United States since October 2022. Consequently, there is nothing at the property related to his current life and activities, he said. Simes also said that the US government is possibly attempting to dissuade him from coming back to the United States and block any attempt to have a Russian-American dialogue.

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“..Germany is also persecuting media outlets that are actually trying to discover what happened..”

• Germans Lying About Nord Stream Exchange – Moscow (RT)

Berlin has not provided Moscow with any actual information about the attacks on the Nord Stream gas pipelines in 2022, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said The pipelines which ran under the Baltic Sea were used to transport Russian natural gas to Germany and other parts of Western Europe. They were damaged in September 2022 by a series of explosions near the Danish island of Bornholm. Russia has accused the US of orchestrating the attack, while some media in the West have blamed a “pro-Ukrainian group.” Earlier this week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused Germany of refusing to officially share information about the investigation, suggesting that leaking it to the media instead raises “suspicions that all of this is staged” to deflect blame from the actual culprits.

German Foreign Ministry spokesman Sebastian Fischer responded on Monday that Berlin has engaged “in information exchange” with Moscow. Speaking on Wednesday, Zakharova accused him of lying. “What Mr. Fischer said does not correspond to reality at all,” Zakharova told reporters. “Simply put, it is a lie. For almost two years, the German side has responded to all inquiries from Russian authorities regarding the destruction of the Nord Streams with only empty formalities that contained no factual information.” Fischer’s statement “only strengthens our suspicions of Berlin’s intention to ‘blow up’ the investigation, which is being conducted in total secrecy, by not allowing it to identify the true instigators of the attack on the largest trans-European energy infrastructure facility,” Zakharova added. According to the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Germany is also persecuting media outlets that are actually trying to discover what happened, which “shows that Berlin has something to hide and is extremely uninterested in conducting a real investigation and having the truth made public.”

The original Nord Stream was built after the 2009 gas transit dispute between Kiev and Moscow, enabling Gazprom to supply Western Europe without depending on Ukraine and Poland. The second pipeline was finished in late 2021, despite delays due to US sanctions. Western media narratives about “Ukrainian saboteurs” being behind the blast, whether acting on orders from Kiev or alone, began appearing only after US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh blamed Washington. Citing sources within the intelligence community, Hersh argued that CIA divers working with the Norwegian Navy planted remotely-triggered bombs on both pipelines, using a NATO exercise in the region as cover. Meanwhile, Ukraine has maintained that Russia blew up its own pipelines, which Moscow has dismissed as ridiculous.

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“These remaining months before the elections are accompanied by total confusion, and this, naturally, is reflected in US officials’ statements.”

• Biden’s Desperation for ‘Foreign Policy Win’ (Sp.)

“The US administration is particularly eager to announce an agreement, driven by both diplomatic and domestic pressures,” Dr. Imad Salamey, an assistant professor of political science at Lebanese American University, told Sputnik, commenting on why Israeli officials haven’t confirmed Tel Aviv’s readiness to accept the “bridging proposal” announced by Secretary Blinken on Monday. “The Biden administration views the success of such an agreement as a potential foreign policy win, which could bolster its position ahead of upcoming elections,” Salamey explained. By contrast, “the Israeli government may face significant internal challenges regarding the deal,” the observer said. “Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government is deeply divided, and any official confirmation could exacerbate these divisions, potentially leading to resignations or even the collapse of the coalition.

Thus, while the US is keen to publicize progress, Israel might be more cautious, weighing the domestic repercussions of any public acknowledgement of the agreement.” Blinken’s public announcement “could [also] be interpreted as a strategic move to exert public pressure on Israel,” according to the scholar. “The pressure serves multiple purposes: it advances US diplomatic interests in the region, reinforces the image of the US as a global leader, and garners domestic support by showcasing the administration’s proactive role,” Salamey said. But Israeli media reports indicate that the government has no intention of agreeing to the agreement announced by the US and “at least in Israel, it’s clear to everyone that there will be no deal,” Tel Aviv-based international affairs observer Dr. Simon Tsipis told Sputnik.

“Netanyahu has started to refer to the fact that the point of the agreement that does not suit him is the Hamas demand that Israel withdraw its troops from the Philadelphi Corridor border” between Gaza and Egypt Tsipis said, referring to Tel Aviv’s unwillingness to let go of the border area to prevent the resumption of arms smuggling. “But in my view this is just an excuse for the fact that Netanyahu is not interested in making any deal with Hamas, no matter its contents,” the observer noted. Tsipis recalled that for Netanyahu, the conflict in Gaza has become not just a matter of his government’s political survival, but his personal freedom, given the multiple Israeli criminal investigations hanging over his head, which would inevitably resume if the conflict were brought to a peaceful conclusion. “Plus, it’s becoming increasingly clear to people whose relatives and friends are being held hostage by Hamas with each passing day that there are practically no more of them left alive.

Yesterday, six bodies of hostages were pulled out of one of the tunnels. If earlier, several months ago, it was assumed that there were more than 220 of them being held there, now it’s assumed that there are no more than 100 still alive. The rest are dead, and the pressure inside Netanyahu is growing. By showing society that there are no more living hostages, he’s trying to let off the political pressure building up within Israeli society,” Tsipis said. As far as the US and Blinken’s hasty announcement of an agreement, Tsipis believes it’s tied to the fact that the Biden administration is effectively running on autopilot at this point after the president announced that he would not be seeking another term, and the Democrats began preparing Vice President Harris to take the reins. “These remaining months before the elections are accompanied by total confusion, and this, naturally, is reflected in US officials’ statements. The American side is now completely inactive and has virtually no influence, and this is felt in Israel too,” Tsipis said.

“There is no pressure from the US because there is no one to apply this pressure, because even if the US is not yet in a state of anarchy, it is in a transitional period and has a kind of temporary government.” “Netanyahu’s government and he personally have been left to float freely. They do not depend on anyone and there’s no pressure on them from anyone. This is a dangerous situation, because returning to the above, Netanyahu’s main goal is his survival – political survival and simply remaining a free man. That could lead to a military escalation, and in fact, we are already on the threshold of an escalation and war with Lebanon,” Tsipis warned, pointing to the intense back-and-forth shelling across the Israel-Lebanon border in recent days.

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“..strategy adjustment was revised with the desire to “simultaneously” deter Russia, China and North Korea in mind.”

• Biden Approved New Nuclear Strategy Refocusing on ‘Chinese Threat’ (Sp.)

President Joe Biden approved a classified nuclear strategy earlier this year that directed US forces to refocus on potential threats from China, the New York Times reported on Tuesday, citing US officials. The report detailed that Biden had approved the new strategy in March, and that it refocuses on China’s growing nuclear arsenal. However, it also addresses concerns of potential coordinated nuclear challenges by China, Russia, and North Korea against the United States. An unclassified report is expected to be given to Congress before Biden leaves office. Driving the development is the US’ fear regarding China’s nuclear stockpile, more specifically how it’ll match up “in size and diversity” against Washington’s own arms over the next 10 years. Citing June remarks from Pranay Vaddi, who serves as the senior director for arms control and non-proliferation on the National Security Council, the outlet noted the strategy adjustment was revised with the desire to “simultaneously” deter Russia, China and North Korea in mind.

The Tuesday report comes days after China implemented export controls on antimony metals, which just so happen to have multiple applications within the US military, including in components for nuclear weapons. The new restrictions, in line with similar controls on other rare-earth metals, are due to take effect on September 15. Alongside with Tajikistan and Russia, China controls upwards of 90% of the global antimony reserves. A report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank details the US’ “stockpiles limited antimony of just 1,100 tons compared to the 23,000 tons consumed in 2023,” adding that 63% of its stocks came from China alone. China previously underscored that its new directive was intended to ensure China’s national security and to fulfill the country’s non-proliferation obligations, and that its measures were not set to strike at any one country.

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“..Beijing “follows a policy of ‘no first use’ of nuclear weapons and always keeps its nuclear capabilities at the minimum level required by national security.”

• Beijing Has ‘No Intention’ Of Nuclear Arms Race With US – FM (RT)

Washington’s fear-mongering over Beijing’s nuclear arsenal is completely unfounded, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning has said. Her comment came after the New York Times reported on Tuesday that US President Joe Biden had quietly updated the Nuclear Employment Guidance, refocusing it on China. Speaking to journalists on Wednesday, Mao said that Beijing was “gravely concerned” with the report. “The US has called China a ‘nuclear threat’ and used it as a convenient pretext for the US to shirk its obligation of nuclear disarmament,” she said. Mao added that the size of China’s nuclear arsenal was “by no means on the same level with the US,” stressing that Beijing “follows a policy of ‘no first use’ of nuclear weapons and always keeps its nuclear capabilities at the minimum level required by national security.” China has “no intention to engage in any form of arms race” with other states, she stated.

“It is the US who is the primary source of nuclear threats and strategic risks in the world,” the spokeswoman argued. In 2023, the Pentagon estimated that China will double its stockpile of operational nuclear warheads to over 1,000 by 2030. The US currently has 5,550 warheads, while Russia has 6,255, according to estimates published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The White House has downplayed China’s concerns, with spokesman Sean Savett describing the change in nuclear strategy as a routine update that was “not a response to any single entity, country, nor threat.” US officials, however, have repeatedly described China as “a challenge” to world peace and accused it of economic and military coercion in the Indo-Pacific. Beijing, in turn, has blamed the US for the ongoing tensions, urging Washington to abandon its “Cold-War mentality.”

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”Nerfing of the gun emoji matches rise of the woke mind virus,,”

• X’s New Gun Emoji Fights ‘Woke Mind Virus’ – Musk (RT)

Elon Musk has explained the decision to bring back the gun emoji to X (formerly Twitter), saying the choice to depict a realistic firearm rather than a toy pistol is part of the fight against the “woke mind virus.” In a post on his social media network on Tuesday, the US billionaire shared a chart showing how the emoji has looked on various platforms over the past decade. Included on the list alongside X were images used in the products of Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Meta’s Facebook. The apparent trend has been to move away from real guns to toy guns, while Musk’s platform has done the opposite since he bought it in 2022. ”Nerfing of the gun emoji matches rise of the woke mind virus, as a core tenet is equating fake harm with real harm,” he said, commenting on the chart.

