The Automatic Earth

Juan de la Corte (1597–1660) Lot And His Daughters Escaping From The Destruction Of Sodom And Gomorrah

The awful shadow of some unseen Power
Floats tho’ unseen amongst us, -visiting
This various world with as inconstant wing
As summer winds that creep from flower to flower.-
Like moonbeams that behind some piny mountain shower,
It visits with inconstant glance
Each human heart and countenance;
Like hues and harmonies of evening,-
Like clouds in starlight widely spread,-
Like memory of music fled,-
Like aught that for its grace may be
Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery.

Shelley, Hymn to Intellectual Beauty

Drones

LISTEN: Was UK supplied technology used by Israel to murder British citizens?

Were UK-made arms used to kill three British nationals?

Israeli media reports that Elbit Systems Hermes 450 drones were used to kill 3 British citizens.

These drones are powered by UK-made R902(W)… pic.twitter.com/6jAEfzobjt

— Khalissee (@Kahlissee) April 4, 2024

Biden

Joe Biden, who grew up a Muslim attending a Black church in the Puerto Rican part of Scranton, where he beat up Corn Pop while marching for trans rights on his way to a synagogue, now claims his family were “watermen in the Port of Baltimore in the 1800s”pic.twitter.com/zHHpaIYb4L

— Bad Hombre (@joma_gc) April 5, 2024

Save the world

On August 19, 2020, President Trump was asked if he was secretly saving the world from a Satanic cult of pedophilies. Even if you hate Donald Trump, ask yourself, why does every form of media tell you to? Nothing can stop what’s coming. pic.twitter.com/7H7feWqpAN

— Dom Lucre | Breaker of Narratives (@dom_lucre) April 4, 2024

Letitia
https://twitter.com/i/status/1775962785886974153

Democrat
https://twitter.com/i/status/1775901228419174414

WWIII is creeping up on us. It’s everywhere today.

“..that thick slab of Norwegian wood posing as Secretary-General came up with a merry “initiative” to create a 100 billion euro fund..”

• The “Order” Based On Made-up Rules Is Descending Into Savagery (Pepe Escobar)

As the de facto North Atlantic Terror Organization celebrates its 75th birthday, taking Lord Ismay’s motto to ever soaring heights (“keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down”), that thick slab of Norwegian wood posing as Secretary-General came up with a merry “initiative” to create a 100 billion euro fund to weaponize Ukraine for the next five years. Translation, regarding the crucial money front in the NATO-Russia clash: partial exit of the Hegemon – already obsessing with The Next Forever War, against China; enter the motley crew of ragged, de-industrialized European chihuahuas, all in deep debt and most mired in recession. A few IQs over average room temperature at NATO’s HQ in Haren, in Brussels, had the temerity to wonder how to come up with such a fortune, as NATO has zero leverage to raise money among member states.

After all, the Europeans will never be able to replicate the time-tested Hegemon money laundering machine. For instance, assuming the White House-proposed $60 billion package to Ukraine would be approved by the U.S. Congress – and it won’t – no less than 64% of the total will never reach Kiev: it will be laundered within the industrial-military complex. Yet it gets even more dystopic: Norwegian Wood, robotic stare, arms flailing, actually believes his proposed move will not imply a direct NATO military presence in Ukraine – or country 404; something that is already a fact on the ground for quite a while, irrespective of the warmongering hissy fits by Le Petit Roi in Paris (Peskov: “Russia-NATO relations have descended into direct confrontation”). Now couple the Lethal Looney Tunes spectacle along the NATOstan front with the Hegemon’s aircraft carrier performance in West Asia, consistently taking its industrial-scale slaughter/starvation Genocide Project in Gaza to indescribable heights – the meticulously documented holocaust watched in contorted silence by the “leaders” of the Global North.

UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese correctly summed it all up: the biblical psychopathology entity “intentionally killed the WCK workers so that donors would pull out and civilians in Gaza could continue to be starved quietly. Israel knows Western countries and most Arab countries won’t move a finger for the Palestinians.” The “logic” behind the deliberate three tap strike on the clearly signed humanitarian convoy of famine-alleviating workers in Gaza was to eviscerate from the news an even more horrendous episode: the genocide-within-a-genocide of al-Shifa hospital, responsible for at least 30% of all health services in Gaza. Al-Shifa was bombed, incinerated and had over 400 civilians killed in cold blood, in several cases literally smashed by bulldozers, including medical doctors, patients and dozens of children.

Nearly simultaneously, the biblical psychopathology gang completely eviscerated the Vienna convention – something that even the historical Nazis never did – striking Iran’s consular mission/ambassador’s residence in Damascus. This was a missile attack on a diplomatic mission, enjoying immunity, on the territory of a third country, against which the gang is not at war. And on top of it, killing General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force in Syria and Lebanon, his deputy Mohammad Hadi Hajizadeh, another five officers, and a total of 10 people. Translation: an act of terror, against two sovereign states, Syria and Iran. Equivalent to the recent terror attack on Crocus City Hall in Moscow. The inevitable question rings around all corners of the lands of the Global Majority: how can these de facto terrorists possibly get away with all this, over and over again?

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PCR keeps thinking he knows better then Putin.

• Putin’s Road to Armageddon (Paul Craig Roberts)

The United States government, speaking through the mouth of Secretary of State Blinken, defied all of Russia’s warnings this week with this declaration: “Ukraine will become a member of NATO. Our purpose at the summit is to help build a bridge to that membership.” By Putin’s refusal to use the necessary force to deal with the dangerous situation and by continuing to insist that the conflict is nothing but a limited operation to clear Ukrainian forces out of the Russian provinces, not an invasion of Ukraine, Russia will soon find herself at war with NATO. I have warned consistently without effect, only to be denounced by idiots as “bloodthirsty,” that Putin’s unrealism about the conflict, like his previous unrealism about the Minsk Agreement and his unrealism about the overthrow of the Ukrainian government in the so-called Maidan Revolution, is a direct path to World War III.

