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Debt Rattle July 20 2026

Jul 202026
 
 July 20, 2026  Posted by at 9:02 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  43 Responses »


Marlon Brando screentest 1951


• US-Iran Tit-For-Tat Spirals Towards Broader Conflict (ZH)
• Trump Has Just Weeks Left to Finish the Iran Conflict (Victor Davis Hanson)
• The DSA and the Myth of Scandinavian Socialism (Turley)
• DSA Using Vehicle of Democrat Party to Install Communist Government (CTH)
• Socialist Playbook: “Secret Nazis” Are Fine If They Advance Agenda (ZH)
• The “New Soros” Whose Street Cred Could Rise If Spain Blocks Extradition (ZH)
• UN Ambassador Throws Cold Water on Mamdani’s Plan to Arrest Netanyahu (Margolis)
• Is Trump Grooming Marco Rubio As His Successor? (Eric Florack)
• Ukraine Could Suffer Military Defeat – Senior Commander (RT)
• Both Russia and Iran Are At War, and Neither Knows It (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Roger Waters Calls Out West For Banning RT (RT)
• Trump Has Paid Carroll $5.62M, $83.3M Defamation Judgment Still Pending (JTN)
• Border Czar Tom Homan Discusses Value of ICE Body Cameras (CTH)

 


 

https://twitter.com/JFKJrResearch/status/2078545899240980590?s=20

 


 


The US should know who they’re fighting: the Revolutionary Guard or the ayatollahs.

• US-Iran Tit-For-Tat Spirals Towards Broader Conflict (ZH)

The escalation pathway in the renewed tit-for-tat conflict between the US and Iran is becoming increasingly alarming and has been underway for eight days. US forces reportedly struck Qeshm Island and the southern Iranian cities of Shadegan, Sirik and Hajiabad, while Tehran retaliated with drone and missile attacks targeting US bases and critical infrastructure across Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain, according to Bloomberg, citing Iranian state media.


The latest escalation could open the door for Israel to rejoin the fight. Itamar Ben Gvir, an Israeli security cabinet minister, told listeners on Israeli radio that he hoped President Trump would strike Iran hard. Iran’s latest attacks moved beyond military targets to now civilian infrastructure, which has been troubling. Kuwaiti Ministry of Electricity warned earlier today that its power and desalination plants have come under attack for the second straight day by Iranian projectiles.

US Central Command described the latest US strikes as seeking to reduce Tehran’s offensive capabilities on the Strait of Hormuz that threaten commercial shipping and “swiftly punish” Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces behind the Jordan attack that killed two US soldiers and left another missing in action.

By now, the interim ceasefire deal signed by the US and Iran is in flames, as US forces have renewed their blockade of Iranian ports and the Trump team has tightened sanctions on Tehran’s oil exports…

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“.. and then go home and say to our allies Iran is now mostly inert. They have no air force. You in the Gulf, you have 600 combat frontline aircraft. You have missiles. You have missile defense. ..”

• Trump Has Just Weeks Left to Finish the Iran Conflict (Victor Davis Hanson)

We’re approaching 140 days since we first attacked Iran on Feb. 28 of this year. And we only really had … people call this a war, but it’s basically 40 days of actual bombing, tit for tat, followed by 100 days of negotiations interspliced with some tit-for-tat exchanges of missiles and drones. But for the most part, we have negotiated. Now, we know the strategy of both sides. The strategy of our president was he wanted to stay in power, meaning he wanted to have control of Congress. Otherwise, his initiatives and agenda will be ossified if the Democrats take over the House. They will impeach him if they take over the House, and he’s protected against conviction by running the Senate.


But if he should lose the House or Senate, in other words, if things would blow up, he would be in deep trouble. So, his point was always to make sure that Iran did not have the ability to produce a nuclear weapon and did not have the ability to launch missiles all over the Gulf and did not have the ability to close the Strait of Hormuz. But the negotiations interrupted that cycle in which Iran also had a strategy, and their strategy was, “If we can drag this conflict out and punctuate it with missile launches and ride out the retaliations, which would be proportional or symmetric, we can run the clock out all the way to the midterms.

“If we do, the Democrats will take over the House of Representatives, and maybe they will not allot money to continue Trump’s war. And more importantly, maybe this will be the start of a new government in 2028, and we’ll be home free as we were with [Joe] Biden and [Barack] Obama.” So, that was their strategy: Drag it out, drag it out. Who won? Well, we’ll see about the denouement, but for now, Iran has been able to survive because we stopped full-scale fighting almost 100 days ago, and these tit-for-tats have been ineffectual in the sense they have not stopped the missile barrages to the Gulf states, and they have not given us control over the Strait of Hormuz, and we do not have control of the enriched uranium.

So, where are we now? We still have the same pressures on Donald Trump. We’ve got less than four months now until the midterms, but the economic news has been surprisingly good. Inflation, at a per-month rate, is at a historical low almost, and unemployment is about 4.2. GDP is strong at 2.3, 2.4. The stock market is high. The full effect of tax cuts and greater energy production and deregulation are starting to be felt, along with foreign investment. So, Trump thinks that, along with the redistricting and the Supreme Court ruling on gerrymandering, he might have a chance to upset the historical reality that 39 of the last 41 midterms have gone to the out party. So, he still thinks he has a chance, and he still wants to conclude operations and go home, and the Iranians know that.

So, where are we now? I think we can see what he’s doing. The last four days he’s had very, very strong strikes. Some of his critics have said on the right, “Well, you’re hitting all of these dock works and these small mosquito fleets and the fuel for missiles. “Why didn’t we do that earlier?” Well, we didn’t do it earlier because we were negotiating and we were measured and proportionate. And to deal with the Iranians now, you have to be unmeasured and disproportionate.

So, what we are seeing now is a full-scale effort to destroy all of their military abilities. And that would mean going to the factories, the industrial complex that makes these missiles, find where their launchers are, find their drone fields, clear the corridor near the strait of all of their anti-aircraft ability, their missiles, their drones, and their small fleet of vestigial boats that they use to mine the strait and attack tankers. Clear it all out. Do this for a week or two weeks and then stop and see if they want to concede. If they do not want to concede, then I think you would have another week of dual-use targeting.

And that would mean they were going to bring in the B-2s and hit Pickaxe Mountain, seal the areas under suspicion of harboring enriched uranium, hit the bridges, hit some of the power grid, and then go home and say to our allies Iran is now mostly inert. They have no air force. You in the Gulf, you have 600 combat frontline aircraft. You have missiles. You have missile defense. You can defend yourself from an inert Iran. You Europeans, Japanese, South Koreans, Taiwanese, you all want to use the Strait. We don’t. But we’ve cleaned it out now, and all you have to do is send a couple of vessels each.

And under our leadership, we always have forces in the Persian Gulf. We have frigates. We have a carrier that rotates in and out. We will help you organize the ability and the willpower to keep the Strait open.


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“.. the Scandinavian socialism myth is so enticing that I expect Scandinavians must wonder where they can also find it.”

• The DSA and the Myth of Scandinavian Socialism (Turley)

In 2015, the Danish Prime Minister Lars Rasmussen observed, “I know that some people in the U.S. associate the Nordic model with some sort of socialism. Therefore, I would like to make one thing clear. Denmark is far from a socialist planned economy. Denmark is a market economy. Likewise, Social Democratic Minister of Finance Kjell Olof Feldt stated: “That whole thing with democratic socialism was absolutely impossible. It just didn’t work.”


As I discuss, these countries are not only committed to capitalism but also ranked among the most free-market economies in the world. These countries are also very different from the United States: “When socialism was tried in larger nations in Europe, such as France under FranAois Mitterrand, it failed, and capitalist measures had to be restored. In 2025, the populations of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway are approximately 5.9 million, 10.6 million, and 5.6 million smaller than many American states. “

The DSA and the American left, including many in the media, continue to sell the public a bill of goods on the success of Scandinavian socialism. Ironically, it is the type of disinformation that the left often cites to justify greater censorship. Despite denials from these very countries, socialists in the United States continue to spread this false claim that there is a socialist paradise over the ocean where collectivists labor in picturesque Nordic fishing villages.

The promulgation of such myths is a central feature of Marxism. Lenin stressed that “we must not confine ourselves exclusively to propaganda in the narrow sense of the word.” Stalin likewise warned that “If our Party propaganda for some reason or other goes lame…then our entire state and Party work must inevitably languish.”

The fact is that socialism has repeatedly failed throughout history. The only way to get a people to embrace it is to rewrite that history. That is precisely what we see not only in the United States, but in the recent claims of incoming British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who condemned the privatization policies of Margaret Thatcher: “The country surrendered control of the essentials — housing, water, energy, transport — and left people exposed to higher costs.” What he does not mention is that she followed the collapse of socialist policies under Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan in 1977–78 during the so-called “winter of discontent,” which I also discuss in the book.

Chevalier is a true believer who has praised Marxism and the concept of “seizing the means of production.” She won her primary despite comments bragging about her using the American flag to wipe her hands and criticizing the dating of white women as Black and Arab men “Fetishizing ugly colonizer women.”

Given that history, the adoption of the Scandinavian socialism myth is par for the course. Like Zohran Mamdani, she is rallying young, disillusioned, college-educated voters who are told that their struggles stem from the failures of the free market. Instead, they are offered free stuff and the illusion of an economic nirvana where lattes and Pilates are virtually costless.

Indeed, the Scandinavian socialism myth is so enticing that I expect Scandinavians must wonder where they can also find it.

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“Martha MacCallum Interviews DSA Co-Chairman Gustavo Gordillo …”

• DSA Using Vehicle of Democrat Party to Install Communist Government (CTH)

This is a very alarming conversation to be taking place in modern America. Alas, all things political have devolved into this current stage where Communism is represented by young voters as the preferred manner of government. Democrat Socialists of America (DSA) Co-Chair Gustavo Gordillo, having previously outlined that attachment to the Democrat party is only purposeful as a vehicle to gain political power, discusses the end game of DSA for installing communism within the United States. The DSA platform is disturbing, but generally in alignment with the Bernie Sanders and AOC model.


(1) Eliminate the United States Senate as a legislative body. (2) The House of Representatives then selects the President and Supreme Court justices. (3) All illegal aliens are given citizenship and amnesty. (4) All border enforcement is halted; there are no more USA boundaries. (5) The Dept of War (Defense) is dissolved completely. (6) The government, now controlled by the House of Representatives, determines who can have wealth – and how much. (7) Climate Change is the legislative priority – no more fossil fuel use.

Gustavo Gordillo’s family fled Peru due to a communist revolution. In the video below Martha MacCallum challenges DSA Chair Gordillo to explain how the DSA platform is expected to work. Gordillo explains the immediate DSA demand to control housing (govt), control food distribution (grocery stores), give free daycare for children, and create affordability for lower income citizens/aliens by taking the wealth from the high-income earners and giving the wealth to the lower income group.

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“White DSA Member Inadvertently Exposes Socialist Playbook: “Secret Nazis” Are Fine If They Advance Agenda.”

• Socialist Playbook: “Secret Nazis” Are Fine If They Advance Agenda (ZH)

Far-left podcaster and Democratic Socialists of America member Emma Vigeland appeared to inadvertently expose the far-left movement’s ends-justify-the-means political calculus: Even a “secret Nazi” would be acceptable if the candidate advanced a national socialist agenda. Vigeland, a former field reporter, producer, and commentator for The Young Turks and identified as a DSA member, also co-hosts The Majority Report with Sam Seder. She explained on a separate Vox podcast that she doesn’t care if a progressive or socialist candidate has “Nazi” skeletons in their closet.


“I am wary of over-focusing on an individual’s personal character over their platform. You know, I’ve said this before. I don’t really care if say like Bernie Sanders or AOC go home and they’re a secret Nazi, but they go out and they vote for the right things. Like we’re talking about politician,” the DSA member said earlier this month.Vox host Astead Herndon was astonished by Vigeland’s remarks, and asked: “You don’t care?”

Why is anyone surprised anymore? This comes after the political collapse of DSA’s Graham Platner, who had a large “Totenkopf” tattoo- a symbol associated with the Nazi SS.

What the internet had to say:

[..] DSA’s nation-killing agenda to collapse America:

The DSA is such a liability for the Democratic Party that a prominent Bill Clinton insider took the time to write up a Wall Street Journal op-ed that said: “Lawmakers, law-enforcement agencies and journalists should investigate the DSA to see if it is being funded by foreign governments and interests.”

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“.. the communist centimillionaire and heir to the Cox media fortune..”

• The “New Soros” Whose Street Cred Could Rise If Spain Blocks Extradition (ZH)

The federal government is well underway with a multiagency and multinational effort to combat the alarming rise of far-left revolutionaries. This was most evident on Thursday, when Secretary of State Marco Rubio addressed delegations from 65 countries. Meanwhile, Jim “Fergie” Chambers, the communist centimillionaire and heir to the Cox media fortune, is apparently “one step closer to extradition” on federal charges linked to “international money laundering… with the intent to provide material support and resources to foreign terrorist organizations.”


Chambers is a major funder of America’s radical Left and has been described by pro-Palestinian activist Laith Marouf as “the new Soros.” Marouf warned that Chambers could gain significantly more influence and “street cred” if Spain refuses to extradite him to the U.S. City Journal investigative analyst Stu Smith provided additional color on Marouf’s recent conversation, offering readers a clearer view of the major financiers and influence networks operating across the radical Left:


As left-wing activists demand “Freedom for Fergie,” Laith Marouf is refusing to join them. Marouf says he opposes Chambers’s extradition to the United States but warns that an unsuccessful prosecution could merely give the multimillionaire more “street cred.” Citing conversations he claims to have had with current and former intelligence agents, including Syrian and Spanish sources, Marouf alleges that Chambers has been positioned as “the new Soros” and is using his fortune to capture radical English-language media around the world. “He basically bought all the landscape of progressive media and is funding all of them,” Marouf said, alleging that Chambers’s donations allow him to influence those outlets’ political positions.

Marouf also accused Chambers of threatening his life and attempting to destroy his reputation. He said he does not wish imprisonment or death on Chambers, but he will not join those demanding his release. “I will sit on the side as an observer, watching the game of the American white elite beating each other up.” Marouf argues that Chambers is using inherited “blood money” to purchase credibility within the Palestine movement. “No, I don’t want Palestine in his mouth,” he said. “I don’t want Palestine to be associated with Fergie Cox.”

The broader Left has largely rallied behind Chambers, leaving Marouf as a rare dissenting voice. His definition of “progressive media” is unclear, but his broader warning about Chambers buying influence across the radical English-language media sphere rings true. And if Spain refuses extradition, Marouf may be right that the ordeal will only give Chambers more “street cred.”

Smith has previously noted, “Chambers is one of the main funders of America’s radical Left. His money has flowed to a host of projects in the ‘anti-imperialism’ organizing space,” adding, “Chambers claims that he and Singham are effectively the two primary financiers of the US radical Left.” Despite this, the two have apparently been at loggerheads—a conflict that has now gone public.”

https://twitter.com/thestustustudio/status/2059018248478146896?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E2059018248478146896%7Ctwgr%5E89719d8257eb651d0ca597f094364650d04c681b%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fmeet-new-soros-whose-street-cred-could-rise-if-spain-blocks-extradition

Following Rubio’s “Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism” at the State Department on Thursday, where he addressed delegations from 65 countries on combating far-left extremism, the signal is clear: The Trump administration is positioning for a broader fight against transnational Marxist revolutionary networks, reminiscent of the Western counter-subversion campaigns waged seven decades ago.

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You’d almost wish he tried. But in realty, it’s just about scoring cheap points.

• UN Ambassador Throws Cold Water on Mamdani’s Plan to Arrest Netanyahu (Margolis)

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani wants everyone to believe he’s holding all the legal cards this September, threatening to have the NYPD slap handcuffs on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the moment he sets foot in Manhattan. The problem is that he can’t. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz wasted no time shredding Mamdani’s threat, making clear the mayor has no power to detain a foreign head of government protected under longstanding international agreements. “Mayor Mamdani. Here’s why your threat to arrest Prime Minister Netanyahu in New York City during UN General Assembly is not going to happen,” Waltz said.


Waltz then walked through exactly why Mamdani’s fantasy falls apart. “The United States is not party to the Rome Statute that underlies the International Criminal Court. The UN Headquarters Agreement grants diplomatic protections to visiting heads of government. Head-of-state immunity applies, and federal authority trumps any local mayor’s wishes,” he said. So, contrary to Mamdani’s ego and rabid antisemitism, a big-city mayor doesn’t get to override federal law, international treaties, and diplomatic immunity because he dislikes a foreign leader’s foreign policy.

Netanyahu is expected to visit New York in early September for the UN General Assembly, and Israeli officials are just as unimpressed with Mamdani’s posturing as their American counterparts. Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, turned the tables on Mamdani entirely. “If anyone should be arrested, it is New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani,” Danon said. Danon didn’t stop there, accusing Mamdani of abandoning his actual job to chase headlines at Israel’s expense. “Mamdani is failing to govern New York. Instead of focusing on his responsibilities as mayor and confronting the rising wave of antisemitism in his city, he has chosen to incite hostility and generate headlines by attacking the State of Israel,” Danon said.

Danon made clear none of Mamdani’s chest-thumping changes anything. “It will not change a thing. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu will come to New York, address the United Nations General Assembly with pride and stand before the world to state Israel’s truth and its unwavering right to defend its citizens,” he said. Mamdani isn’t backing down, even though he admits he might not have the authority to do what he’s promising. He told The New York Times his administration is still examining whether New York City has any legal basis to detain Netanyahu at all.

“I believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu belongs in The Hague,” Mamdani said, echoing the same talking point he leaned on throughout his mayoral campaign. He went further, calling Netanyahu “a war criminal who has been charged by the International Criminal Court,” and claiming that view is shared by “many, purely because of what his actions have wrought over these last many years.” Mamdani admitted he doesn’t actually know if he can order the NYPD to arrest a foreign head of government, saying he’s “in an active conversation” with the city’s Law Department. He insisted, though, that he wouldn’t invent new legal authority out of thin air. “Whatever the law allows me to do in New York City, that’s what we will do, but we won’t be writing our own laws to that end,” Mamdani said.

How noble of him. Netanyahu has brushed off Mamdani’s threats before and shown no sign of altering his travel plans. He’s also accused Mamdani of siding with Hamas, the terrorist group whose October 7, 2023, massacre in Israel started the war Mamdani keeps invoking to justify his crusade.

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He doesn’t have to.

“A decade ago, he’d have been a lousy fit to carry Trump’s coalition forward. Today, he fits the part.”

• Is Trump Grooming Marco Rubio As His Successor? (Eric Florack)

I’ve been watching the relationship between President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio lately, mostly due to a long string of commentary, both in my feeds and in my mailbox. Several people in recent days have started asking the same question: Is Trump grooming Rubio as his successor? My hip-shot response would be: Meh…. I wouldn’t object if that was the case. Rubio certainly seems a credible candidate. But, let me say up front—I have my doubts that’s a conscious choice on Trump’s part. But I get why people are asking. Let’s dive in.


Here’s the thing: this examination says as much about Trump’s leadership style as it does about Rubio. And Trump’s leadership style calls to mind a line from General George S. Patton: “Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.” It seems to me that Trump sings harmony with Patton on that one. Unlike most presidents, he doesn’t micromanage. Instead, he:
• Sets broad objectives — “secure the border,” “get a better trade deal,” “end this war” — and skips the tactical playbook.
• Hands trusted advisers real latitude to execute.
• Obsesses over outcomes and how they play in public.
• Steps in personally only when something becomes politically or personally important to him.

Former Cabinet officials and aides tell the same story: Trump wants competing viewpoints on the table, picks a lane from the choices given, and then expects his team to drive in it. He’s not the guy poring over hundred-page policy memos or running agencies from the weeds. Never has been. So let’s look at what’s actually going on between Trump and Rubio. A few things stand out:

• Rubio’s portfolio keeps growing. As secretary of State, he’s literally everywhere on foreign policy, and Trump keeps handing him the delicate diplomatic assignments nobody else gets. Give someone enough rope, and people start measuring him for a crown.
• The relationship has thawed considerably. Remember 2016? Trump spent that primary calling him “Little Marco” and making it personal. Fast forward to today, and the two have built something that actually works. Trump praises Rubio’s performance far more than he knocks it — that, alone, is a genuine rarity in Trump World.
• Rubio has evolved. He’s shed the establishment-conservative label and rebuilt himself as an America First guy on immigration, China, trade, and national security. A decade ago, he’d have been a lousy fit to carry Trump’s coalition forward. Today, he fits the part.
• The succession question isn’t going away for at least a year and a half. Trump can’t run again; the Constitution says so, which means Republicans are already scanning the bench for an heir. Any Cabinet member with a high enough profile gets viewed through that lens whether they like it or not. Certainly Rubio qualifies on that point.

All of that said—I’m still skeptical this is a deliberate succession play on Trump’s part, at least not yet. Is it possible that Trump’s quietly positioning Rubio? Sure. The evidence fits that story just fine. Give a guy the State Department, hand him the hard diplomatic assignments, praise him publicly more than you criticize him — do that long enough, and of course people start drawing a line from Point A to Point B labeled “heir apparent.”

But here’s what that theory conveniently ignores: Trump doesn’t tend to groom people. He uses their abilities toward his own policy ends. He never has cared much for legacy-building or dynasty-planning — the man barely plans past next week’s news cycle, let alone the 2028 primary. To my mind, what actually explains the Rubio relationship is far less cinematic than a “Lion in Winter” style succession plot. In Rubio, Trump has found someone competent, someone who executes without whining, someone who doesn’t leak to the Washington Post the moment his feelings get hurt. That’s it. That’s the whole story. In Trump World, that alone is enough to earn a guy the keys to half the foreign policy apparatus.

And there’s a simpler explanation still sitting on the table, one nobody seems to want to entertain: maybe Trump just hasn’t decided. Maybe, indeed, probably, he doesn’t see the need to. After all, presidents aren’t obligated to anoint a successor, and Trump in particular has never operated on anyone’s timetable but his own. The trust he’s placed in Rubio could, down the road, calcify into something more deliberate — a real endorsement, a real torch-passing. But “could eventually” isn’t “is now.” Until Trump says the word himself, or until Rubio starts acting like a man measuring the Oval Office drapes, the rest of us are just reading tea leaves and calling it political science.

I’ll believe the succession theory when I see it. Right now, all I see is a president who found a guy who gets the job done. To the degree that qualifies Rubio for being the next POTUS, well, that stands on its own. Trump seems willing to allow the primary process to work that one out.

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“The army is becoming increasingly ineffective as it suppresses initiative and downplays failures, Sergey Sobko has warned”.

• Ukraine Could Suffer Military Defeat – Senior Commander (RT)

Ukraine could suffer defeat in the conflict with Russia, as the military command structure is growing increasingly rigid and ineffective, Brigadier General Sergey Sobko warns. His remarks were echoed earlier by former Defense Minister Mikhail Fedorov, who was controversially relieved of his post by Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky earlier this week – which triggered mass protests across Ukraine. In a post on Facebook on Friday, Sobko, the chief of staff of the 11th Army Corps, wrote that the Ukrainian military is in urgent need of reform, “otherwise we may be defeated.”


“Professional discussion is often perceived as disloyalty, and initiative as a threat,” he said, adding that this tendency has discouraged commanders from “taking risks for the sake of success.” Sobko also suggested that commanders are being promoted based on “personal loyalty” to their superiors, as opposed to competence and professionalism. He also called out what he described as a growing trend within the Ukrainian military toward micromanagement and downplaying failures in reports.

Sobko’s criticisms echo those made by former defense chief Fedorov. In the wake of his dismissal earlier this week, the 35-year-old technocrat confirmed that he was at loggerheads with Ukraine’s top military commander, Aleksandr Syrsky, whom he accused of blocking his efforts to modernize the army and make it more technology-oriented. At a press conference on Thursday, the former minister said, “we faced a complete blockage of all our initiatives.” He also claimed that Syrsky made an ultimatum to Zelensky, demanding that Fedorov be removed from office.

On Friday, the Financial Times, citing anonymous sources, also reported that Fedorov’s push to make corruption-plagued procurement procedures in the defense sector more transparent did not sit well with the top brass either. The firing of the defense minister, which came as part of a broader government reshuffle, has sparked protests in Kiev and other Ukrainian cities. Apart from demands that the defense chief be reinstated, some demonstrators have also called for Syrsky’s dismissal. The FT quoted an unnamed senior Ukrainian defense official as saying,

“Syrsky hasn’t got a sense of how he’s going to win,” and that his “theory of victory is simply to hold out as long as you can and mobilize more people.” In a separate piece on Saturday, the FT, citing an anonymous senior official in Zelensky’s administration, claimed that the Ukrainian leader is considering firing Syrsky. According to the outlet, Zelensky is consulting military commanders over the weekend, looking for a potential replacement. Over the course of the conflict, Syrsky has earned the nickname ‘the Butcher’ for his perceived willingness to disregard heavy casualties.

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PCR doesn’t move.

• Both Russia and Iran Are At War, and Neither Knows It (Paul Craig Roberts)

Russia is at war with Washington and Europe, a war that has vastly widened, but Putin thinks Russia is engaged in a Special Military Operation confined to the battlefront in Donbas. Iran is at war, an existential war, with Satanic Israel, but the Iranian leadership thinks they are responding to an American “illegal military intervention.” All of Iran’s invective, threats, and vows are directed at Satanic America. Not a word about Satanic Israel, the cause of the conflict. America is just Israel’s proxy, as Ukraine is the West’s proxy against Russia. As neither Russia nor Iran understand that they are engaged in existential wars, neither has a war plan to achieve victory.


Iran’s policy is to inconvenience the American empire with an oil shortage and vows to escalate Iran’s tits to America’s tats. Russia’s policy is called TiT–Trust in Trump. John Helmer reports that the instructed Russian media and foreign policy analysts, who I suspect are financed by oligarchs, believe what they have invented as “the Anchorage spirit” has “given Russia a lot” by removing the US from direct participation in the conflict.

The implied hopes are in vain. What Trump has done is to turn over to Europe the arming of Ukraine with high-tech drones made in Germany that Ukraine, with US guidance and targeting information, is using to severely impact Russian oil production and refining, and to target and kill Russian civilians. Thus, the West has taken the war home to Russia. Currently, there is severe gasoline rationing in Crimea and long lines in some other Russian locations, and currently according to reports Russia is importing gasoline and diesel fuel from India. As for “trusting in Trump,” there are reports that Trump is considering allowing Zelensky to produce the US Patriot and Tomahawk missiles in Ukraine to provide more long-range weapons for strikes deep into Russia.

Russians have fled their summer holiday in Crimea where drone attacks are an everyday occurrence. St. Petersburg was under attack during the recent international meeting in the city, and Moscow’s mayor just reported that Ukraine, a.k.a., the West, launched 1,900 drones targeting Moscow in the past week. Russia is having to use its munitions to protect its capital, not to attack the enemy.