X transition from the previous toy gun to one that resembles a modern semi-automatic pistol happened last month – at least for its web interface. The older version was introduced by previous management in 2018. The US stands out among developed nations due to its gun culture and levels of gun violence. Some people want the display of realistic guns in various media reduced because they believe it glorifies them and fuels their use. The Unicode Consortium, the organization that decides on what should be turned into an emoji, currently calls the one with a gun a “water pistol.”

Musk is a vocal supporter of some conservative political causes. He has said he believes “that the right to bear arms is an important safeguard against potential tyranny of government,” but supported some gun control measures, such as background checks for people who want to own deadlier firearms. Earlier, Musk posted a row of gun emojis at around the same time that US President Joe Biden was giving a speech at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Monday. Among other things, Biden touted his administration’s record of passing gun control legislation and urged further restrictions. The ‘woke mind virus’ that Musk was referring to is a pejorative conservative term for the advocacy of radical policies, such as the right of minors to gender transition at schools without the consent or knowledge of their parents.

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Waterfall

 

 

Baby hippo
https://twitter.com/i/status/1825875430542581794

 

 

Frens
https://twitter.com/i/status/1826490109077635095

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle August 21 2024

Aug 212024
 
 August 21, 2024  Posted by at 8:43 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  31 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Tête de femme 1926

 

• Musk Responds To Trump’s Job Offer (RT)
• RFK Jr Campaign Mulling “Joining Forces With Trump” (ZH)
• Trump Vows to Slash Energy Costs by Half if Elected (OP)
• Harris Refuses to Participate in Televised Debate on September 4 – Trump (Sp.)
• Harris Polls “Much Less Rosy” Than Reported, SuperPAC Admits (ZH)
• DNC Platform Calls For ‘Radical’ Mass Amnesty For Millions Of Illegals (ZH)
• All Trump, no Harris: The Democratic Party’s Puzzling New Platform (RT)
• Kamala Harris’ Radical Left Plan to Ruin America (Lacalle)
• Harris’ Unrealized Gains Tax Would Obliterate The US Economy (QTR)
• Trump Bows Down To Putin – Biden (RT)
• Where Unauthorized Migrants In The US Come From (SCF)
• War With Iran Would Bring Global Economic Collapse, Isolate US (Sp.)
• Ukrainian MPs Pave Way For Ban On Largest Christian Church (RT)
• Harley-Davidson Hits Brakes On Diversity (RT)
• Boeing Halts 777 Test Flights (RT)

 

 

 

 

Bloodbath
https://twitter.com/i/status/1825770016697925708

 

 

Dore Chicago

 

 

Medhurst

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)”

• Musk Responds To Trump’s Job Offer (RT)

Billionaire Elon Musk has expressed a willingness to take a position with the US government should Republican nominee Donald Trump be elected president. The GOP nominee recently suggested that he could give Musk an advisory role in his administration. In the wake of the assassination attempt on Trump last month, Musk publicly backed his candidacy, writing on X: “I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery.” The businessman has adopted an increasingly critical stance toward the Democratic President Joe Biden in recent months. In a post on X on Tuesday, Musk signaled to Trump: “I am willing to serve.” One user suggested naming a department that Musk could head in the US government as the “Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)” – an apparent reference to the ‘Doge meme’ and the eponymous Dogecoin cryptocurrency.

Commenting on the idea, the billionaire jokingly replied that this is the “perfect name.” Speaking to Reuters on Monday, Trump described the tech tycoon as a “very smart guy.” “I certainly would [appoint Musk to an advisory role], if he would do it, I certainly would,” the Republican nominee said. Last week, Musk staged a live interview with Trump on the X platform, which he owns. At one point during the conversation, Musk called on the presidential hopeful to establish a “government efficiency commission” to ensure that taxpayer money is better spent. He also offered to help out with such an endeavor, to which Trump replied that Musk would be ideal for the role.

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“..Because We ‘Run The Risk Of Enabling A Harris/Walz Presidency'”

“…the DNC made it impossible for us… …they have banned us, shadow-banned us. kept us off stages. manipulated polls. used lawfare against us. sued us in every possible State.”

“..I believed in the America that I a little girl pledged an allegiance to…”

• RFK Jr Campaign Mulling “Joining Forces With Trump” (ZH)

Just days after refuting reports that RFK Jr approached Harris for a cabinet position, his running mate, Nicole Shanahan just dropped a bombshell during a podcast that could change the race considerably. Appearing on the ‘Impact Theory’ podcast (that was filmed yesterday), Shanahan said they are debating whether to stay in the race or drop out and join forces with Trump: “There’s two options that we’re looking at… …and one is staying in, forming that new party, but we run the risk of a Kamala Harris and Waltz presidency because we draw more votes from Trump. Or we walk away right now and join forces with with Donald Trump and explain to our base why we’re making this decision.”

Shanahan is clearly disillusioned at the anti-democratic methods that the Democratic Party have pulled to stall RFK Jr’s progress: “…the DNC made it impossible for us… …they have banned us, shadow-banned us. kept us off stages. manipulated polls. used lawfare against us. sued us in every possible State. They’ve even planted insiders into our campaign to disrupt it, and to create actual legal issues for us. I mean the extent by which the sabotage they’ve unleashed upon us is mindblowing. I mean we’re still learning new ways that they have sabotaged us. I really wanted a fair shot at this election and I believed in the America that I a little girl pledged an allegiance to…”

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“We have more of the real energy, the energy that works..”

• Trump Vows to Slash Energy Costs by Half if Elected (OP)

GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump has promised to reduce energy costs by half by reversing current federal government policies in his first year in office if he gets elected. Trump was speaking at an event at a defense manufacturing facility in Pennsylvania and said that if he enters the White House, during his first year he would remove future mandates for electric cars and cancel “green energy” policies, according to a report by UPI. Trump went on to warn those in attendance that if Harris wins the presidential vote, energy costs would triple and quadruple, and the U.S. “won’t be producing a drop of oil.” He also accused the Biden administration of a “regulatory jihad to shut down power plants.” The Biden administration indeed has a very different energy policies agenda than Trump and Harris has indicated she would stay in the transition lane if she enters the White House as president.

Trump, on the other hand, has remained a staunch supporter of what he calls U.S. energy dominance, encouraging as much oil and gas production as possible to turn the country into a self-sufficient one in terms of energy and extend its international influence through energy exports. Last month, in an interview with Bloomberg, Trump said that if he wins he would boost U.S. oil production, calling the commodity liquid gold. “We have more liquid gold than anybody,” Trump told the publication, adding “We need energy at low prices. The advantage we have all over almost every country including the very large ones is that we have more energy than anybody. We have more of the real energy, the energy that works,” the former president vying for another term in office said. “Wind does not work. It’s too expensive,” said Trump, claiming that solar and wind farms are neither too good for the environment, nor too suitable to provide energy at low costs and prices.

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“..it is very difficult, at best, for her to defend her record setting Flip-Flopping on absolutely everything she once believed in.”

• Harris Refuses to Participate in Televised Debate on September 4 – Trump (Sp.)

Former US President and Republican candidate for the upcoming presidential election Donald Trump said that his Democratic opponent, current US Vice President Kamala Harris, informed his team that she would not participate in the debates on the Fox News channel on September 4. “Comrade Kamala Harris has just informed us that she will NOT do the FoxNews Debate on September 4th,” Trump said on social media. “I am not surprised by this development because I feel that she knows it is very difficult, at best, for her to defend her record setting Flip-Flopping on absolutely everything she once believed in.”

Trump noted that instead of the debate on that day, Fox will host a televised meeting with him in Pennsylvania. The former president promised to provide details later. Earlier in August, Trump said that he would hold three rounds of televised debates with Harris in the coming month, which are planned to be organized on the platforms of three different US television channels. However, he did not specify whether Harris herself had confirmed her readiness to participate in all three rounds of televised debates with him.

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Until recently, nobody knew her. Those in the DNC who did, refused to vote for her. And just like that, she’s more popular than Trump? Sure thing.

• Harris Polls “Much Less Rosy” Than Reported, SuperPAC Admits (ZH)

The founder of the main outside spending group backing Kamala Harris for president says their own internal opinion polling is “much less rosy” than public polls – and has warned Democrats that they face much closer races in key states. “Our numbers are much less rosy than what you’re seeing in the public,” said Future Forward super PAC president Chauncey McLean said during a Monday event hosted by the University of Chicago Institute of Politics. According to public polls – which, as you’ll see below, are largely bullshit – Harris is leading Donald Trump in several national polls by FiveThirtyEight; 46.6% to 43.8%, and has allegedly pulled ahead in several battleground states, Reuters reports. Except that’s not what Future Forward is seeing…

The PAC has created a ‘massive polling operation’ and tested some 500 digital television ads for Biden and 200 for Harris, along with polling some 375,000 Americans in the weeks after Biden was forced out of the 2024 race and Harris became the presumptive Democratic nominee on July 22. According to McLean, the majority of Harris’ momentum after she took over for Biden was from young voters of color – opening up Sunbelt states such as Nevada, Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina. That said, Pennsylvania – the most consequential state in the group’s analysis, is a ‘coin flip’ based on Future Forward polls. He says Harris must win one of three states – Pennsylvania, North Carolina or Georgia – to win the White House. He warned that Harris has yet to fully rebuild the Biden coalition of Blacks, Hispanics and young voters that brought him the White House in 2020.

McLean said polling shows the public wants more detailed policy positions from Harris. He says they don’t want “white papers,” but they also don’t want platitudes. He says they need more concrete examples of how she may differ from Biden and make their lives easier economically. Trump allies have called on Harris to do the same in recent days, hoping to pin her down on controversial issues. -Reuters. According to McLean, the race is tight as ever.

“We have it tight as a tick, and pretty much across the board,” he said. About those bullshit polls… Mark Davin Harris of political consulting firm ColdSpark says they’re seeing a “historic response bias on surveys that is setting the table for a large polling miss this fall.” Diving right in, Harris says pollsters are essentially injecting unreported bias into polls by targeting subgroups more likely to answer the way they want. For example, “In the meta data from the call centers college educated Dems are 3-4x more likely to answer than non-college. While weighting can help minimize the bias if done correctly it won’t totally eliminate the problem. For example even if you quota’ed for party (something I have very mixed feelings about) AND for education at the topline you can have the college Dems consume such a big chunk of Democrats that you miss the downscale Dems that are MUCH less partisan loyal.”