The minute Ukraine becomes a member of NATO, Putin will find himself at war with NATO. Russia has only a short time to knock out Ukraine, destroy the government, occupy the country and build a wall around it. The ascension of Ukraine to Nato “is literally how the nuclear apocalypse movie starts,” says Elon Musk, one of the few remaining intelligent Americans. Putin’s “limited military operation” has achieved nothing but two new NATO members–Finland and Sweden–attacks on Russian civilians inside Russia, mounting deaths from Western weapon system after weapon system supplied to Ukraine along with NATO military personnel to operate them and Western intelligence to target them. All the while Putin has been unable to comprehend that Russia is at war. Putin’s lack of response to mounting provocations has convinced Washington that Putin’s warnings are meaningless. Putin’s failure to enforce his red lines has caused Washington to loose belief that Putin has any red lines.

Just as Putin was forced into his “limited military operation” by the insulting cold shoulder Washington gave his plea for a mutual security pact, Russia will be forced into wider war with NATO by Washington’s defiance of Putin’s warning that Russia will not allow NATO membership for Ukraine. Putin has a few months to end Ukraine’s existence, a country that never existed until Washington created it, before Putin’s inability to act brings on World War III. Despite the dire situation, Putin remains unable to come to terms with reality. The Russian government continues to demonstrate to Washington weakness and irresolution by repeating its willingness to negotiate. Here we see Putin’s failure as a war leader. It should be Washington and NATO pleading with Putin to negotiate.

We are traveling along the road to Armageddon exactly as I predicted. One ignored provocation leads to another and worst provocation, and then to another and another, and now we have reached the red line that Putin cannot ignore. At this point the only way Putin can avoid World War III is to surrender or to terminate the existence of Ukraine before Washington elevates Ukraine to NATO membership. There is no other choice.

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“..would draw it into the biggest land war in Europe since 1945..”

• US and Germany Against Inviting Ukraine Into NATO – NYT (RT)

The US and Germany are reluctant to accept Ukraine into NATO despite fears of Kiev’s military collapse under Russian pressure, the New York Times reported on Thursday. Officials in the US-led bloc are worried that such a drastic move “would draw it into the biggest land war in Europe since 1945,” the paper said, adding that NATO is looking for a “middle ground” instead. These concerns are said to be shared by Berlin and Washington, which are opposed to opening membership talks with Ukraine at NATO’s summit in Washington in July. At the same time, they champion long-term security assistance commitments to Ukraine. On Wednesday, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg urged the bloc’s members to focus on providing Ukraine with “reliable and predictable security assistance” rather than voluntary donations.

The NATO chief has reportedly proposed a five-year €100 billion ($107 billion) package of military aid to Kiev, which would also see the bloc take on more responsibility – rather than the US – in terms of coordinating assistance. Several Western diplomats told the NYT, however, that this plan appears “elusive” at the moment. A former US ambassador to NATO, Ivo Daalder, said that Washington appears to be tacitly opposed to the initiative, which would diminish its role in coordinating the assistance. Hungary, another NATO member, has publicly spoken out against any moves that could make the bloc more involved in the conflict. It is also unclear how NATO could compel members to contribute to the €100 billion package over such a long period of time, the report says.

However, “none of these things may matter” by summer if Russia continues to push back Kiev’s troops, as Ukraine is “in danger of losing the war,” the NYT said. In recent weeks, Russia has liberated the key Donbass city of Avdeevka, while capturing several nearby settlements. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky warned last month that this would not be the last retreat unless the US renews its military assistance. An aid package has for months been stalled in the US Congress due to Republican opposition, as GOP members demand more efforts to enhance border security. Russia has condemned the Western arms shipments to Kiev, warning they will only prolong the conflict. Officials in Moscow have also accused the West of using Ukraine as a tool in order to inflict “a strategic defeat” on Russia.

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“..the Machiavelli of Maryland..”

• NATO Faces ‘Catastrophic Defeat’ In Ukraine – ex-Pentagon Adviser (RT)

NATO nations can only forestall an inevitable loss to Russian forces in Ukraine by deploying their troops to the former Soviet republic, a former adviser to the US military has claimed. “The arithmetic of this is inescapable: NATO countries will soon have to send soldiers to Ukraine, or else accept catastrophic defeat,” military strategist Edward Luttwak wrote in an oped published on Thursday by the British online media outlet UnHerd. “The British and French, along with the Nordic countries, are already quietly preparing to send troops – both small elite units and logistics and support personnel – who can remain far from the front.” The conflict can’t be won without direct troop deployments because regardless of the quantity and quality of weapons sent to Kiev, Ukrainian forces are too outnumbered by the Russians, Luttwak argued. “This means that unless [Russian President Vladimir] Putin decides to end the war, Ukraine’s troops will be pushed back again and again, losing soldiers in the process who cannot be replaced.”

Luttwak’s comments follow weeks of battlefield advances by Russian forces in the Donbass region. Western leaders have insisted that they can ensure a Ukrainian victory by providing aid to Kiev, but French President Emmanuel Macron suggested in February that direct troop deployments by NATO members could not be ruled out. European NATO members face a “momentous decision” because with US forces facing a growing threat of a potential Chinese attack on Taiwan, it will be up to them to provide the manpower that Ukraine needs, Luttwak said. “If Europe cannot provide enough troops, Russia will prevail on the battlefield, and even if diplomacy successfully intervenes to avoid a complete debacle, Russian military power will have victoriously returned to central Europe,” he added. NATO-Russia relations have deteriorated so much amid the Ukraine crisis that the Western alliance is already in “direct confrontation” with Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday. Putin has warned that NATO would risk triggering a nuclear conflict if its members send troops to Ukraine.