Putin, who insists that the conflict is limited to Donbas, refers to the increasingly successful attacks deep inside Russia as “terrorist actions.” Thus, Putin refuses to acknowledge them as acts of war, which relieves him of responsibility to do what Russian war doctrine requires. For example, Russian war doctrine at a minimum requires Russia to destroy the site of the German production of drones for Ukraine. In actually, Russian war doctrine requires a devastating nuclear attack on the United States. But as Washington knows that there is no threat from pusillanimous Putin, Washington knows Putin will not comply with Russia’s war doctrine. Putin proved this when he dismissed Washington’s attack on Russia’s strategic bomber force and on his home in an assassination attempt as merely “terrorist actions.”

Among the consequences of Putin’s denial of reality is the joining of NATO by Scandinavian countries that previously remained neutral, and the change in long-standing policy of Finland and Latvia to host on their territory on Russia’s border American nuclear weapons. So, it is clear as day, it is indisputable, that Putin’s idiotic pretense that Russia is not really at war, only involved in a Special Military Operation in Donbas, is leaving Russia exposed to a much wider war. The Russian media and oligarch-sponsored “experts” describe the rising threat to Russia as a “successful negotiation.”

The Iranians, who had an equally strong upper hand as the Russians, have also thrown away their advantage. Once the Iranian government on the verge of total victory threw their victory away by rescuing their enemies from defeat by agreeing to a ceasefire, Iran left the door open for future conflict. Ayatollah Khamenei stated: “The enemy must not sense any sign of weakness from us.” But it is signs of weakness that Iran sends.

Iran sits on its butt and permits American attacks, some of which are devastating on civilian infrastructure and civilian lives. Only then does Iran respond with disabling attacks on Washington’s bases in the Persian Gulf oil Sheikdoms and Jordan. This is nonsensical. A country that realized it was at war, would strike and wipe out the enemy bases from which it would be attacked. Not sit there and suffer the damage, as if it needs an excuse to respond.

But Iran only responds, after suffering destruction, to attacks. Iran has no war plan to defeat its enemies. This is a failure of Iranian leadership. And Russia’s is the same. The unwillingness of the two attacked countries to deal with reality is leading to two large wars.

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“The Pink Floyd co-founder has also slammed UK and EU elites for openly pushing for war with Russia..”

• Roger Waters Calls Out West For Banning RT (RT)

Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters has lambasted Western governments for pushing for war with Russia and banning RT in order to freely disseminate the warmongering “propaganda of the ruling class.” Appearing on Tucker Carlson’s podcast, published on Friday, Waters expressed dismay that “some people in the governments of the United States of America, and the UK, and the European Union are making blood-curdling, bloodthirsty noises about” a potential military conflict with Russia. The Pink Floyd co-founder noted that EU nations, including Germany, are rapidly increasing their military spending and funneling taxpayers’ money “into a big piggy bank in order to fight the Russians.”


“The Russians don’t want to invade Europe. What are they talking about?” he said, arguing that certain interest groups may be paying Western politicians to promote warmongering narratives and thereby justify outsized military expenditure. Instead of antagonizing Moscow and silencing voices that challenge Western “propaganda,” the musician-turned-activist said that “we have to be cooperating with the Russians.” “It sort of breaks my heart that I can’t watch RT anymore. ‘Cause it’s banned. You can’t watch Russia Today,” he said, recounting how the Russian broadcaster was taken off the air across much of the West following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022.

“So we live in a very difficult time where it may be, unless you, with your audience – or me with my tiny voice – can join with our brothers and sisters and pull together the ordinary working people all over the globe, and we can make the voice of the choir so loud that we can drown out the propaganda of the ruling class,” he said. Waters has long been a critic of Western military support for Ukraine, telling RIA Novosti last November that officials in the UK and the EU “don’t make any pretense that they care about” ordinary Ukrainians. Their endgame is to use the “corrupt Nazis” in Kiev, who will then “help them strip the country of all its assets and stuff the money into their pockets,” the musician said at the time.

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Legal disgrace.

• Trump Has Paid Carroll $5.62M, $83.3M Defamation Judgment Still Pending (JTN)

Supreme Court filings this week confirm that E. Jean Carroll has received roughly $5.62 million from President Donald Trump after the justices late last month declined to hear his appeal of the civil judgment in the case. But the court’s action resolves just one chapter of the long-running legal battle – leaving a separate $83.3 million defamation judgment pending. Trump is expected to ask the high court to review that case, which his attorneys argue raises broader questions concerning presidential immunity and the scope of official presidential speech.


The high court’s June 29 ruling, revealed Tuesday in the filings, is connected to the 2023 civil court verdict in which Trump was found liable for sexually abusing Carroll, a writer, in the mid-1990s and defaming her after she publicly accused him. The court’s ruling also left the civil court verdict intact and clears the way for Carroll to collect the judgment, plus accrued interest, after years of litigation.

Allegations and Civil Trials
Carroll, a longtime advice columnist, first publicly accused Trump in 2019 of sexually assaulting her in a dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman in Manhattan during the mid-1990s. The allegation appeared in an excerpt from her memoir published by New York Magazine. Trump denied the accusation, saying he had never assaulted Carroll and describing her claims as a “hoax” and politically motivated.

Carroll subsequently filed two civil lawsuits.
The first, filed in 2019, alleged Trump defamed her by denying the assault and accusing her of fabricating the allegations. The second, filed in 2022 under New York’s Adult Survivors Act, included a battery claim based on the alleged sexual assault and additional defamation claims. During the 2023 trial, jurors heard testimony from Carroll, several corroborating witnesses, and two other women who accused Trump of similar misconduct. Prosecutors also introduced the 2005 Access Hollywood recording in which Trump described grabbing women without their consent.

The jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation, although it rejected Carroll’s rape claim under New York’s legal definition in effect at the time. Jurors awarded Carroll $2 million for the sexual abuse claim and $3 million for defamation. In a separate trial in January 2024, another jury awarded Carroll the $83.3 million after concluding that Trump continued to defame her through statements made after the first verdict.

Supreme Court Declines Review Trump appealed the $5 million judgment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, arguing that the trial court improperly admitted testimony from other accusers and the Access Hollywood recording. After the Second Circuit affirmed the verdict, Trump petitioned the Supreme Court for review in November 2025. The justices considered the petition during their June 25, 2026, conference before denying certiorari four days later without comment or recorded dissent. Because the high court declined review, the Second Circuit’s decision remains in effect.

Trump’s attorneys later filed a petition for rehearing, arguing that the Court should reconsider the case because a forthcoming petition challenging the separate $83.3 million judgment may present presidential immunity issues under Trump v. United States (2024). Rehearing petitions are rarely granted. Following the Supreme Court’s denial, U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan ordered the release of the escrowed funds. Despite emergency efforts by Trump’s attorneys to delay payment, the judgment was ultimately satisfied.

Trump Continues to Denounce the Cases
Throughout the litigation, Trump has been unyielding in his public statements. He has repeatedly called Carroll a “liar,” dismissed the allegations as fabricated for book sales or political gain, and portrayed the entire process as election interference and “weaponization” of the justice system. On Truth Social and in interviews, he has labeled the cases “hoaxes,” “con jobs,” and part of a pattern of politically motivated attacks. Even after the Supreme Court’s decision, Trump vowed to continue fighting, framing it as resistance against what he calls Democrat-funded lawfare. His spokesperson echoed these sentiments, declaring that “the American People stand with President Trump” in demanding an end to such cases.

The $83 Million Judgment Remains on Appeal
Although Carroll has now collected the $5 million judgment, the larger $83.3 million award remains under appellate review. The Second Circuit affirmed that judgment earlier this year, and Trump is expected to file a petition for certiorari with the Supreme Court. His attorneys are expected to argue that statements made while he was president are protected by presidential immunity or should be treated as official conduct under the Westfall Act. Enforcement of the larger judgment has been stayed after Trump posted a bond securing the award while his appeal proceeds.

Whether the Supreme Court agrees to hear the second case remains uncertain. Some legal observers have suggested that immunity questions could present a more substantial issue for review than the evidentiary challenges raised in the first appeal, while others note that the Court’s refusal to hear the earlier case may signal reluctance to revisit the litigation. For now, the Supreme Court’s denial leaves the first judgment final while the parties continue to litigate the remaining appeal. The Carroll cases remain among the most closely watched civil proceedings involving President Trump, touching on questions of defamation law, presidential immunity, and the limits of civil liability for public officials.

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“.. members of Congress saying ICE isn’t a real law enforcement agency. I think that- I actually think that emboldens some people to say, “I’m not going to comply with ICE.”

• Border Czar Tom Homan Discusses Value of ICE Body Cameras (CTH)

The worst thing to ever happen to the reputation of black culture in America was the introduction of police body cameras to highlight the behavior of African Americans to the world. Frequent travelers will note that foreign discussions no longer include curious questions about racism in America. With black Americans putting themselves on full cultural display, the world now understands the connection between black culture and antisocial behavior.


The same concept applies to ICE officers wearing body cameras. As each incident unfolds, people can see the severity of the antagonism faced by the law enforcement officers doing what the overwhelming majority want to see done. Deport all illegal aliens, cancel all H1Bs and put Americans first! WATCH:


[Transcript] – MARGARET BRENNAN: And we’re back with President Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan. Welcome back to Face the Nation.

TOM HOMAN: Thanks for having me.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Mr. Homan, we saw that two immigrants were shot in the span of a week. There was that one in Maine that was fatal just days after another one in Houston. We also saw that man fleeing agents in Florida who then was struck and killed by a tractor trailer. I know you’ve been trying to keep the department out of the headlines ever since that streak in Minnesota that was deadly. How do you respond to those who say what’s happening now looks like very little has changed?

TOM HOMAN: Well, you know, first of all, we’ll wait and see what the investigations- how they play out, right? Because, you know, I don’t want to get ahead of investigations on who’s at fault, what exactly happened. Because we all know when the investigations happen, there’s going to be cell phone video, there may be city cameras, and of course, then you got witness statements and affidavits from the officer, and- and witnesses. So, we got to let the investigations play out. So, I don’t want to really comment on investigation themselves, but you know, I think, you know, Markwayne Mullin, you know, took some action, and in concern of the safety of the agents and- and how we do operations, and- and that’s why he did that, you know, that- that- that pause on- on enforcement on vehicle stops.

But you know, I- my concern is I’ve never- I’ve done this since 1984. My concern is I think a lot of the rhetoric that you see every day, especially in sanctuary cities, and at these protests that- resist, members of Congress saying ICE isn’t a real law enforcement agency. I think that- I actually think that emboldens some people to say, “I’m not going to comply with ICE.” And I think no matter what people think of ICE, no matter what you think of immigration law, you should always comply with law enforcement.[..]

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Doubling human life expectancy https://twitter.com/Yerocode0/status/2078464147432300625?s=20

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle September 13 2024

Sep 132024
 
 September 13, 2024  Posted by at 7:56 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  44 Responses »


M. C. Escher Relativity Lattice 1953

 

• How to Steal an Election: GOP Exposes Dems’ Playbook Ahead of 2024 Vote (Sp.)
• Will ‘Insane’ Biden Provoke World War III Before November Election? (Miles)
• Another Season Of Shutdown Theater Is Upon Us (ZH)
• Kamaflage: The Harris Policy Dump (Porter)
• Erdogan Demands Russia Must Return Crimea To Ukraine (ZH)
• Turkiye’s BRICS Bid: Strategic Shift or Diplomatic Leverage? (Delgen)
• 34 Countries Express Desire to Join BRICS in One Form or Another – Putin (Sp.)
• Polish FM Reveals Limits Of Support For Ukraine (RT)
• Roger Waters Prepared To Perform In Russia And Ukraine (RT)
• Everything Is Going To Plan – Zelensky (RT)
• Zelensky Accuses Brazil And China Of Colluding With Russia (RT)
• Zelensky Disappointed After Blinken Visit, Despite Getting $1.5 Billion More (ZH)
• Lavrov Ridicules ‘Divers On Little Boat’ Theory About Nord Stream Sabotage (RT)
• Olaf Scholz Has A Sudden Moment of Clarity About Russia (Amar)
• Ukrainian Diplomat Claims Peace Was Possible In 2022 (RT)

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1834094117783278038

 

 

Trump 9/11

 

 

Rep. Ind.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1834019780413583437

 

 

JD Vance
https://twitter.com/i/status/1834053741290643708

 

 

Judge Judy

 

 

Sorority

 

 

OMG

 

 

Collum

 

 

Sen. Biden

 

 

Joe hat

 

 

 

 

“In order to hold on to power, Democrats have decided to steal the election. This plan requires the orchestration of belief among the voting public that Kamala is a strong candidate leading Trump in the polls. Thus, the polls are rigged for this purpose..”

• How to Steal an Election: GOP Exposes Dems’ Playbook Ahead of 2024 Vote (Sp.)

Republicans are waving a red flag over possible “election theft” ahead of the November vote. They draw attention to efforts to cancel ID checks and ballot verification, the hiring of predominantly Democratic observers in some counties, and apparent attempts to create loopholes allowing illegal aliens to vote. “Election theft has always been present in America,” US economist and former Reagan administration official Dr. Paul Craig Roberts wrote. “In the 19th century, a vote could be bought for 50 cents and a half pint of whiskey. But in the 21st century, organized vote theft is a big business.” The economist pointed out that “normally, it does not matter to the ruling establishment which candidate wins, because the establishment owns both candidates.” However, in 2016, 2020, and 2024, Donald Trump emerged as a player “outside the grip and control of the establishment. Therefore, to keep him out of office, vote fraud has been elevated to the fore,” as per the economist.

Conservatives argue that the Democratic Party has launched full-fledged lawfare against the Republican frontrunner ahead of the election. The former president has been charged with a total of 88 felony counts in four criminal investigations, and found guilty of 34 of them. He is routinely vilified in the US mainstream press, and was most recently subjected to unfair “fact-checking” by ABC News during his September 10 debate with Kamala Harris, Republicans say. Meanwhile, a silent battle over the 2024 election is already underway across the United States. Instead of improving the democratic procedure’s transparency, voting requirements have been loosened in recent decades, the pundit said. “There are many ways to exploit the loose voting requirements in the US,” Dr. Roberts wrote. “[In some states] an ID or proof of citizenship is not required in order to vote. Actual physical presence is not required to vote: it can be done through drop boxes on streets or mail-in ballots.

“Dead people still on voter rolls can be voted. People still on voter rolls who have moved out of the state can be voted. Voter registrations made when driver’s licenses are issued to illegal aliens can be voted.” As of April 2024, 36 states required some form of identification to cast a ballot. Of these states, 21 asked for photo ID, and 15 also accepted non-photo ID. The remaining 14 states and Washington, DC did not require voters to present identification in order to vote at polls on Election Day. For years, Democratic lawmakers have tried to ram “voting rights” legislation through Congress to water down or abolish election restrictions altogether. Democrats argue that strict ID rules and in-person voting, advocated by Republicans, prevent low income people, African Americans, and other minorities from casting their ballots.

What’s worse, the assumption that black Americans are less likely to have proper identification instruments established a protocol leading to the issuance of Federal Identification Papers to illegal aliens. According to Dr. Roberts, “it is still illegal federally for illegal aliens to vote, but some Democrat cities permit them to vote.” “The 3.6 million immigrant-invaders who cross the border into the US from Mexico each year are provided with federal IDs. These IDs allow states to issue them driver’s licenses. Today, the practice is for the states to register the person to whom a license is issued on the voting rolls,” according to the economist.

[..] According to Dr. Roberts, Kamala Harris’ approval rating is deliberately inflated by polls and corporate press by oversampling Democratic voters, especially in swing states. Conservative commentators believe that this is done in order to lay the groundwork for potential election theft and make her victory there look more plausible. “In order to hold on to power, Democrats have decided to steal the election. This plan requires the orchestration of belief among the voting public that Kamala is a strong candidate leading Trump in the polls. Thus, the polls are rigged for this purpose,” Dr. Roberts wrote.

He drew attention to the fact that in 2020, when Kamala Harris campaigned for the Democratic nomination for president, she had zero support and was immediately eliminated from the first round. During her four years as vice president, she is rated as one of the worst and least popular in history. “In less than one month the presstitute media elevated her from a non-entity to the favorite in the US presidential election,” he noted.

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“My fear is that [the United States] will try something really drastic like a false flag attack or maybe even a mini nuke,” said McGovern..”

• Will ‘Insane’ Biden Provoke World War III Before November Election? (Miles)

Lasting from the end of World War II until the early 1990s, the Cold War saw the United States and the USSR locked in a global competition for power and influence. Although the two superpowers never went to war directly, the 45-year period was marked by two proxy conflicts in Vietnam and Korea and a constant fear that a third World War was not far away. Tensions were heightened by the fact that both the United States and the Soviet Union possessed nuclear weapons, dramatically raising the stakes of global conflict. Both countries nearly saw their worst fears realized during the Cuban Missile Crisis, when it appeared the US and USSR were unwilling to back down over the issue of nuclear missiles being placed just miles from each country’s border in Cuba and Turkey. The incident led to the establishment of a special hotline for US and Soviet leaders to communicate directly, and caused US President John F. Kennedy to remark that tensions between nuclear powers must never again rise to such a level.

For decades, Kennedy’s maxim was dutifully observed as both countries worked to improve relations, finally culminating in the end of the Cold War. The prospect for nuclear confrontation was avoided until recent years, claimed former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, when the United States rejected Russian overtures for a new European security architecture and stubbornly insisted Ukraine’s coup regime would be granted entry into NATO. The analyst joined Sputnik’s The Critical Hour program Wednesday to consider whether US President Joe Biden is willing to risk global conflict to reverse Kiev’s flagging fortunes on the battlefield. “They want to provoke Putin [into] doing something really drastic before the election, before the [presidential] election here on November 5th,” suggested McGovern, a critic of neoconservative US foreign policy.

“They’re losing in Kursk [region],” he noted, referring to Ukraine’s stalled incursion into Russian territory. “What were they trying to do? They were trying to get the Russians to react in such a way as to bring the US in with both feet militarily.” [..] “My fear is that [the United States] will try something really drastic like a false flag attack or maybe even a mini nuke,” said McGovern, concerned that the US could fabricate an episode such as the Gulf of Tonkin incident that drew the country into the Vietnam War. “Let’s see what happens the next couple of weeks. I think Putin is right. It’s only the smart thing to see who wins on the 5th of November. Till then, I’m still holding my breath.” But McGovern warned that the consequences of the United States’ strategy in Ukraine could fall not on the US itself, but on its European allies.

“It’s really hard to know what Biden and [National Security Advisor Jake] Sullivan, who are running things, really think,” he claimed. “Some of my best friends and analysts think they’re insane. And it’s really, really hard to predict what they’re going to do if they’re insane.” “The Europeans are being told by the Russians, ‘look, if Biden, Blinken and Sullivan opt for a tactical nuclear weapon, for God’s sake, please, please remember we got them too. And where will we use them? We’ll use them in Europe,’” McGovern said, summarizing Russia’s possible response.

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They refuse to get their voting in order.

• Another Season Of Shutdown Theater Is Upon Us (ZH)

Another season of shutdown malarkey is upon us – this time with a deadline of October 1st before it’s time to fling poo. Republicans want to tie a six-month funding stopgap (Continuing Resolution or CR) to the SAVE Act – which would require proof of citizenship when registering to vote. On Wednesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) yanked a funding bill off the House floor hours before an expected vote after a growing number of Republicans vowed to tank the measure which includes the SAVE Act. Democrats want a “clean” funding bill that would keep the government open until December, right after the elections, without (of course) the SAVE Act. Donald Trump wants Johnson and the Republicans to grow a pair of balls and let the government shut down if they can’t preserve the SAVE Act.

On Tuesday, before he yanked the funding bill off the floor, Johnson told reporters “We are going to put the SAVE Act and the CR together, and we’re going to move that through the process. And I am resolved to that; we’re not looking at any other alternative. … I think almost 90% of the American people believe in that principle and that’s why we’re going to stand and fight,” adding “You know how I operate: You do the right thing and you let the chips fall where they may.” Hilarious. After he pulled the bill, Johnson said: “We’re in the consensus-building business here in Congress with small majorities,” adding “We’re having thoughtful conversations, family conversations, within the Republican conference, and I believe we’ll get there.” Of course, going head-to-head with Democrats (and some Republicans) over the SAVE Act means litigating claims of election fraud, which Republicans folded like a wet napkin over after the 2020 US election instead of circling the wagons around Trump.

Meanwhile, at least seven Republicans have said they would vote against a CR, period, as it only kicks the can down the road. Johnson is dealing with a tough math problem. Because of their minuscule majority, House Republicans can only afford four GOP defections if all lawmakers vote. Rep. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., was hospitalized Tuesday night after collapsing at an event. And at least seven other Republicans have publicly stated they will vote against a stopgap measure, known as a continuing resolution or “CR.” Many others said they could join them. Two sources told NBC News that leadership was anticipating as many as 15 GOP no votes if the vote had been held Wednesday. -NBC” Republicans opposing a CR include Reps. Cory Mills of Florida, Jim Banks of Indiana, Matt Rosendale of Montana, Andy Biggs of Arizona and Tim Burchett of Tennessee. “I’ve continuously voted against CRs. I think it is terrible legislating,” said Burchett.

“And the No. 1 threat to this country is fiscal irresponsibility. We are going off a fiscal cliff, and I think that every time we do this, we just kick that can further down the road.” According to Mills, a military veteran and fiscal conservative who serves on the Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committee, “This CR would weaken our defense capabilities and the readiness of our military, just as global threats are rapidly evolving. It would prevent us from responding effectively to adversarial nations like China, hinder innovation, and delay modernization,” adding “Six months is a long time in politics, but it’s an eternity in geopolitics, where quick responses are critical to countering foreign adversaries threatening to harm U.S. interests. Mills is a ‘yes’ on the SAVE Act, saying: “I’m a firm NO on bankrupting the nation and a YES on election integrity.” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) explains the charade we’re about to see unfold over the next two weeks:

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“She will cut red tape and build more housing by imposing new red tape in the form of federal rent regulations..”

• Kamaflage: The Harris Policy Dump (Porter)

The Harris-Walz campaign has been vibe-a-licious and content-free; its positions on domestic and foreign policy have (with apologies to Hollywood) essentially consisted of open defiance of any presidential campaign norms: “Policy? We ain’t got no policy. We don’t need no policy. We don’t have to show you any stinkin’ policy.” But the campaign’s policy on policy changed, sort of, the day before the debate, when it went ahead and posted some stinkin’ policy anyway. In a word, Harris’ policy dump should be seen for what it is: Kamaflage. She uses words that score well with Republicans and moderates, but inverts the meaning of those words, creating an unintelligible stinkin’ mess. “Kamala Harris will create an Opportunity Economy where everyone has a chance to compete and a chance to succeed – whether they live in a rural area, small town, or big city.” Really? How is she going to do that?

The campaign also promises that Harris would “make it a top priority to bring down costs and increase economic security for all Americans.” It added, “As President, she will fight to cut taxes for more than 100 million working and middle class Americans while lowering the costs of every day needs like health care, housing and groceries.” How would Harris cut taxes? Not by actually reducing anyone’s taxes, but by increasing spending: “restoring” (i.e. increasing) the amount paid out under two tax credits that provide cash payments to lower income families, most of whom already do not pay federal income taxes. But, as we learned from the ironically named Inflation Reduction Act, pumping more money into the system without increasing the supply of goods and services just devalues the dollar and creates inflation for everyone.

Harris’ campaign calls for both “making our tax system fairer and prioritizing investment and innovation,” while also calling for higher taxes on corporate earnings, quadrupling the tax on corporate distributions through stock buybacks, and increasing the capital gains rate by 40%. With a flourish that would make George Orwell blush, she blithely asserts that tax increases bolster the economy too: “When the government encourages investment, it leads to broad-based economic growth and creates jobs, which makes our economy stronger.” In what alternate reality does raising taxes on investments encourage investments? A lifelong government employee who never worked in the private sector, Harris apparently envisions herself a preternaturally talented real estate developer. Her campaign’s policy paper claims she has a “comprehensive plan” to build three million more rental units and affordable homes “to end the national housing supply crisis in her first term.”

What’s the big plan? She’ll “cut red tape” to build housing faster, while also penalizing companies that “hoard available homes to drive up prices,” and “outlaw new forms of price fixing by corporate landlords.” Did you follow that? She will cut red tape and build more housing by imposing new red tape in the form of federal rent regulations so that landlords make less money. This is merely contradictory nonsense with poll-tested verbiage. She would also give $25,000 to first-time home buyers, “with even more generous support for first-generation homeowners.” Obviously, giving people more money to buy houses means houses will cost more, not less. Note, too, that not all first-time home buyers would be treated equally. Some, such as immigrants (whether here legally or illegally), would get even more than young Americans who are descended from (gasp!) previous homeowners.

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It is easy to demand things you know won’t happen. You can say: well, I tried…

• Erdogan Demands Russia Must Return Crimea To Ukraine (ZH)

While some people think Turkey is an ally to Russia, the reality is that this “friendship” is more often shaky and could perhaps even be seen as a facade ready to collapse at any moment. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday reminded the world that his country firmly reflects NATO’s view of the Ukraine war. He said in video message to 4th Crimea Platform happening in Kiev, a Ukrainian government sponsored event, that the return of Crimea to Ukraine is “a requirement of international law.” “Our support for Ukraine’s territorial integrity, sovereignty, and independence is unwavering. The return of Crimea to Ukraine is a requirement of international law,” Erdogan declared, while also stressing ongoing support for Crimean Tatar rights.

He said of the minority ethnic group commonly viewed as Turkish: “I believe that additional steps will continue to be taken to strengthen the rights of the Crimean Tatar Turks in the upcoming period.” Turkey has long denounced not only historic persecution of the Tatars at the hands of Russians which reaches back to the 18th-19th centuries, but also the alleged persecution following Russia’s 2014 takeover of the peninsula. Erdogan stressed before the conference that Tatars must be able to live “freely, securely, and peacefully in their own homeland.” Erdogan added of the broader conflict, “Our sincere wish is for the war to end with a fair and lasting peace based on Ukraine’s territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence.”

The Kremlin was quick to respond, saying the following within hours after Erdogan’s speech: “Subjects of the Russian Federation are not subject to negotiation,” Zakharova told reporters who asked about Erdogan s remarks during the press briefing at the Foreign Ministry, adding that anyone who wants to address the issue needs to read the Russian constitution first. Residents of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol voted overwhelmingly to rejoin Russia in March 2014, shortly after a US-backed coup in Kiev overthrew the Ukrainian government in favor of militant nationalists. Neither Ukraine nor its Western backers have ever accepted the results of the referendum, declaring it to be an illegal annexation.

This isn’t the first time that the Turkish leader has expressed such a firm position, which has not made Russia happy. Turkey has also since near the start of the conflict supplied Ukraine forces with armed drones. Turkey was central along with UN negotiators in securing the 2022-2023 Black Sea Grain Initiative, and has been a rare open line of communication to the Kremlin within NATO. It has also positioned itself as a potential future mediator of peace. But Erdogan’s Crimea stance is yet another reminder that Turkey in the end is still a powerful NATO member, and with a Washington relationship that’s more impactful for Ankara than its ties with Moscow.