Harris is set to release an analysis that show “historically liberal” bias even when they “weight back to party.” According to Harris, one possible solution would be to focus on a person’s past voting history – as those who ‘always’ vote are being oversampled vs. the ‘low turnout’ voters, who are more likely to vote for Trump. “We’re seeing a lot of surveys WAY oversampling the ‘always voters’ and not getting enough of the infrequent voters that are so important in a Presidential race and Trump does better with low turnout folks,” he said.

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Who in America truly wants this?

• DNC Platform Calls For ‘Radical’ Mass Amnesty For Millions Of Illegals (ZH)

The official Democratic party platform calls for the passage of the US Citizenship Act – which the Trump campaign on Monday called ‘a radical amnesty bill that would give automatic citizenship and social security numbers to the millions of illegal aliens that invaded our country, including criminals, human traffickers, and gang members.’ According to the DNC platform: America is a nation of immigrants. The legal immigration framework was last updated in 1990 and does not reflect the needs of our country in the 21st century. Many immigrants today are forced to wait years, and often decades, to immigrate lawfully to the United States. A robust immigration system with accessible lawful pathways and penalties for illegal immigration alleviates pressure at the border and upholds our values. The U.S. Citizenship Act would permanently increase family-sponsored and employment-based immigration. This is in sharp contrast to Trump’s platform, which calls for sealing the border and carrying out the largest deportation operation in US history.

“This was the plan all along”. Some are suggesting that the Biden-Harris administration allowed the country to be flooded with illegal immigrants in order to eventually grant mass amnesty.

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“The 91-page document was compiled in July and published on Sunday..” “The platform refers to Biden as the Democratic Party’s candidate at least 20 times..”

• All Trump, no Harris: The Democratic Party’s Puzzling New Platform (RT)

Democratic delegates have voted to approve the party’s 2024 platform. The 94-page document still states that President Joe Biden is running for office, mentions Donald Trump more than Kamala Harris, and includes multiple false and misleading claims. The 91-page document was compiled in July and published on Sunday. In a largely symbolic vote at the Democratic National Convention on Monday, it was approved as the party’s official platform for the next four years.

A woke introduction. The platform opens with a so-called “land acknowledgement,” declaring that the US is made up of “lands that have been stewarded through many centuries by the ancestors and descendants of Tribal Nations who have been here since time immemorial.” “While we meet in Chicago, we also recognize and honor the traditional homelands of the Anishinaabe, also known as the Council of the Three Fires: the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi Nations,” it continues, before listing off other Native American tribes hailing from the Chicago region. Originating on university campuses, ‘Land acknowledgements’ have been embraced by progressive politicians and nonprofits in recent years. Conservatives have mocked the practice as overly politically correct, while some leftists have argued that land acknowledgements don’t go far enough, and should be backed by cash reparations.

Biden still in the race? The platform refers to Biden as the Democratic Party’s candidate at least 20 times, despite the 81-year-old suspending his campaign and endorsing Vice President Harris to run in his place last month. “President Biden, Vice President Harris, and Democrats are running to finish the job,” the platform’s second page declares, before listing a host of the president’s priorities for his “second term in office,” which include nominating more “diverse” judges and offering a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants. Regina Romero, the co-chair of the convention’s platform committee, told delegates that the document was written “prior to the president passing the torch in an act of love and patriotism,” and despite its mistakes remains a “forward-looking vision for our party that echoes the voice of all.” These references to Biden are “an open admission that Kamala has no policies of her own. She has no plan to fix the litany of crises she’s created,” Trump campaign spokesman Dylan Johnson said in a statement on Monday.

All about Trump. Throughout the platform, Biden’s record is repeatedly contrasted with Trump’s. Lines such as “while President Biden has stood up to the gun lobby, Trump is proud of doing their bidding” and “while President Biden has sought to appoint judges who look like America, three-quarters of Trump’s judicial appointees were men and 84 percent were white” appear on almost every page of the document. In total, Trump is mentioned 150 times in the platform, while Harris’ name appears only 32 times. Biden is named 287 times.

No Harris policies. All of the platform’s post-election promises are attributed to Biden, with the document omitting Harris’ recent economic proposals, which include financial assistance for first-time home buyers, a $6,000-per-child tax credit, and price controls on groceries. In the month since Biden ended his campaign, these economic proposals are the only policies Harris has announced. By contrast, Biden, Trump, and Hillary Clinton had all published extensive policy documents by this stage of the 2020 and 2016 election cycles.

Hoaxes and falsehoods. The document contains numerous mistruths and outright falsehoods, particularly about Trump. It claims, as Biden has in his speeches, that Trump called members of the military who died in war “suckers” and “losers,” and that he called neo-Nazi protesters “very fine people.” Neither anecdote is true. Biden and Harris’ accomplishments are similarly embellished. For example, the document claims that the president and vice president are “finally rebuilding” broadband infrastructure in the US, despite the fact that zero new connections have been built since Harris was appointed to lead the $42 billion initiative in 2021, according to Federal Communications Commission chief Brendan Carr.

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Peronism.

• Kamala Harris’ Radical Left Plan to Ruin America (Lacalle)

Price controls, higher taxes, government intervention, and subsidies paid for by printing a constantly devalued currency. These are the essential pillars of “21st century socialism” and the radical left Peronism that obliterated Argentina. These are also the main elements of the economic plan presented by Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party. Undoubtedly, this is the most radical socialist economic plan ever announced by the Democrats. According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), Harris’s proposals will cost $1.95 trillion over 10 years. However, it emphasizes that if certain measures become permanent, this figure could increase to $2.25 trillion. The Harris campaign has stated that these costs will be offset by a classic excuse of socialism in any election: “higher taxes on corporations and high earners.”

This is, obviously, ludicrous, because there is no revenue measure that will cover the already bloated $2 trillion annual deficit and an added $2 trillion. The mantra of “higher taxes for the rich” always means higher taxes and more inflation, a hidden tax, for you. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has already warned of the fiscal disaster of the United States, with an annual deficit of 6% of GDP. Despite not accounting for a recession and projecting record tax revenues from 2024 to 2034, the CBO predicts an explosion in the budget deficit from $1.9 trillion to $2.8 trillion by 2034, even before factoring in Harris’s new spending plan. This means that the adjusted deficit will rise above 6.9 percent of GDP by 2034, almost twice the average of 3.7 percent over the previous 50 years.

Following the Harris plan, the United States public debt will likely increase by $24 trillion in a decade. As I have explained, there is no set of revenue measures that can bring $2 trillion per year in additional tax receipts, and tax hikes will harm both investment and growth. An economy that generates an annual deficit of 6 percent of GDP to achieve a mere 2 percent annual growth is already on a dangerous path, and Harris’ plan would make it even worse. Kamala Harris promises to cut inflation by spending and printing more money, reducing competition, and attacking businesses. It has never worked and never will because it is upside-down economics. Welcome to the U.S. “Peronism.”. Imagine all those United States citizens who have escaped Latin American or European economies impoverished by interventionism to find a better opportunity in the United States only to find that the same policies will be implemented by Harris.

The narrative of price gouging and greedflation is simply false. In 2023, profit margins in the grocery industry hit the lowest level since 2019, at 1.6%, according to the IMF. Corporations, even if they were stupid and reckless, cannot make all prices rise constantly. Competition would eat away at their market share; newcomers would eliminate them, and aggregate prices would fall. Furthermore, stores and businesses cannot make aggregate prices soar, maintain the increase, and consolidate it, which is the measure of inflation (CPI) we read every month. The only thing that can make all prices rise and continue increasing at a slower pace is printing money and eroding the purchasing power of the currency.

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“..a plan that won’t just be negative for the country, it could very well be the hill that our country’s economy dies on..”

• Harris’ Unrealized Gains Tax Would Obliterate The US Economy (QTR)

On Tuesday, it was announced that Presidential candidate Kamala Harris would be supporting President Joe Biden’s tax proposals for 2025, which include a 44.6% capital gains rate and a 25% tax on unrealized gains. Having used up all of the rest of the batshit, insane, counterintuitive economic dirty tricks left in the “we’ll literally do anything but cut spending” bag, the Biden administration began pushing this tax idea in April 2024 when I first wrote about it. Unrealized gains taxation could be the most destructive idea for our country since prohibition, I joked at the time. As part of its budget proposal for the 2025 fiscal year, the Biden administration was trying to raise an addition $4.3 trillion over 10 years in the worst way possible: imposing a minimum tax equal to 25 percent of a taxpayer’s taxable income and unrealized capital gains less the sum of their regular tax, for taxpayers with wealth over $100 million.

Putting aside the fact that this high-risk idea only amounts to a pittance, $430 billion per year, the introduction of taxing unrealized gains could be one of the worst slippery slopes we ever dare to roll our country’s economy down. I mean, shit, we could save $1 trillion just by not sending $100 billion a year to other nations for starters. But I digress. For an outline of exactly what an unrealized gains tax is, here’s the American Institute on Economic Research: A tax on unrealized capital gains means that individuals are penalized for owning appreciating assets, regardless of whether they have realized any actual income from selling them. If you purchased a stock for $100 this year, for example, and it increased to $110 next year, you would pay the assigned tax rate on the $10 capital gain. You didn’t sell the asset, so you don’t realize the $10 appreciation, but must pay the tax regardless.

Taxing unrealized capital gains contradicts the basic principles of fairness and property rights essential for a free and prosperous society. Taxation, if we’re going to have it on income, should be based on actual income earned, not on paper gains that may never materialize. AIER notes that implementing such a tax not only deeply infringes upon personal liberty and private property rights — but I can’t help but think about how it also sets a destructive wrecking ball rolling down a slippery slope for the first time in our nation’s history. And, given the precarious state of our nation’s finances, it doesn’t seem like the best time to start spitballing about new risky ideas that may or may not catch on only because they sound like they are addressing the problem of a widening wealth gap that Federal Reserve policies created and continue to exacerbate to begin with.