Luttwak suggested that by providing support troops for such tasks as troop training and repairing damaged equipment, NATO nations could free up more Ukrainians to serve on the front lines. “These NATO soldiers might never see combat, but they don’t have to in order to help Ukraine make the most of its own scarce manpower,” he said. The Romanian-born Luttwak, who was raised and educated largely in the UK, has advised the Pentagon, the US State Department, and the White House National Security Council, among other entities in Washington. A December 2015 profile of Luttwak by The Guardian billed him as “the Machiavelli of Maryland.” Now 81, he has reportedly advised clients ranging from the Dalai Lama to the prime minister of Kazakhstan. Despite being a proponent of Western involvement in the conflict, Luttwak was put on a Ukrainian blacklist in 2022 for opining that Kiev cannot realistically hope to defeat Russia outright and depose Putin.

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“..The newspaper – in the 19th century nicknamed “The Thunderer”, now owned by Rupert Murdoch, nicknamed “The Dirty Digger”..

• Ukraine Plan Of Crocus Attack: Ethnic Pogroms, Civil War In Russia (Helmer)

“The unity of Russia’s multiethnic society,” President Vladimir Putin told the Russian Trade Union Congress on Thursday, “is the main fundamental condition of our success. In this connection, and based on the initial results of the investigation, we have grounds to believe that the main goal of those who masterminded the bloody and heinous terrorist attack in Moscow was to damage our unity.” Putin is repeating the message – four times in two weeks: earlier on March 23, March 25, and April 2 — because it happens to be true. What also happens to be true is that during the Yeltsin period, when asked by Moscow university students what I thought of anti-semitism in Russia, I said: Russians are the most primitive white tribe in the world – they are hostile to the other tribes, the Jews, Chechens, Armenians, Chukchi, Uzbeks, Tajiks — each one of them equally. After this sociology was elaborated, invitations to lecture at Moscow universities stopped.

The sociological problem which Russia’s enemies have is that the foreign white tribes, like the Galicians of the Ukraine, the Anglo Saxons, and the Blin-Noodle gang ruling Washington, make the primitive sociological mistake of thinking they can trigger intercommunal warfare inside Russia, to weaken and break it up. The British Secret Service (MI6) made their first abortive attempts at this during the Bolshevik revolution and the civil war following. The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and MI6 have been plotting the same thing since 1945, increasing the resources and accelerating their efforts in the Caucasus during the Yeltsin administration of the 1990s.

It is therefore no surprise they have convinced their Ukrainian counterparts to implement the same scheme. On Tuesday of this week, The Times of London headlined this plan “Ukraine Stokes Anti-Immigrant Tensions in Russia”. The newspaper – in the 19th century nicknamed “The Thunderer”, now owned by Rupert Murdoch, nicknamed “The Dirty Digger” — reported an interview with Andrei Kovalenko, head of the Ukraine’s Centre for Countering Disinformation (CCD). By weaponizing local ethnic communities like the Tajiks in Russia, the operational objective, according to Kovalenko, is “to exploit divisions and distrust among the Russian public.”

Kovalenko is conceding the Ukraine strategy behind the Tajik gunmen’s attack on the Crocus City Hall on March 22. But the foreign tribesmen have misread the Russian sociology again. The attack has failed in its war objective. The theory of interethnic conflict in Russia was last tested in Moscow in January 2022 by the Levada Centre, a pollster registered as a foreign agent in 2016. Levada has been surveying ethnic Russian attitudes towards other ethnic groups since 2011, emphasizing for its own reasons what the Levada staff call anti-Semitism. The polling results over the years show that positive and negative Russian sentiment has been moving on several measures of social distance — acceptance as family members, friends, neighbours, citizens, temporary workers on visa – in different directions for different ethnic groups.

The improvement in the Russian perception of Ukrainians and Jews has been sharply reversed by the Kiev war on the Donbass and then the Israeli war against Gaza. By contrast, the political, economic, and media efforts of the Putin administration to cultivate strategic relations with China, the African states, and the Caucasus, including Chechnya, have accentuated the positive, diminished the negative.

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There are plenty people with such “takes”. But Musk gets MSM coverage.

• MSM Reluctantly Admits Elon Musk’s Ukraine Takes Are Proving Correct (ZH)

“So, Musk may not be too wide of the mark after all”: Politico. Something which could hardly be imagined a year ago or even six months ago has happened this week: a Politico op-ed voices agreement with Elon Musk on Ukraine. Of course, the Wednesday piece still takes customary shots at the “wayward” billionaire and owner of X: “Wayward entrepreneur Elon Musk’s latest pronouncements regarding the war in Ukraine set teeth on edge, as he warned that even though Moscow has “no chance” of conquering all of Ukraine, “the longer the war goes on, the more territory Russia will gain until they hit the Dnipro, which is tough to overcome.” “However, if the war lasts long enough, Odesa will fall too,” he cautioned.