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Demand Crimea and then join Russia’s club. Yeah. Being in NATO and then also join BRICS doesn’t look realistic.

• Turkiye’s BRICS Bid: Strategic Shift or Diplomatic Leverage? (Delgen)

NATO member Turkiye’s formal application to join the BRICS group of emerging economies earlier this month has garnered widespread attention. While the Turkish Foreign Ministry and the Directorate of Communications have yet to officially confirm or deny the news, there have been several indirect confirmations from Turkish and Russian officials. Omer Celik, a member of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), couched his response to reporters carefully: “Our president has stated at various times that we want to be a member [of BRICS] … Our request on this issue is clear. This process is underway in this framework, but there is no concrete development on this.” Further confirmation of Turkiye’s membership bid came from Yuri Ushakov, BRICS chair and Russian President Putin’s foreign policy advisor, who has publicly stated: “Turkiye has applied for full membership. We will consider this application.”

In addition, Sputnik reported that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is expected to attend the BRICS summit in Kazan, scheduled for 22–24 September. This aligns with prior announcements that Erdogan would also attend the next Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) meeting for heads of state. These developments emphasize Ankara’s interest in the multipolar order that BRICS represents, especially following its failed bids to join the EU, though Turkiye’s official stance remains unclear – perhaps deliberately so. The timing of Turkiye’s potential BRICS membership raises important questions, especially given that this development follows an informal meeting with EU foreign ministers, marking Turkiye’s first such invitation since 2019. The BRICS acronym, coined in 2001 by Goldman Sachs economist Jim O’Neill, originally described Brazil, Russia, India, and China. South Africa joined in 2010, transforming it into BRICS. As of 2024, additional countries like Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE have also joined the BRICS+ bloc, further expanding its global reach.

BRICS aims to increase the voice of emerging economies in international affairs and challenge Atlanticist dominance over the global financial system. Though not a formal international organization like the UN or World Bank, BRICS has established the New Development Bank to provide loans for development projects in emerging economies. By the end of 2022, the bank had lent an astounding $32 billion for new roads, bridges, railways, and water projects, although representing only half the $72.8 billion committed by the World Bank in fiscal year 2023. In its expanded form, the number of people living in BRICS countries is a hefty 3.5 billion, or 45 percent of the global population. The combined size of their economies is more than $28.5 trillion, or about 28 per cent of the global economy. Combined, the expanded BRICS membership also produces about 44 percent of the world’s crude oil. What about the west? On the domestic front, Turkiye’s internal politics are in flux. In the 31 March local elections, the ruling AKP lost a significant portion of its support for the first time in 20 years, largely due to ongoing economic crises.

In response, President Erdogan appointed Mehmet Simsek as his new finance minister, a figure known for his strong ties with western financial institutions, which some have interpreted as a shift back towards a pro-EU and pro-NATO foreign policy. In a meeting at British think-tank Chatham House earlier this summer, Simsek reiterated that EU membership remains Turkiye’s strategic goal and that the country would adhere to sanctions on Russia following the Ukraine invasion.Simsek’s rhetoric caused some unease in Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s expected visit to Turkiye was canceled, and he made his thoughts clear at St Petersburg International Economic Forum on 5 June: “It seems to me that the Turkish government’s economic bloc has recently focused on getting loans, making investments and receiving grants from western financial institutions. This is probably not a bad thing, but if it is connected with the restriction of trade and economic relations with Russia, then the Turkish economy will lose more than it gains. In my opinion, there is such a threat.”

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“Russia pays great attention to security issues within BRICS during its presidency..”

• 34 Countries Express Desire to Join BRICS in One Form or Another – Putin (Sp.)

Today, more than three dozen countries, precisely more than 34 states, have already expressed a desire to join the activities of our association [BRICS] in one form or another,” Putin said during a meeting with high representatives of the BRICS states on security issues. The plan of Russia’s BRICS presidency has already been fulfilled by more than 70%, Vladimir Putin said. “As of now, the chairmanship plan has been fulfilled by more than 70%, about 150 events, meetings, industry forums have been held, most expert and ministerial meetings have been held,” Putin said at a meeting with high representatives of the BRICS and BRICS Plus states in charge of security issues.

Russia’s activity as BRICS 2024 chair focused on the swift integration of new members of the association, Putin added. “As the current chair of BRICS, this year Russia has approached the organization of joint activities within the framework of the association with great responsibility. Our chairmanship has been entrusted with a special mission — to do everything possible to facilitate the fastest and most organic integration of new member countries into all BRICS mechanisms,” Putin explained.

BRICS has accumulated significant experience in responding to security challenges, including in cybercrime and fight against terrorism, Putin said. “We are building on the truly solid experience of interaction accumulated by BRICS in responding to threats of terrorism and extremism, illegal arms and drug trafficking, transnational crime and illegal migration. Among the specific results of the joint work of the BRICS states, I would like to note the creation of a special electronic registry for exchanging data on computer attacks and incidents,” Putin said at a meeting with BRICS security representatives. Russia pays great attention to security issues within BRICS during its presidency, the leader added.

Read more …

Vovan and Lexus strike again. They must be good.

• Polish FM Reveals Limits Of Support For Ukraine (RT)

Poland has “zero willingness” to send troops to defend Ukraine, Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has told a pair of Russian pranksters posing as former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko. Vovan and Lexus, who typically dupe public figures into talking to them by imitating various officials, released a video on Thursday featuring the top Polish diplomat. At one point, the fake Poroshenko asked whether Poland would be willing to “join the team” and fight Russian troops on territory claimed by Ukraine. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk would be “very reluctant to do so,” Sikorski replied. Even the proposal to shoot down Russian cruise missiles over western Ukraine with Polish interceptors is “very, very controversial,” since this would amount to joining the conflict, the official explained.

“If the front started to collapse, things might change. But at the moment there is zero willingness to do that,” Sikorski said. Poland is concerned that by sending troops to Ukraine, Warsaw would confirm Russian claims that it has designs on territory that Kiev received from Poland as part of a border settlement after World War II, the diplomat noted. Warsaw is willing to train Ukrainian soldiers and facilitate the return of Ukrainian citizens eligible for military service, Sikorsky said. But “Polish soldiers inside Ukraine – not doable. Unless there was a peace agreement, and these were peacekeeping forces, UN or something. Then it’s different, maybe,” he added. Sikorsky suggested that a military intervention by other members of NATO was likewise improbable, as “there is no willingness to have a war with Russia in Western Europe. This is an absolute red line.”

However, the US will keep sending military aid to Ukraine no matter what, the Polish minister argued, claiming that Washington’s credibility among its allies is at stake. He also described as “very unhelpful” public calls by Polish President Andrzej Duda, an ally of the previous conservative government, to station US nuclear weapons on Polish soil. If deployed, such weapons would remain outside of Warsaw’s control and wouldn’t make a difference for Russia, since other European nations already host similar arms, Sikorsky said. “It’s like being a postman who has a million-dollar check, who feels important, as if this million dollars was his,” he explained.

Read more …

As 81-year old Joe Biden is all but gone, 81-year old Roger Waters is touring: “We are nearly 170 people on the road. And 30 tractor trailers, trucks carrying all the equipment..”

• Roger Waters Prepared To Perform In Russia And Ukraine (RT)

British rock star Roger Waters has said he would perform in Russia and Ukraine if given the chance, in an interview with a teen literary prodigy from Donbass. The 81-year-old co-founder of the band Pink Floyd, who is also a vocal critic of US imperialism and warmongering, spoke via telelink with Faina Savenkova, a 15-year-old playwright and author from Lugansk, Russia. According to a preview released on Thursday by the organizer of the interview, RIA Novosti, Waters said he would have no reservations about performing in Russia. “There are no ‘buts’ really. Russians were inviting me to go and do a gig in St. Petersburg and Moscow for this summer,” he said. His latest tour, ‘This Is Not a Drill’, traveled around the world until December 2023 and was touted as Waters’ farewell tour.

Some of the events faced threats of cancelation in Germany over elements of anti-Nazi satire and the musician’s criticism of Israel, which detractors claim to be anti-Semitic. This type of production is a massive endeavor that requires a lot of planning, according to Waters. “We are nearly 170 people on the road. And 30 tractor trailers, trucks carrying all the equipment. It’s a huge, huge thing. It’s not like I go around with a balalaika and singing at bars.” “Will I go on the road again? I have no idea. If I do, would I like to play in Russia – and Ukraine? Of course I would,” he said. In the interview, Waters also discussed the Ukraine conflict. He said Ukrainians should keep in mind that US foreign policy is designed with the sole purpose to “feather the nests of American plutocrats.” “The people of Ukraine surely by now must know that the US government couldn’t care less about your lives,” he said.

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“..met with the Ukrainian leadership to discuss “how best to define a Ukrainian victory.”

• Everything Is Going To Plan – Zelensky (RT)

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has downplayed the Russian counteroffensive in Kursk Region, claiming that what is taking place is consistent with Kiev’s military planning. The Russian Defense Ministry recently listed ten settlements in Kursk that it said Russian troops had liberated over the two previous days. It also estimated total Ukrainian casualties suffered in the incursion at over 12,500 troops. Zelensky, who recently told the media that Kiev intended to hold on to the captured land for the foreseeable future, claimed on Thursday that he was not bothered by the recent setback there. “The Russians have started counterattack action. Everything goes in accordance with our Ukrainian plan,” he told journalists during a press conference in Kiev. Uncorroborated reports on social media have claimed that Russian airborne troops have successfully pushed Ukrainian soldiers back from the eastern part of a pocket in Kursk that they previously held.

Ukraine sent thousands of troops into the Russian region last month in what was the largest cross-border operation undertaken by Kiev in the ongoing conflict with Russia. Officials in Kiev have offered a number of explanations for the Kursk incursion. The stated aims have included capturing Russian soldiers for prisoner exchanges, instilling fear in Russian society, humiliating President Vladimir Putin, forcing Moscow to redeploy troops from the Donbas front, and seizing Russian territory that could be used as a bargaining chip in eventual peace talks. The operation is supposedly part of a secret “victory plan” that Zelensky has said he would present to US President Joe Biden. Washington is supposed to provide the military capabilities necessary for it to be achieved, he added. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Kiev on Wednesday. According to the Wall Street Journal, he and his British counterpart David Lammy met with the Ukrainian leadership to discuss “how best to define a Ukrainian victory.”

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“..putting out peace initiatives without first consulting Kiev..”

• Zelensky Accuses Brazil And China Of Colluding With Russia (RT)

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has criticized China and Brazil for “taking Russia’s side” and putting out peace initiatives without first consulting Kiev. Back in May, the two nations jointly issued a six-point plan for settling the Ukraine conflict, emphasizing that “dialogue and negotiation” are the only “viable way out of the crisis.” They have also called for a new international conference on Ukraine amenable to both Moscow and Kiev. The previous summit on the conflict was held in Switzerland this summer without representatives from Russia and focused solely on Zelensky’s “peace formula,” which Moscow has vehemently rejected. Speaking to Brazilian news outlet Metropoles on Wednesday, Zelensky called the Chinese-Brazilian proposal aimed at mutual compromise “destructive” and dismissed it as a “political statement.”

He stated that he has since talked to Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and also approached Beijing to discuss resolving the conflict. “Why did you suddenly decide that you should take Russia’s side or be somewhere in the middle? How can you offer ‘here is our initiative’ without asking us anything?” Zelensky asked, suggesting that at the same time, Beijing and Brasilia had discussed the initiative with Russia. “We are not fools,” Zelensky insisted, using the Russian word for “fools” (duraki) despite conducting the interview with the Brazilian journalist in Ukrainian. Meanwhile, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi stated during a meeting with Russian Security Council Secretary Sergey Shoigu on Tuesday that Beijing would continue to promote an imminent ceasefire and political settlement.

“China has always maintained an objective and impartial attitude towards the Ukrainian issue and will continue to work to promote balanced, objective and rational voices in the international community, so as to build more international consensus and accumulate the necessary conditions for an early ceasefire and a political settlement of the crisis,” Wang said. Moscow has welcomed China’s and Brazil’s peace proposals and expressed appreciation that they have received international backing. However, at the same time, Russian officials have repeatedly cast doubt on the sincerity of Ukraine’s willingness to hold such talks. Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated last week that the West intends to make Kiev “fight to the last Ukrainian” with the goal of inflicting “a strategic defeat” on Moscow.

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Putin says long-range weapons for Ukraine means war with NATO.

• Zelensky Disappointed After Blinken Visit, Despite Getting $1.5 Billion More (ZH)

The end result of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Kiev Wednesday alongside British Foreign Secretary David Lammy was… (big surprise) Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky getting a huge amount of money. During the rare joint trip, the US and UK pledged nearly $1.5 billion in additional aid, though it remains that Ukraine still didn’t get quite what it wanted: authorization to use US-made long-rage missiles against Russian territory. “Speaking for the United States, we have adjusted and adapted as needs have changed, as the battlefield has changed. And I have no doubt that we’ll continue to do that as this evolves,” Blinken told a press briefing, after President Biden earlier said the question of long-rage strikes is being worked out. But there was no big announcement from Kiev on the controversial issue.

Not content with the announcement of $1.5 billion in American and British taxpayer funds, Zelensky said of the long-range weapons issue: “Let’s count on some strong decisions, at least,” adding that “For us, it’s very important.” Blinken additionally said he’ll take the issue “back to Washington to brief the president” and that “no doubt” Biden and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer will discuss the issue when they meet at the White House Friday. While Kiev might see it as a consolation prize, the US cut of the new pledge to Ukraine comes in at more than $700 million in humanitarian aid, while Lammy pledged another $782 million in assistance and loan guarantees. The West has been seeking to rapidly bolster Ukraine’s energy grid after constant waves of Russian aerial attacks which has left the country subject to rolling emergency blackouts. All of this has happened ahead of what’s expected to be a very tough winter.

Upon wrapping up his visit to Kiev, Blinken made his way over to Warsaw where he is meeting with Polish leadership. The Associated Press says it’s expected that the NATO ‘eastern flank’ member will press the issue of Zelensky’s request to hit Russia hard with long-range missiles. “NATO member Poland, which shares a border with Ukraine, has been supportive of the Ukrainians and Blinken is likely to hear further requests for easing weapons-use restrictions from Polish President Andrzej Duda, Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski,” AP reports. But the consensus even among hawkish Washington foreign policy pundits is that long-range strikes into Russia will not change the battle lines in eastern Ukraine, where the fate of the war is being decided. Instead, it will only make escalation between NATO and Moscow much more unpredictable.

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Obviously.

• Lavrov Ridicules ‘Divers On Little Boat’ Theory About Nord Stream Sabotage (RT)

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has laughed off “ridiculous” claims by German media outlets that the Nord Stream pipelines were blown up by a small group of divers on a “little boat.” Commenting on the issue of protecting critical energy infrastructure at a press briefing on Thursday, he said investigations into the sabotage of the Russian natural gas pipelines in 2022 had been turned into a “spectacle.” Despite submitting numerous requests, Lavrov said Russia had still not received any information about the investigation from the German authorities, and claimed their investigation lacked transparency. Meanwhile, Denmark and Sweden, who have also ignored all of Moscow’s requests, have stated that they had closed down their national investigations into the Nord Stream explosions, the minister noted.

“We will not abandon this topic, we will continue to seek a transparent investigation, which is being blocked in every possible way by the US, Britain and their allies,” Lavrov said. He also ridiculed recent reports in the German media featuring theories about how the pipelines were destroyed. “Five people were sitting around drinking, having a laugh, and decided ‘Why don’t we blow up the Nord Stream pipelines?’ They had diving skills, allegedly hired a little boat, sailed to the place where the Nord Streams were passing, went down, planted explosives and detonated them,” the minister said, describing the German reports. “If someone can actually believe this version, then it’s only people who are afraid of the truth and are trying to protect the criminal Kiev regime in any way possible,” he suggested.

The Nord Stream pipelines, which transported Russian natural gas to Germany and other parts of Western Europe via the Baltic Sea, were sabotaged in September 2022 in a series of underwater explosions near the Danish island of Bornholm. Russia has blamed the US for orchestrating the attack, while some Western media outlets have blamed the act on an unaffiliated “pro-Ukrainian group.” Russian President Vladimir Putin has dismissed claims that the pipelines were blown up by activists as “complete nonsense,” and has insisted that the explosions were carried out by professionals supported by “the full might of the state, which has certain technologies.”

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“..a policy of Russophobia and rearming, is stuck like a German truck somewhere west of Moscow in November 1941..”

• Olaf Scholz Has A Sudden Moment of Clarity About Russia (Amar)

Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, has caused a stir. Not by some kind of success, in, for instance, elections, the economy, or foreign and domestic policy. Scholz does not do that kind of thing. For a man with his ratings, crowd pleasing is not even an option. Even though they may indeed mean Scholz’s days are numbered, as the British Telegraph surmises, the devastating defeats his Social-Democratic party and its ‘traffic-light’ coalition partners – the Greens and the market-liberal Free Democrats – have just suffered in regional elections in Thuringia and Saxony are just the tip of the iceberg, as polls consistently show: A whopping 77% of Germans consider their current leader “führungsschwach” (weak at, well, leading); his personal “popularity” – really, unpopularity – rating has just collapsed from a dismal 14th to a comically catastrophic 18th place. Only 23% want him to even try to run for office again, and even in his own party the majority is against the idea.

And it’s not just him alone but his team as well: 71% of Germans think his government is doing a bad job. A difficult – and foul – 2025 budget compromise achieved in July within Scholz’s fractious coalition did not inspire hope: Only 7% of voters believed that the coalition “partners” would work together more effectively now, 10% thought things would only get worse, and 79% that they’d stay just as dire as they were. While Scholz’s government had promised that the new budget would finally jolt the ailing German economy back to life, 75% of Germans didn’t believe in that promise. And who can blame them? The German economy, hobbled by both self-imposed budgetary constraints that rule out stimulus politics and then the insane abandonment of inexpensive Russian energy, has been stagnating since 2018; as of now it has entered a “technical recession.”

That was the mood at the end of July. By now, it’s bound to be much worse: The coalition’s rickety budget compromise is under heavy fire from, among others, Professor Hanno Kube, “one of the most respected constitutional jurists” of Germany, according to leading news magazine Der Spiegel. Kube, one should recall, has helped bring down Berlin’s shady accounting practices once before, triggering a deep and reverberating political crisis that the traffic-light accomplices have never fully overcome. And Volkswagen, nothing less than a national symbol and by far Germany’s biggest employer in the country’s vital yet badly declining car-making sector, has ended its job guarantee and is preparing the ground for plant closures and mass layoffs in Germany for the first time in the company’s history. It’s hard to convey what a psychological blow that is.

As a German, let me put it like this: Imagine losing World War I and a football world championship at the same time. Exaggeration? Guilty as charged. But not by much. We could prolong the painful litany of Berlin’s failures at home, but the gist should be clear already: Scholz’s profile as a German leader is that of a dourly resolute, unrelenting loser. Even his much touted “Zeitenwende” (‘epochal change’), that is, a policy of Russophobia and rearming, is stuck like a German truck somewhere west of Moscow in November 1941.

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“While there were opportunities for a political settlement at the talks in Istanbul… now, in my personal opinion, there are no such opportunities..”

• Ukrainian Diplomat Claims Peace Was Possible In 2022 (RT)

The Ukraine conflict could have been stopped back in 2022 soon after it started, according to Aleksandr Chaly, former Ukrainian first deputy foreign minister and one of Kiev’s key negotiators at the time. The diplomat said that Moscow and Kiev had a real chance of inking a peace deal at negotiations in Istanbul a mere month after the beginning of hostilities, but that chance has since been lost. “While there were opportunities for a political settlement at the talks in Istanbul… now, in my personal opinion, there are no such opportunities,” Chaly stated at a panel discussion at the Xiangshan defense forum in Beijing on Thursday, as cited by RIA Novosti. Ukraine and Russia held several rounds of peace talks in the spring of 2022, and the Istanbul round was considered the most productive, as the parties managed to develop and pre-approve a draft peace treaty.

The document reportedly included clauses on Kiev formally adopting neutral status, limiting its armed forces and vowing not to discriminate against ethnic Russians. Moscow, in return, was willing to withdraw troops from Ukrainian territories and offer Kiev security guarantees. However, the treaty was never finalized, and Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky later issued a decree banning peace talks with Putin.

Speaking during a panel discussion at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok earlier this month, Putin accused the West of “ordering” Kiev to drop the treaty due to “the wish of the elites in the US and some European nations to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia.” He stressed, however, that Moscow has “never refused” negotiations and that the Istanbul draft could still serve as the foundation for a peace deal. According to a Wall Street Journal report published earlier this week, an increasing number of Ukrainians want Kiev and Moscow to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict, which has been dragging on for 30 months. A poll published by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) in early August suggested that 57% of Ukrainians wanted dialogue with Russia.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Voodoo

 

 

Escape

 

 

Stone age
https://twitter.com/i/status/1834149136532111815

 

 

Dog beat

 

 

Goro

 

 

Birds

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle February 2 2024

Feb 022024
 
 February 2, 2024  Posted by at 9:40 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  68 Responses »


Winslow Homer Mending the nets 1881

 

• House Speaker Mike Johnson First Floor Speech On Border Catastrophe (Kanekoa)
• It’s Biden vs. Texas, and Texas Is Right. (McMaken)
• Israel Accepts Ceasefire Deal – Al Jazeera (RT)
• US Created Ukraine Conflict to Keep Europe ‘Under Its Thumb’ (Sp.)
• EU Leaders Agree to Give $54Bln in Macro-Financial Assistance to Ukraine (Sp.)
• Zelensky Wants Zaluzhny Out Over Effort At Ceasefire With Russia – Hersh (Sp.)
• Zelensky To Fire Top General This Week – CNN (RT)
• Zelensky’s Generals Refuse To Accept Firing Top Commander – Bild (RT)
• Biden Makes Clear Case for NATO Complicity Over IL-76 Shoot-Down (SCF)
• Ukraine’s ‘Failed State’ Status (DeMartino)
• Mass European Farmer Protests Blowback for Ukraine Support (Sp.)
• CIA Staffer Sentenced To 40 Years For Leaking US Hacking Secrets (RT)
• Roger Waters Faces Axe by Record Label Over Defiant Israel Stance (Sp.)
• UK High Court Throws Out Trump’s Christopher Steele Case (BBC)
• Interesting – Elon Musk (Kanekoa)

 

 

 

 

Meme team
https://twitter.com/i/status/1753078612243423563

 

 

 

 

Jan 6

 

 

Tucker Bret

 

 

KJP Boeing

 

 

Scott Ritter: Turkey & Russia JOIN WAR

 

 

Macgregor: Iran must pay

 

 

 

 

 

 

” Just as we lock our doors at night to protect our homes, we secure our borders to protect our homeland. And my friends, that is our sacred obligation.”

• House Speaker Mike Johnson First Floor Speech On Border Catastrophe (Kanekoa)

House Speaker Mike Johnson delivers first floor speech on border catastrophe, accusing President Biden of intentionally creating a “clear and present danger to our national security.” “Since I was elected Speaker less than 100 days ago, more than 700,000 illegals have been welcomed into our country illegally by the Biden administration. American schoolchildren have been forced into virtual schools so migrants can sleep in their school buildings. Korean War veterans have been booted from nursing homes that were sold to house migrants. Our streets are being flooded with fentanyl. Hundreds of thousands of children and adults are being poisoned and losing their lives. Vulnerable children and women are being exploited and trafficked by cartels. Since President Biden and Alejandro Mayorkas assumed office, there have been more than 7 million encounters with illegal aliens just at our southern border alone.

35 of our 50 states, including my home state of Louisiana, don’t have a population that large. More than 300 individuals who are on our terror watchlist have been apprehended on the southern border. The frightening question is, how many have entered undetected? We know there are at least 1.8 million gotaways that have escaped. Understand that the situation at our border presents a clear and present danger to our national security, and it demands that it be addressed. FBI Director Christopher Wray told the Homeland Security Committee in November that these gotaways are a great concern for the agency, and all 56 of our Joint Terrorism Task Forces are trying to identify who these people are. We don’t know how many terrorists are inside our borders. We do know that fentanyl is pouring into our communities like an open sewer. Right now, the leading cause of death in America for Americans aged 18 to 46 is fentanyl poisoning.

To make matters worse, we’ve learned that the Biden administration is now simply just releasing 85% of the illegals who come across that border right into the country. For reference, by the way, in 2013, the Obama administration detained 82% of illegal aliens. How do we go from detaining 82% to releasing 85%? It only happens if this is by design. It only happens if it’s an orchestrated intentional effort by the administration to do exactly that, and that is what the evidence shows. Earlier this month, I released a memo documenting 64 specific actions that the Biden administration has taken to undermine our border security and to promote the mass release of illegals and dangerous persons into our country. The very first day President Biden walked into the Oval Office, he revoked Executive Order 9844. Do you know what that did? It ended the construction of the border wall that Congress had already paid for. Everybody has seen the images of the materials out there rotting in the sun. Why?

Because Joe Biden decided unilaterally that he didn’t want a wall. In February 2021, the administration stopped applying Title 42 expulsions to children and incentivize by doing that incentivize families to send unaccompanied children through Mexico under the watch of cartels and traffickers. Since then, the administration admits to losing track of more than 80,000 unaccompanied children somewhere in the US. We don’t know where they are. Have they been put into trafficking rings? We know that some of these kids are being trafficked for free labor and being forced to do things that are too appalling for us to articulate on this floor. Everybody here knows that’s happening, and we’re not demanding the President stop it? He can. He has the power to do it.

[..] We have to decide if we believe in the rule of law or not. We have to decide if we’re a sovereign nation or we’re not. I believe that border security is part of our solemn obligation to safeguard the well-being of our citizens and uphold the principles that define who we are as a nation. A weak border weakens America, and a strong border is good for America, and a stronger America is good for everybody around the world. And everybody in this chamber should acknowledge that. Just as we lock our doors at night to protect our homes, we secure our borders to protect our homeland. And my friends, that is our sacred obligation.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1753202850023498016

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“..what is self-evident here is that it is up to the state government to determine for itself whether or not the state is being invaded..”

• It’s Biden vs. Texas, and Texas Is Right. (McMaken)

So, what exactly does the Texas governor’s declaration say? Overall, it makes the case that the Biden administration has been ignoring federal immigration laws and illegally withdrawing border-control operations from the Texas-Mexico border. Abbott concludes: “Under President Biden’s lawless border policies, more than 6 million illegal immigrants have crossed our southern border in just 3 years. That is more than the population of 33 different States in this country. This illegal refusal to protect the States has inflicted unprecedented harm on the People all across the United States.” If that were all, we’d just chalk this up to a document that amounts to little more than a letter to the editor. But then Abbott says that the US Constitution provides a remedy for the situation:

“..the Framers included both Article IV, § 4, which promises that the federal government “shall protect each [State] against invasion,” and Article I, § 10, Clause 3, which acknowledges “the States’ sovereign interest in protecting their borders.” The final paragraph is where it gets interesting. Abbott writes: “The failure of the Biden Administration to fulfill the duties imposed by Article IV, § 4 has triggered Article I, § 10, Clause 3, which reserves to this State the right of self-defense. For these reasons, I have already declared an invasion under Article I, § 10, Clause 3 to invoke Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself. That authority is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary. The Texas National Guard, the Texas Department of Public Safety, and other Texas personnel are acting on that authority, as well as state law, to secure the Texas border.”