If the administration really wanted to address the problem of wealth inequality, it would be setting its sights on the central bank that sacrificed price stability so it could spray trillions of dollars in “stimulus” toward financial assets, while cutting American families paltry checks of just $600, during COVID. When I did the math during COVID, the total amount spent to bail out the country when we decided to shut down the economy and have the Federal Reserve replace it with a fiat house of cards amounted to something like $17,500 per every citizen in the United States. Except, again, only $600 of that went to each individual. The rest went to the financial sector, in turn widening the inequality gap further as billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos saw tens of billions of dollars added to their net worth in a matter of months. And so now, rather than take tangible, decisive action to actually address the problem, the Harris administration is putting forth a plan that won’t just be negative for the country, it could very well be the hill that our country’s economy dies on. And to be honest, I’m not being hyperbolic.

Read more …

One last go for Joe. Let’s dig up a golden oldie. Nobody remembers Robert Mueller anyway. From another article:

“50 to 70 million Americans suffer from some sort of sleep disorder, and a midnight Joe Biden speech could be the perfect remedy.”

• Trump Bows Down To Putin – Biden (RT)

US President Joe Biden has accused his predecessor, Donald Trump, of being unfit for the role of commander-in-chief, claiming he ‘bows down to dictators’. The outgoing president spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago on Monday to urge voters to support the candidacy of Vice President Kamala Harris in the November election. Last month, he was pressured by party heavyweights to drop out of the race after a disastrous debate against Trump. Biden brought up the story about Trump allegedly calling World War I soldiers buried in Europe “suckers and losers” to attack the former president, saying someone like this cannot lead the US military.

”No commander-in-chief should ever bow down to a dictator the way Trump bows down to Putin. I never have, and I promise you, Kamala Haris will never do it,” he said. Trump broke from the policy of his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, by greenlighting the delivery of military aid to Ukraine, fueling tensions with Russia over NATO’s intention to make Ukraine a member of the US-led bloc. In 2021, Moscow proposed freezing NATO expansion to address its concerns, but was told by Washington that it cannot dictate who joins the organization.

The Republican nominee now claims he can end the ongoing hostilities between Russia and Ukraine, which broke out in February 2022 under Biden’s watch. Presumably, Trump intends to leverage US aid to Kiev to force concessions on its part. Biden has vowed to prop up Ukraine against Russia “for as long as it takes” to defeat it. During his speech in Chicago, Biden took credit for getting European members of NATO to unite in support of Ukraine. He claimed that Europeans have been looking at Russia “with dread” since the times of Napoleon. Trump has argued that getting along with foreign leaders, including those that some may call dictators, is a good thing for a president, as this helps cool tensions and prevent unnecessary conflicts.

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Where illegal turns into unauthorized… What’s in a word?

Only 4% come from South America?!

• Where Unauthorized Migrants In The US Come From (SCF)

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“How would that look for the United States, when the United States is going to fight the war on behalf of a genocidal regime and then bring down the world economy?”

• War With Iran Would Bring Global Economic Collapse, Isolate US (Sp.)

On July 30, a senior leader of the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, Fouad Shukur, was assassinated in Beirut, a few hours later the political leader of the Palestinian movement Hamas and the chief negotiator for the movement in ceasefire talks with Israel, Ismail Haniyeh, was assassinated in Tehran. Nearly three weeks after the assassination of Shukur and Haniyeh, the world is still waiting for Iran’s retaliation against Israel for the attacks. It inevitably will, but the more pertinent question is what comes next. “The real question is not what Iran does, the question is what does the United States do?” asked Mohammad Marandi, a professor of English Literature and Orientalism at the University of Tehran on Sputnik’s Fault Lines on Monday. “If the United States gets involved in the war, then I think it’s the United States [that] will lose more than anyone else.”

Marandi explained that a war between the US and Israel on one side and Iran on the other would expand regionally and include the US-allied dictators who would be seen as complicit with the United States. “So there will no longer be any gas or oil installations in the Persian Gulf region and beyond that will be able to export anything. So, that would lead to a global economic collapse,” Marandi continued. “It won’t lead to a recession or a depression, it will lead to a deep depression – something that we haven’t experienced before in recent centuries, even in the 1930s.” Iran has no choice but to respond more forcefully than it did after an Israeli airstrike struck the Iranian consulate in Damascus, Syria. That attack, in which Iran utilized hundreds of drones to overwhelm Israeli air defenses and then hit military targets with missiles, was described as restrained outside of Western and Israeli media. Still, less than four months later, Israel struck Iran again.

“By definition, [that] means it was inadequate for a permanent solution. So, the Iranians are going to have to hit harder,” explained Marandi. Despite a letter signed by the US and a few European countries telling Iran to stand down, most of the world understands that Iran has been restrained and reasonable compared to their Israeli counterparts. That will further isolate the United States if it joins Israel in a war with Iran, which will exacerbate its economic issues if there is a global collapse. “How would that look for the United States, when the United States is going to fight the war on behalf of a genocidal regime and then bring down the world economy? It will be devastating to the United States because no one will sympathize with it,” Marandi added. “The point is that they are dragging the world towards a catastrophe. This genocide will have consequences. And an expanded war will have enormous consequences,” he concluded.

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“Zelensky can’t force God to fight.”

• Ukrainian MPs Pave Way For Ban On Largest Christian Church (RT)

The Ukrainian parliament has approved a law that would allow authorities to ban the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), which Kiev has repeatedly accused of having ties to Russia, according to an MP. The legislation also outright bans the Russian Orthodox Church and all affiliated religious institutions. In a series of Telegram posts on Tuesday, lawmaker Yaroslav Zheleznyak said the parliament had passed a law banning certain religious organizations on the territory of Ukraine, particularly those linked to Russia. “Among the people, it [is called] the law banning the Moscow Church,” he said. The law was approved by 265 deputies, with 29 voting against, and four abstaining. The law, which will take effect in 30 days, bans the activities of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and all affiliated religious organizations. However, it contains a caveat that gives the UOC nine months to sever all ties with the ROC.

While the UOC declared full autonomy from the Moscow Patriarchate several weeks after the Ukraine conflict broke out in 2022, Kiev continued to accuse its clergy of having ties to Russia, often raiding churches and making arrests. Parliament Speaker Ruslan Stephanchuk acknowledged last week that the law would certainly result in “the Russian church in Ukraine” being banned, presumably referring to the UOC. Around the same time, Vladimir Zelensky appeared to refer to the imminent move, which he said would “reinforce Ukraine’s spiritual independence.” Last week, the initiative was endorsed by the All-Ukrainian Council of Churches and Religious Organizations (AUCCRO), which represents all denominations in the country. It claimed that Russia remains the main “threat” to religious freedom in Ukraine.

The Russian Orthodox Church, however, has dismissed AUCCRO’s decision as illegitimate, noting that UOC delegates had not been invited to take part in the meeting to discuss the matter. Ukraine has long experienced religious tensions, with a number of entities claiming to be the true Ukrainian Orthodox Church. The two main rival factions are the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and the Kiev-backed Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), which is considered by the Russian Orthodox Church to be schismatic. The UOC remains the largest Orthodox church in Ukraine, with more than 8,000 parishes across the country. However, some of these parishes are choosing to transfer to the jurisdiction of the OCU under pressure from authorities in Kiev.

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Motorwoke.

• Harley-Davidson Hits Brakes On Diversity (RT)

American motorcycle maker Harley-Davidson has ended its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiative, becoming the latest major US company to distance itself from ‘woke’ policies. DEI refers to measures aimed at ensuring equal representation for people of all backgrounds, regardless of their race, gender, or disability status. The iconic motorbike brand, known for its robustly masculine image, said it would instead focus on “retaining our loyal riding community.” Harley-Davidson was targeted last month by conservative influencer Robby Starbuck, who has pledged to “expose” companies for their “woke policies” and to “bring sanity back to corporate America.” In a statement on X (formerly Twitter) on Monday, Harley-Davidson said it would review all sponsorships and outside organizations with which it affiliates.

The bike manufacturer said it would be moving forward focusing “exclusively on growing the sport of motorcycling.” It also stated that it was “saddened by the negativity on social media over the last few weeks.” The company suggested that it would drop some sponsorships, which could include LGBTQ Pride festivals, and end its relationship with the Human Rights Campaign, a leading LGBTQ advocacy group. Harley-Davidson has been a corporate member of the Wisconsin LBGT Chamber of Commerce, and has reportedly funded Pride-themed events. The company has come under fire from many US bikers for taking part in various LGBTQ initiatives, and had reportedly lost some of its fanbase.

In July, Starbuck claimed that the brand had been “one of the most beloved brands in America but recently on CEO Jochen Zeitz’s watch, they’ve gone totally woke,” as he launched his campaign against the motorcycle maker’s policies. In its statement, the Milwaukee-based firm also said it had not “operated a DEI function since April 2024,” and that it does not have “hiring quotas” or “supplier diversity spend goals.” Starbuck welcomed the company’s move on X, praising it as “another win for our movement.” Earlier, American rural retailer Tractor Supply and farm equipment maker John Deere also backtracked on their corporate diversity policy following pressure campaigns led by the activist. Critics of DEI have questioned the efficacy of initiatives aimed at making organizations more diverse and inclusive, leading to pressure on companies to scale back certain programs.

Read more …

Said it before: the rot is everywhere. How can you undo that?

• Boeing Halts 777 Test Flights (RT)

US aircraft manufacturer Boeing has halted test-flights of its 777X twin-engine jetliner after post-flight inspections identified failures of crucial parts on three out of four test aircraft, industry outlet the Air Current reported on Monday, citing sources. According to the aviation news service, a titanium thrust link, part of the structure that mounts the engine to the aircraft, was found severed on one jet following a test-flight in Hawaii. Further inspections found similar faults on two more aircraft, the Air Current cited two people familiar with the matter as saying. “Our team is replacing the part and capturing any learnings from the component and will resume flight testing when ready,” Boeing confirmed to Air Current in an emailed statement. The 777X’s engines are the largest and most powerful ever built, measuring nearly 3.5 meters in diameter and weighing 11 tons each.

Also on Monday, the US Federal Aviation Administration ordered inspections of another Boeing aircraft, the 787 Dreamliner. In an incident in March, a 787 jet went into a sudden mid-air dive, leaving more than 50 passengers injured. A number of flaws have been discovered in Boeing aircraft in recent months, leading to safety concerns and investigations. In July, the company agreed to pay a fine of $243.6 million and plead guilty to fraud for its attempts to conceal faults with the stability system responsible for 2018 and 2019 crashes that killed nearly 350 people. Under the plea deal, the manufacturer has agreed to invest at least $455 million over the next three years to improve its safety and compliance programs and submit to a three-year probation by a special monitor appointed by the US government.