Statements like these, and Musk’s supposedly ‘alternative’ view of the crisis in general, have long invoked the wrath of mainstream media pundits. Yet publications like Politico now sing a different tune, but only after President Zelensky himself has signaled just how dire the battlefield situation actually is for his forces. Politico has previously featured headlines like ‘Elon Musk Is Transmitting a Message for Putin’. Musk in his recent Odesa commentary did no such thing, but merely urged the Ukrainians to find a way forward towards peace at the negotiating table before it’s too late. Again, lines such as the below coming out of the heart of the media establishment would have been impossible to come across a year ago… from Politico:

“With a history of urging Ukraine to agree to territorial concessions — and his opposition to the $60 billion U.S. military aid package snarled on Capitol Hill amid partisan wrangling — Musk isn’t Ukraine’s favorite commentator, to say the least. And his remarks received predictable pushback. But the billionaire entrepreneur’s forecast isn’t actually all that different from the dire warnings Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made in the last few days. According to Zelenskyy, unless the stalled multibillion-dollar package is approved soon, his forces will have to “go back, retreat, step by step, in small steps.” He also warned that some major cities could be at risk of falling.”

But we should point out that Musk has been a realist from the start, more in line with analysts such as John Mearsheimer, voicing positions which have proven right time and again, despite contradicting the bandwagon mainstream consensus at every turn. And here’s the kicker in the conclusion, from the Politico op-ed… “We don’t only have a military crisis — we have a political one,” one of the officers said. While Ukraine shies away from a big draft, “Russia is now gathering resources and will be ready to launch a big attack around August, and maybe sooner.” So, Musk may not be too wide of the mark after all.

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“..and the whole shootin’ match ends up twenty minutes later a smoldering, civilization-ending mess..”

• Vectoring Dangerously (Kunstler)

If your situational awareness is well-tuned, you can put together a political weather report from the swirl of events that otherwise seem to confound the degenerate simps who pretend to report the news. Events are tending in the direction of self-reinforcing, ramifying chaos, and the people running the show are obviously insane as they do everything possible to hurry chaos along. Case in point: Antony Blinken, our Secretary of State, who announced yesterday that Ukraine will get rushed into NATO ASAP. Do you understand that would mean a direct, automatic, peremptory declaration of war against Russia, requiring all of NATO — that is, their combined militaries — to go kinetic inside Ukraine and theoretically inside Russia, too, (a move that has not worked out well for anyone in all of history), because Article Five of the NATO charter states that an armed attack against one is an attack against all, and must be answered with counter-attack? Thus, you see, Mr. Blinken just announced World War Three.

You might also consider that NATO does not have the capacity to fight that war. The European members don’t have sufficient troops and equipment, or financial reserves for that matter. And there is, of course, America’s under-recruited DEI army of transsexuals and video-gamers, with equipment that has already proven inadequate on-the-ground in Ukraine, and a logistical route for delivery of all that which runs 5,000 miles across an ocean and then another continent. . . whereas our opponent (Russia) is right next door to the battlefield and churning out munitions like there is no tomorrow (which there might well not be for all concerned). Even Adolf Hitler, the last fool to attempt a conquest of Russia, wouldn’t like those odds. And why would Russia desist from firing hypersonic missiles at Berlin, Paris, London, New York and. . . ? You get the idea. In which case the USA, backstopping NATO, would lob swarms of our nuclear missiles into Russia. . . and the whole shootin’ match ends up twenty minutes later a smoldering, civilization-ending mess.

Smooth move, Tony Blinken. In political weather terms, this is like an arctic shear cutting across the northern hemisphere. At the same time, you might notice a financial la Nina forming out over the salty sea. Gold chugged up above $2,300-an-ounce the past ten days, a record. That’s a coded message from Reality Central. My de-coder ring says it means the bond market is about to fall on its ass, taking the dollar down with it, which would swiftly domino into the way-overpriced equity markets, and Gawd knows what kind of maelstrom all the derivatives flotsam would get sucked into. Notice, too that Bitcoin goes up $3,000 one day and down $2,000 the next. Kind of sketchy. But that’s just my take. If you have one, I’d like to hear it. In any case, it looks like stormy financial weather which, if nothing else, is not exactly an advantageous accompaniment to a world war. In fact, it could beat a path quickly to something like empty supermarket shelves — and you know what they say about a population being a few missed meals away from anarchy.

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I had to sit down for half a hour. Didn’t expect this at all. /sarc off. It’s called money laudering.

• Ukrainian Officials’ Wealth Surged During Conflict (RT)

Senior Ukrainian officials have significantly increased their personal wealth over the past two years despite the conflict with Russia, an analysis of self-reported income and assets has revealed. The study was conducted by the Ukrainian business news site Ekonomicheskaya Pravda based on mandatory disclosures required from officials concerning themselves and their family members. The deadline for reporting on the previous year expired on March 31, meaning that a complete dataset is now available to the public. A third of the senior officials picked by the newspaper for their sample reported new major assets, such as vehicles or real estate, the outlet reported on Wednesday. For their study, the journalists picked 2,200 top-tier members of various branches of the Ukrainian government, prioritizing those whose family names are most common in the country.

They tracked the changes in the holdings of these individuals by examining disclosures from this past year and previous years. The open hostilities with Russia started in February 2022. The officials chosen by the outlet reported 721 cars, 268 apartments, and 90 homes newly owned by their households over that period of time. The second half of 2022 saw the highest numbe of acquisitions in all three categories, but there has been only a relatively small drop in the rate of purchases since. The public servants also managed to boost their ownership of liquid assets in the form of cash and bank deposits by roughly a quarter. The US dollar was the most popular currency among Ukrainian officials, with a $6 million increase reported by the 2,200 people studied.

The outlet stressed that it likely underestimated the increase in wealth among officials since “not all of them follow their duty” and disclose their assets accurately. For instance, a former regional head is currently being investigated after failing to mention property worth some $1.8 million, which a news outlet had linked to members of his family. Some of the changes were due to changes in marital status, the report said. One MP, who married a wealthy businessman in 2023, consequently reported dozens of land plots owned by her new family, according to the article. The Ukrainian government relies heavily on foreign credit and aid to remain operational. Its central bank reported last month that in January and February a shortfall of financial support from other nations forced it to shift to borrowing domestically and depleting reserves to cover the budget deficit.