Abbott is essentially saying that federal supremacy in this case has been rendered null and void by a federal refusal to enforce federal law. Can he get away with it? For clarity, let’s look at Article 1, section 10. It reads: “No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.” The key phrase here is “unless actually invaded.” Whether or not the current flood of migrants across the border constitutes “invasion,” as stated here, is perhaps debatable.

However, what is self-evident here is that it is up to the state government to determine for itself whether or not the state is being invaded. After all, the whole point of the section is to grant certain powers to states outside the authority of the federal government. If the federal government also gets to determine for itself whether or not the state is being invaded, then the section is pointless. So, an honest reading of this text ought to preclude the Biden administration or US Supreme Court coming back and saying “you’re not being invaded, now do what we say.”

Abbott
https://twitter.com/i/status/1753160896312995917

Read more …

Wait and see.

• Israel Accepts Ceasefire Deal – Al Jazeera (RT)

Israel has agreed to a ceasefire proposal that would halt its war with Hamas, Al Jazeera reported on Thursday, citing the Qatari Foreign Ministry. Hamas has reportedly given the plan a “positive” response. The ceasefire plan was hashed out in Paris over the weekend, with Qatari and Egyptian diplomats mediating between Israel and the Palestinian militant group. Delegations from West Jerusalem and Gaza left the French capital promising to study the proposal and negotiate further this week, and by Thursday evening, a deal was apparently within reach. “Israel agreed to the ceasefire proposal and we have initial positive confirmation from Hamas,” a spokesman for the Qatari Foreign Ministry said on Thursday evening, according to Al Jazeera. “We are awaiting their response,” the spokesman added.

The proposed ceasefire will be implemented in three stages, according to a Hamas statement shared with Reuters earlier this week. The first phase would see fighting stop for 40 days as Hamas hands over the female civilians, children, and elderly people it is still holding captive. During this time, large-scale deliveries of food and medicine into Gaza would resume. The following stages would see Hamas turn over captive Israeli soldiers and the bodies of Israeli troops, in exchange for further aid deliveries and the freeing of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails. “Military operations on both sides will stop during the three stages,” the militants said, adding that the number of Palestinian prisoners freed would be open to negotiation.

The proposal falls short of the full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza that Hamas initially demanded. As a step toward ending the war, however, it also threatens Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan to keep fighting until Israel achieves “total victory” over the militants, as he has promised on multiple occasions. While hardliners within Netanyahu’s cabinet have pressed him to reject any deal they view as too lenient towards Hamas, Israel has faced international condemnation over its conduct in Gaza, and two of the Jewish state’s most stalwart backers – the US and UK – suggested this week that they could soon recognize an independent Palestinian state. Such an outcome would be a political disaster for Netanyahu, who angered Washington and London last month when he outright rejected a two-state solution to the decades-long conflict with the Palestinians.

Hamas fighters attacked Israel on October 7, killing around 1,200 people and taking roughly 240 as hostages. Israel responded by imposing a siege on Gaza and launching waves of airstrikes on the densely-populated enclave. A ground operation followed three weeks later, and after almost four months of fighting, more than 27,000 Palestinians have died, two thirds of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

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“..European countries are “going down faster than we can even imagine..”

“..we were concerned about their economy moving up because they were getting cheap Russian energy..”

• US Created Ukraine Conflict to Keep Europe ‘Under Its Thumb’ (Sp.)

On Thursday, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban relented to pressure from the EU and finally allowed €50 billion in military and financial aid to be transferred to Ukraine after blocking the funding for more than a month. The funds are ostensibly planned to fund Ukraine until 2027 and came as US aid remains stalled in Congress. Before the latest aid package was approved by the EU, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg remarked at a Monday news conference in Washington, DC, that “weapons are – in fact – the way to peace [in Ukraine],” but that’s not quite the case, an analyst told Sputnik. Dr. David Oualaalou told Sputnik’s Critical Hour on Wednesday that Stoltenberg’s assertion “defies logic” and asserted that Ukraine is already “gone.” Oualaalou argued that Europe was pushed into supporting Ukraine by the US, which is not “paying the price” of that support in the same way Europe is.

He added that the economic situation in Europe, largely brought on by the consequences of their support of Ukraine and sanctions on Russia, makes the continent reliant on the US. “[The US] created the conflict to ensure that Europe will stay under [its] thumb by dictating the terms and complicating matters for them,” Oualaalou explained. “One way you do that, [is] you complicate the economic outcome for an entity, doesn’t matter who, that’s how you do it.” He added that his family members in Europe acknowledge that European countries are “going down faster than we can even imagine,” and pointed to the farmer and worker protests breaking out across the continent. Complicating matters further, Oualaalou argued, is that even with monetary aid being sent to Ukraine, Europe is too short on ammunition to give Ukraine much that will help them on the battlefield.

“I hope your listeners know that the UK cannot fight the Houthis, for example,” Oualaalou said, referring to the growing conflict in the Red Sea. “The reason? They don’t have firepower, they don’t have enough. That is why they are just riding with the US.” Oualaalou also argued that even the US and UK combined will not be able to defeat the Houthis. “We couldn’t defeat the Taliban, we couldn’t defeat the militias in Iraq. What makes us think we’re going to defeat the Houthis? And the Houthis, to my knowledge, and I’ve been on the ground, I was there. They are fierce fighters.” Co-host Garland Nixon suggested that the real goal in funding Ukraine was to line politicians’ “filthy pockets” with money, an assertion Oualaalou agreed with. But he also reiterated that it is also part of the US geopolitical strategy.

“[The] Ukraine conflict was created by design for us to keep the Europeans down because we were concerned about their economy moving up because they were getting cheap Russian energy – that’s what’s at the heart of it,” he said. Asked about the narrative and media attention shifting from Ukraine to the Middle East, even as the conflict continues, Oualaalou admitted that it’s simply part of the larger plan, and that there could be more on the horizon. “That’s usually how the narrative goes because that is the aim – you move from one conflict to the next one because you’re already preparing [for] the next conflict. … what I see on the horizon, is what’s going on too, in Asia,” he explained. “It [has] become clear in the West that Ukraine is a failed state. The objective has been accomplished. Let’s move to the next conflict. And once that’s settled, we’re going to move to a third one and so forth.”

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To achieve what?

• EU Leaders Agree to Give $54Bln in Macro-Financial Assistance to Ukraine (Sp.)

The EU leaders have reached an agreement on allocating 50 billion euros ($54 billion) as part of macro-financial assistance to Ukraine, European Council President Charles Michel said on Thursday. “All 27 leaders agreed on an additional €50 billion support package for Ukraine within the EU budget. This locks in steadfast, long-term, predictable funding for #Ukraine. EU is taking leadership & responsibility in support for Ukraine; we know what is at stake,” Michel wrote on X. The EU leaders have agreed to hold a debate about its assistance to Ukraine every year, and to review it after two years if necessary, The Guardian reported on Thursday, citing the EU summit’s conclusions. According to the conclusions, the European Council will hold a debate every year on the implementation of the Ukraine facility, and will invite the European Commission to make a proposal to review it in two years if needed.

Meanwhile, Reuters reported, citing a European diplomat, that the EU funds for Hungary will remain frozen after Budapest also agreed on the allocation of assistance for Ukraine. European officials have continuously said that they are ready to study alternatives in the event of a final blocking of aid to Kiev from the EU budget. The total amount of EU macro-financial assistance to Ukraine in 2023 amounted to 18 billion euros, transferred in monthly payments in the amount of 1.5 billion euros. This assistance was provided to Kiev regardless of the implementation of reforms and the fight against corruption.

In December, Hungary vetoed an enlargement of the EU’s 2024-2027 budget to incorporate 50 billion euros in macro-financial aid for Ukraine. Media reported that Hungary had proposed splitting the package into four tranches, subject to approval each year. However, several EU diplomats are reportedly opposed to giving Hungary the option of an “annual veto”. Western countries, led by the United States, have been providing military aid to Ukraine since the start of Russia’s special military operation in February 2022. The aid evolved from providing artillery munitions and training in 2022 to heavy weapons, including tanks, advanced air-defense systems, prohibited cluster munitions and long-range missiles, later that year and in 2023.

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Your top man must be a warmonger.

• Zelensky Wants Zaluzhny Out Over Effort At Ceasefire With Russia – Hersh (Sp.)

Volodymyr Zelensky wants to remove Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny from his post because of his alleged involvement in secret talks with Western officials about pursuing a ceasefire with Russia, US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported. On Monday, Ukrainian lawmaker Oleksiy Goncharenko said, citing sources, that Zaluzhny was allegedly ordered to resign. The Ukrainian Defense Ministry and Zelensky’s spokesman denied the claims. “Zelensky’s desire to fire his commanding general is the result, some Americans believe, of his knowledge that Zaluzhny had continued to participate – whether directly or through aides is not known – in secret talks since last fall with American and other Western officials on how best to achieve a ceasefire and negotiate an end to the war with Russia,” Hersh said on Thursday. The New York Times reported on Tuesday, citing sources, that the Ukrainian government had postponed the dismissal of Zaluzhny due to a leak of information about his possible resignation.

The government planned to fire Zaluzhny, but on Monday evening, when information leaked, it decided to back off, the report said, adding that now, the government is slowing down the process. According to reports, Zelensky was forced to reverse his decision as international partners, including the United States and the United Kingdom, expressed concern about Zelensky’s actions.Zelensky reportedly met with Zaluzhny to inform the general of the decision to fire him. Instead, Zelensky offered Zaluzhny the post of secretary of the country’s security council, but Zaluzhny turned it down. The head of Ukraine’s military intelligence service, Kyrylo Budanov, and the commander of the Ukrainian ground forces, Oleksandr Syrsky, were named candidates for the post of commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, the report added.

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If only he could find a replacement.

• Zelensky To Fire Top General This Week – CNN (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky intends to fire his top general, Valery Zaluzhny, before the end of the week, CNN claimed on Wednesday citing sources familiar with the situation. The report follows similar rumors appearing in outlets such as the Financial Times and the Washington Post, which have so far been dismissed by Kiev. The relationship between the two men reportedly began to deteriorate when the general wrote an article for The Economist in November, describing the battlefield situation as a “stalemate” following Kiev’s failed counteroffensive. The president has vehemently rejected that assessment. According to CNN, Zaluzhny was called into Zelensky’s office on Monday, where he was told he would be fired in the next few days. While no formal announcement has yet been made, a source allegedly told the outlet that a presidential decree is expected by the end of the week.

Rumors that the country’s popular military leader would be replaced originally started circulating in the media earlier this week based on anonymous sources in Kiev. The Washington Post claimed that the president explained his decision to Zaluzhny by saying that a new commander was needed to rejuvenate the situation, as the Ukrainian people had grown tired of war while Kiev’s foreign backers had reduced military assistance. The general was then reportedly offered an advisory position, which he declined, opting instead to leave the military entirely, a source told the outlet. After reports of Zaluzhny’s imminent sacking leaked on Monday, Zelensky spokesman Sergey Nikiforov issued an official statement insisting it was “untrue.” The Ukrainian Defense Ministry also posted a message on social media declaring the rumors false.

The New York Times reported on Tuesday that the Ukrainian president had chosen to reconsider the decision after the initial plan ended up in the press. However, another source told the paper that the firing had only been temporarily delayed while Kiev looks for a fitting replacement for Zaluzhny. Moscow, meanwhile, has described the rumors of the Ukrainian commander’s dismissal as a sign that Kiev’s leadership is in disarray and has “a lot of problems,” according to Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov. He predicted that divisions in Ukraine’s military and civilian leadership stemming from the failed counteroffensive would continue to grow as Russia proceeds with its objectives.

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“Syrsky himself – alongside the Ukrainian military intelligence chief, Kirill Budanov – reportedly “politely declined” an offer to take up Zaluzhny’s position..”

• Zelensky’s Generals Refuse To Accept Firing Top Commander – Bild (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has been unable to fire the nation’s top general, Valery Zaluzhny, because both replacements under consideration refused the job, the tabloid Bild reported on Thursday. A host of Western and Ukrainian media previously claimed, citing anonymous sources in Kiev, that Zelensky had sacked Zaluzhny, prompting the Ukrainian government to refute those rumors. According to Bild, the president did attempt to fire the general on Monday and had to reverse his decision “within an hour” because he could not find a replacement for the nation’s top commander. The move drew strong opposition from the Ukrainian generals, the tabloid claimed. Zelensky allegedly wanted to see Ground Forces Commander Aleksandr Syrsky in Zaluzhny’s place because “he is more loyal to the president,” Bild said, citing Gustav Gressel, a Ukraine expert with the Berlin-based European Council on Foreign Relations think tank.

The generals disapproved of the choice because they see Zaluzhny as a “more humane” leader who is “closer to the troops,” the analyst explained. Syrsky himself – alongside the Ukrainian military intelligence chief, Kirill Budanov – reportedly “politely declined” an offer to take up Zaluzhny’s position, the paper claimed. Yesterday, Britain’s The Times named Syrsky and Budanov as possible candidates to be Ukraine’s top general, also reporting that they had refused. Despite Zaluzhny retaining his post, the conflict between him and Zelensky continues to “smolder,” Bild alleged. The relationship between the two men reportedly began to deteriorate when the general wrote an article for The Economist in November, describing the battlefield situation as a “stalemate” following Kiev’s failed counteroffensive. The president has vehemently rejected that assessment.

According to the German outlet, the president and his commander also clashed over strategy in the cities of Bakhmut and Avdeevka. In late spring 2023, when the Russian forces were pressing their advantage against the Ukrainians in Bakhmut, Zelensky insisted the city should be held to the last man, while Zaluzhny wanted to withdraw to preserve his forces, the paper said, adding that the situation was being repeated in Avdeevka. On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that Zelensky had abandoned his plans to fire the top general after his plan was leaked to the media. CNN reported on Thursday, however, that the Ukrainian leader still wanted to go ahead with the decision and would fire Zaluzhny by the end of the week.

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“..even the Pentagon has admitted there is no evidence showing Iran had a hand in the drone attack. Nevertheless, Biden has asserted Iran is to blame and that this gives the U.S. a right to respond militarily..”

• Biden Makes Clear Case for NATO Complicity Over IL-76 Shoot-Down (SCF)

Joe Biden is contending that the United States has the right to attack Iran as a result of the deadly strike on a U.S. base in Jordan which killed three American troops. Biden is throwing rocks in a glass house if we then look at the case of the IL-76 shoot-down over Russia when 74 people were killed. It is by no means clear if Iran was involved in the Jordan base raid. Tehran strongly denies it and even the Pentagon has admitted there is no evidence showing Iran had a hand in the drone attack. Nevertheless, Biden has asserted Iran is to blame and that this gives the U.S. a right to respond militarily. If Biden can make that case, then the United States and its NATO allies should be held accountable for the shooting down of the IL-76 transport plane over Russia killing all onboard, according to the reasoning of none other than the US President.

By “accountable” that means Russia has the right to take retaliatory military action against the culprit of the crime in which 74 people were killed. Again, this is according to Biden’s own reasoning.Biden was not speaking about the fatal IL-76 incident that occurred on January 24 when nine Russian servicemen and 65 Ukrainian prisoners were killed after their cargo plane was hit in mid-air with a warhead. The president was responding to U.S. journalists questioning him about the deaths of three American military personnel at a base in Jordan that Iraqi militants attacked on January 28. Biden said he held Iran responsible for the American fatalities and vowed to retaliate. Somewhat contradictorily, the president and his spokesmen have said the United States does not seek to have a wider war with Iran even though Biden said he intends to attack Iranian assets in a “tiered way at a time of his choosing”. If that’s not a wider war, what is?

Iran has vehemently denied any involvement in the drone attack on the U.S. base in Jordan near the border with Syria and Iraq. The strike was claimed by Iraqi militia known as Islamic Resistance which is allied with Iran.Asked if he blamed Iran, Biden said he did “in the sense that they’re supplying the weapons to the people who did it.” Iran and the Iraqi militants are affiliated in a similar way to Tehran’s support for Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria, and the Ansar Allah movement in Yemen. All are motivated by staunch opposition to U.S. military occupation in the Middle East and Washington’s support for Israel’s genocidal aggression in Gaza. Collectively, Iran and its allies are known as the Axis of Resistance.There is no evidence that Iran supplied the weapons to the militants who killed the three American troops. Iran contends that each resistance member possesses its own agency and decision-making.

By contrast, however, the supply of American and other NATO weaponry to the Kiev regime is publicly recorded. It is estimated that the West has funded Ukraine with a total of $200 billion since the proxy war against Russia erupted in February 2022. About half of that has been spent on weapons that include long-range missiles such as Patriot, Shadow Storm, Scalp and Iris-T systems. British and French cruise missiles have been repeatedly used to hit pre-war Russian territory such as Belgorod resulting in dozens of civilian deaths. The strike on the IL-76 transport plane is believed to have been carried out with Western-supplied weapons. Russian crash investigators have this week confirmed earlier claims that the cargo plane was shot down with a NATO weapon, either a U.S.-made Patriot missile system or a German Iris-T surface-to-air missile.

When the IL-76 was blown out of the sky on January 24 over Russia’s Belgorod region, Russian radars detected the launch of two anti-aircraft warheads nearly 100 kilometers away from the target. The missiles were allegedly fired from the location of Liptsy in Ukraine’s eastern Kharkov province. It is believed that only NATO-supplied weapons to the Ukrainian forces could have achieved that extensive range.At the time of the IL-76 shoot-down, the Kremlin said that if it confirmed that Western weapons were responsible then Russia would deem the West to be complicit in the crime. On January 26, Russian First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN Dmitry Polyansky said: “According to preliminary investigation, Ukrainian armed forces carried out this terrorist attack using an anti-aircraft missile system. The missiles were launched from the village of Liptsy in Kharkov region.”

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“..despite all the aid that has been sent to Ukraine, which he estimated to be over $200 billion, the army itself is woefully ill-equipped for battle..”

• Ukraine’s ‘Failed State’ Status (DeMartino)

Earlier this week, Ukraine’s security service announced that five Ukrainians, including the current head of a department in Ukraine’s Defense Ministry, had been served with notices of suspicion related to the embezzlement of nearly $40 million that was supposed to be spent on artillery shells.The news was the latest in a consistent pattern of fraud and corruption being reported in Ukraine since Russia’s special military operation began nearly two years ago. Former Ukrainian ambassador and whistleblower Andrii Telizhenko told Sputnik’s Fault Lines that corruption is rife in Kiev and is only getting worse. “So this whole scheme of $40 million is just a small little example,” Telizhenko explained. “Ukraine became a failed state,” Telizhenko said, “because of the corruption and because Ukraine was sold off to the people inside Ukraine, was sold off to its Western allies, and people in Ukraine are suffering from this.”

Telizhenko noted that despite all the aid that has been sent to Ukraine, which he estimated to be over $200 billion, the army itself is woefully ill-equipped for battle. “People are still collecting money to buy medical kits and drones for the soldiers,” Telizhenko said. “[This is] what is happening in Ukraine, total corruption.” Telizhenko noted that there was another case in which more than $1 billion worth of military equipment that the US Department of Defense authorized to be sent to Ukraine never arrived and the DoD was unable to locate them. “So this is a great example where equipment is being lost for billions of dollars, equipment is not being made for hundreds of millions of dollars, and it’s all being stolen by the Kiev regime, and I think, with the help of the deep state government in Washington.”The actions by Ukrainian authorities to arrest those involved in the motor scandal are token gestures, says Telizhenko,“It’s all a big show.”The corruption in Ukraine has always been there but grew exponentially after the West began meddling in Ukrainian affairs, he explained.

“Corruption, which was inside Ukraine, which [already] was pretty big, but then it came from the outside, from people like [US President Joe] Biden in Washington, the deep state, which said, ‘Oh, why [don’t] we also make money on this together with the Ukrainian politicians?’” Telizhenko blasted the Ukrainian officials calling them “hypocrites” and “so-called patriots.” The corruption is so entrenched, Telizhenko said, that it will take more than the removal of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to root it out.“It [is] coming to a situation where a change of government in Washington, DC, a change of national policy issues in Washington, people like [Former US President Donald] Trump [could] come in,” Telizhenko explained. “He spoke about making peace in 24 hours, that’s a possibility.” “The end game… for Ukraine is to have a new government inside Ukraine and to see what government comes from Washington, maybe that will give some stability in the world,” he concluded.

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“..we see how the [countries in the union are] going really down the slope and nobody’s stopping it..”

• Mass European Farmer Protests Blowback for Ukraine Support (Sp.)

After farmers blocked highways leading into Paris last week, farmers from several other European countries have followed suit, protesting against their countries’ dropping of fuel subsidies, green regulations and dropping sale prices. Veteran war correspondent Elijah Magnier told Sputnik’s Fault Lines on Wednesday that the root causes of the protests stem from Europe’s decision “to follow the United States policy and join the war against Russia.”
“We shot ourselves in the foot, basically that’s very soft – we shot ourselves in the head and now we are paying the price,” Magnier said. He noted how everything from energy to consumer food prices has skyrocketed in Europe, but that has not caused European leaders to change course. “Now, they are attacking the heart of Europe that are the farmers … they can no longer stand on their feet with the difference of prices, with the increase of price [for consumers and] the lower price that the markets are buying off of them.”

Co-host Jamarl Thomas asked Magnier what demands the farmers have. Magnier replied that they want protection from cheap products coming out of Ukraine, subsidies on diesel fuel to be reinstated, the rollback of European Green New Deal regulations that limit when and what crops are allowed to be planted and a fair price from the supermarket that matches the cost of living increases in Europe. Part of the issue, says Magnier is that the EU hamstrings what the individual countries’ leaders can do to respond to their population. “It’s a serious issue today in Europe, where the European leaders are no longer able to rule Europe as it used to be, and we see how the [countries in the union are] going really down the slope and nobody’s stopping it,” Magnier explained.

In particular, Magnier explained, farmers are angry that they have to follow the new regulations but Ukraine is allowed to skirt them under the guise that they are at war. “When you say ‘you cannot plant this kind of vegetable at this particular time of the year because of the CO2 and because of the climate change and because we need to transform Europe into a green environment,’” Magnier explained. “You cannot [also] say, ‘Okay, this is applicable only on the Europeans [with] the exception of Ukraine,’ that doesn’t go, it doesn’t work. “The farmers today are waking up [to] the consequences of the Ukrainian conflict and they are saying ‘we have to be completely detached from what is happening in Ukraine because this is not our war,’” he added. Instead of fighting with the farmers, Magnier said he believes the EU should at least pause the Green New Deal regulations until after the conflict in Ukraine is over and talk to the farmers about what they need and can accommodate, but he noted that trust between the two parties has already been severed.

“So what [European Commission President] Ursula von der Leyen is saying is, ‘Well, I’m ready to talk to you to see what we need and how we can work together.’ But it is too late. [The EU should] stop all [their] procedures and say, ‘let us talk.’ But you don’t negotiate with the knife at the throat of the farmers saying, ‘Well, now I have to think what I can lift, what I cannot lift.'” “If the leaders in Brussels don’t start talking and listening to the farmers, they cannot achieve their [Green New Deal] plan, so the plan is unachievable,” he added.

Dutch farmer
https://twitter.com/i/status/1753176829169398094

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Vault 7. “..Schulte had helped create the hacking tools that he later exposed to WikiLeaks..”

• CIA Staffer Sentenced To 40 Years For Leaking US Hacking Secrets (RT)

A former CIA software engineer who embarrassed his employer by allegedy giving a massive trove of classified information to WikiLeaks has been sentenced to 40 years in prison by a New York judge. US District Court Judge Jesse Furman handed down the sentence against Joshua Schulte on Thursday, falling short of the life prison term that federal prosecutors had requested. Schulte, who was accused of carrying out the largest theft of US secrets in the CIA’s history, was convicted on charges of espionage, computer hacking, contempt of court, making false statements to the FBI, and possessing child pornography. Schulte, 35, was allegedly the source behind the so-called Vault 7 release by WikiLeaks in 2017, which exposed the methods used by the CIA to hack smartphones and other devices.

The bombshell report exposed how the US spied on foreign governments, terrorism suspects and other targets, creating a major embarrassment for Washington’s intelligence agencies. It also reportedly triggered a secret CIA plot to kidnap or assassinate WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Prior to his arrest in 2018, Schulte had helped create the hacking tools that he later exposed to WikiLeaks. The CIA tactics included efforts to turn so-called smart TVs – televisions with online connectivity – into listening devices. Prosecutors claimed he was behind “the most damaging disclosures of classified information in American history.”Schulte argued during his July 2022 trial that the CIA and FBI were making him a scapegoat for a humiliating leak of data that could have been stolen by hundreds of other people. He claimed, too, that he had no motive to carry out such a leak.

During Thursday’s sentencing hearing, he complained of horrible conditions in his New York jail cell, which he called a “torture cage,” and he said prosecutors were seeking “vengeance” after previously offering him a plea bargain calling for a 10-year prison sentence. Furman found that Schulte was motivated by “anger, spite and perceived grievance” against his CIA bosses after they ignored his complaints about working conditions. After being jailed in 2018, the ex-programmer continued trying to leak classified materials in what prosecutors called an “information war” with the US government, the judge said.

While executing a search warrant in the espionage case, FBI investigators allegedly found an encrypted cache of more than 3,000 images and videos depicting child sexual abuse on Schulte’s home computer, according to prosecutors. More than six years of his 40-year prison sentence stemmed from the pornography charges. Although Furman didn’t grant the request by the US Department of Justice to imprison Schulte for life, he did agree to apply a “terrorism enhancement,” a legal provision that allows harsher sentences for terrorism-related offenses. Assange, who has been jailed in London since 2019 while fighting extradition to the US, faces up to 175 years in prison on 17 espionage charges.

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Waters is 80 years old and doing massive sold out shows all the time. He’ll be fine.

• Roger Waters Faces Axe by Record Label Over Defiant Israel Stance (Sp.)

Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) is reportedly planning to axe its 2016 publishing deal with 80-year-old rock legend Roger Waters over his “inflammatory comments” on the crises in Israel and Ukraine, and his outspoken criticism of the United States. Sources told entertainment magazine Variety that the Germany-based record giant is getting ready to take the radical step to “separate entirely” from Waters. Ordinarily, publishing deals are generally allowed to expire without renewal instead of being prematurely ended. Waters mentioned being “fired” by BMG in an interview with independent journalist Glenn Greenwald late last year, citing pressure from Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League pro-Israeli lobbying group, over his outspoken position on the conflict in Gaza.