Read more …

 

 


 

 

Yeadon: A completely different take on ivermectin

https://twitter.com/i/status/1825808269039849903

 

 

Tigress
https://twitter.com/i/status/1826027723774419353

 

 

Cubs
https://twitter.com/i/status/1825749033933005062

 

 

Emanuel

 

 

Mars&Jupiter
https://twitter.com/i/status/1826017245228650552

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle August 16 2024

Aug 162024
 
 August 16, 2024  Posted by at 8:04 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  49 Responses »


Salvador Dali Portrait of Picasso 1947

 

• Zelensky Gave Initial Order For Nord Stream Attack – WSJ (RT)
• Russians Volunteer in Droves as US Tries to Divert Nord Stream Blame (Miles)
• Poland Probably Involved In Nord Stream Blasts – ex-German Spymaster (RT)
• Zelensky Aide Denies Kiev’s Involvement In Nord Stream Attack (RT)
• Zelensky Aide Admits Kursk Incursion Was Discussed With Western Backers (RT)
• US Lying About Involvement In Kursk Attack – Patrushev (RT)
• Zombie Russiagate Conspiracy Persists as US Stokes Fear, Hatred of Moscow (Sp.)
• Harris Seeks to Distance Herself From Biden’s Unpopularity on Economy (Sp.)
• Kamala’s First Economic Plan Proposes Price Controls To “Combat Inflation” (ZH)
• “Would It Kill You Guys?” (ZH)
• Vance and Walz Agree to Oct. 1 Debate (ET)
• It’s Time For America To Rethink Its Relationship With NATO (Bridge)
• Want More Freedom of Speech? Try Less Government (Turley)
• Kim Dotcom Defiant After NZ Approves Extradition For US Trial (ZH)
• RFK Jr Tried To Meet With Trump, Harris In Pursuit Of Cabinet Position (ZH)

 

 

 

 

Paper

 

 

Dore Kamala
https://twitter.com/i/status/1824225386269389091

 

 

RoganTrump
https://twitter.com/i/status/1823808656825000274

 

 

TysonTrump
https://twitter.com/i/status/1823818699708739734

 

 

TrumpSS

 

 

Benz
https://twitter.com/i/status/1823823666125398446

 

 

 

 

No he did not. The US is real eager not to be blamed for Nord Stream. So despite Seymour Hersh’s record, they keep coming with stories that would ‘prove’ him wrong. Now it’s a bunch of Ukrainians again. With the same story about 6 adults in a little rented sailing boat for a week, cramped enough. But they also brought deep sea scuba gear for four/five, and a whole set of bombs. Oh, and this is new: an amateur Ukrainian scuba diver named Volodymyr Z blew it all up. He has vanished, so no questions. Seymour Hersh is right. He always is. For some 60 years now. He likes that reputation. He wants to die an honest man.

• Zelensky Gave Initial Order For Nord Stream Attack – WSJ (RT)

Vladimir Zelensky approved a Ukrainian plan to sabotage the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, before trying to call off the operation under US pressure, but it was too late to do so, the Wall Street Journal has reported, citing people allegedly involved in the plot. The energy infrastructure, built to deliver Russian gas to Germany and the rest of Europe, was ruptured by blasts under the Baltic Sea in September 2022. Early the following year, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh reported that explosives were planted on the Nord Stream pipelines by US Navy divers under the cover of a NATO exercise, and detonated on orders from US President Joe Biden. Top officials in Moscow, including President Vladimir Putin, have also pointed the finger at Washington, arguing that it stood to gain the most from the disruption of Russian gas supplies to the EU.

In its article on Wednesday, the WSJ pointed to another version of events, according to which the pipelines were targeted by the Ukrainians. It was first reported by the Western media shortly after the publication of Hersh’s article. According to the outlet’s sources, the idea of blowing up Nord Stream was conceived by “a handful of senior Ukrainian military officers and businessmen” as they gathered for drinks in May 2022, a few months after the outbreak of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev. The plotters believed that it would reduce Russia’s energy revenues and make the EU less dependent on Moscow. According to the report, the Ukrainian operation involved a small rented yacht, called Andromeda, with a six-member crew, including trained civilian divers, and cost only around $300,000.

Vladimir Zelensky initially approved the attack on the pipelines, but later – when the CIA learned of the plan and asked the Ukrainian leader to abort it – ordered the operation to be called off, a Ukrainian officer who claimed to have been involved in the sabotage and three other informed people said. However, then Ukrainian commander-in-chief Valery Zaluzhny ignored the demand and went ahead with the attack, the sources alleged. He told Zelensky that, once dispatched, a sabotage team goes incommunicado and cannot be withdrawn, they added. When approached for comment by the WSJ, Zaluzhny, who is now Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, denied the report, calling claims of his – or Kiev’s – involvement in the destruction of Nord Stream a “mere provocation.”

Read more …

And they prepare the new story well.. Germany’s involved, and Poland..

• Russians Volunteer in Droves as US Tries to Divert Nord Stream Blame (Miles)

Support among Russians for the special military operation is at a high as Western governments scramble to cover up the United States’ increasingly sloppy crimes. Two decades from the outset of the United States’ war in Iraq a 2023 opinion survey found 61% of Americans disagree with the decision to launch the ill-fated invasion. The finding is the culmination of years of soul searching on the part of the American public, which has grown increasingly wary of US military intervention in recent years. A large majority of Russian citizens, on the other hand, have indicated they approve of the country’s special military operation against Ukraine with healthy military recruitment figures serving as the latest evidence the citizenry is united behind President and Commander-in-Chief Vladimir Putin. International relations and security analyst Mark Sleboda joined Sputnik’s The Final Countdown program Wednesday to discuss the latest developments in the Western proxy war on Russia as well as the curious case of the Nord Stream pipeline explosion as the German government claims to have found a suspect for the crime.

“The German news that broke is pretty interesting,” said Sleboda, referring to the German government’s release of the name of a supposed suspect behind the presumed sabotage of the Russo-German Nord Stream Pipeline in 2022. “This Volodymyr Z – according to German privacy laws, the full name is not released… this is the absolutely complete bull feces, cockamamie cover-up story that the United States and Germany have centered on.”“They can’t admit that the United States blew up the Nord Stream pipelines, because that would mean the end of NATO,” the analyst added. “It would be a member of NATO attacking a member of NATO. They can’t admit that. So they came up with this.” In a case of reality sometimes proving to be stranger than fiction, the German government has claimed an amateur Ukrainian scuba diver by the name of “Volodymyr Z” is responsible for the explosion that blew up the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that formerly transported cheap natural gas from Russia to Europe.

But critics claim the “discovery” of the alleged culprit, whose last name is purportedly “Zhuravlev,” is itself another fiction of Western intelligence agencies, which insist on offering an alternative explanation for the environmental disaster which is widely presumed to be the work of the United States. “It [was] a methane release,” Sleboda noted. “And methane is a greenhouse gas some 28 times more potent than carbon. So, yes, it is also the largest man-made release of carbon environmental catastrophe [of] that scale. But these things go by the wayside when geopolitics is concerned.” “As far as I’m concerned the Seymour Hersh version of events is probably very close to the actual story,” he added, referring to the investigative journalist’s analysis of the incident.

“To believe that a group of rando Ukrainians on a rent-a-day little pleasure dinghy out of Poland managed to lay serious military explosives at the bottom of the Baltic Sea, a NATO lake just off an island in Denmark that NATO routinely does military exercises [in] – in fact amazingly enough, just a week earlier, there [were] US ships involved in military exercises, military ships that may very well have actually been involved in leaving some explosives on the bottom of the Baltic Sea – I mean, this story is so ridiculous and, conveniently enough, their mysterious Volodymyr Z just disappeared.” Western governments’ refusal to implicate the United States in the incident and reluctance to investigate the matter has further damaged support for the Ukraine proxy war as European leaders fear former President Donald Trump would end US support for the conflict if reelected in November.

Meanwhile, Russian citizens remain united behind Moscow’s war effort, with Ukraine’s attempt to mount an incursion onto the Kursk region of Russia only heightening Russians’ patriotic fervor. “It’s just further cementing support for the [special military operation],” noted Slebeda. “By all domestic accounts the number of young men signing up as volunteer contract soldiers for the SMO – which was already around 1,000 a day, at least at the last word by the minister of defense – has jumped again because people feel that Russia has been attacked and Russia has been insulted.” “The statements in the press make it quite clear that the US and Europe were at some level completely behind this. So that increases Russian society’s anger and desire for getting some payback.”

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BS. The Polish may have helped the Americans, but that’s not this story.

• Poland Probably Involved In Nord Stream Blasts – ex-German Spymaster (RT)

Poland was likely involved in the underwater explosions that ruptured the Nord Stream underwater gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea in September 2022, the former president of Germany’s foreign intelligence agency has claimed. August Hanning also alleged that Warsaw has intentionally obstructed Berlin’s investigation into the incident. No one has so far claimed responsibility for the blasts, which brought an end to the supply of Russian gas to Germany via Nord Stream 1 and damaged the parallel Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which had never entered operation due to EU bureaucratic setbacks. In an interview with Die Welt on Thursday, Hanning said: “The way it seems is that it was a Ukrainian team that, as per the findings of the investigation, operated there.” However, he added, “this was of course only possible with support from the land.”

“When we look at the map… pretty evidently, the Polish agencies were engaged here, and I think not only agencies …I think that this was an arrangement between [people] at the top level in Ukraine and in Poland,” the former intelligence chief conjectured. He alleged that Warsaw might have provided logistical support to the suspected Ukrainian saboteurs. According to Hanning, “these are decisions that were made at the highest political level. And I think that there was an arrangement between [Ukrainian] President [Vladimir] Zelensky and [Polish] President [Andrzej] Duda to carry out this attack. ”He claimed that Polish authorities let one of the suspects leave the country even though Germany had already reached out to Warsaw, requesting assistance in his capture. Warsaw “didn’t exactly promote the probe. On the contrary, crucial findings were withheld, as I have heard from investigative circles,” Hanning told Die Welt.