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“I watched the State of the Union, he was all jacked up at the beginning, by the end he was fading fast, there’s something going on there..”

• Biden Was ‘Higher Than A Kite’ During SOTU Speech – Trump

Former US President Donald Trump has accused his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, of using drugs to get through his State of the Union address last month, and has insisted that he should be tested for drugs before any potential debates. Speaking with radio broadcaster Hugh Hewitt on Thursday, Trump claimed that Biden “was higher than a kite” during his speech, and described it as “the worst address I’ve ever seen.” He went on to recall last year’s scandal in which the Secret Service discovered a bag of cocaine at the White House, suggesting that Biden may have been “helped some way” to get through the annual address. “I watched the State of the Union, he was all jacked up at the beginning, by the end he was fading fast, there’s something going on there,” Trump said.

A plastic bag containing cocaine was discovered in a phone locker in the West Wing of the White House on July 2, 2023. After launching an investigation, the Secret Service dropped the case after only a few weeks, concluding that it was impossible to determine the owner of the drugs. The move sparked outrage among Biden’s critics, with many suggesting the cocaine may have belonged to the president’s son, Hunter, who has admitted to struggling with substance abuse. The White House officially denied any involvement of the Biden family in the case and praised the Secret Service’s “thorough investigation.”

Nevertheless, Trump has insisted that Biden should be tested for drugs before the two engage in debates ahead of November’s presidential election. The billionaire has previously called on the president to debate him “anywhere anytime.” Biden has not yet agreed to any debates with his rival, but said last month that it would depend on Trump’s “behavior.” Recent surveys have found that a majority of voters are concerned with the mental capabilities of both Trump and Biden, who are set to face off in the presidential election on November 5. A poll conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research last month found that 63% of American voters do not believe Biden has the mental capacity to serve effectively as president; 57% said the same thing about Trump.

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“..no newspaper in the United States has ever published a similar black square” in support of American journalist Gonzalo Lira..”

• US Intel Services Use Journalists As Their Agents – Zakharova (TASS)

US special services use journalists as their agents in violation of US laws, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said. Commenting on how the United States “celebrated” a year since the arrest of Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal journalist, accused of espionage in Russia, the diplomat drew attention to the way one of the latest March issues of The Wall Street Journal looks – almost the entire front page is blank. “And only the black and white face of Evan Gershkovich, a US citizen detained on suspicion of espionage, caught in the act, with the phrase ‘His story should be here,'” she wrote on her Telegram channel. “Evan Gershkovich could have written about the terrorist bombing of Russian cities by the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev in recent months. The militants are also shelling journalists, including American journalists – it could be a report from a hot spot that the Americans themselves created by pumping weapons and intelligence into the militants,” she pointed out.

“He could have written a great article about all the fellow journalists killed by the Kiev regime: Oles Buzina, Pavel Sheremet, Andrey Stenin, Anatoly Klein, Igor Kornelyuk, Anton Voloshin, and many others. He could have, but for some reason he didn’t write [about it] all those years he had worked in Russia. He could have, if he had been practicing journalism and not spying,” the spokeswoman emphasized. “By the way, I do not exclude that the American media was expressing its indignation at the American secret services, which continue to use journalists as their agents in violation of US law,” she said. Zakharova pointed to the fact that “no newspaper in the United States has ever published a similar black square” in support of American journalist Gonzalo Lira, “who spent eight months in the torture chambers of a Ukrainian prison and was finally killed by the Ukrainian Security Service in January.”

“By the way, has a criminal case been opened in the US for his murder? I haven’t heard of it,” she added. Gershkovich, a correspondent for the US newspaper The Wall Street Journal, was arrested in Russia in an espionage case. According to the Center for Public Relations of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), Gershkovich, “acting as an agent for the American side, collected top-secret data about the activity of an enterprise of the Russian military-industrial complex.” In this connection, the journalist was detained in Yekaterinburg at the end of March 2023; criminal proceedings were initiated against him under Article 276 of the Russian Criminal Code (“Espionage”). Gershkovich faces up to 20 years in prison. He has not pleaded guilty.

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“The DOJ has filed opposition to Mr. Pope’s motion, saying it has “no obligation to investigate”..”

• Jan. 6 Defendant Video Raises Questions About Undercover Agents (ET)

Recently released Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol Police security video shows a suspected FBI special agent clapping and cheering as crowds surged up steps to the Columbus Doors and another meeting with an FBI tactical team just before it entered the Capitol after the fatal shooting of Ashli Babbitt. The videos were first identified by defendant William Pope of Topeka, Kansas, in court filings in his own Jan. 6 criminal case. Exhibits Mr. Pope originally filed under seal have become public since the release of thousands of hours of Jan. 6 security video by the Committee on House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight. Two possible FBI special agents and a third unknown colleague were with John D. Guandolo, the FBI’s former liaison with U.S. Capitol Police, at the Women for a Great America event on the East Front of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, according to Mr. Pope.

In sworn testimony in a December 2022 Alaska civil court trial and in numerous media appearances, Mr. Guandolo said he was with two FBI special agents and a colleague with whom he traveled to Washington on Jan. 6. Mr. Guandolo has indicated that he was also introduced to other FBI personnel at the Capitol that day. Mr. Pope is seeking to compel federal prosecutors to identify them all. He said even if the men were at the Capitol on personal time, their free movement around the grounds shows they did not believe the Capitol was off limits to the public. Mr. Guandolo, who handled counterterrorism and criminal investigations for nearly 13 years—from 1996 to 2008—as an FBI special agent, has said he was at the Capitol in a personal capacity and went primarily to pray. He was interviewed by the FBI about his Jan. 6 visit on July 6, 2022. A heavily redacted copy of the FBI 302 interview summary has been made public.