“Bertelsmann’s, did they say ‘F*ck you Jonathan Greenblatt, we’re a proper company and this is a great artist and we have his publishing and we supported him and he makes great records’? No, they didn’t. They went ‘ok’ and they fired me, boom!” Waters recalled, accusing Greenblatt of falsely labeling him an “anti-Semite” and threatening to “remind the public” that BGM “collaborated with the Nazis in World War II” to push the label to axe him. After the October 7 escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli crisis, Waters, a longtime self-professed pro-Palestinian peace activist, accused Israel of “committing genocide” and suggested that “its leaders and any Western leaders who support it should be prosecuted under the Genocide Convention.”

On Ukraine, Waters was invited by Russia to speak at a meeting of the United Nations Security Council last February, where he condemned all sides in the conflict but emphasized that Russia’s special military operation was “not unprovoked” and the “provocateurs” must be condemned “in the strongest possible terms.” Waters’ nuanced stance on the Ukrainian crisis led his name to be placed on a notorious ‘kill list’ website linked to the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs. Consistently speaking out against the suspected crimes of the UK government as a “willing accomplice and satellite of the American Empire,” Rogers has decried the “US Empire” as “the most evil of all by a factor of at least ten times.”

Waters’ future with BGM was called into question last year. After being appointed CEO of BMG last July, record industry big whig Thomas Coesfeld unilaterally canceled the release of a new 50th anniversary recording of Dark Side of the Moon, the legendary album which propelled Pink Floyd and Waters to international stardom in 1973. The album wound up being released by independent UK-based publisher Cooking Vinyl Publishing instead. Waters was Pink Floyd’s lead lyricist, co-lead vocalist and band leader between 1968 and 1985. He was inducted into the US Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996, and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2005, and has often been characterized as one of the top rock singer-songwriters of all time.

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Steele belongs in jail. But he has protection.

• UK High Court Throws Out Trump’s Christopher Steele Case (BBC)

Donald Trump’s attempt to bring a case in the UK courts against a former MI6 officer who wrote a salacious dossier linking him to Russia has failed. The former president had been seeking to use data protection laws to sue Orbis Business Intelligence Ltd, the company run by Christopher Steele. Mr Steele compiled the dossier which had unproven allegations about bribing officials and sex parties. It was leaked to the media just before Mr Trump was sworn in as president. In bringing the lawsuit, he said the dossier contained allegations that were inaccurate and breached his data protection rights. A ruling on Thursday by the High Court in London threw out the case. Mrs Justice Steyn DBE said she did not make any judgement on the allegations themselves but found Mr Trump’s claim had not been brought within the six-year limitation period.

“There are no compelling reasons to allow the claim to proceed to trial,” she wrote. A statement is expected from Mr Steele later today. The case stems from 2016, when a US political consultancy asked Mr Steele’s company to produce a report into potential Russian interference in that year’s US general election. The project was paid for by Hillary Clinton’s Democrats and other political opponents of Mr Trump. Mr Steele, the former head of MI6’s Russia desk, sent his findings to the FBI, a British national security officer and an aide to a senior US senator. The dossier, later obtained and published by BuzzFeed News, detailed uncorroborated intelligence claims that Mr Trump had a “compromising relationship with the Kremlin”.

The former president said in his witness statement when he brought the case last year that “none of these things [in the Steele dossier] ever happened.” “I can confirm that I did not, at any time engage in perverted sexual behaviour including the hiring of prostitutes to engage in ‘golden showers’ in the presidential suite of a hotel in Moscow.” Mr Trump said official investigations had debunked the dossier but it continued “to cause me significant damage and distress” because people still believed it. He added that he had not had time to sue in the UK before 2023 because he had been busy being president. Antony White KC, for Orbis, told the court in October that Mr Trump had accepted that the company was not responsible for BuzzFeed’s publication of the document.

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X thread that Musk labeled “interesting”.

“Elon Musk paid more income tax than anyone ever in the history of Earth back in 2021. He paid over $11 billion in taxes.”

• Interesting – Elon Musk (Kanekoa)

Judge Kathaleen McCormick rescinded Elon Musk’s $55 billion Tesla compensation package, overturning the company’s board and 80% of its shareholders. McCormick also ruled against @elonmusk during his Twitter acquisition. Before becoming the head of the Delaware Chancery Court, McCormick worked at a Delaware law firm called Young Conaway. This firm and its employees have been major donors to President Joe Biden for decades. In 2016, Hunter Biden hosted a gubernatorial campaign event for Congressman John Carney, with then-Vice President Joe Biden as the guest speaker. This event took place at the Law Offices of Young Conaway in Wilmington, Delaware. Carney, a close friend of Joe Biden for the last four decades, later became governor and nominated Kathaleen McCormick, a partner at Young Conaway, to her position on the Delaware Chancery Court.

In a March 2018 email, Hunter Biden claimed to personally know every judge on the Delaware Chancery Court while threatening legal action against his Chinese business partners. “I will bring the suit in the Chancery court in Delaware – which as you know is my home state and I am privileged to have worked with and know every judge on the chancery court.” After Elon Musk purchased Twitter with the stated goal of restoring free-speech, President Biden called for a federal investigation into Musk on the podium at the White House. Following this, the Biden Department of Justice, Securities and Exchange Commission, and Federal Trade Commission initiated legal actions and investigations against Tesla, SpaceX, and X. This recent decision by Judge McCormick, who worked with Biden’s top donors and was nominated by Biden’s close friend, to override Tesla’s board and the majority of its shareholders is another clear example of the Biden administration and its allies weaponizing the American legal system against their political opponents.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

Assange

 

 

 

 

Brahman
https://twitter.com/i/status/1752804731859218932

 

 

Treat

 

 

Disabled
https://twitter.com/i/status/1753069487925190827

 

 

Tiny
https://twitter.com/i/status/1752811211866116527

 

 

Mandarin

 

 

Ears
https://twitter.com/i/status/1752788518420840805

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle May 28 2023

May 282023
 
 May 28, 2023  Posted by at 8:37 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  32 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh The garden of the asylum at Saint-Rémy 1889

 

• No Truce With the Heartland (Luongo)
• Eurasian Heartland Rises to Challenge the West (Pepe Escobar)
• After Bakhmut (Douglas Macgregor)
• Counteroffensive Can Start At Any Moment – Ukrainian Official (RT)
• Ukraine Demands German Missiles Capable Of Striking Moscow (RT)
• Africa Foresees End Of Unipolar World – Russian Envoy (RT)
• Credit Rating Agency Downgrades US (RT)
• Debt Ceiling Deal Between White House And GOP Reached In Principle (ZH)
• EU Sanctions Talks Hit Roadblock – Politico (RT)
• China Rebuffing All Contact With US Military: Pentagon (ZH)
• John Durham and the Burying of American History (Patrick Lawrence)
• Roger Waters Under Criminal Probe Over Anti-Nazi Satire (RT)
• Fisher-Price Introduces ‘My First Gender Transition’ Playset (BBee)

 

 


The winner from the Texas Sand Sculpture Festival.

 

 

Eli Crane

 

 

Anthony Bourdain

 

 

Rogan Smith

 

 

 

 

Veritas

 

 

Carrey

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Perhaps it’s time to see Mackinder from a Chinese perspective. In 1904 that may not have seemed important, but today?!

• No Truce With the Heartland (Luongo)

Ukraine has always represented the apotheosis of the Neocon/Neoliberal world order. As Crooke points out, they are facing a very unpleasant choice: “The war is now, in this way, being projected as a binary choice: ‘End the war’ versus ‘Win the war’. Europe is tergiversating –standing at the cross-roads; hesitantly starting down one road, only to reverse, and indecisively take a few cautious steps down the other. The EU will both train Ukrainians to fly F-16s; and yet is coy about providing the planes. It smacks of tokenism; but tokenism is often the father to mission-creep.” Indeed it is. Because of the closed-mindedness of those in power in the West — their biases, racism, and arrogance — they will not stop in Ukraine until they are forced to by circumstances.


Those circumstances will likely be dictated by the revamped Russian military now configured to fight a longer and different kind of war than the one that began in February 2022. Every day we see signs that Russia’s military-industrial capacity is increasing rapidly while the EU languishes. The US is rapidly trying to bring back onshore manufacturing lost to the ZIRP and Greenspan Eras, but this is a slow and painful process especially since it has run out of room on the balance sheet to deficit spend to accelerate things. “Biden” and his merry band of vandals in D.C. are more than happy to burn the place to the ground more thoroughly than the British did in the War of 1812 if they can’t get their way on unlimited taxing and spending.

So, here we are. Bakhmut has fallen. The Ukrainian counter-offensive is non-existent. If anything it was already absorbed by Putin and Prigozhin. Zelenskyy will now get F-16s to attack Crimea and use that as some moral high ground for justifying NATO’s official involvement after Russia’s inevitable counter-attack. Then the air will be thick with the smell of thermobarics in the morning. But, regardless of any of that, there will be no truce in the Heartland. Russia will not back down. China will back them to the end, as will OPEC+ and the rest of Central Asia. But they will not escalate one inch further than they need to. Allowing the West to keep thinking they can win is the ultimate form of grinding out a superior opponent.


[..] While the West fights desperately to stave off defeat of the Heartland, it’s clear the rest of the World Island is making plans to leave them behind. At some point there are simply too many people and too much pressure to keep pushing the world towards a conclusion it doesn’t want to go. And that’s when everything changes, literally overnight. Until then, it will be another day, another escalation, another pointless political knife fight and thousands of people dying needlessly. When he published that paper in 1904 all Mackinder did was formalize British imperial thinking into an easily-digested thesis for morons. Today we are being gaslit by these morons into believing our lives depend on fighting for ‘freedom’ in central Ukraine. It was written as the British empire’s grip on power was beginning to wane. World War I would put the capper on that.

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More heartland. BRICS + Central Asia.

• Eurasian Heartland Rises to Challenge the West (Pepe Escobar)

President Xi Jinping telling President Putin at the end of their summit last March in Moscow that we’re now facing “great changes not seen in a century” directly applies to the new spirit reigning across the Heartland. Cue to the China-Central Asia summit last week in Xian, the former imperial capital, where Xi solidified the expansion of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) from Western China in Xinjiang to its western neighbors and then all the way to Iran, Turkey and Eastern Europe. Xi in Xian particularly stressed the complementing aspects between BRI and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), once again showing that all five Central Asian “stans”, acting together, should counter-act the proverbial external interference via “terrorism, separatism and extremism”.

The message was stark: these hybrid war strategies are all integrated with the attempt by the Hegemon to continue fostering serial color revolutions. The purveyors of the “rules-based international order”, Xi implied, will go no holds barred to prevent ongoing Heartland integration. The usual suspects in fact are already spinning that Central Asia is falling into a potential trap, fully captured by Beijing. Yet this is something Kazakhstan’s “multi-vector diplomacy”, coined way back in the Nazarbayev years, would never allow. What Beijing is developing, instead, is an integrated approach via a C+C5 secretariat with no less than 19 separate channels of communication. The heart of the matter is to turbo-charge Heartland connectivity via the BRI’s Middle Corridor.

And that, crucially, includes technology transfer. As it stands, there are dozens of industrial transfer programs with Kazakhstan, a dozen in Uzbekistan, and several in discussion with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. These are extolled by Beijing as part of “harmonious Silk Roads”. Xi himself, as a post-modern pilgrim, detailed the connectivity in his keynote speech in Xian: “The China-Kyrgystan-Uzbekistan highway that runs across the Tian shan Mountains, the China-Tajikistan expressway that defies the Pamir Plateau, and the China-Kazakhstan crude oil pipeline and the China-Central Asia Gas Pipeline that traverse the vast desert – they are the present-day Silk Road.”

[..] Moscow is very much aware of the high stakes. For instance, for a year and a half virtually every month a Russian delegation arrives in Tajikistan to implement, in practice, the “pivot to the East”, developing projects in agriculture, health care, education, science and tourism. Central Asia should have a leading role in BRICS+ expansion – something supported by both BRICS leaders Russia and China. The idea of a BRICS + Central Asia is being seriously floated from Tashkent to Almaty. That would imply establishing a strategic continuum from Russia and China to Central Asia, South Asia, West Asia, Africa and Latin America – spanning the logistics of connectivity trade, energy, manufacture production, investment, technological breakthroughs and cultural interaction.

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“Zelensky’s supporters no longer believe in the myth of Ukrainian victory..”

• After Bakhmut (Douglas Macgregor)

Until the fighting begins, national military strategy developed in peacetime shapes thinking about warfare and its objectives. Then the fighting creates a new logic of its own. Strategy is adjusted. Objectives change. The battle for Bakhmut illustrates this point very well. When General Sergey Vladimirovich Surovikin, commander of Russian aerospace forces, assumed command of the Russian military in the Ukrainian theater last year, President Vladimir Putin and his senior military advisors concluded that their original assumptions about the war were wrong. Washington had proved incurably hostile to Moscow’s offers to negotiate, and the ground force Moscow had committed to compel Kiev to negotiate had proved too small. Surovikin was given wide latitude to streamline command relationships and reorganize the theater.

Most importantly, Surovikin was also given the freedom of action to implement a defensive strategy that maximized the use of stand-off attack or strike systems while Russian ground forces expanded in size and striking power. The Bakhmut “Meatgrinder” was the result. When it became clear that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and his government regarded Bakhmut as a symbol of Ukrainian resistance to Russian military power, Surovikin turned Bakhmut into the graveyard of Ukrainian military power. From the fall of 2022 onward, Surovikin exploited Zalenskiy’s obsession with Bakhmut to engage in a bloody tug-of-war for control of the city. As a result, thousands of Ukrainian soldiers died in Bakhmut and many more were wounded. Surovkin’s performance is reminiscent of another Russian military officer: General Aleksei Antonov.

As the first deputy chief of the Soviet general staff, Surovikin was, in Western parlance, the director of strategic planning. When Stalin demanded a new summer offensive in a May 1943 meeting, Antonov, the son and grandson of imperial Russian army officers, argued for a defensive strategy. Antonov insisted that Hitler, if allowed, would inevitably attack the Soviet defenses in the Kursk salient and waste German resources doing so. Stalin, like Hitler, believed that wars were won with offensive action, not defensive operations. Stalin was unmoved by Soviet losses. Antonov presented his arguments for the defensive strategy in a climate of fear, knowing that contradicting Stalin could cost him his life. To the surprise of Marshals Aleksandr Vasilevsky and Georgy Zhukov, who were present at the meeting, Stalin relented and approved Antonov’s operational concept. The rest, as historians say, is history.

Macgregor

If President Putin and his senior military leaders wanted outside evidence for Surovikin’s strategic success in Bakhmut, a Western admission appears to provide it: Washington and her European allies seem to think that a frozen conflict—in which fighting pauses but neither side is victorious, nor does either side agree that the war is officially over—could be the most politically palatable long-term outcome for NATO. In other words, Zelensky’s supporters no longer believe in the myth of Ukrainian victory. The question on everyone’s mind is, what’s next? In Washington, conventional wisdom dictates that Ukrainian forces launch a counteroffensive to retake Southern Ukraine. Of course, conventional wisdom is frequently high on convention and low on wisdom.

On the assumption that Ukraine’s black earth will dry sufficiently to support ground maneuver forces before mid-June, Ukrainian forces will strike Russian defenses on multiple axes and win back control of Southern Ukraine in late May or June. Roughly 30,000 Ukrainian soldiers training in Great Britain, Germany, and other NATO member states are expected to return to Ukraine and provide the foundation for the Ukrainian counterattack force. General Valery Gerasimov, who now commands the Russian forces in the Ukrainian theater, knows what to expect, and he is undoubtedly preparing for the Ukrainian offensive. The partial mobilization of Russian forces means that Russian ground forces are now much larger than they have been since the mid-1980s.

Given the paucity of ammunition available to adequately supply one operational axis, it seems unlikely that a Ukrainian offensive involving two or more axes could succeed in penetrating Russian defenses. Persistent overhead surveillance makes it nearly impossible for Ukrainian forces to move through the twenty- to twenty-five-kilometer security zone and close with Russian forces before Ukrainian formations take significant losses. Once Ukraine’s offensive resources are exhausted Russia will likely take the offense. There is no incentive to delay Russian offensive operations. As Ukrainian forces repeatedly demonstrate, paralysis is always temporary. Infrastructure and equipment are repaired. Manpower is conscripted to rebuild destroyed formations. If Russia is to achieve its aim of demilitarizing Ukraine, Gerasimov surely knows he must still close with and complete the destruction of the Ukrainian ground forces that remain.

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Repeat every day.

• Counteroffensive Can Start At Any Moment – Ukrainian Official (RT)

Ukrainian forces are “ready” to launch their much-touted counteroffensive, the head of the National Security and Defense Council told the BBC in an interview on Saturday. Aleksey Danilov said the military top brass are now waiting for the right moment to launch the attack. “It could happen tomorrow, the day after tomorrow or in a week,” Danilov answered when pressed about a potential start of the counteroffensive, which Kiev has been talking about for months. A major assault was initially expected to start in spring or even late winter, but Kiev repeatedly postponed it, citing adverse weather conditions and the need to obtain all necessary weapons and equipment from western backers. Danilov said it would have been “weird” for him to reveal the exact date, as “that cannot be done.”

He described the planned attack as a “historic opportunity” that his nation “cannot lose” if it wants to become a “big European country.” “We understand that we have no right to make a mistake,” he added. In April, The New York Times reported that Ukraine’s Western supporters might start to pressure Kiev into launching talks with Moscow should the much-anticipated offensive fail to yield any major gains. Kiev has been sending mixed signals on the counteroffensive. Earlier this week, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s aide, Mikhail Podoliak, told Italy’s Rai TV channel that it “has been going on for several days”. However, on Thursday, another presidential advisor, Igor Zhovkva, contradicted that statement, saying Ukrainian forces were still preparing for the operation.

Danilov denied the offensive had already begun, claiming that Ukrainian strikes against Russian “control centers” and “military equipment” were just routine operations. Danilov’s remarks came as Russia outlined its conditions for ending the conflict with Ukraine. Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin told TASS on Saturday that Kiev should abandon the idea of joining NATO and the EU, guarantee the rights of minorities, and declare Russian a state language. Ukraine must also recognize the “new territorial realities,” the high-ranking diplomat said, referring to four former Ukrainian territories that joined Russia following referendums in autumn 2022, as well as Crimea, which reunited with Russia in 2014 following another referendum. However, Danilov stated earlier in May that there could be no peace talks “on Russia’s terms.”

Read more …

Does Germany wish to be a target?

• Ukraine Demands German Missiles Capable Of Striking Moscow (RT)

Ukraine has asked Berlin to provide it with long-range air-launched missiles that could potentially reach Moscow, a spokesperson for Germany’s Defense Ministry confirmed on Saturday. On Friday, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper reported, citing two unnamed “insiders” within the German military, that Ukraine “urgently wants” Swedish-German Taurus missiles. These munitions could be allegedly placed on US-made F-16 fighters, which are now being considered for delivery to Kiev by several Western countries. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky is said to have asked for the missiles during his meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin earlier this month.

For now, it is unclear whether Berlin, which earlier said it did not have any F-16s to send to Kiev, will grant this request. The report said the demand presents Berlin with a dilemma, as some in the German government doubt whether Ukraine would sensibly use such a weapon – which can travel 500km (310 miles) and is armed with a 500kg warhead. As Kiev may use the Taurus to strike Moscow from the border, “some fear that in a situation of dire need, Kiev could allow the war to escalate uncontrollably,” the paper added. According to the outlet, another problem is that the Taurus needs extremely precise and up-to-date information to stage attacks, raising questions as to whether Berlin would be willing to share such data with Kiev.

Earlier this month, the UK decided to supply Ukraine with Storm Shadow missiles with a range of over 250km (155 miles), with Moscow’s Foreign Ministry condemning the move as another step towards a “serious escalation.” Later, the Russian Defense Ministry said that Kiev used the weapon to conduct a strike on civilians in the Donbass city of Lugansk, resulting in six children injured, according to local authorities. Even without long-range missiles, earlier this month Kiev unsuccessfully attempted to conduct a strike on the Kremlin using two drones, which according to Moscow was an attempt to assassinate Russian President Vladimir Putin. Kiev has denied any involvement, with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky claiming that “we fight on our territory” and “we don’t have… enough weapons for this.”

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“..the aggressive imposition of Western ‘new values’ causes growing rejection there and only brings Russia and African countries closer together.”

• Africa Foresees End Of Unipolar World – Russian Envoy (RT)

The West’s attempts to pressure Africa to turn on Russia have failed as people on the continent realize the true nature of the conflict in Ukraine and see that the unipolar world order is coming to an end, according to the head of the Russia-Africa Partnership Forum. Oleg Ozerov, who is also Russia’s ambassador-at-large, told Newsweek on Friday that the attendance of 40 out of 54 nations of the continent at the Russia-Africa Interparliamentary Conference had “shattered the myth of Russia’s alleged isolation due to the events in Ukraine, persistently promoted in the West.” “People in Africa understand very well that the former Soviet republic has turned into an arena of confrontation between the new and the old world paradigms, between different visions of the future, not just a trivial feud between neighbors,” he said.

According to the diplomat, the well-balanced and neutral approach towards “Russia’s confrontation with the West” by Africa, China, India and Latin American nations “confirms once again that the transition to… multipolar architecture is irreversible.” Those countries clearly understand that the time for “unipolar world-order is running out,” he added. What Africa needs now is promotion of local solutions and national interests, as well as deliverance “from the rigid constraints of globalism promoted by neo-liberalist ideologists,” Ozerov said. “African countries count on Russia’s support” in achieving those goals, he stated. Moscow is backing efforts to complete the decolonization process in a number of African countries, while also working to put together a broad anti-terrorist front on the continent “free from any hidden agenda or double standards,” the diplomat continued.

“The US and EU want Africa to play the role of a mere supplier of raw materials to the ‘civilized world,’” Ozerov said. But Russia has a different approach as its “primary interest is to assist the development of Africa’s domestic energy and electricity markets, where we have considerable expertise, especially as regards nuclear energy,” he explained. Moscow has “no vested interests, such as to preserve its zone of influence or aggressively guard markets from any ‘outsiders,’” and Africans see that, the envoy said. And that’s the reason why “the unprecedented pressure by the West on Russia’s partners in Africa is not that effective in practice.” Ozerov said that, during his trips to the continent, it became obvious to him that “the aggressive imposition of Western ‘new values’ causes growing rejection there and only brings Russia and African countries closer together.” Russia is due to host a high-level Russia-Africa Summit in St. Petersburg in July, with the envoy saying that recent developments indicate that the event is going to be “a success.”

Read more …

What’s the influence on Treasury purchases?

• Credit Rating Agency Downgrades US (RT)

China Chengxin International Credit Rating (CCXI) slashed its sovereign credit score for the US by one notch earlier this week, becoming the first among top rating firms to make the move. The leading Chinese agency, a joint venture between Beijing Zhixiang Information Management Consulting and US ratings giant Moody’s, lowered the US to AAg+ from AAAg, having placed it on review for a further downgrade, according to a statement released on Thursday. “The intensification of political divisions between the two parties in the United States has increased the difficulty of resolving the debt-ceiling issue,” the statement reads.

“Even if a consensus is reached, the brinkmanship would pose uncertainty to the US government’s policy path and dampen economic confidence, which could trigger further volatility in the US politics and economy,” the agency added. According to CCXI, US debt sustainability is currently being seriously challenged, with the highest level of borrowing among the previously AAAg-rated nations, while the issue is being complicated by hawkish policies of the US Federal Reserve. The regulator has hiked the key interest rate several times over the past few months, raising the risk of asset depreciation on the balance sheets of many financial institutions. The credit rating agency Fitch previously put the US on watch for a potential downgrade, having warned that the nation could soon lose its AAA score due to an inability to pay its bills, within a matter of days.

Meanwhile, Moody’s said a mid-June interest payment on Treasuries will be critical for maintaining its top AAA grade. Republicans and Democrats have struggled to reach an agreement to increase the debt ceiling for weeks, prompting warnings from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen that the US is “highly likely” to default if Congress does not act soon. The move would be a first in American history, as the government has never defaulted on its debt, which has swelled to more than $31 trillion. Late on Friday, Yellen extended the deadline for a potentially devastating default, saying the government has just a few more days to argue over the debt ceiling before it runs out of cash.

Read more …

“The debt ceiling deal “cuts” spending by 0.2% of GDP or about $50 billion. Is that good enough?”

“Of the $80 billion Democrats appropriated to the IRS over ten years, the “deal” rescinds $1.9 billion. You read that right. That’s the kind of “get” that’s so good McCarthy agreed to increase the debt ceiling $4 trillion.”

• Debt Ceiling Deal Between White House And GOP Reached In Principle (ZH)

The White House and GOP negotiators have reached an agreement in principle to raise the US debt ceiling, averting a default. The deal raises the debt limit and keeps non-defense spending ‘near flat’ for two years, while cutting and capping various federal programs, the NY Times reports. After 2025, however, there will be no budget caps. It was structured with the aim of enticing votes from both parties, though it would most likely draw the ire not only of conservative Republicans but also Democrats furious at being asked to vote for cuts they oppose with the threat of default looming. If the progressives or the Freedom Caucus don’t blow it up, the plan has a chance of Congressional passage before June 5, the date Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned any deal must be finalized by in order to avoid hitting the “X-date”, when the Treasury can no longer meet its obligations.


“After weeks of negotiations, we have come to an agreement in principle,” said House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, adding that there are “historic reductions in spending” and “consequential reforms.” “There are no new taxes, no new government programs,” McCarthy continued, adding that they would be spending tonight writing the agreement. McCarthy expects a vote on Wednesday. In the House, Republicans hold a narrow majority – meaning unhappy right-wing lawmakers who have demanded significantly larger budget cuts in exchange for raising the ceiling may hold it hostage (lookin’ at you Gaetz). That said, McCarthy can at least say he tried – inking in principle a compromise that would effectively freeze federal spending that had been slated to expand.

Read more …

“European diplomats are hesitant to openly name and shame those who stall the negotiations, allegedly out of fear that more EU countries suspected of facilitating sanctions-evasion could also rebel.”

• EU Sanctions Talks Hit Roadblock – Politico (RT)

The negotiations over the European Union’s 11th package of sanctions against Russia have been stalled amid opposition from Athens and Budapest, who demand their companies be removed from the Kiev-compiled list of “war sponsors,” according to Politico. Two rounds of talks in Brussels this week ended with no deal in sight, as there was “no pressure” to discuss smaller issues until crucial objections by the member states are addressed, the publication reported on Saturday citing multiple anonymous diplomatic sources. The main roadblock is said to be Kiev’s notorious list of “sanctions-evaders” and “international sponsors of war,” which features multiple European companies because they maintained business ties with Russia.

Compiled by the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP), the list includes such giants as German wholesaler Metro, French retailer Auchan, Italian cement company Buzzi Unicem and Austrian banking group Raiffeisen, among others. Hungary was the only EU state to voice objections during a foreign ministers’ meeting on Monday, insisting that Kiev’s baseless accusations against its leading financial institution OTP Bank could be formalized with the bloc’s next round of sanctions. On Wednesday, however, Greece stepped into the forefront of the discussion, saying that allegations of sanction circumvention could be “very damaging” to its economy as well.