“In short, Poland had no interest in the success of the investigation, and this is of course due to [the fact] that Poland was massively involved in the preparation of this attack,” the former senior intelligence official claimed. He concluded that such attacks do not happen without massive state involvement, going so far as to allege that the “Polish and… the Ukrainian military played a big role, and intelligence services as well.”

On Wednesday, German state broadcaster ARD, along with the Suddeutsche Zeitung and Die Zeit newspapers reported that Poland, despite EU inter-state regulations, has failed to respond to Berlin’s request for cooperation after Federal Public Prosecutor Jens Rommel in June issued an arrest warrant for a Ukrainian national identified as “Vladimir Z”. The suspect is reportedly a diving instructor who lived in Poland and had allegedly placed the explosive devices on the pipeline.Polish prosecutors confirmed that they had received the arrest warrant, but argued that the man was not detained as he had left the country by crossing the Polish-Ukrainian border, Reuters cited. Kiev officials have publicly denied any involvement in the destruction of the pipelines.

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Good cop bad cop. Instill doubt. Keep ’em guessing.

• Zelensky Aide Denies Kiev’s Involvement In Nord Stream Attack (RT)

Kiev had nothing to do with the explosions on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, Mikhail Podoliak, a top adviser to Ukrainian leader, Vladimir Zelensky, has said. Podoliak made the statement to Reuters on Thursday in response to a report by the Wall Street Journal, claiming that Zelensky authorized the September 2022 attack which ruptured the key energy infrastructure built to deliver Russian gas to Germany and the rest of Europe. According to the US outlet’s sources, which included officers allegedly involved in the operation, Zelensky initially approved the attack on Nord Stream. He later tried to call it off under pressure from the CIA, but then Ukrainian commander-in-chief Valery Zaluzhny told him it could not be done as the sabotage group had already been dispatched and there was no way to contact it. “Such an act can only be carried out with extensive technical and financial resources… and who possessed all this at the time of the bombing? Only Russia,” Podoliak told the agency.

Russia has ridiculed claims that it would destroy its own pipelines, which provided it with steady revenue. Top officials in Moscow, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, have previously pointed the finger at Washington, arguing that it stood to gain the most from the disruption of Russian gas supplies to the EU. “Ukraine has nothing to do with the Nord Stream explosions,” Podolyak insisted, adding that Kiev did not gain any strategic or tactical advantage from the sabotage. The report by the WSJ claimed that “a handful of senior Ukrainian military officers and businessmen” came up with the idea of blowing up the pipelines during a drinking party in May 2022, a few months after the outbreak of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev. The plotters believed that it would reduce Russia’s energy profits and make the EU less dependent on Moscow, it said.

Zaluzhny, who is now Ukraine’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, told the outlet that claims of his – or Kiev’s – involvement in the destruction of Nord Stream were a “mere provocation.” A senior official in the Security Service of Ukraine, the SBU, also denied the report, insisting that Zelensky in particular “did not approve the implementation of any such actions on the territory of third countries and did not issue relevant orders.” The WSJ said its reporting is partially corroborated by the findings of the German police investigation into the Nord Stream explosions. The German Federal Public Prosecutor issued a first arrest warrant in connection with the sabotage this week, according to local reports. The suspect is believed to be a Ukrainian citizen identified as ‘Vladimir Z’. The newspaper suggested that the police investigation could “upend” relations between Kiev and Berlin, which has been Ukraine’s biggest backer in the EU amid the conflict with Russia.

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No doubt. Kiev wouldn’t move without NATO.

• Zelensky Aide Admits Kursk Incursion Was Discussed With Western Backers (RT)

Kiev discussed its plan to launch a cross-border attack into Russia with its Western backers, a top adviser to Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has admitted. Western officials have said they supported last week’s incursion into Kursk Region, but have denied any prior knowledge of the operation. However, Zelensky aide Mikhail Podoliak has told The Independent that these disclaimers were not accurate, the British online newspaper reported on Thursday. ”There are certain things that have to be done with the element of surprise, and that have to happen on a local level,” he was quoted as saying. “But there were discussions between partner forces, just not on the public level.”

The Ukrainian official reiterated the explanations of the motives behind the operation that he previously offered on national television, stating that Kiev’s objective is to use military “coercion” against the Russian public. ”When the war proceeds into the territory of Russia, they are certainly scared. They are shocked. This has a significant impact on the psychological state of Russia,” he said. Russian officials have said that by attacking civilians in Kursk Region Kiev had killed any chance for peace talks – an objective that their Ukrainian counterparts claim the incursion brings closer. Podoliak urged the British government to permit Kiev to strike Russian territory with the long-range Storm Shadow missiles London has donated. If such attacks happen, “Russia would understand the cost of war is too high,” he told The Independent.

According to British media, London allows Ukrainian troops to use any of weapons it sends to them on Russian soil, with the exception of the cruise missiles, which the UK manufactures jointly with France. Moscow has warned that if any Western weapons are used for strikes deep inside Russia, it would share similar capabilities with parties elsewhere in the world that would use them against Western military assets. Moscow considers Kiev’s military tactics in Russia to be “terrorist.” Western nations arming Kiev share responsibility for atrocities committed by Ukrainian troops, officials have said.

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They set the whole thing up.

• US Lying About Involvement In Kursk Attack – Patrushev (RT)

Kiev would never dare to stage a large-scale incursion into Russian territory without Washington’s blessing and NATO support, former Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev said. Last week, Kiev launched its largest attack on Russian territory since the outbreak of conflict in February 2022. Western officials have voiced their support for the incursion into Kursk Region but denied any prior knowledge or involvement in the operation. ”The US leadership’s claims of non-involvement in Kiev’s actions in Kursk Region do not correspond to reality… Without their participation and direct support, Kiev would not have ventured into Russian territory,” Patrushev told Izvestia in an interview published on Friday.

The adviser to President Vladimir Putin, who has recently been appointed to oversee Russia’s global maritime strategy, emphasized that the “West put the criminal junta at the head of Ukraine,” while “NATO countries have supplied Kiev with weapons, military instructors, and continuous intelligence while controlling the actions of neo-Nazis.” The operation in Kursk Region was also planned with the involvement of NATO and Western special services. The advance of Kiev’s troops was swiftly halted by Russian forces, although they maintain control over several settlements in Kursk Region. According to the local governor, at least 12 civilians have been killed and another 121 wounded due to the incursion, forcing more than 120,000 residents to evacuate.

”This criminal action stems from the premonition of the imminent collapse of the neo-Nazi Kiev regime,” Patrushev said, adding that “the residents of Ukraine are suffering for the sake of American interests, as the US has turned the country into a military anti-Russian project.” Russian officials have stated that by attacking civilians in Kursk Region, Kiev has eliminated any chance for peace talks—an objective that Ukrainian officials claim the incursion brings closer. Moscow characterizes Kiev’s military tactics in Russia as “terrorist,” while Western nations arming Kiev share responsibility for atrocities committed by Ukrainian troops, officials have asserted. ”Washington’s efforts have created all the prerequisites for Ukraine to lose its sovereignty and part of its territories, including those coveted by some American allies,” Patrushev added.

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“Russia has been demonized to the point where Donald Trump has been blamed on the Russians – think what you will of that..”

• Zombie Russiagate Conspiracy Persists as US Stokes Fear, Hatred of Moscow (Sp.)

“Russiagate continues to survive like a science fiction monster, resilient to bullets,” writes former CIA analyst Ray McGovern in a piece on the website Consortium News, noting the longevity and usefulness of the conspiracy in continuing to stoke hostility towards Moscow among the American public. The notion that Russia interfered in the 2016 US presidential election or played a role in hacking leaked Democratic Party emails has persisted even after sworn testimony from the cyber security firm CrowdStrike confirmed the lack of evidence for the claim. “The mainstream media has been incredibly adept at suppressing all this stuff,” McGovern noted on Sputnik’s The Critical Hour program Wednesday. “No matter what we write in Consortium News or other outlets – it’s on antiwar.com now, too – or however much you and I share this information, we’re fighting an uphill battle.”

“Why is this important? Just to remind folks who might not reflect on this, Russia has been demonized to the point where Donald Trump has been blamed on the Russians – think what you will of that,” he continued. “And all kinds of other things have been blamed on the Russians to the point where if these not very emotionally stable people in the White House decide to go after the Russians in Ukraine or even get involved against the Russians in Syria or elsewhere in the Middle East, most of the American people say, ‘oh yeah, those damn Russians, didn’t they give us Donald Trump?’” The ingrained hostility towards Russia from the American public – and from Democratic Party supporters, in particular – has served as a useful tool in justifying continued US involvement in Ukraine’s proxy war against the country.

Former CIA head James Clapper, who presided over the agency’s illegal surveillance of the Donald Trump campaign during the 2016 election, has been instrumental in perpetuating the narrative. Clapper has made his distrust of Moscow clear, appearing to suggest nefarious qualities are somehow hardcoded into the DNA of Russian people. “[Clapper claimed] the historical practices of the Russians [make them] almost genetically driven to co-opt, penetrate, gain favor, whatever, which is a typical Russian technique,” McGovern recalled, calling him a “Russophobe extraordinaire.” A gene for dishonesty has yet to be found. But if one exists, Pompeo’s comment suggests it is most likely to predominate among CIA officials like Clapper, who have been responsible for the overthrow of dozens of world leaders and the deaths of millions of civilians.

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Oh sure. She’ll go MAGA.

• Harris Seeks to Distance Herself From Biden’s Unpopularity on Economy (Sp.)

US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris plans to distance herself from incumbent White House occupant Joe Biden’s unpopularity on the economy and other issues, Axios reported on Wednesday. While Harris does not intend to disclose this plan publicly, she wants to break with Biden on economic issues and, first of all, on rising prices, the report said, citing the vice president’s advisers. This is part of a “highly choreographed” effort aimed at portraying Harris as a different kind of Democrat, according to the report. Harris plans to share with voters how she would govern if she wins the November election during her first policy speech in North Carolina on Friday and in the address at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next week, the report said. In North Carolina, she is expected to share her plans to lower costs of health care, housing and food for the middle class.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1823799450776821941

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Price gouging may have been an issue 100 years ago. Not today, not for consumer goods. For a company like Google, perhaps.