Security video shows that as the crowd broke through the police line on the East Plaza and surged up the steps to the Columbus Doors, one of Mr. Guandolo’s colleagues clapped enthusiastically. “Oh, oh, oh man, this is huge,” the man said, heard on Mr. Guandolo’s cell phone video that showed the crowd ascending the east steps. On Capitol Police security Camera 7231, which looks out at the House Egg on the East Front, Mr. Guandolo was seen filming while standing on a chair just before 2:05 p.m. The clapping man, wearing a grey knit cap and dark coat, is identified in Mr. Pope’s court filing as “the Clapper” and “Colleague 2.” While Colleague 2 cheered the protesters’ advance on the Capitol, a man on Mr. Guandolo’s left, “Colleague 1,” had his phone raised, presumably capturing his own video of the advancing crowd. He wore a brown knit cap and blue jacket, and carried a backpack, video showed.

Mr. Pope asked U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras to compel the Department of Justice to identify all FBI agents “who were material witnesses at the Capitol.” Mr. Pope wants the FBI “to produce all photographs, videos, and records related to their presence.” The DOJ has filed opposition to Mr. Pope’s motion, saying it has “no obligation to investigate” who the men in the videos are. Some of the exhibits in Mr. Pope’s Feb. 12 motion were redacted, but the recent release of thousands of hours of Jan. 6 security video by the Subcommittee on Oversight allows them to be released publicly, Mr. Pope said.

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“The Federal Reserve then did the only thing it knows how to do: It hiked interest rates.”

• Bidenomics and Its Discontents (Galbraith)

Unemployment is low. Inflation has fallen. Real earnings are rising. GDP growth has held up—so far. The economists are happy, but for some reason the voters are not! It must be their own ignorance and obtuseness—so says Paul Krugman, house economist of The New York Times. The other possibility—however horrible to contemplate—is that perhaps the voters are sensible and the economists are obtuse. And perhaps the indicators on which economists rely no longer mean what economists suppose them to mean. Take the unemployment rate. It is a ratio of those seeking work to the whole active labor force. In past times, most households depended on a single earner, for whom holding a job was a make-or-break proposition. If unemployment was rising or high—say 7 percent, typical in recessions—then, even though 93 percent of the labor force was still working, fear of unemployment amplified the woes of those actually out of work.

Conversely, if unemployment was low or falling, most workers felt reasonably secure. The unemployment rate, back then, was a reasonable indicator of distress or well-being. Those days are long gone. Today’s typical American working household has several earners, sometimes in multiple jobs. If one earner loses a job while the others keep theirs, she may leave the workforce for a time; there is the option of making do with less, and for some there is early retirement. She will not, in that case, count as unemployed—however difficult her life. A low jobless rate can mask a great deal of stress in such households. The employment-to-population ratio is still a bit below where it was in 2020, and far below where it was in 2000; average weekly hours are still falling. Next, consider inflation, which is the rate of price change measured month-to-month or year-to-year. But what matters to consumers is prices in relation to household incomes over several years.

In 1980 Ronald Reagan famously asked, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” Today, millions of American households are worse off than they were in 2020. Basic living costs, such as gasoline, utilities, food, and housing, have risen more than their incomes have. Real median household income peaked in 2019 and fell at least through 2022. Yes, but didn’t real wages go up sharply in 2023? According to the Biden-friendly Center for American Progress, real wages (for those continuously employed) have indeed now recovered roughly to where they would have been had no pandemic occurred. But there is a great distinction between steady progress and a sawtooth down-and-up. The former breeds confidence; the latter does not. Then there is the ending of Covid-19 relief. Pandemic programs gave millions of Americans a financial cushion for a time; early on, the payments were often larger than previous paychecks and, while they lasted, poverty and food insecurity went down. (By 2021 Covid tax credits and relief payments brought child poverty down to a record low of 5.2 percent.)

Most Americans were prudent with the support, but they often used it, not unwisely, to achieve a touch of independence from dreary jobs. With that support gone, the cushions erode, savings decline, debt rises–and families feel the pressure to go back to work on whatever terms that employers offer. They don’t like that very much. As people return to work, how secure are their jobs? In the golden years during which today’s older generation of economists learned their textbook tools, a worker’s job was often a lifetime affair. Autoworkers (and their associates in rubber and glass) might suffer periodic layoffs, but they could expect to be called back; their skills and experience remained useful. That was all over by the 1980s.

Since then, factories close and do not return, and practically all new jobs have been in routine services, with mediocre wages and high turnover. The pandemic drove home the fragility of these jobs to everyone—even those who had never lost a job before. Interest rates are another problem. Long ago, Joe Biden kicked the can of “fighting inflation” over to the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve then did the only thing it knows how to do: It hiked interest rates. Mortgage rates were around 3 percent in 2021; today they are at least twice that. High interest rates hit young families looking for their first house, and they hit established households, often older, looking to sell their homes. And high interest on consumer debt eats away at disposable incomes. The capital wealth of the middle class falls, to the benefit of those with cash to spare. The second group is much smaller and far richer than the first.

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“..RFK is right that the Biden administration engaged in censorship through agencies, but it wasn’t exactly a secret..”