“Greece reiterated that, should there be concrete evidence of violation of sanctions, these should be brought to the attention of the member states concerned, at the technical level, so that this be adequately investigated and then due action will be taken,” an unnamed EU diplomat told the publication. Politico claimed that the Ukrainian list and the next sanctions package are “not linked” and the duo was simply holding the talks hostage as “political leverage.” However, European diplomats are hesitant to openly name and shame those who stall the negotiations, allegedly out of fear that more EU countries suspected of facilitating sanctions-evasion could also rebel. In the meantime, two sources said that the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, acknowledged the problem and “it is now up to him to work with the Ukrainians on a solution.”

Budapest has taken a neutral stance in the ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev, as it refused to provide military aid to Ukraine or allow Western aid to pass through its territory. Although Hungary had largely taken part in the existing EU sanctions against Russia, it has repeatedly criticized the restrictions and opposed those that might affect its own economy, including its conventional and nuclear energy sectors. Athens also defied the bloc’s efforts to cut all economic ties with Moscow, with imports of Russian goods by Greece more than doubling to a record €9.33 billion ($10 billion) last year. The trade balance between the two countries in 2022 was negative, however, with the value of Greek exports to Russia last year decreasing to €156.4 million from €206.6 million in 2021.

Read more …

They’re arming Taiwan. So what is there to talk about?

• China Rebuffing All Contact With US Military: Pentagon (ZH)

Top Pentagon officials have once again said that China is ignoring and rebuffing the US military’s attempts to establish and open line of communication, which is crucial to avoiding inadvertent conflict in regions such as in the South China Sea where both naval powers operate. “Open communication channels between the US and China are important in maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait, US Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Affairs Ely Ratner said on Thursday,” regional media reports. “The Pentagon’s attempts to reach out to China’s military in recent months have been ignored or rebuffed,” Ratner told an audience at the DC-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

He sought to stress that the Pentagon “believes in the importance of open lines of communication with the PRC [People’s Republic of China] and we have sought to build out those open lines of communication. Unfortunately… we’ve had a lot of difficulty when we have proposed phone calls, meetings, dialogues.” “The US and Department of Defense have had an outstretched hand on this question of military to military engagement, but we have yet to have consistently willing partners,” Ratner emphasized further. Earlier this month there was hope that US-China dialogue would be back on track following the meeting between National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Chinese Communist Party Politburo Member and China’s Director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission Wang Yi in Vienna on May 10-11.

That meeting was generally reported and regarded as positive, given that before that all such high level diplomatic contacts had been off ever since the ‘spy balloon’ shootdown incident over the American east coast in early February. But even if the rival militaries are struggling to keep open communications, Washington and Beijing are pushing forward with trade talks: “U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo sat down with her Chinese counterpart Wang Wentao in Washington D.C. on Thursday to discuss “concerns” surrounding bilateral trade. Marking the first cabinet-level exchange between the two countries in months, the U.S. talked about American companies operating in China. According to a readout by the Commerce Department, “The two had candid and substantive discussions on issues relating to the U.S.-China commercial relationship, including the overall environment in both countries for trade and investment and areas for potential cooperation.”

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“..part of the effort to bury the Russiagate hoax the way the Warren Commission buried the facts of the Kennedy assassination for many years.”

• John Durham and the Burying of American History (Patrick Lawrence)

I appreciate the Durham Report for the chronology of events it indicates. This is now easier to follow than it has been previously. In simple terms, Clinton authorized an operation to frame Trump within days of the leak of emails from Democratic Party servers in July 2016. The FBI’s leadership acted quickly to set this operation in motion. It first considered using the offhand remarks of George Papadopoulos, a minor Trump campaign volunteer, to obtain surveillance warrants against various of Trump’s advisers. When that proved too flimsy, the agency’s top officials turned to the Steele Dossier. The agency knew it was junk, but they punched it up sufficiently to get the warrants needed to proceed against Trump and his people. This was Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI’s anti–Trump op at the heart of the Russiagate hoax.

“The truth is, we had almost all of the information a long time ago. What we didn’t have was the certification of the information by a government authority, by a legal authority,” Walter Kirn remarks in America This Week. “I think Durham did a job of showing reach to the highest levels of the government. Apparently everyone was briefed on the reality of this thing early on, very early on. All the highest authorities knew it was bullshit.” Perfectly fair comment, an astute summation. Then Kirn continues in a very curious way: “In a way, I guess it became necessary that the system vindicates itself by finding that which could not be found and asserting that which could not be proved, to the point that the moment where it mattered passed away. President Trump’s no longer president. All of the harms that were done by this thing have been done. They changed our history, they changed our media. They changed our sense of information and why it’s important.”

Kirn is right to suggest that “the system” appears to figure that a report such as Durham’s can now be released because it is all water under the bridge—a little in the way the U.S. will acknowledge one or another of its coup operations long after the facts have ceased to matter. Similarly, it looks as if Garland found this an opportune moment to send the Durham Report to Capitol Hill, effectively to remove the entire Russiagate affair from the common American consciousness. With a presidential election 18 months away, Biden’s attorney-general must dispose of Russiagate and Durham’s probe as hastily and as best he can.

But I am not with Kirn when he asserts all the harm has been done. No, it has not. Russiagate changed history all right. And the destruction of this history is to my mind the greatest harm of all. This is the very oddest thing about the Durham Report: It purports to rip off the veil shielding the plot against Donald Trump from view, but it shapes up after a few days’ consideration as part of the effort to bury the Russiagate hoax the way the Warren Commission buried the facts of the Kennedy assassination for many years.

Read more …

He’s been doing it for 50 years.

• Roger Waters Under Criminal Probe Over Anti-Nazi Satire (RT)

German police have launched a criminal investigation into English rock legend and Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters on suspicion of glorifying Nazism during two concerts in Berlin. The musician has insisted the performance was in opposition to fascism. On Friday, in a statement quoted by several media outlets, the Berlin police said that Waters was suspected of inciting hatred, and that the probe was centered on his performances on May 17 and 18 in the German capital. In footage posted on social media, the musician can be seen wearing a leather trench coat resembling a Nazi uniform with two crossed hammers and a red armband. He then proceeds to take a mock gun and shoot into the crowd.

“The context of the clothing worn is deemed capable of approving, glorifying or justifying the violent and arbitrary rule of the Nazi regime in a manner that violates the dignity of the victims and thereby disrupts public peace,” the police said. Nazi-related symbols are outlawed in Germany, with an exception being made for educational or artistic purposes. Waters’ performance was apparently in reference to the film “the Wall,” an adaptation of the eponymous 1979 Pink Floyd album. The rock star appears as the album’s protagonist who hallucinates being a fascist dictator addressing a Nazi rally. Waters’ concerts also featured a pig-shaped balloon floating in the air, with a logo of the Israeli weapons company Elbit Systems and the Star of David.

The show also involved showing the names of people fading in on the screen, including Anne Frank, a Jewish diarist who died in a Nazi concentration camp, and Palestinian Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, who was killed while covering an Israeli military operation in May 2022. The Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon suggested that Waters wanted to compare Israel to the Nazis, describing the musician as “one of the biggest Jew haters of our time.” On Friday, the musician addressed the controversy, writing on Twitter that he had become a target of “bad faith attacks” from those who disagreed with his political views. “The elements of my performance that have been questioned are quite clearly a statement in opposition to fascism, injustice and bigotry in all its forms”, he said, adding that he had spent his entire life speaking out “against authoritarianism and oppression.”

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“Therapist doll that, when squeezed, whispers, “Don’t tell your parents.”

• Fisher-Price Introduces ‘My First Gender Transition’ Playset (BBee)

In a show of solidarity with a vocal minority of gender activists who don’t purchase their products, Fisher-Price introduced the “My First Gender Transition” playset for kids ages 2 to 9. “The My First Gender Transition playset helps your child have a fun time playing pretend while in no way being inculcated with an emotionally destructive ideology,” said Product Manager Murthina Spillwig who may soon be updating her resumé. “Parents in our focus groups were excited to force their kids to pretend to enjoy the playset for Instagram.” The playset is bursting with a plethora of features to confuse your toddler, including:

-My First Gonadotropin-Releasing Hormone Analogue puberty-blocking toy syringe
-Top Surgery For Tykes toy surgical table
-Barnyard and jungle-themed breast binders and packing underwear
-Therapist doll that, when squeezed, whispers, “Don’t tell your parents.”
-A lifesize poster of inspiring role model Dr. Rachel Levine
In anticipation of the success of the gender-affirming playset, Fisher-Price has announced they will soon be releasing the “My First Detransition” playset.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Perfect job

 

 

Bukele

 

 

Aweeeee

 

 

Iguana
https://twitter.com/i/status/1662395821977894916

 

 

 

 

Deactivate a cat

 

 

 

 

Sea slug
https://twitter.com/i/status/1662378744160440321

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle October 5 2022

Oct 052022
 
 October 5, 2022  Posted by at 7:50 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  58 Responses »


Odilon Redon The boat 1900

 

• CIA Chief Weighs In On Putin’s Alleged Nuclear Threat (RT)
• Russia ‘Fully Committed’ To UN Consensus On Nuclear War (RT)
• US Risks ‘Direct Conflict’ With Russia Over Ukraine – UN Envoy (RT)
• The Strong, and the Merely Powerful (Patrick Lawrence)
• Putin Spox Weighs In On Elon Musk’s Attempt At Ukraine Peace Deal (ZH)
• Elon Musk Proposes To Buy Twitter At Original $44B Price To Avoid Trial (NYP)
• Roger Waters Says He’s On Ukrainian ‘Kill List’ (RT)
• Kremlin Reacts To Zelensky Banning Talks With Putin (RT)
• Russian Partial Mobilization Numbers Revealed (RT)
• Maneuver Warfare (Schryver)
• Capital Controls – The Third Horseman Of The Unholy Trinity (Hubble)
• Fauci Gives Daszak Millions More To Study Gain Of Function (NYP)
• Hunter Biden Committed ‘Fraud’ Against Business Partners – Bobulinski (Fox)
• The Morning After (CJ Hopkins)
• Why Does Time Go Forwards, Not Backwards? (Henriques)

 

 

 

 

Truss

 

 

Just economists losing their minds over Liz Truss’ economics

 

 

 

 

Gerald Ford

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is none.

“..we don’t see any practical evidence today in the US intelligence community that [Putin] is moving closer to actual use” or that there’s any “imminent threat of using tactical nuclear weapons.”

• CIA Chief Weighs In On Putin’s Alleged Nuclear Threat (RT)

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) does not believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin is currently preparing to deploy nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the agency’s chief William Burns said in an interview on Sunday. “We have to take very seriously [any] kind of threats, given everything that’s at stake,” Burns told CBS Evening News with Norah O’Donnell. However, he acknowledged that “we don’t see any practical evidence today in the US intelligence community that [Putin] is moving closer to actual use” or that there’s any “imminent threat of using tactical nuclear weapons.” Asked if the Russian leader was bluffing when speaking about being ready to use “all the means at [its] disposal” if the country’s territorial integrity were threatened, Burns said it was “very hard to say at this point.”

The CIA director described the rhetoric from Putin and other high-ranking officials as “reckless and deeply irresponsible.” He also suggested that it was up to US policymakers to communicate to Moscow that such a decision would have “severe consequences.” UK Secretary of Defense Ben Wallace claimed on Sunday that Russia was“highly unlikely” to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, but claimed the Russian leader was also “totally irrational.” The issue has been at the fore since Putin announced a partial mobilization two weeks ago and warned that Moscow was ready to use any weapons from its extensive arsenal to defend itself if necessary. “If the territorial integrity of our nation is threatened, we will certainly use all the means that we have to defend Russia and our people. It’s not a bluff,” Putin stated at the time.

He reiterated the message on Friday in an address at the signing of the unification treaties for the accession of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, along with the Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions, into Russia. “We will defend our land with all the forces and resources,” the president vowed. Putin’s words have been interpreted by politicians and media in the West as a veiled threat that Moscow may deploy nuclear weapons in the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. In late September, Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergey Ryabkov rejected such speculation, saying: “we are not threatening anyone with nuclear weapons.” The diplomat referred journalists to Russia’s military doctrine, which states that nuclear weapons may only be employed if such arms or other weapons of mass destruction are being used against the country, or it is faced with an existential threat from conventional arms.

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The reason this has been so fully distorted, can not be a good one.

• Russia ‘Fully Committed’ To UN Consensus On Nuclear War (RT)

Moscow maintains that a war between nuclear-armed countries should never be fought, the top nonproliferation official in the Russian foreign ministry told the UN General Assembly’s First Committee on Tuesday. “We believe that one of the most important tasks is to maintain adherence by all countries of the ‘nuclear five’ to the postulate that any war between countries possessing nuclear weapons cannot be allowed to happen, which was reflected in the January joint statement of the leaders of nuclear powers. Russia is fully committed to it,”said Vladimir Yermakov, director of the arms control and nonproliferation department at the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The committee, which is in charge of arms control and international security, heard the statement through Konstantin Vorontsov, deputy head of the Russian delegation to the UNGA.

Yermakov’s remarks follow a clarification from the Kremlin that Moscow will only use nuclear weapons based on its official doctrine – meaning, in self-defense from weapons of mass destruction, or where its survival was threatened by conventional means. “There can be no other considerations here,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Monday. Russia has been repeatedly accused by the US and its allies of threatening the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Putin’s spokesman Peskov has repeatedly directed reporters to the official doctrine in order to dispel any misunderstandings. According to Russia’s nuclear posture, Moscow reserves the right to use atomic weapons only “in response to the use of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction against Russia or its allies,”as well as “in response to a conventional attack that threatens the very existence”of Russia as a sovereign state.

Over the weekend, however, head of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov proposed using “low-yield nuclear weapons” as one of the “more drastic measures”regarding the conflict in Ukraine. Kadyrov was addressing the withdrawal of Russian troops from a Donetsk Region town due to a persistent Ukrainian assault. While Russian regional heads – including Kadyrov, who Peskov said has “contributed a lot” to the operations in Ukraine – are free to express personal opinions, they cannot give free rein to their emotions, “even in difficult times,”the Kremlin spokesman said.

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“Continued American deliveries of weapons, intelligence and even fighters to Ukraine are approaching the “dangerous line” of direct confrontation with Moscow..”

• US Risks ‘Direct Conflict’ With Russia Over Ukraine – UN Envoy (RT)

Continued American deliveries of weapons, intelligence and even fighters to Ukraine are approaching the “dangerous line” of direct confrontation with Moscow, Russian diplomat Konstantin Vorontsov told the UN General Assembly on Tuesday. Shortly before that, the Pentagon announced the contents of another military shipment to Ukraine, valued at $625 million. “The US is increasing the deliveries of weapons to Ukraine, providing its military with intelligence information, ensuring the direct participation of its fighters and advisers in the conflict,”Vorontsov, who is the deputy head of the Russian delegation, told the General Assembly’s First Committee, a body charged with arms control and security issues.

This “not only prolongs hostilities and leads to new casualties, but also brings the situation closer to the dangerous line of a direct military clash between Russia and NATO,” Vorontsov added. Moscow has repeatedly warned the US and its allies against sending weapons, ammunition and equipment to Ukraine, but Washington and NATO vowed to keep doing so for “as long as it takes, ”while insisting that doesn’t make them a party to the conflict. According to the Pentagon, the US has spent more than $19.6 billion in “security assistance” to Ukraine since 2014, and another $16.8 billion since February 24, when the Russian military operation began. The US will continue to provide Ukraine with “key capabilities” and to address Kiev’s “evolving battlefield requirements,” the military added.

The latest batch of weapons and equipment, valued at $625 million, includes four High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) and ammunition for them, 16 each of the 155mm and 105mm howitzers, 75,000 rounds for artillery ammunition – including guided rounds and remote mine-laying ones – small arms and mortar rounds, and 200 MRAP armored vehicles.

Macgregor: “Other than Poland, no one in NATO is interested in going to war with Russia. If we persist on this line, we will see NATO dissolve and fragment.”

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“Strong nations serve their people as their primary responsibility.”

• The Strong, and the Merely Powerful (Patrick Lawrence)

There are various ways to interpret what Putin, Xi, and their allies among non–Western nations are working toward. In my view, they draw a distinction none has put into words but which is nonetheless essential to their vision: There are strong nations and there are the merely powerful. In the world order as we have it the powerful dominate — ever more evidently by force alone. In the world order now emerging, it is genuinely strong nations that will at last prevail over those reliant on power alone, and force will have little to do with it. [..] Strong nations serve their people as their primary responsibility. This is where I begin as I characterize them. They have a purpose, a telos, as the ancient Greeks put it, and a shared belief in the worth of their ideal.

They have a commitment to advancing the well-being of their citizens — to constructive action in the interest of the commonweal. They value their cultures, their histories, their memories. These common characteristics confer on strong nations solid but flexible social fabrics and an assumed sense of shared community. They are a source of identity and at the same time expressions of identity. Ironically, strength of the kind I describe tends to generate power. But it is power judiciously deployed. Genuinely strong nations have no need to dominate others. They are ungiven to subterfuge or subversion, seeing no purpose in it. They value mutual benefit in their relations with others simply because this is the surest way to stability and a peaceful order.

Let us not traffic in impossible ideals or in the thought of nations as pure as snow. There are none. A strong nation may have many things about it that are not to be admired — awful things, even. A strong nation may also be powerful. China is such a case. I am of the view — and I realize there are others — that China does not use its power to malign purpose. Remove the Sinophobia and anti–Chinese paranoia, and the record supports this.

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“Achieving peace without fulfilling Russia’s conditions is absolutely impossible. Many ideas there deserve attention,” he said..”

• Putin Spox Weighs In On Elon Musk’s Attempt At Ukraine Peace Deal (ZH)

The Russian Presidency’s office has responded to billionaire Elon Musk’s “Russia-Ukraine Peace” Twitter poll which he put out Monday, and resulted in swift backlash among pundits who accused the Tesla and SpaceX founder of mimicking “pro-Russian” talking points. Musk pushed back against the avalanche of detractors, explaining that he’s interested in exploring ways to arrive at a peaceful settlement, and not continued escalation toward nuclear war. Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Tuesday told reporters, “We consider it very positive that a man like Musk is looking for a peaceful way out of the situation around Ukraine,” according to Interfax.

Musk had floated the idea of “redoing” last week’s referendums on the four Ukrainian territories in the east joining the Russian Federation under UN supervision. He also controversially said that as basis of a peace deal Ukraine would have to permanently cede Crimea. It was particularly the Crimea aspect which sparked an immediate backlash and pile-on of pundits, journalists, and even diplomats – on up to Ukrainian President Zelensky himself – who suggested this means Musk “supports Russia”. According to more of Peskov’s words via Interfax (machine translation): “At the same time, he recalled that from the very beginning, Russia advocated that the conditions put forward by Moscow be fulfilled through negotiations. Unlike many professional diplomats, Peskov noted, Musk is still trying to find ways to achieve peace. “Achieving peace without fulfilling Russia’s conditions is absolutely impossible. Many ideas there deserve attention,” he said..”

But Peskov underscored there can be no “redo” of the referendums, given Moscow has already moved to bestow legal recognition of the four regions’ integration into Russia. “And there can be nothing else here. Today the president will sign decrees, and this will become the territory of the Russian Federation. But I repeat once again, the fact itself is very positive, when such people think, try to think logically, what could be done, to switch to a peaceful course,” Peskov said. To review, Musk’s poll had laid out four proposals: • Redo elections of annexed regions under UN supervision. Russia leaves if that is will of the people. • Crimea formally part of Russia, as it has been since 1783 (until Khrushchev’s mistake). • Water supply to Crimea assured. • Ukraine remains neutral. After more than 2.7 million votes, of which Musk said many were bots attempting to skew the results, it’s clear that public opinion remains fiercely divided on the war, given sizeable groups on either side. Meanwhile Chinese state media pundit Hu Xijin pointed out the following…

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We presume.

• Elon Musk Proposes To Buy Twitter At Original $44B Price To Avoid Trial (NYP)

Elon Musk has offered to close his original deal to buy Twitter for a whopping $44 billion — a bid to avoid a court trial over the hotly contested agreement slated for later this month, sources told The Post. The billionaire Tesla CEO is in talks for a settlement to acquire the social network for $54.20 per share — the same price he agreed to in April before saying in July he was pulling out of the deal, according to sources close to the talks. Twitter shares spiked more than 13% to $48.13 immediately following an earlier report of Musk’s proposal by Bloomberg and were halted for pending news. Musk sent a letter to Twitter with the offer, according to Bloomberg. Musk notified Twitter’s lawyers of the offer to go through with the deal under its original terms late Monday night, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The two sides worked toward hashing out an agreement in a Delaware Court of Chancery hearing this morning that was closed to the public, the source said. Another hearing will likely be held this afternoon but it’s unclear whether the judge hearing the case, Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick, will make it open to the public. Months of bad blood between Twitter and Musk have made Twitter insistent that the Delaware court supervise the closing process in the coming days. If everything goes as expected and Musk doesn’t try to pull any last-minute “gotchas” on Twitter, the deal should realistically close within days or at most a week, a source familiar with the matter said. Twitter sued Musk over his refusal to go through with the deal in a trial that was set to open on Oct. 17.

Musk was scheduled to be deposed by Twitter’s attorneys on Thursday and Friday this week, raising the prospect that the last-minute deal was made in part to avoid the deposition. [..] Analysts who cover Twitter say that $54.20 is an astronomically high price to pay for the scandal-plagued social media site. Without Musk’s involvement, Twitter would be trading in the $20 range, analysts say.

BBee musk

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The kill list has Kiev government support, which in turn has massive US/UK support. The list now includes US/UK citizens. Can’t make it up? Well, you don’t have to. This is a government that actively supports, to the tune of tens of billions, a foreign government that threatens to kill its citizens.

• Roger Waters Says He’s On Ukrainian ‘Kill List’ (RT)

British rock star Roger Waters, a co-founder of Pink Floyd, has allegedly been placed on a Ukrainian “kill list”after speaking out against Western military meddling and calling on Kiev to make peace with Russia. In an interview with Rolling Stone published on Tuesday, the 79-year-old pushed back against accusations that he’s been repeating Russian talking points about the conflict in Ukraine. “Don’t forget, I’m on a kill list that is supported by the Ukrainian government. I’m on the fu**ing list, and they’ve killed people recently… When they kill you, they write ‘liquidated’ across your picture. Well, I’m one of those fu**ing pictures.” Waters gave the example of Darya Dugina, the Russian journalist murdered in August after appearing on the Ukrainian Mirotvorets list.

As the musician noted, her entry on the list was marked “liquidated” after she was killed in a car-bombing. Others who have questioned or criticized the Kiev regime, such as photojournalists Andrea Rocchelli of Italy and Andrei Stenin of Russia, have also been killed after appearing on the Mirotvorets list. The site lists personal information on its blacklist targets, which also include politicians and NGO activists. Mirotvorets, or “Peacemaker,” is an independent database of individuals whom anonymous moderators consider to be threats to Ukrainian national security. The site denies being a kill list; rather, it claims to be a source of information for law-enforcement agencies and “special services” about pro-Russian terrorists, separatists and war criminals, among others. It allegedly has links to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry.

Waters stirred backlash earlier this year, when he suggested that US President Joe Biden was a “war criminal” for fueling the Ukraine crisis and sent an open letter to the wife of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, urging her to help “stop the slaughter” by pushing for a negotiated peace deal with Russia. He later sent an open letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin, asking for guarantees that Russia wouldn’t expand beyond Crimea and the Donbass region. Pressed by Rolling Stone on why he isn’t supportive of Ukraine’s resistance against Russian forces, Waters said, “Because it’s an unnecessary war, and those people should not be dying. And Russia should not have been encouraged to invade Ukraine.” He also dismissed reports of Russian war crimes in Ukraine as Western propaganda.

Two concerts that Waters had scheduled for next April in Krakow, Poland, may be canceled because of his push for a negotiated peace in Ukraine, the musician said late last month. “Draconian censoring of my work will deny them the opportunity to make up their own minds,” he said of his Polish audiences. The wide-ranging Mirotvorets kill list also includes Faina Savenkova, a 13-year-old girl in the Lugansk People’s Republic who called for the United Nations to end the fighting that has dragged on in her region since 2014.

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We’ll wait for his successor.

• Kremlin Reacts To Zelensky Banning Talks With Putin (RT)

To resume peace talks with Kiev, Moscow will wait for either a change of stance by the current Ukrainian president or for a new leader, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. This comes after President Zelensky signed a decree ruling out negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Even before the launch of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine in late February, Moscow “was the supporter of the idea of achieving the terms put forward by the Russian side through diplomatic means,” Peskov told journalists on Tuesday. Russia is still ready to look for a negotiated solution to the conflict between the neighbors, according to the spokesman. But “it takes two parties to negotiate,” he noted. “We’ll now be waiting for the current president to change his stance or for the arrival of the future president of Ukraine, who would change his position in the interests of the Ukrainian people,”Peskov said.

On Tuesday, Zelensky signed a decree on Ukraine officially rejecting peace talks with Putin. It rubber stamped decisions made by Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, on Friday, just hours after Putin signed agreements on Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics and Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions joining Russia. One of the resolutions was: “stating the impossibility of conducting negotiations with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.” Zelensky recorded a video address after the meeting claiming that “we [Ukraine] are ready for dialogue with Russia, but with another president of Russia.” In his speech on Friday, Putin called upon Ukraine to “cease all hostilities, stop the war it started back in 2014 and return to the negotiating table.”

However, he made it clear that the decision to unite with Russia, which the people of Donbass, Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions made during referendums, was not up for discussion. Kiev should treat the “free choice” of the four territories “with respect,” Putin said, adding that it was “the only way for peace.” Moscow and Kiev have not sat down at the negotiating table since talks in Istanbul in late March. The Russian side, which initially expressed optimism on the peace process, later accused Ukraine of backtracking on all the progress achieved in Türkiye, saying it had lost trust in Kiev’s negotiators. In recent months, Ukraine has been either putting forward terms that Moscow deemed ‘unrealistic’ for the resumption of talks, or said that they can only begin after Russia is defeated on the battlefield.

During the conflict, Zelensky has also, on several occasions, proposed meeting with Putin face-to-face in order to find a way to end the hostilities. But Moscow insisted that the two leaders should only get together to sign concrete agreements already prepared for them by the negotiating teams.

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These things take time.

• Russian Partial Mobilization Numbers Revealed (RT)

Russia’s partial mobilization plans are already more than two-thirds complete, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu announced during a conference call on Tuesday. It comes almost two weeks after President Vladimir Putin called to bolster the military amid the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. The defense chief said that over 200,000 persons have so far been added to the Russian Armed Forces, all of whom are now undergoing the necessary training. Shoigu has instructed relevant officials to provide the mobilized recruits with all the necessary clothing and other items and appoint them to military positions.