“..average costs paid by businesses have risen just as much as costs charged to consumers – if businesses are being “greedy,” they’re doing it all wrong…”

• Kamala’s First Economic Plan Proposes Price Controls To “Combat Inflation” (ZH)

After the unoriginal Vice President Kamala Harris stole former President Trump’s proposed ‘no tax on tips’ policy, she’s at it again with yet another recycled idea. This time, she’s echoing President Biden’s actions and rhetoric to crack down on sky-high food prices by proposing the first-ever federal ban on “corporate price-gouging in the food and grocery industries”—a move that reeks of socialism. “There’s a big difference between fair pricing in competitive markets, and excessive prices unrelated to the costs of doing business,” the Harris campaign wrote in a statement, adding, “Americans can see that difference in their grocery bills.” The Harris campaign said the vice president will unveil the new federal proposed ban on Friday at a campaign rally in the battleground state of North Carolina as part of a broader economic policy platform. The proposal will ensure food companies can’t exploit consumers to increase profits, according to CBS News, citing Harris-Walz campaign officials.

Harris’ policy speech will also call on the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys to examine corporations violating price-fixing rules. Her remarks are expected to echo Biden’s actions and rhetoric, especially with his war against meat processing companies that he alleges are responsible for higher burger prices at the supermarket. VP Harris’ campaign argues that lowering Americans’ costs is a function of socialist-style price controls. Yet this is the quickest way to understand that Harris’ economic team has no actual understanding of inflation. Heritage Foundation’s EJ Antoni explained, “Here’s your “price gouging” narrative: average costs paid by businesses have risen just as much as costs charged to consumers – if businesses are being “greedy,” they’re doing it all wrong…”

Instead of curbing out-of-control government spending, which debt rises $1 trillion every 100 days, and understanding that monetary inflation driven by the Federal Reserve’s money creation is the root cause of inflation, Harris deflects the actual problem: The Fed. She instead goes after big corporations for ‘illegal price gouging.’ Here’s a snippet of Money Metals Midweek Memo’s Mike Maharrey commenting on Harris’ proposed price-fixing ban on big food companies: The second “dumb” idea Maharrey discussed came from Vice President Kamala Harris, who was recently asked about her plan to combat inflation. Maharrey criticized her response, which he described as “word salad,” pointing out that she merely acknowledged the problem without offering any concrete solutions. Instead, she promised to take on “big corporations” engaging in “illegal price gouging,” corporate landlords, and big pharma.

Maharrey argued that Harris’s approach misses the root cause of inflation, which is monetary inflation driven by the Federal Reserve’s money creation. He cited the July budget deficit data, revealing that the Biden administration spent another $574 billion in just one month, running a $243 billion deficit. Maharrey emphasized that inflation is not caused by corporate greed but by the government’s excessive spending and borrowing. “Price inflation is a symptom of monetary inflation, which has everything to do with money creation by the Federal Reserve,” Maharrey explained. He warned that Harris’s proposed policies, including price controls, would likely lead to shortages and exacerbate the problem rather than solve it.

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“She’s been taking her message to the voters and drawing large crowds. So she’s actually having those direct conversations..”

• “Would It Kill You Guys?” (ZH)

The Harris campaign’s ‘hide Kamala’ strategy may be working from a polling perspective – but it’s gone on so long that even CNN is getting annoyed. “Would it kill you guys to have a press conference?” asked the network’s Jim Acosta (of ‘shouting at Trump’ fame) during an interview with Harris communications director Michael Tyler. “I’m sure this is not going to be the first time you’ve heard this question, but the Trump campaign is also going after the vice president for not doing enough interviews, for not holding a press conference. Would it kill you guys to have a press conference? Why hasn’t she had a press conference?” To which Tyler laughed sheepishly and pivoted to robotic talking points about Harris and running mate Tim Walz being “busy” traveling around the country to multiple (teleprompter) campaign rallies.

“Michael, you know a campaign really isn’t really a press conference,” Acosta pushed back. “Why hasn’t she had a press conference? She’s the vice president, she can handle the questions, why not do it?” Tyler said Harris will sit down for a one-on-one interview before the end of the month, which Acosta said was “not a lot,” adding “can you commit to a press conference by the end of the month?” Tyler once again deflected – saying “We will commit to directly engage with the voters who are actually going to decide this election, and that is going to be complete with rallies, with sit-down interviews, with press conferences, with all the digital assets that we have at our disposal.”

CNN’s John Berman also pressed a Harris campaign spox over the VP’s lack of media presence. “The reason I was asking you about today is because it seems like she has time if she wanted to do an interview with a member of the media or do a news conference, correct? There does appear to be that time, if she wanted,” said Berman – to which Harris campaign spokeswoman Adrienne Elrod repeated Tyler’s talking point that Harris and Walz are bringing their message directly to voters. “She hit a number of battleground states. I think we had 15,000 people in Detroit last week, 12 to 13,000 in Nevada. She’s been taking her message to the voters and drawing large crowds. So she’s actually having those direct conversations,” said Elrod – before Berman cut her off. “But not today — all I’m saying is not today. She could do an interview today, I would think, you know, because she’s not out there today,” said the CNN host. Meanwhile, Trump did a lengthy press conference at Mar-a-Lago last week and had a 2 hour conversation with Elon Musk – something Harris clearly couldn’t pull off because her biggest liability, like Biden, is her brain.

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How do you avoid Walz’s (non-) service?

• Vance and Walz Agree to Oct. 1 Debate (ET)

A much-anticipated debate between Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz appears to be on as both vice presidential candidates have agreed to CBS’s proposal for an Oct. 1 face-off. The network issued a statement Wednesday indicating that it had invited both vice-presidential candidates to take part in a debate in New York City, presenting both campaigns with four dates as options: Sept. 17, Sept. 24, Oct. 1, and Oct. 8. Walz, who remains the presumptive Democratic Party nominee until the Democratic National Convention later this month, accepted the invitation in a message on X, writing: “See you on October 1, JD.” Vance, who initially told Fox News that he would most likely agree but that his team needed time to review the rules and conditions of the debate, agreed to the Oct. 1 debate and upped the ante by agreeing to another debate proposed by CNN.

“The American people deserve as many debates as possible, which is why President Trump has challenged Kamala to three of them already. Not only do I accept the CBS debate on October 1st, I accept the CNN debate on September 18th as well. I look forward to seeing you at both!” Vance wrote in a post on X. At the time of reporting, it was unclear whether Walz had agreed to the Sept. 18 debate proposed by CNN. Vance told Fox News on Wednesday after being asked whether he would agree to the Oct. 1 debate on CBS that he would most likely be there but that his campaign needed to review the conditions. “I strongly suspect we’re going to be there on October the 1st,” Vance said, but added the condition that “we’re not going to do one of these fake debates where they don’t actually have an audience there, where they don’t actually set the parameters in a way where we can have a good exchange of ideas.

“We’re going to do a real debate, and if CBS agrees to it, then certainly we’ll do it,” Vance said. The Ohio Republican drew a contrast between the large volume of media interviews that the Trump–Vance campaign has been giving compared to the Harris–Waltz campaign, adding that he wants to debate Walz several times because “it’s important for the American people to actually see us discuss our views.” Vance has criticized Vice President Kamala Harris for her lack of media availability since she became the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee. “I enjoyed sitting down with three of the major networks today to answer the tough questions any leader should answer,” Vance said in an Aug. 11 post on X, after giving three separate interviews on Sunday morning shows.

Harris has largely avoided answering questions from the press since replacing President Joe Biden as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, drawing criticism from conservatives and journalists alike. Previously, Vance said that he wouldn’t commit to a debate until Walz was officially named the vice presidential nominee, which is expected to take place at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, scheduled for Aug. 19–22. Historically, both of the major party presidential and vice presidential nominees have participated in debates. So far, Trump and Harris have agreed to one debate, which is to be hosted by ABC on Sept. 10. There has been speculation that other Trump–Harris debates could take place, though nothing has been formalized.

Walz

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“..Dwight Eisenhower noted, “If in ten years, all American troops stationed in Europe for national defense purposes have not been returned to the United States, then this whole project will have failed.”

• It’s Time For America To Rethink Its Relationship With NATO (Bridge)

For over a century, the United States has had one overarching goal in Europe: ensuring that the continent’s economic and military power was divided among various states by preventing the rise of a European superstate that could usurp that power for itself. Now that that goal has been achieved, will Washington admit it’s time to Europeanize NATO? In the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, the influential voice of the U.S. establishment, Justin Logan and Joshua Shifrinson fire a shot across the bows of Brussels when they repeat the Trump mantra that “it’s time for Washington to Europeanize NATO and give up responsibility for the continent’s security.” “The United States should recognize that it has achieved its main goal in Europe,” Logan and Shifrinson write. “Having successfully ensured that no country can dominate the continent, it should embrace a new approach to the region.

Under a revised strategy, the United States would reduce its military presence on the continent, Europeanize NATO, and hand principal responsibility for European security back to its rightful owners: the Europeans.” As half of the U.S. electorate hopes to ‘make America great again’ with the populist Trump, that opinion is quickly going mainstream. As the soaring U.S. national debt and a souring economy become political hot-button issues in a critical election year, many Americans have come to the conclusion that Uncle Sam has been playing beat cop in Europe for far too long. In the aftermath of the Cold War, European nations made severe cuts to their military expenditures while Washington remained content to pick up the expensive slack. But as the U.S. defense budget nears $1 trillion per year, and millions of invading illegals pouring across the border from Latin America, it is becoming simply unaffordable for the U.S. taxpayer to subsidize the security of Europe any longer.

After all, Europe is quite capable of handling the task. The war in Ukraine is case in point. It boggles the mind that the 27 member states of the European Union, comprised of nearly half a billion people, should require a single American-made rifle in this regional conflict. After all, Europe is comprised of many strong and productive nations with respectable industrial centers. There is no reason why Europeans, who have been scheming about the creation of an ‘EU Army’ since the days of de Gaulle, cannot find the ways and means to handle the conflict for themselves (by comparison, Russia currently produces more than twice the number of artillery shells each month than Europe and the U.S. combined). The primary reason that Brussels has dropped the ball in Ukraine is because they have become spoiled by American largesse and have lost both the ability and the will to look after their own interests. America has been asked once again to fill the void at grave expense to its own national interests.