• RFK Jr. Is Right About Joe Biden (ZH)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. can be an unhinged leftist and crackpot, but he also happens to be correct about President Joe Biden’s attacks on constitutional order, particularly free expression. Speaking to an incredulous Erin Burnett on CNN this week, Kennedy argued that Biden was a bigger threat to “democracy” than Donald Trump, a position that clashes with the media’s entire 2024 campaign messaging. In a more decent world, we’d be debating which presidential candidate was better at upholding the constitutional order, rather than which one was worse. That is not our fate. And yet, the unique thing about the 2024 presidential contest is that voters are given a chance to compare existing presidential records. Kennedy contends that Biden “is the first candidate in history, the first president in history that has used the federal agencies to censor political speech or censor his opponent.”

One suspects Eugene Debs might quibble with this characterization, though not since the Committee on Public Information has there been a White House that has shown such disdain for free expression and debate. Biden is the first president to openly and secretly pressure major communication companies to take direction and work in conjunction with state agencies to censor debate. The same left-wingers who do not believe in any limiting principles while regulating economic life will lecture us about how so-called platforms are free to work with anyone they please, including the White House. OK, but tech companies also spend tens of millions each year in Washington rent-seeking and lobbying for favorable regulations. They are highly susceptible to state intimidation. When Biden deputizes massive communication companies to act as censors, he’s merely taking a shortcut in the suppression of speech that undercuts, at the very minimum, the spirit and purpose of the First Amendment.

One might even call this brand of state-corporate relationship “semi-fascist.” RFK is right that the Biden administration engaged in censorship through agencies, but it wasn’t exactly a secret. Recall Jen Psaki informing us that the White House was “flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation.” Biden claimed that allowing unfettered speech on Facebook during COVID was “killing people.” Just contemplate the media’s reaction if Trump’s White House had been keeping lists of “problematic” posts. Remember, as well, White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield warning that social media companies “should be held accountable” for the ideas of those who use their websites. Was she talking about the ideas that spurred the 2020 Black Lives Matter riots, the most expensive in history? Was she talking about those who spread conspiracy theories about Russian collusion? Probably not. Though Trump never did anything to inhibit the spread of criticism or conspiracy theories.

Luntz

Pollster Frank Luntz: The Democratic Party is going to pay for its treatment of RFK Jr.

“The idea that the DNC is spending money to keep a legitimate candidate off the ballot is the most anti-democratic thing I’ve heard in 2024.”

“That is indefensible, and they’re gonna pay for… pic.twitter.com/VGa1f9jIPW

— Holden Culotta (@Holden_Culotta) April 4, 2024

Read more …

Judge McAfee: “Jack Smith had made “no reference to the Presidential Records Act” in his indictment of Trump, giving the former president’s lawyers no legal grounds to invoke it..”

The prosecutor can bring it up, but the defense can’t.

• Judges Reject Trump’s Attempts To Quash Cases (RT)

Judges in Florida and Georgia have shot down attempts by former US President Donald Trump to have two criminal cases against him thrown out of court. The cases pertain to his alleged mishandling of classified documents and efforts to interfere with the 2020 election. Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee ruled on Thursday that the former president cannot use his constitutional right to free speech to dodge election interference charges in Georgia. Trump has been charged with state-level racketeering offenses for instructing his campaign staff to find evidence of election fraud by the Democratic Party, and for a taped phone call made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in which he asked Raffensperger to “find 1,780 votes,” which would have guaranteed him a razor-thin victory in the state.

McAfee ruled that this statement was made “in furtherance of criminal activity,” and is therefore not protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution. Trump’s lawyer, Steve Sadow, said in a statement that “President Trump and other defendants respectfully disagree with Judge McAfee’s order and will continue to evaluate their options regarding the First Amendment challenges.” While the ruling is a setback for Trump, McAfee handed Trump a minor victory last month when he dismissed three out of 13 charges against the former president and multiple counts against his senior aides and lawyers. Trump has also appealed a decision by McAfee to allow Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis to continue prosecuting the case, after it emerged that she benefited financially from her intimate relationship with a lawyer she hired to lead the prosecution.

Trump is facing three other criminal cases: two federal litigations concerning his alleged mishandling of classified documents and his alleged incitement of the January 6, 2021 riot on Capitol Hill, and a state-level case in New York concerning his ‘hush money’ payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. Later on Thursday, the Florida judge overseeing the classified documents case declined a request by Trump to dismiss the charges based on his claim that the Presidential Records Act authorized him to take the documents from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago estate.

The judge did not rule Trump’s claim true or false, but noted that government prosecutor Jack Smith had made “no reference to the Presidential Records Act” in his indictment of Trump, giving the former president’s lawyers no legal grounds to invoke it. Trump views all four cases as part of an overarching conspiracy by Democrats and their allies to prevent him from contesting this year’s election. In a post to his Truth Social platform on Easter Sunday, Trump condemned the “crooked and corrupt prosecutors and judges that are doing everything possible to interfere with the presidential election of 2024 and put me in prison,” including “deranged Jack Smith” and “sick Fani Willis.”

Mike Davis
https://twitter.com/i/status/1776275373027741797

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The Supreme Court must be much more assertive.

• Supreme Court Faces ‘High Stakes’ Decisions on Trump-Related Cases (ET)

The combination of several Trump-related cases, the potential for landmark changes to legal precedent, the vigorous calls for reform, and the coming elections have made 2024 a year of high impact decisions for the court. One decision has already impacted the course of the 2024 presidential campaign. In March, the justices rejected an effort that could have resulted in millions of President Trump’s supporters not having their preferred candidate on the ballot. During oral argument, Justice Amy Coney Barrett referenced the “very high stakes” surrounding the case, which has been described as the court’s most influential election-related matter since Bush v. Gore. Its landmark opinion in Trump v. Anderson foreclosed the possibility that states like Colorado could, under their existing authority, remove federal candidates from ballots. The majority opinion, however, has been criticized for lacking clarity around how Congress should act.