The minister added that there is also a significant number of volunteers showing up at the military commissariats wanting to join the army, and stressed that it is “extremely important” to assess each appeal carefully and to not reject anyone unless there are serious reasons to. He also explained that those who have been called into service in the past two weeks will only be sent to take part in Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine after they finish training and develop combat coordination with units that are already on the ground. In order to speed up the training process, the minister has ordered commanders to provide fresh recruits with additional training under the guidance of officers with combat experience.

Furthermore, the ministry announced that conscripts who fall under the upcoming draft, which will take place in November and recruit some 120,000 people, will serve in units not involved in the military operation. Meanwhile, those who have just finished their mandatory service in Russia’s armed forces will be returning home. Speaking in a televised address on September 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared a partial mobilization, looking to recruit some 300,000 reservists to take part in the ongoing military conflict with Ukraine which began in late February. The Russian Defense Ministry has since clarified that the mobilization prioritizes those who have served in the military and who’ve had previous combat experience as well as the necessary specializations needed on the front line.

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“British intelligence has warned the General Staff that these forces may be concentrating for a Russian counter-attack..”

• Maneuver Warfare (Schryver)

For weeks now, the vastly outnumbered Russian forces have been executing a fighting retreat – ceding territory to the advancing Ukrainians, briefly occupying strong prepared defensive positions from which they inflict severe losses on the Ukrainian attackers, and then retreating yet again to another line of prepared positions. As is always the case during an ongoing battle, reliable casualty numbers are difficult to ascertain. But the nature of the terrain, the strength of the prepared Russian defenses, and the Russians’ overwhelming superiority in terms of air power and artillery have afforded them a huge battlefield advantage.

Contributing to this advantage has been the frequently displayed rashness of almost suicidal banzai-like Ukrainian assaults on hardened Russian positions which, although their significant numerical superiority ultimately permitted them to compel another Russian retreat, hugely disproportionate losses of manpower and military equipment have been inflicted on the Ukrainian attackers. Late last week, in my article entitled Turning Point, I described how the Ukrainians had expended thousands of troops and hundreds of vehicles in their quasi-fanatical attempts to take both Kupyansk and Liman. Nevertheless, those two towns were taken, and the Ukrainians have continued to make modest advances since then while the Russians prepare yet another hardened defensive line several kilometers further east.

I’ve also been reporting for weeks now regarding the never-ending trains of Russian equipment and troops streaming into the region from various directions – and yet few if any of these major reinforcements have found their way to the front lines, much to the chagrin of those cheering on the Russian cause, and who have been devastated by what appear to be repeated Russian defeats. However, in just the last few hours, reports have been leaking out that western intelligence has detected a major buildup of Russian forces in and around Belgorod, just across the border of the Kharkov Oblast, and immediately north of the current line of contact. The reliability of this intelligence is not yet determined, and even if true, its significance remains as yet unknown, but I will share two of the reports I’ve seen on Telegram in the past couple hours – reports that are circulating among both Russian- and Ukrainian-friendly sources with a reasonable degree of established credibility.

First from a Ukrainian-friendly channel that has long exhibited connections to a source within the Ukrainian government: “Our source reports that the Office of the President received a warning that the risk of a Russian strike and counter-offensive behind Ukrainian lines remains. “The only thing is that no one can say exactly when, how, and where it will happen. The movement can abruptly begin along the entire border of Ukraine. The Russians know that Zelensky instructed everyone to remove reserves from the border regions and send them to the front line for an offensive (blitzkrieg). “That is, once again entering the Sumy region, the RF Armed Forces can easily take hundreds of kilometers under them, not to mention an attack on the northern part of the Kharkov region, or Belarus joining the game.”

A Russian-friendly source (presumably also relying on a Ukraine-friendly source) reports as follows: “MI6 has passed intelligence to the Office of the President (Zelensky) and the General Staff (Zaluzhny) that Russia continues to amass forces in the Belgorod region and appear to be in no rush to use them as a reserve. “British intelligence has warned the General Staff that these forces may be concentrating for a Russian counter-attack along the border of the Oskol River to cut off the increasingly stretched Ukrainian forces grouping that has only a few supply routes available to it.”

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“..central bankers and governments are going to get sick of being humiliated by financial markets. They’ll decide that significant currency intervention is needed to stabilise exchange rates.”

• Capital Controls – The Third Horseman Of The Unholy Trinity (Hubble)

According to an economic theory called the Unholy Trinity, governments can only ever have two of the following three things: pegged exchange rates, independent monetary policy and free capital flows. The reason why this is so is quite complicated. But the point is that they must choose two of the three, making the third a pressure valve for the problems created by their attempts to control the other two. Of course, governments occasionally try to have all three. But it always ends in humiliation. It’s only a question of when. In this context, humiliation may mean the breaking of the (managed) currency peg. Think of what happened to sterling on Black Wednesday, 16 September 1992, when the currency was forced out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) and subsequently plunged.

Alternatively, humiliation may mean the loss of control of monetary policy, and rampant inflation. There are plenty of contemporary examples. Finally, humiliation may involve massive capital flight from the country in question, which results in the imposition of capital controls. Apartheid-era South Africa provides a good example. Just look at the news today for the latest example of the Unholy Trinity being on the move… In Japan, the authorities re pegging interest rates low to help the economy and the government deal with too much debt. This is a major reason why the yen has been hammered in foreign exchange markets this year.

In the UK, there are fears of a currency crisis because interest rates can’t go higher without triggering a debt crisis. In Sweden, the central bank was forced to hike interest rates a full percent to try and stem the tide in the falling currency. The pressure valves are whistling. Currencies and monetary policy are colliding with each other. And policy makers are being humiliated. But what about the third part of the Unholy Trinity? For now, capital flows are still free. In my view, at some point, central bankers and governments are going to get sick of being humiliated by financial markets. They’ll decide that significant currency intervention is needed to stabilise exchange rates. And they won’t be willing to give up on controlling monetary policy. But that means they’ll be forced to unleash the third horseman of the Unholy Trinity: capital controls.

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It cannot -should not- be that Fauci gets to terrorize the nation for 2+ years, double his wealth in the process, retire in peace with the largest US pension ever, and pay Daszak millions more for gain-of-function research.

• Fauci Gives Daszak Millions More To Study Gain Of Function (NYP)

A shadowy NYC non-profit run by a scientist who tried to squelch the theory that COVID-19 emerged from a Chinese lab has received millions more from the National Institutes of Health to study similar viruses in Southeast Asia. A $653,392 grant to Peter Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance, awarded Sept. 21, is being administered by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases — whose director, Dr. Anthony Fauci, announced in August that he was stepping down at the end of this year. The grant is the first installment of a five-year award totaling $3.3 million — and was doled out on the same day NIAID awarded EcoHealth more than $2.1 million for two more ongoing studies, one of which involves so-called “gain-of-function” to make viruses more dangerous.

EcoHealth Alliance previously received millions in grants — directing some of those funds to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, from where many believe COVID-19 leaked into the city of 11 million and trigged the worst global pandemic in 100 years. Previously released emails have documented a close relationship between Daszak and Fauci, who received a “personal thank you” from the EcoHealth chief in April 2020 for backing the theory that COVID-19 spread naturally from bats to humans. Vanity Fair reported in June of last year that Daszak personally organized a February 2020 statement signed by 27 scientists and published in the influential British medical journal The Lancet.

The statement, which deplored the lab leak idea as a conspiracy theory, included the signatures of six scientists who had either worked at or been funded by EcoHealth Alliance — conflicts that, along with Daszak’s ties to the Wuhan lab, were not disclosed. Daszak has so far declined to answer questions from lawmakers about EcoHealth’s work with the Wuhan lab, leading Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) to call for the organization to be blocked from receiving federal funds until its leader comes clean. “This is like a bad sequel with the same plot and characters, but a bigger budget,” Ernst told The Post in a statement Monday.

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“He effectively swapped out an entity that he owned 20% of to a business that he owned 100% of, which is fraud.”

• Hunter Biden Committed ‘Fraud’ Against Business Partners – Bobulinski (Fox)

Tony Bobulinski says his former associate, Hunter Biden, committed crimes against his business partners by tampering with key documents to funnel over $5 million into a company he owned. “It’s called fraud,” Bobulinski told Fox News host Tucker Carlson, during an in-depth conversation that will air during “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Tuesday. Bobulinski, a retired lieutenant in the U.S. Navy, is the former CEO of SinoHawk Holdings, which he has long said was the partnership between a Chinese energy firm and the Biden family. He believes Hunter Biden changed references to a SinoHawk-linked LLC called Oneida Holdings in a 2017 limited liability company agreement to divert millions of dollars to a company he held a larger stake in.


“It’s sort of staggering that that document is exactly the same document as SinoHawk Holdings, LLC. And it appears that Hunter Biden, Jim Biden and the Biden family literally copied the same document down to typos… they removed Oneida Holdings, which was the Delaware LLC that represented Jim Biden, Hunter Biden, myself, Rob Walker and James Gilliar,” Bobulinski said. “Hunter and his lawyer, Jorge Misires, replaced it with Owasco, which was Hunter Biden’s law firm or business that he operated,” Bobulinski said. “He effectively swapped out an entity that he owned 20% of to a business that he owned 100% of, which is fraud.” Carlson then asked Bobulinski if he saw any other possible explanation than fraud committed by Hunter Biden. “I’m sure you can reach out to the Biden family and get comment from them, but there are calls,” Bobulinski said. “He received over $5 million.”

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“When you’re radically destabilizing and restructuring a society, you hit them hard with the Shock-and-Awe for a few weeks, or months (or years in this case), and then you gently ease them into the new “reality.”

• The Morning After (CJ Hopkins)

This is the weirdest part of the PSYOP. It’s like the morning after an office party on which you wake up almost terminally hungover to hazy memories of having performed a Tequila-fuelled blowjob on Bob in Accounting in what was either the 9th Floor Reception Area or possibly the downstairs lobby of your building while someone vaguely resembling that smirking kid in the Mail Room filmed it on his phone. Yes, it’s the Morning After … that revolting regurgitant chorus you’re hearing is the sound of millions of Covidian Cultists down on their knees in their gender-neutral bathrooms praying to the Porcelain God. It has been quite a trip these last two and a half years, but the orgy of fear and hatred is over, the mass hysteria is wearing off, and the reality of the damage they have done is beginning to become undeniable.

Countless thousands of people have been killed, seriously injured, and permanently disabled, victims of experimental “vaccines” they did not need but were coerced into taking. Societies have been torn apart, economies crippled, institutions discredited, democratic precepts like the rule of law and constitutional rights made mockeries of themselves, friends and families turned against each other, and so on, and the dust hasn’t even settled yet. It will take many years to assess the damage…or, rather, to recontextualize, rationalize, deny, and memory-hole the damage (while simultaneously “normalizing” the fascistic biosecurity dystopia the damage made it possible to implement). This process is now well underway.

As I’m sure you’ve noticed over the past several months, governments, global health authorities, the corporate and state media, the culture industry, and other key components of “The New Normal Reich” have been quietly phasing out their “Covid restrictions,” rewriting “The Science,” rewriting history (i.e., the science and history they had previously rewritten), executing limited hangouts, and otherwise transitioning the masses out of “emergency” mode and into the New Normal. In other words, everything is going to plan. You can’t keep people whipped up into a state of full-blown hysteria indefinitely. When you’re radically destabilizing and restructuring a society, you hit them hard with the Shock-and-Awe for a few weeks, or months (or years in this case), and then you gently ease them into the new “reality.”

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Time is in the eye of the beholder.

• Why Does Time Go Forwards, Not Backwards? (Henriques)

Here’s the problem: when you zoom in to the level of, say, one water molecule colliding and bouncing off another, the arrow of time disappears. If you watched a microscopic video of that collision and then you rewound it, it wouldn’t be obvious which way was forwards and which backwards. At the very smallest scale, the phenomenon that produces heat – collisions of molecules – is time-symmetric. This means that the arrow of time from past to future only emerges when you take a step back from the microscopic world to the macroscopic – something first appreciated by the Austrian physicist-philosopher Ludwig Boltzmann. “So the direction of time comes from the fact that we look at big things, we don’t look at the details,” says Rovelli.

“From this step, from the fundamental microscopic vision of the world to the coarse-grained, the approximate description of the macroscopic world – this is where the direction of time comes in. “It’s not that the world is fundamentally oriented in space and time,” Rovelli says. It’s that when we look around, we see a direction in which medium-sized, everyday things have more entropy – the ripened apple fallen from the tree, the shuffled pack of cards. While entropy does seem to be inextricably bound up with the arrow of time, it feels a bit surprising – perhaps even disconcerting – that the one law of physics that has a strong directionality of time built into it loses this directionality when you look at very small things. “What is entropy?” Rovelli says. “Entropy is simply how much we’re forgetting about the microphysics, how much we are forgetting about the molecules.”

If there is an arrow of time, where did it come from in the first place? “The answer is embedded in the beginning of the Universe,” says Carroll. “The answer is because the Big Bang had low entropy. And still, 14 billion years later we are swimming in the aftermath of that tsunami that started near the Big Bang. That’s why time has a direction for us.” The extraordinarily low entropy of the Universe at the Big Bang is both an answer and an enormous question. “The thing we understand the least about the nature of time, is why the Big Bang had low entropy, why the early Universe was like that,” says Carroll. “And I think honestly, as a working cosmologist, I think that my fellow cosmologists have dropped the ball on this one. They don’t really take that problem seriously enough.”

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8 minutes of Bobulinski

 

 

 

 


With the head of a vulture and body of a parrot, the Dracula Parrot is one of nature’s most beautiful and unnerving birds. Photo by Ondrej Prosick

 

 

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

 

 

 

Debt Rattle September 27 2022

Sep 272022
 
 September 27, 2022  Posted by at 8:33 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  74 Responses »


Marcel Duchamp About young sister 1911

 

• This Is the Way the World Ends (Jim Kunstler)
• Ukrainian Territories To Be Absorbed Into Russia By Week’s End: Lawmaker (ZH)
• All the Young Dudes, Carry the -Russian- News (Escobar)
• Zelensky Reveals US Pays Ukraine $1.5 Billion Per Month (RT)
• Putin Considering Talks With Kiev On New Conditions – Turkish FM (RT)
• German Energy Apocalypse Update V (Eugyp)
• Germany Suspects ‘Targeted Attack’ On Russian Gas Pipelines (RT)
• The US Is Winning Its War On Europe’s Industries And People (MoA)
• West Should Treat Us With Respect – Putin (RT)
• Poland Slams ‘Scandalous’ Von der Leyen Warning (RT)
• Russia And The US Still Have Time To Prevent A Nuclear War (Trenin)
• Orban Says EU Sanctions on Russia Have ‘Backfired’ (R.)
• Moscow Tells US To ‘Back Off’ With ‘Aggressive’ Course (RT)
• Moscow Grants Russian Citizenship To Edward Snowden (AP)
• Roger Waters Pens Open Letter To Putin (RT)
• Trouble About The Corona Vaccine Deal: Why Is Von Der Leyen Stonewalling? (MP)
• Just 1.5% Of Eligible Americans Have Gotten Updated COVID Booster (ZH)

 

 

 

 

Meloni identity
https://twitter.com/i/status/1574263707001008129

 

 

 

 

Net Zero
https://twitter.com/i/status/1574280761913524224

 

 

This one is a bit older.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Madame von der Leyen’s fellow Germans have already been sent to their room without so much as a kartoffelklop, plus no heat or hot showers for you, Hansel and Gretel.”

• This Is the Way the World Ends (Jim Kunstler)

The bond market has gone south, and that spells The End for the great game of financialization. The bond market is Moby Dick compared to the little blowfish that is the stock market. The global money system is based on bonds, which are… what? That’s right: loans… promises to pay you X at some future moment. So, what happens when a daisy-chain of promises-to-pay gets broken? Or, perhaps more precisely, when all those promises lose their last shred of plausible reality? Why, the money that these broken promises are denominated in loses its essential cred. Trick question: how much is worthless money worth? (Answer: not enough to pay for a can of Schrödinger’s cat food.) Which is where all this folderol leaves a lot of ordinary people all over Western Civ (and beyond!) trying to scratch up enough increasingly worthless money to feed the family and pay the landlord. Many will never understand what happened. But they will not be any less pissed off at the result.

This is the way the world ends for the hapless phantom known as “Joe Biden” the child-sniffing ectoplasm that haunts the White House these days of late empire. Somehow, the bamboozled nation has so far passively accepted the pranks and punishments laid on them by the backstage managers behind the Figment-in-Chief. Eight-plus percent inflation? No problemo, right? Eighty-five thousand new IRS agents on-board to drive you batshit while destroying your household and your posterity (ha!)? Half the population of South America flooding across the border? (The vibrancy! You no like?) A hundred dollar fill-up at the gas pump, and no heat for you this winter? (But… Netflix!) Drag queens to amuse and edify your children about the delirious realm of sexual pathology. All that…and how about a Russian hypersonic nuclear missile up your ass if the preceding somehow failed to move you? (Because: Russia, Russia, Russia…!)


Meanwhile, a trend is manifesting in other lands. The people of, first, Sweden and now Italy are voting in “right wing” nationalist governments — the horror — sending their equivalent of our Party of Chaos to the showers. This has irked the President of the European Union, one Ursula von der Leyen, no end. She has threatened to send Italy to its room without supper for the effrontry. Of course, Madame von der Leyen’s fellow Germans have already been sent to their room without so much as a kartoffelklop, plus no heat or hot showers for you, Hansel and Gretel. Embrace the suck.

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No way back.

• Ukrainian Territories To Be Absorbed Into Russia By Week’s End: Lawmaker (ZH)

With four occupied regions of Ukraine currently in the midst of a five-day referendum on whether to join the Russian federation, a Kremlin lawmaker told state media over the weekend that the territories are likely to be absorbed by Russia on September 30. “Taking into account the preliminary results of the referendums and Russia’s readiness to acknowledge them, the accession of the territories is likely to take place as early as on September 30,” the unnamed member of Russia’s State Duma said to TASS. Voting is set to conclude Tuesday in Donestk, Luhansk and the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, meaning as early as Wednesday or even Thursday announcements of results are likely to trickle out, paving the way for a potential Friday official declaration.


While Russian forces do not yet control the entirety of each of these territories, their annexation would constitute Ukraine losing almost 20% of its geographic territory. Russian President Vladimir Putin might himself make the proclamation following the referendums, which Ukrainian leaders along with Washington have dismissed as a “sham” – saying they won’t be recognized. Russian media reports indicate: The lawmaker said Russian President Vladimir Putin could take part in the procedure on September 30. “I don’t know if he will [participate], but he is likely to do so,” the MP said. Given that on Saturday Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov vowed new territories would be under Russia’s “full protection” – there is more than likely to be a major uptick in the intensity of fighting to follow the referenda results announcement in eastern Ukraine.

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“..after so many years, Moscow is finally fully committed to supporting Donbass all the way to the baby bears coming to Mama for good.”

• All the Young Dudes, Carry the -Russian- News (Escobar)

Moscow’s rerouted strategy takes maskirovka – mask, feint, fool the enemy – to another level, actually dropping the mask, plus the velvet gloves. Now it’s all very clear: this is turbo-charged Sun Tzu (“May your plans be dark and impenetrable like the night, and when you move, strike like lightning.”) There will be plenty of strikes like lightning ahead in the Ukrainian battlefield. This is the culmination of a process that started in Samarkand, during the SCO summit last week. According to diplomatic sources, Putin and Xi Jinping had a very serious conversation. Xi asked tough questions – as in you must finish this off – and Putin arguably explained how things would reach the next level.

Yoda Patrushev was on the road to China immediately afterwards – meeting with his Yoda counterpart Yang Jiechi, head of the Foreign Affairs Commission, and the secretary of the Central Political and Legal Committee, Guo Shengkun. Following-up on Samarkand, Patrushev outlined how Moscow will help Beijing militarily when the Empire tries anything funny in the next battlefield: Asia-Pacific. That should happen under the framework of the SCO. Crucially, the Patrushev meetings were requested by the Chinese. So the Russia-China strategic partnership is about to achieve full-fledged cooperation before the going gets tough in the South China Sea. It’s as if Russia-China were on the brink of creating their own CSTO.

And that is happening even as the Chinese leadership continues to express – mostly in private – that war in Russia’s western borderlands is very bad for business (BRI, EAEU, SCO, BRICS+, all of them) and should be wrapped up a.s.a.p. The problem is a swift wrap-up is off the cards. Foreign Minister Lavrov, in New York for the UN General Assembly, has stressed how. “Ukraine has eventually become a totalitarian Nazi sort of state” – unconditionally supported by the collective West. NATOstan has predictably doubled down on its tactics since the non-response response to Russia’s demand for a serious discussion on indivisibility of security, in late 2021: it’s always about shelling Donbass. This could not possibly be tolerated anymore by the Kremlin and Russian public opinion.

Thus the partial mobilization – forcefully proposed by the siloviki and the Security Council for quite a while now, with Kostyukov at GRU, Naryshkin at SVR and Bortnikov at FSB on the forefront. The symbolism is powerful: after so many years, Moscow is finally fully committed to supporting Donbass all the way to the baby bears coming to Mama for good. There are – unconfirmed – rumors in Moscow that the decision was accelerated because GRU has intel on the Americans soon transferring long-range missiles to Kiev capable of striking Russian cities. That’s beyond a red line for the Kremlin – hence Putin’s express mention that every weapon available in Russia’s mighty arsenal will be used to protect the Motherland.

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Lowballing.

• Zelensky Reveals US Pays Ukraine $1.5 Billion Per Month (RT)

The Ukrainian government is being heavily supported with American money, with Washington contributing $1.5 billion per month to the budget, Ukraine’s President Vladimir Zelensky has revealed. The sum was mentioned by the Ukrainian leader during an interview with CBS host Margaret Brennan for the ‘Face the Nation’ program, which was aired on Sunday. Currently Kiev runs “a deficit of $5 billion in our budget,” Zelenksy said, adding that “the United States gives us $1.5 billion every month to support our budget to fight” against Russia. Zelensky argued that arming and otherwise helping Ukraine militarily is a “win-win” for the US. He pledged that once Russia is defeated, the Ukrainian people will return to their home country and start paying taxes there, relieving the burden on American taxpayers.

“For the United States, it will be significant savings, but for us, it will be an opportunity to secure our territory and make it safe for our population,” he stated. US President Joe Biden has pledged to help Ukraine “for as long as it takes” to secure a strategic defeat of Russia, which he declared Washington’s ultimate goal in the conflict. Many Americans do not share the president’s view that the situation in Ukraine is crucial. According to the conservative election pollster Rasmussen Reports, it failed to make the top-ten list of issues of concern for likely voters. Earlier this month, the Biden administration asked Congress to authorize some $12 billion in additional aid for Ukraine, including $4.5 billion to support the Kiev government financially beyond September. It asked for $2 billion on top of that, to help Ukraine offset rising energy prices.


The package is expected to be approved on Friday, but some political analysts question whether the cash flows to Ukraine can be sustained after the midterm elections in November. “America can’t afford to provide a blank checkbook to Ukraine when we have inflation, gas prices, a supply chain crisis, all of the above, going on at home,” a GOP lawmaker told Politico, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “That’s what I’m hearing from my voters.” The outlet predicted that if the Republican Party wins the House, Biden will face more resistance to his requests for emergency aid to Ukraine.

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“In the course of negotiations with our president, Putin announced the possibility of returning to negotiations with Kiev, but on new conditions that have appeared,”

• Putin Considering Talks With Kiev On New Conditions – Turkish FM (RT)

Russian President Vladimir Putin is considering resuming talks with Ukraine, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Monday. The top diplomat made the remarks during a press conference in Tokyo where he’s attending the funeral of former prime minister Shinzo Abe, who was assassinated in July. According to Cavusoglu, Putin floated the idea during a conversation with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the recent summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. “In the course of negotiations with our president, Putin announced the possibility of returning to negotiations with Kiev, but on new conditions that have appeared,” Cavusoglu was quoted as saying, He didn’t elaborate on the “conditions” specified.

The minister also reiterated Ankara’s desire to stage direct talks between Putin and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky. “Our president will continue his contacts with Putin and Zelensky. Our aim is to bring the two leaders together to ensure that decisions are made at the level of the leaders,” Cavusoglu said. Top Russian officials have repeatedly said Moscow has been ready to talk with Kiev, pinning the blame for the stalled negotiations on the Ukrainian side. Last week, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said dialogue is “of course needed,” adding that Putin had already explained that “Ukraine left the negotiations several months ago.”


Apart from declaring the goal of defeating Moscow on the battlefield, Ukrainian officials have also reacted angrily to the referendums on joining Russia, currently ongoing in the Donbass republics and Zaporozhye and Kherson Regions in southern Ukraine. On Sunday, Zelensky warned that should Russia complete the vote, it would “make it impossible, in any case, to continue any diplomatic negotiations” with Moscow.

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“Normally” Eugyppius writes on Covid. But he’s in Germany…

• German Energy Apocalypse Update V (Eugyp)

Germany has nationalised the gas importer Uniper, to save it from insolvency in the face of the Gazprom gas stoppage. Robert Habeck’s earlier scheme to save Uniper and other importers involved the imposition of a gas surcharge of 2.4 cents per kilowatt hour on all consumers, but the government appears ready to scrap this plan just days before it was set to go into effect. Instead, some politicians are now talking of capping gas prices, though as far as I can tell, nobody has any idea how. As the pressure builds and the first closures begin, Germany is entering an economic recession, and there are everyday renewed cracks in the political edifice.

Minister President of Saxony Michael Kretschmer (CDU) – no fringe political figure – recently remarked that Germany “cannot do without Russian gas” and acknowledged that EU sanctions are to blame for the shortage, but he stopped short of demanding that Nord Stream 2 be opened; instead, he hopes for a return to Russian gas after the Ukraine war has ended. The Greens in government remain committed to taking Germany’s last nuclear power plants offline by the end of the year, hoping that enough French nuclear plants will return to service over the winter to cover any resulting shortages. It is hard to imagine a more farcical approach to nuclear energy.

Meanwhile, the head mayor of Berlin has suggested that two- or three-hour periods of load-shedding may be necessary to keep the electrical grid functional over the winter. Other experts, while downplaying the risk of uncontrolled outages, have raised the possibility load-shedding as well, confirming that these are very real contingency plans and that we’re being prepared for them. The stated concern is invariably that local or regional gas shortages will cause the widespread activation of electrical heaters and overwhelm the grid, though how exactly this could be anticipated far enough in advanced for scheduled outages is unclear to me. Prices have increased vastly across the economy, and estimates are that up to 60 percent of German households are now committing their entire monthly income to cover the rising cost of living.

The depth of the crisis isn’t fully known, as loan defaults and similar economic signals won’t begin in earnest until 2023. And that’s it. There are no plans from the government, beyond doubtful price-tinkering, regulatory schemes and targeted financial assistance. If you look at those news outlets most guilty of Corona hysteria, like the state-funded Tagesschau or the Süddeutsche Zeitung, you find extremely muted reporting on the crisis. Instead, hyperventilation about Ukraine continues to dominate headlines; pieces on the energy apocalypse are either misleading items like this one, hailing a dip in gas prices, or trivial write-ups about whether cities should cancel their Christmas lighting this year.