As JD Vance, the Republican Party’s nominee for the vice presidency, wrote in the pages of the Financial Times, “We owe it to our European partners to be honest: Americans want allies in Europe, not client states, and our generosity in Ukraine is coming to an end. Europeans should regard the conclusion of the war there as an imperative. They must keep rebuilding their industrial and military capabilities.”It’s important to keep in mind that NATO was never planned as a permanent fixture on the European continent. As Logan and Shifrinson emphasize, the Western military bloc was “expedient to protect Western European states as they recovered from World War II, facilitate Western European efforts to balance Soviet power, and integrate West Germany into a counter-Soviet coalition that would also help civilize German power.”

And as Russia has been at great pains to remind its Western colleagues, U.S. Secretary of State James Baker famously gave Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev the assurance on February 9, 1990 that the fledgling military bloc would not shift “one inch eastward.” And as far back as 1951, the supreme Allied commander in Europe, Dwight Eisenhower noted, “If in ten years, all American troops stationed in Europe for national defense purposes have not been returned to the United States, then this whole project will have failed.” Eisenhower would be shocked to see the level of American influence in Europe today. Obviously, the situation today bears no resemblance to the state of affairs fifty years ago. NATO has exploded into a 32-member fighting force, while former apprehensions of a resurgent Germany have given way to questions about Berlin’s role in the European hierarchy.

European countries and the United States no longer feel threatened by an ‘imperial Germany,’ yet there are powerful forces inside of the United States that will never cede Washington’s control over Brussels, and that largely explains the tremendous hostility that Trump faces as he makes another effort for the White House. The hawks have great disdain for this man who has shown a penchant for avoiding military conflict while threatening to leave NATO.

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“..censorship by surrogate” through which agencies did indirectly what they are barred from doing directly under the First Amendment..”

• Want More Freedom of Speech? Try Less Government (Turley)

It is time to get the United States out of the censorship business for good. In the last three years, the House of Representatives has disclosed a massive censorship system run in part with federal funding and with coordination with federal officials. A federal court described this system as truly “Orwellian.” The Biden Administration has made speech regulation a priority in targeting disinformation, misinformation or malinformation. President Joe Biden even said that companies refusing to censor citizens were “killing people.” His administration has now created an anti-free speech record that is only rivaled by the Adams Administration, which used the Alien and Sedition Acts to arrest political opponents. Jen Easterly, who heads the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, is an example of how speech controls and censorship have become mainstream.

Her agency was created to work on our critical infrastructure, but Easterly declared that the mandate would now include policing “our cognitive infrastructure.” That includes combating “malinformation,” or information “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.” I have testified for years about the censorship system. For much of that time, Democrats insisted that there was no proof of any coordination or funding from the government. Such evidence did indeed exist, but Democrats worked to block any investigation to confirm what we already knew about government officials targeting individuals and groups for throttling, bans, and blacklisting. Then Elon Musk bought Twitter. The release of the Twitter Files destroyed any plausible deniability of the government’s role in this censorship system. Various agencies had employees working with social media companies to target those with opposing or disfavored views. At the same time, we learned of grants from the federal government supporting blacklisting and targeting operations.

That includes efforts to quietly choke off the revenue of disfavored sites by pressuring advertisers and donors. While companies like Facebook have continued to fight to conceal their coordination with the government, the Twitter Files pulled back the curtain to expose the system. Indeed, Democrats largely abandoned their denials and turned to full-throated defenses of censorship, even calling free speech advocates “Putin-lovers” and “insurrectionist sympathizers.” In 1800, Thomas Jefferson defeated John Adams in the only election where free speech was a primary issue for voters. It should be again. Vice President Kamala Harris is known as a supporter for these censorship and blacklisting operations. She can now defend that record and convince Americans that they need to have less free speech. This debate should ideally focus on one simple legislative proposal. In my new book, I suggest various measures that can regain the ground that we have lost on free speech.

One such measure is a federal law that would ban any federal funding of any offices or programs (government, academic, or corporate) that rate, target, censor, throttle, or seek to take adverse action against individuals or groups based on their viewpoints in public forums or social media. There can be easy exceptions to this ban for individuals or groups engaging in criminal conduct or unlawful foreign interference with elections. Threatening individuals or trafficking in child pornography constitute conduct, not speech. They are criminal acts under the federal code. Nothing in this law would prevent the government from speaking in its own voice. If Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas wants to challenge claims made about him or his agency, he can do so on the agency website or make his case to the media. That is the essence of free speech. What he cannot do is create a Disinformation Governance Board to regulate the speech of citizens or groups.

In my prior testimony to Congress, I warned about the use of what I called “censorship by surrogate” through which agencies did indirectly what they are barred from doing directly under the First Amendment. This new law will not put an end to the burgeoning anti-free speech movement. It will not end the new market for groups making millions in seeking to silence or strangle sites with opposing views. However, it will create a wall of separation of the government from censorship systems. It would also offer a simple and clear line for the 2024 election. Candidates will have to take sides on free speech. If candidates like Harris want to continue to support the government in blacklisting or censoring citizens, they should own it. We spent years of politicians engaging in cynical denials of the government’s role in censorship. If these politicians are “all in” with censorship, then they should be honest about it and let voters make the same choice that was made in 1800.

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“I love New Zealand. I’m not leaving.”

• Kim Dotcom Defiant After NZ Approves Extradition For US Trial (ZH)

Internet mogul Kim Dotcom says he’s not going anywhere after New Zealand’s justice minister said on Thursday that he will be extradited to the Untied States on charges related to his defunct file-sharing website Megaupload. Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith announced that he had signed an extradition order for Dotcom, saying in a statement: “I considered all of the information carefully, and have decided that Mr Dotcom should be surrendered to the US to face trial,” adding “As is common practice, I have allowed Mr Dotcom a short period of time to consider and take advice on my decision.” The extradition order comes 12 years after an FBI-ordered raid on his Auckland mansion. In 2017, the high court in New Zealand first approved his extradition – with an appeal court reaffirming the finding in 2018. In 2020, the country’s supreme court again affirmed the finding, however they also left the door open for further judicial review.

Dotcom responded to the decision, posting on Tuesday that “the obedient US colony in the South Pacific just decided to extradite me for what users uploaded to Megaupload.” He later said: “I love New Zealand. I’m not leaving.” According to US authorities, Dotcom and three other Megaupload executives cost film studios over US$500 million by encouraging people to store and share copyrighted material – generating over US$175 million for his website. He also faces charges of money laundering and racketeering. The internet mogul says he should not be held personally liable for copyright infringement carried out on his site. “New Zealand copyright law (92b) makes it clear that an ISP can’t be criminally liable for actions of their users,” Dotcom noted in 2017 following the high court’s decision. “Unless you’re Kim Dotcom?”

Megaupload was based in Hong Kong until 2012, when the US seized the domain and shuttered the site. It relaunched in 2013 as Mega, with a New Zealand domain name, however Dotcom has had no involvement in the company since at least 2015. The company’s chief marketing officer, Finn Batato, and chief technical officer and co-founder, Mathias Ortmann, both from Germany, along with a third executive, the Dutch national Bram van der Kolk, were arrested in Auckland with Dotcom in 2012, according to The Guardian. Ortmann and Van der Kolk were sentenced to jail terms in 2023 under plea deals that avoided extradition, while Batato died in 2022 in New Zealand.

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“..the CIA is concerned that Trump did not initially take the RFK JR bait, and now they are going to run a public campaign to position their operative. I’ll say it again, Robert F Kennedy Jr is an intelligence asset.”

• RFK Jr Tried To Meet With Trump, Harris In Pursuit Of Cabinet Position (ZH)

Independent 2024 presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr tried to land a meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris last week, in hopes of trading an endorsement for a top job in her administration, the Washington Post and other outlets reported Wednesday evening. So far, Team Harris has ignored RFK Jr’s pitch. “We’ve reached out repeatedly through the highest level intermediaries. We’ve been told that they have no interest in talking with me,” Kennedy told the New York Times. Separately, Kennedy expressed disappointment to the Post. “I think it is a strategic mistake for them. That’s my perspective,” Kennedy said. “I think they ought to be looking at every opportunity. I think it is going to be a very close race.” In July, Kennedy described Harris as “monumentally unpopular with her own party,” and condemned her tenure as attorney general in California, saying she worked to keep nonviolent criminals in jail in a “modern version of slavery” and thus “has one of the worst civil rights records of any public official.”

He also condemned her for being “a war hawk on Ukraine…a war hawk on China.” Kennedy’s poll numbers have sagged since the Democrats pressured President Biden into calling off his re-election campaign — which means his potential endorsement has also lost some zing. The Post says its averaging of polls in July had Kennedy backed by about 9% of voters. With Biden out and Harris in, his support has faded to around 5%. What’s more, some polls suggest that Kennedy’s presence on ballots is a net benefit to Harris. While Harris ignored the invitation, Kennedy did secure a meeting with Donald Trump last month in Milwaukee, and reportedly offered the same deal that he now wants to offer to Harris, with a specific interest in advising Trump on health and medical policy. It appears Kennedy’s top goal is a powerful position in the next administration, with little regard for whose administration it is.

[..] Some are suggesting Kennedy may not be operating in good faith…Like lawyer “sundance” at The Conservative Treehouse:

“It sounds to me like RFK Jr is trying to present a pressure point to entice President Trump to pull him closer. In other words, the CIA is concerned that Trump did not initially take the RFK JR bait, and now they are going to run a public campaign to position their operative. I’ll say it again, Robert F Kennedy Jr is an intelligence asset. Many of the low-information alligator emoji people are falling for it. A few CTH readers are also having a difficult time seeing the IC operation around RFK Jr, particularly because of the CIA involvement in the killing of his family patriarchs before. However, it is that angle of denial the IC is purposefully exploiting. RFK Jr is an intel asset. His people know we know.”

RFK
https://twitter.com/i/status/1823925998582219079

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Stone

 

 

Globefish

 

 

Sea lion
https://twitter.com/i/status/1824058973244330325

 

 

Seal
https://twitter.com/i/status/1823978050955907093

 

 

Handsome

 

 

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