The decision emphasized the role of Congress in enforcing the 14th Amendment, while the three liberal justices and Justice Barrett favored a more limited approach that overruled state authority over federal candidates for office. President Trump’s immunity appeal, scheduled for oral argument on April 25, could impact his Florida documents case and hush money trial, wherein he has requested a delay pending the Supreme Court’s decision on his D.C. immunity claims. The stinging criticism that followed the court’s unanimous opinion in Trump v. Anderson indicates no matter how united the justices are, they will continue to face heavy scrutiny—especially when it comes to President Trump. President Trump’s appeal, like Mr. Navarro’s, questions the separation of powers as well as the authority of the legislative and judiciary branches in challenging the executive.

In Trump v. Anderson, the court avoided wading into the specifics of President Trump’s alleged wrongdoing on Jan. 6 and will likely try to do the same with his immunity appeal. But their decisions in two other cases might impact the indictment in President Trump’s federal election case. A challenge brought by Jan. 6 defendants against the DOJ’s use of an Enron-era obstruction charge in prosecutions will be heard before the high court on April 16. In the federal election case, two of those charges were brought against President Trump. If the court rules in the defendants’ favor, as some legal experts predict, that could lessen the burden for President Trump in D.C. while also provoking scrutiny of the justices’ approach to Jan. 6. The court’s decision in the presidential immunity appeal could similarly either upend or affirm the prosecution—likely sparking backlash from either side depending on the outcome.

Read more …

Disconnect.

• How The West Lost Control Of The Gold Market (Henry Johnston)

What is important to understand here is that the creation of a derivative market satisfies demand for gold that would otherwise go to the physical market. Only a limited amount of gold exists and can be mined but an unlimited amount of gold derivatives can be underwritten. As Gromen explains, when monetary expansion drives demand for gold (due to the inflation this brings), there are two ways this demand can be dealt with: let the price of gold rise as more dollars chase the same amount of gold; or permit more paper claims to be created on the same amount of gold, which allows the pace of gold’s rise to be managed. There are several important implications of this. The rise of the paper market has clearly played an important role in defanging gold in its role as exerting a hard limit on expansionary policy, thus implicitly reinforcing the credibility of the dollar. But it has also meant that the gold price has largely been determined by investment flows rather than physical demand.

And when we’re talking about investment flows, we mean first and foremost Western institutional investors. Given that gold trades essentially as a cyclical asset, institutional investors have primarily traded gold based on movements in real US interest rates – meaning interest rates adjusted for inflation. Gold is bought when real rates fall and vice versa. The logic is that when interest rates rise, money managers can earn more by switching to bonds or cash, thus increasing the opportunity cost of holding non-interest-bearing assets such as gold. By the same token, lower rates make gold – seen as a hedge against inflation – more attractive. This correlation has been particularly strong over the last 15 years or so and many analysts date it back further than that. So let’s go a step further and pose the following question: If Western institutional money has been driving the price, who has been on the other side of the trade when actual gold does change hands?

To oversimplify a bit, the model worked roughly as follows, as has been explained by gold analyst Jan Nieuwenhuijs: Western institutions essentially controlled the price of gold and bought from the East in bull markets and sold to the East in bear markets. This makes sense, because the Western side of this trade essentially consisted of investors who in any asset class tend to chase the price higher. The East, meanwhile, was characterized more by consumer demand. Because consumers are price-sensitive, they tend to buy when the price is low and are happy to sell into a rising market. So gold flowed from East to West in bull markets and from West to East in bear markets. But, as we mentioned above, it was the Western institutional investors who were in the driver’s seat in this trade. This was the well-established state of affairs up until 2022, which happens to be when the Ukraine proxy war began and the US took the bold step of freezing some $300 billion in Russian central bank assets.

A coincidence or not, what happened that year was that the correlation between US real rates and gold broke down and has not been restored. The first sign of an impending shift was that, in first few months after the Fed embarked on a sharp rate-hike cycle in March 2022, gold did drop but proved much more resilient to the rising rates than correlation models would have suggested. But the real breakdown in the correlation started around September of that year, when gold prices actually started climbing even as real rates remained flat. In fact, from late October 2022 through June 2023, the gold price rose 17%. Meanwhile, over 2023, US real yields rose (despite quite a bit of volatility), which, according to the old correlation, should have meant a decline in gold prices as higher yields elsewhere would make non-yielding gold less attractive. However, gold rose 15% for the year.

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Vodka
https://twitter.com/i/status/1775995652951978353

When you’re waiting to film a commercial and the dog suddenly remembers how much she loves you ❤️pic.twitter.com/X1kdwRU0Rp

— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) April 4, 2024

Live forever

Ep. 89 Bryan Johnson is a very smart, very rich, very well-meaning man who wants to live forever. That sounds like a terrible idea. This is one of the most interesting debates we’ve ever had. pic.twitter.com/XN8BPLvc3b

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) April 5, 2024

Matrix
https://twitter.com/i/status/1776221960416157920

Jaguar

A Jaguar on a hot day
pic.twitter.com/5Xb7FDO3Sc

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) April 5, 2024

Kingfisher
https://twitter.com/i/status/1776014518650618272

Elephants

This is how elephants protect their babies.. pic.twitter.com/eJCJ9ZF1Mm

— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) April 5, 2024

Ostrich

Every living thing needs to be loved.pic.twitter.com/pFgNAOZCNj

— Figen (@TheFigen_) April 4, 2024

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