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Well, the Russians don’t blow up their own pipelines…

• Germany Suspects ‘Targeted Attack’ On Russian Gas Pipelines (RT)

While the loss of pressure in three natural gas pipelines between Russia and Germany is still officially being investigated, Berlin is reportedly no longer convinced it was a coincidence, and suspects a “targeted attack” on behalf of either Ukraine or Russia, the newspaper Tagesspiegel reported on Monday evening. Pressure in one of the Nord Stream 2 lines dropped sharply overnight, followed by the same happening to both Nord Stream 1 pipes on Monday afternoon. Denmark announced that a gas leak was spotted off the coast of Bornholm island in the Baltic Sea and closed the area for maritime traffic, but could not confirm if this was what caused the pressure loss.

According to Tagesspiegel, the German government and agencies investigating the incident “can’t imagine a scenario that isn’t a targeted attack,” according to an anonymous source familiar with their assessments. “Everything speaks against a coincidence.” The outlet explained that a deliberate attack on the bottom of the sea has to involve special forces, navy divers or a submarine. Berlin is reportedly examining two possible scenarios. In the first, Ukraine or “Ukraine-affiliated forces”could be behind the attack. The second option is that Russia did it as a “false flag,” to make Ukraine look bad and drive the EU energy prices even higher.


With Nord Stream offline since late August, Russian gas can only be delivered to Germany and central Europe via the older pipelines going through Poland and Ukraine, Tagesspiegel noted. “We are in the process of clarifying the situation here,” a spokeswoman for the federal ministry of economics told the outlet. “We don’t currently know what caused the pressure drop.” Nord Stream 1 was built in 2011. Construction on Nord Stream 2 began in 2018, and took much longer due to political pressure and economic sanctions from the US. NS2 was finished and pressurized by September 2021. However, two days prior to Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, the German government put its certification on indefinite hold, and has categorically refused any suggestion from Moscow – or its own people – to unblock the pipeline.

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“Instead of a real military threat from Russia and China, the problem for American strategists is the absence of such a threat.”

• The US Is Winning Its War On Europe’s Industries And People (MoA)

On February 7 Professor of Economics Michael Hudson explained why America’s Real Adversaries Are Its European and Other Allies: “What worries American diplomats is that Germany, other NATO nations and countries along the Belt and Road route understand the gains that can be made by opening up peaceful trade and investment. If there is no Russian or Chinese plan to invade or bomb them, what is the need for NATO? And if there is no inherently adversarial relationship, why do foreign countries need to sacrifice their own trade and financial interests by relying exclusively on U.S. exporters and investors?

These are the concerns that have prompted French President Macron to call forth the ghost of Charles de Gaulle and urge Europe to turn away from what he calls NATO’s “brain-dead” Cold War and break with the pro-U.S. trade arrangements that are imposing rising costs on Europe while denying it potential gains from trade with Eurasia. Even Germany is balking at demands that it freeze by this coming March by going without Russian gas. Instead of a real military threat from Russia and China, the problem for American strategists is the absence of such a threat.” What the U.S. needed was to provoke Russia, and later China, into reacting to U.S. arranged threats in a way that would oblige its ‘allies’ to follow its sanction policies. The rather dimwitted European leadership fell for the trick.


The U.S. arranged for a Ukrainian attack on the rebel held Donbas region. This started on February 17 with intense artillery preparations against Donbas positions as recorded by the OSCE observers at that border. Russia had to react or see the ethnic Russians in those areas getting maimed and killed by Nazi devoting Ukrainians. There was no way to prevent that but by other than military means. On February 22 Russia recognized the Donbas republics as independent states and signed defense agreements with them. The same day the German chancellor Olaf Scholz canceled the launch of the undersea Nord Stream II pipeline which was to transport Russian gas to Germany’s industries and consumers. The Europeans launched a sequence of extremely harsh economic sanctions against Russia which, prodded by the U.S., had been prepared months in advance. Russia’s Special Military Operation, under Article 51 of the UN Charter, commenced on February 24.

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“Without that we won’t even talk to them. Nobody is going to tolerate humiliation..”

• West Should Treat Us With Respect – Putin (RT)

Russia and Belarus are countries that are prepared to work with the West but only if there is mutual respect, presidents Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko agreed during a face-to-face meeting in Sochi on Monday. Speaking on tv channel Rossiya 24, Lukashenko said he believes the West’s future lies with Russia, which has “everything they need.” On the other hand, he added, the West has things Russia and Belarus need and are willing to buy, including certain technologies. “What else do they want? They just need to make responsible decisions,” he said said. Putin agreed with the Belarusian leader, insisting the West must “treat us with respect.”

“Without that we won’t even talk to them. Nobody is going to tolerate humiliation,”Lukashenko continued, noting that both Moscow and Minsk were open to working with those who want to live side by side, building relations based on mutual respect. The Russian leader has previously suggested that the West was essentially waging a hybrid war against Moscow and was looking to “weaken, disunite and ultimately destroy”Russia. In a televised address last week, Putin claimed that Western countries openly admit that they “managed to break up the Soviet Union in 1991”and were now aiming to “split Russia into many regions that would be at each other’s throats.”


As a means to that end, Putin claims the West has been intentionally fostering Russophobic sentiments in countries like Ukraine, where he accuses the US and its allies of installing a hostile government and of turning the Ukrainian people into cannon fodder by pushing them into war with Russia. Putin has also warned Western leaders who openly call for a military defeat of Russia that Moscow is prepared to use any means at its disposal to defend itself and to ensure its territorial integrity. US President Joe Biden has hit back at Putin, accusing him of “making irresponsible nuclear threats to use nuclear weapons.”

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“..the president’s remarks were not an attempt to interfere with Italian domestic politics but rather meant to underline the body’s role “as guardian of the [European] treaties with regard to the rule of law.”

• Poland Slams ‘Scandalous’ Von der Leyen Warning (RT)

A warning by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen that Brussels has tools to discipline Italy if its prospective center-right government fails to cooperate with the EU was “scandalous,” according to Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki. The remark was a wake-up call for member states, the head of the Polish government said on Sunday, as quoted by state news agency PAP. “Is this the kind of Europe we want? Is this democracy and rule of law? That Eurocrats in Brussels decide what a government should be?”Morawiecki asked. He was responding to von der Leyen’s suggestion that, should the new Italian government fail to meet the EU’s policy expectations, the country could be disciplined.

The top official said “whatever democratic government is willing to work with us, we’re working together,” adding that “if things go in a difficult direction, I’ve spoken about Hungary and Poland, we have tools.” Von der Leyen spoke about Italy on Thursday at Princeton University, after it was suggested that people friendly to Russia could come to power in Rome after the election on Sunday. She was asked what the EU leadership plans to do about it. Morawiecki interpreted the remark as a promise to punish Italy, unless its new government is “in favor of Brussels.” European Commission spokesman Eric Mamer said that the president’s remarks were not an attempt to interfere with Italian domestic politics but rather meant to underline the body’s role “as guardian of the [European] treaties with regard to the rule of law.”


A center-right coalition led by Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy (FI) party looks set to form a new cabinet following a snap election in the country. The outcome was consistent with opinion polls ahead of the ballot. In mid-September, the European Commission recommended suspending some €7.5 billion of emergency funding to Hungary over alleged erosion of the rule of law in the country. A similar punishment was imposed on Poland last year over controversial judicial reforms adopted by its conservative government.

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“..if – God forbid! – the Kremlin will face what the Russian military doctrine calls “a threat to the existence of the Russian Federation,” its nuclear weapons will not point to some location on the European continent, but more likely across the Atlantic.”

• Russia And The US Still Have Time To Prevent A Nuclear War (Trenin)

This October marks the 60th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis, which drew Moscow and Washington into a nuclear showdown that threatened the immediate annihilation of the world. Luckily, the leaders of the time – Nikita Khrushchev and John F. Kennedy – had the wisdom to step back from the brink, and then engage with each other on first steps toward jointly managing adversity in the nuclear era. Given the current conflict in Ukraine, which is steadily escalating toward a direct military collision between Russia and the United States, there is a hope that the lessons of the past can also help to end the present confrontation on a peaceful note. However, we should also be mindful of the major differences between the two crises.

On the surface the root cause of both confrontations has been acute feelings of insecurity created by the expansion of the rival power’s political influence and military presence right to the doorstep of one’s own country: Cuba then, Ukraine now. This similarity, however, is almost as far as it goes. The salient feature of the Ukraine crisis is the vast asymmetry not only between the relevant capabilities of Russia and the United States, but even more importantly between the stakes involved. To the Kremlin, the issue is literally existential. Essentially, it is not only the future of Ukraine, but that of Russia itself that is on the table. To the White House, the issue is definitely important, but far less critical. What is in question is clearly US global leadership (which will not collapse within the Western world, whatever happens in Ukraine), its credibility (which can be dented but hardly destroyed), and the administration’s standing with the American people (for whom Ukraine is hardly a top concern).

[..] The problem is that its highly pro-active policy on Ukraine is based on a flawed premise that Russia can indeed accept being ‘strategically defeated’ and, should nuclear weapons be used, their use would be limited to Ukraine or, at worst, to Europe. Americans have a long tradition of ascribing their own strategic logic to their Russian opponents, but this can be fatally misleading. Ukraine, parts of Russia and Europe being hit by nuclear strikes – while the US emerges from the conflict unscathed – might be considered a tolerable outcome in Washington, but hardly in Moscow. [..] So many of Russia’s so-called red lines being breached without consequence from the start of the Ukraine war have created an impression that Moscow is bluffing, so that when President Vladimir Putin recently issued another warning to Washington, saying that “it is not a bluff,” some people concluded that it was precisely that.

Yet, as recent experience demonstrates, Putin’s words deserve to be taken more seriously. In a 2018 interview he said, “Why do we need a world in which there is no Russia?” The problem is that Moscow’s strategic defeat, which the US is aiming for in Ukraine, would probably ultimately result in “a world without Russia.” This probably suggests that if – God forbid! – the Kremlin will face what the Russian military doctrine calls “a threat to the existence of the Russian Federation,” its nuclear weapons will not point to some location on the European continent, but more likely across the Atlantic.

Read more …

“Hungary to hold a referendum on the EU’s sanctions imposed on Russia, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán announces.

“The sanctions were not decided democratically, but were decided by Brussels bureaucrats and European elites,” he said on Monday.”

• Orban Says EU Sanctions on Russia Have ‘Backfired’ (R.)

Hungary should prepare for a prolonged war in neighbouring Ukraine, Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Monday, sharply criticising European Union sanctions imposed on Russia which he said have “backfired”, driving up energy prices. Orban, long at odds with the EU over some of his policies seen in Brussels as anti-democratic, urged a ceasefire to end the war and said the sanctions against Russia were dealing a blow to Europe’s economy. Orban, who was reelected for a fourth consecutive term in April, now faces surging inflation, plunging consumer confidence and the prospect of a recession next year.

He told parliament it was no surprise that governments were falling in Europe, referring to the Italian election on Sunday following which Giorgia Meloni looks set to lead Italy’s most right-wing government since World War Two. “We can safely say that as a result of the sanctions, European people have become poorer, while Russia has not fallen to its knees,” Orban said. “This weapon has backfired, with the sanctions Europe has shot itself in the foot.” “We are waiting for an answer, the entire Europe is waiting for an answer from Brussels on how long we will keep doing this,” he said, adding it was also time to discuss the sanctions with the United States. Orban, whose government is in talks with the European Commission to secure billions of euros in EU funds blocked over rule-of-law concerns, said his government would launch a “national consultation” asking Hungarians about sanctions.


Orban has previously used this campaign tool to shore up domestic support for his Fidesz party on policies such as gay rights or migration. Orban said his government had revised its long-term energy strategy and aims to overhaul the power system and extend the lifespan of the Paks nuclear power plant, with a total of 32 big investments planned to be financed using EU funding. “If the Brussels bureaucrats do not give us this money, which Hungary is eligible for, then we will get the necessary funds from other financial sources,” Orban said, adding Hungary had started talks with the EU and “other international partners”. He did not elaborate.

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“Dozens of nations representing half of humanity either backed Russia’s position on Ukraine or at least acknowledged the merits of Russia’s reasoning..”

• Moscow Tells US To ‘Back Off’ With ‘Aggressive’ Course (RT)

The US is taking an increasingly aggressive stance towards Moscow, but no amount of economic sanctions and political pressure can sway it from defending its national interests, a top Russian diplomat said. Moscow’s diplomacy regarding the US is an exercise in “crisis management”, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said in an interview on Russian television on Monday. He described US behavior as being “increasingly confrontational and worrisome.” “We can see how [the Americans] are trying to mobilize their satellites, their vassals to confront Russia in a more aggressive and hardline manner,” the diplomat said. “Washington’s irresponsible, extremely aggressive, extremely assertive course is bringing us all to the dangerous line. We are warning against maintaining this course.”

The brinkmanship has been evident not only when it comes to the crisis in Ukraine, but also in the all-important issue of nuclear non-proliferation and reduction, Ryabkov said. Washington has pretty much dismantled the entire architecture of strategic arms control and is threatening the last remaining bilateral treaty of that kind with Russia, the New START, he pointed out. The core of the problem, the diplomat said, is that the US “does not need agreements, which had been signed on the basis of parity, served not only the security interest of the group [of nations] led by the US, but strengthened the security of entire regions and the world in general. They are not in line with the hegemonic course that the US pursues in the international arena.”

The deputy minister said he didn’t expect US policy towards Russia to change anytime soon, because “there is an anti-Russian consensus of the elites” in the US. But the only viable solution is for Washington to recognize that Russia will not be bullied and act accordingly, Ryabkov added. “Time and time again we’ve told our American interlocutors, to use the most neutral term, that they have to back off and stop escalating the situation,” he said.

European nations, which sided with Washington’s anti-Russian drive, are suffering because of it, the Russian diplomat pointed out. In fact, their subservience to Washington makes them vulnerable to American exploitation, Ryabkov said. “[The Americans] are undermining Europe’s competitiveness, pumping their products into European markets, be they military equipment or hydrocarbons, which the Europeans would rather get from alternative sources under different circumstances,” he said. But Washington lacks global support, regardless of what American officials claim Ryabkov said. Dozens of nations representing half of humanity either backed Russia’s position on Ukraine or at least acknowledged the merits of Russia’s reasoning about it, he explained.

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One of 75, but the only one who gets attention.

• Moscow Grants Russian Citizenship To Edward Snowden (AP)

President Vladimir Putin has granted Russian citizenship to former U.S. security contractor Edward Snowden, according to a decree signed by the Russian leader on Monday. Snowden is one of 75 foreign nationals listed by the decree as being granted Russian citizenship. The decree was published on an official government website. Snowden, a former contractor with the U.S. National Security Agency, has been living in Russia since 2013 to escape prosecution in the U.S. after leaking classified documents detailing government surveillance programs. He was granted permanent residency in 2020 and said at the time that he planned to apply for Russian citizenship, without renouncing his U.S. citizenship.


Snowden’s lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, told Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti that the former contractor’s wife Lindsay Mills, an American who has been living with him in Russia, will also be applying for a Russian passport. The couple had a child in December 2020. Snowden, who has kept a low profile in Russia and occasionally criticized Russian government policies on social media, said in 2019 that he was willing to return to the U.S. if he’s guaranteed a fair trial. He hasn’t commented on being granted Russian citizenship.

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“Just because NATO and the US get to “invade other sovereign countries at the drop of a hat, or for a few barrels of oil,” doesn’t mean Russia shouldn’t hold itself to a higher standard..”

• Roger Waters Pens Open Letter To Putin (RT)

Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters has penned a blunt open letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin, seeking guarantees that Russia will not expand beyond the Donbass and Crimea and will never “invade anyone ever again.” Posted to Facebook on Monday, the missive follows similarly frank open letters to Ukrainian First Lady Elena Zelenskaya. In the letter, Waters asks Putin to affirm he wants an end to the war – something the Russian president has already said on other occasions. He also demands a guarantee that Russia’s “territorial interest” stops at the “security of the Russian speaking populations”of Crimea and the Donbass republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, citing the need to reassure “some people who think you want to overrun the whole of Europe, starting with Poland and the rest of the Baltic states.”

If Russia does have territorial ambitions beyond eastern Ukraine, Waters writes, “f*** you, and we might as well all stop playing the desperately dangerous game of nuclear chicken that the hawks on both sides of the Atlantic feel so comfortable with, and have at it.” It wasn’t immediately clear if the referendums in the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions on joining Russia qualified for this response. Moscow would also have to promise “not to invade anyone ever again,” Waters told Putin, complaining the launch of Russia’s special military operation in February was not just a “heinous war of aggression,” but an unexpected one to boot. Just because NATO and the US get to “invade other sovereign countries at the drop of a hat, or for a few barrels of oil,” doesn’t mean Russia shouldn’t hold itself to a higher standard, he explained.

“If you were to reply to me,” Waters wrote to Putin, “I would mightily respect you for it, and take it as an honorable move in the right direction towards a sustainable peace.” The progressive rock guitarist’s appeal to Putin followed his previous open letters to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s wife Elena, in which he urged the Ukrainian First Lady to “demand the implementation of your husband’s election promises and put an end to this deadly war,” a reference to Zelensky’s campaign pledge to “end the civil war” in Donbass. He told Zelenskaya she was “tragically mistaken” in her belief that western “support for Ukraine” – namely the continued supply of weapons – would shorten the conflict.

Zelenskaya responded to the musician earlier this month on Twitter, blaming Russia for “invading” Ukraine, “destroy[ing] cities and kill[ing] civilians.” She insisted that if Ukraine stops fighting it will mean the end of its existence, and urged Waters to address his peace appeals to the Russian president instead.

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Google translation from German outlet Morgenpost.

The “talks” between Ursula and Bourla were in WhatsApp (or a similar app), and she gave herself permission to delete all of it. Dead end.

• Trouble About The Corona Vaccine Deal: Why Is Von Der Leyen Stonewalling? (MP)

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is under pressure because of a multi-billion dollar mega contract for the delivery of Biontech-Pfizer’s corona vaccine. According to information from our editorial team, the budget controllers of the EU Parliament are preparing a formal reprimand, the displeasure in Parliament is great, the first MPs call for the public prosecutor. It is by far the largest contract in the European Union for the procurement of corona vaccines: In May 2021, i.e. five months after the start of the vaccination campaign, the Commission agreed on the delivery of up to 1.8 billion doses of the Biontech/Pfizer vaccine ( 900 million as an option) for the years 2022 and 2023. According to insider information, the purchase price is a gigantic 35 billion euros.

Not only the volume is spectacular. It is also unusual that von der Leyen apparently personally arranged the contract in talks with Pfizer boss Albert Bourla – the European Court of Auditors speaks of “preliminary negotiations”. Nevertheless, the President of the Commission adamantly refuses to provide any information about her exchange with the Pfizer boss. Now von der Leyen even rebuffed the Court of Auditors – and may have overdone it. The auditors took an interest in the deal as part of a special report on European vaccine procurement. According to her account, von der Leyen conducted the preliminary negotiations with the Pfizer boss in March 2021 without involving the joint negotiating team, as would have corresponded to a Commission decision on the procedure.

The auditors asked the Commission for information about the preliminary negotiations, such as experts involved, timetable, records, details of the agreed terms. After all, this contract will “shape the EU’s vaccine portfolio until the end of 2023”. But the examiners received a rejection: “No information was transmitted,” they write. Internally, the inspectors are stunned: “This behavior is extremely unusual, something like this has never happened before,” says the authority. However, the Court of Auditors cannot enforce anything in this case. The EU Parliament has the lever in its hand. There threatens from the Leyen Trouble. The chair of the Budget Control Committee, Monika Hohlmeier (CSU), calls it “very worrying” that the Commission is refusing to give the Court of Auditors central information for evaluating the preliminary negotiations, especially because of their influence on the proper award procedure.

According to the Court of Auditors, the tender only contained what had previously been informally agreed, Hohlmeier told our editorial team: “The Committee on Budgetary Control will reprimand the Commission here and insist that information relevant to the audit must always be shared with the Court of Auditors without restrictions.” The lack of transparency in the multi-billion dollar contracts has long been an issue in the EU Parliament, also because it plays into the hands of anti-vaccination campaigns. Von der Leyen’s blockade is fueling all sorts of speculation among critics, such as an alleged preference for the US company Pfizer. The Washington-based consumer organization SumOfUs accuses von der Leyen of agreeing to a hefty price increase in her talks with Bourla, even though a discount would have been obvious given the enormous quantity. In fact, with the deal, the price per Biontech vaccine dose rose from EUR 15.50 to EUR 19.50 – the then Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borrisov revealed this out of annoyance at the high costs.

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It’s over.

• Just 1.5% Of Eligible Americans Have Gotten Updated COVID Booster (ZH)

Only 1.5% of those eligible to receive the new Covid booster jab – which was tested on just 8 mice, not humans, before the FDA approved it – have taken the updated shot, according to data released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Approximately 4.4 million people have taken the tweaked booster shot from Pfizer and Moderna after they were rolled out three weeks ago around Labor Day weekend. The bivalent shots were designed to target both the original Covid-19 strain, and the currently circulating Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5, NBC News reports. “I would expect a much higher proportion of Americans to have gotten the booster by this point,” said Yale Medicine infectious diseases specialist, Dr. Scott Robers, who said the relatively low uptake was “demoralizing.”

“The fact that this booster came out days before Biden said the pandemic is over is a huge mixed message,” said Roberts, who added that a lack of public awareness surrounding the shots – or the ‘prevailing narrative that the pandemic is ending’ might have hindered the rollout. “Now it’s going to be that much harder to convince those at risk who are on the fence to get a booster.” As of Tuesday, the US had shipped over 25 million boosters to tens of thousands of sites. Approximately 80% of the US population has received at least one shot of the primary Covid vaccine, and almost 68% are considered ‘fully vaccinated’ by the CDC – meaning they’ve received two doses of Pfizer or Moderna’s offering, or one dose of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine.


“[..] experts are still gathering real-world data, since the shots were distributed without results from human trials. Laboratory studies found that the boosters generated strong antibody responses against BA.4 and BA.5, and human trial data showed that a similar vaccine yielded a strong antibody response against the initial omicron strain, BA.1. Authorization of the bivalent boosters for children ages 5 to 11 may be just weeks away, Dr. Peter Marks, director of the Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said at an event this week with the Covid-19 Vaccine Education and Equity Project.” -NBC News Word of the slow uptake comes after Denmark recommended that only those over the age of 50, or who are at risk of developing severe Covid-19, receive the vaccine.

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Trailer

Malhotra

 

 

 

 

 

 

Einstein

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle September 26 2022

Sep 262022
 
 September 26, 2022  Posted by at 8:21 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  79 Responses »


Henri Matisse Cap d’Antibes 1922

 

• Meloni’s Right-Wing Alliance Wins Clear Majority In Italian Elections (ZH)
• Thousands Of Firms In Italy On Brink Of Closure (RT)
• The Return of Fascism (Chris Hedges)
• Russia Says US “Wrecked” Ukraine Talks, But Peace Is Still Possible (Maté)
• Early Turnout Numbers For Referendums On Joining Russia (RT)
• Russia Says It’s Not Threatening Anyone With Nukes (Antiwar)
• We Might Be Spared Nuclear War But Threat of Home Grown Tyranny Remains (PCR)
• Pound Slumps To All-time Low Against Dollar (BBC)
• UK To Double Military Spending Amid Cost-of-living Crisis (RT)
• The Tories Declare Class War (Craig Murray)
• US Facing Natural Gas Shortage – Reuters (RT)
• New Zealand Prime Minister Calls for a Global Censorship System (Turley)
• Psaki : If Midterms Are A ‘Referendum’ On Biden, Democrats Are Doomed (NYP)
• Roger Waters Cancels Poland Concerts After Ukraine War Remarks (RFE)

 

 

Giorgia Meloni has won the Italian elections and is the next PM. The MSM has been loaded full of terms like Mussolini, ultra right wing and fascist. While she speaks of God, country and family. I don’t know exactly who is behind her, and I don’t need to. I have only to look at the mess Mario Draghi has made of Italy.

And more importantly, I look at the lockdowns and vaccine mandates, the unlimited support for the Ukraine nazis, and the cold and hungry winter many people in Europe, not least Italy, will face because of it.

Want to talk fascism? First learn to identify it.

 

 

 

 

Second largest food distribution centre in the world
https://twitter.com/i/status/1574124957377777664

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Meloni’s alliance which includes Salvini’s League and Berlusconi’s Forza Italia will win around 43% of the vote..”

• Meloni’s Right-Wing Alliance Wins Clear Majority In Italian Elections (ZH)

Europe’s unelected authoritarian ruler, Ursula von der Leyen, is not going to be happy: according to early exit polls out of Italy’s national election, the right-wing bloc of Giorgia Meloni – which the ultra-left wing press just can’t stop comparing to Mussolini – is set for a historic, if largely expected, victory and a clear majority (if, however, not a super-majority) which will propel Meloni to the top of the Italian government as the country’s next prime minister, ushering in a historic right-wing shift for a country that – like Sweden until two weeks ago – has traditionally been very left-wing. Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, which won just 4% of the vote during the last national election in 2018, won the biggest share of the vote in Sunday’s parliamentary elections with around 22.5%-26.5% of the vote according to an exit poll released by Italian national broadcaster Rai.

She is now set to become prime minister but would require approval from junior partners in her coalition to assume the role. According to an exit poll from Rai, Meloni’s alliance which includes Salvini’s League and Berlusconi’s Forza Italia will win around 43% of the vote. The Center-Left alliance will have just 25.5%-29.5% of the vote, while the 5 Star movement has 13.5%-17.5% of the final vote. Italy’s electoral system, which strongly favors parties that run as part of a coalition, is expected to help the right to an ample majority in both houses of Parliament: with 228 votes in the Lower House and 115 seats in the Senate (according to SkyTG24), Meloni will have a majority as just 104 votes are required. As the WSJ notes, the Italian election is “the first big test of the European Union’s political cohesion as it confronts Russia’s attempt to redraw the continent’s post-Cold War order.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s restriction of natural-gas deliveries has sparked an energy-price crunch that, combined with other inflationary pressures, is expected to push much of Europe into a recession this winter.” Meloni replaces former Goldman Sachs partner and ECB technocrat and globalist, Mario Draghi, and will be the country’s first female prime minister. The likely right-wing government will face difficult decisions over how to protect Italian households and businesses from sky-high prices for natural gas and electricity. While Italy’s parlous public finances allow limited scope for fiscal largess, if the UK is any example – and it is – Italy will engage in a similar strategy of targeted and debt-funded fiscal stimulus which will lead to a blowout in Italian debt, a further plunge in the euro and much chaos everywhere.

[..] During the election campaign, Meloni tried to reassure voters and investors that she will keep Italy’s mammoth debt under control and won’t question the country’s foreign alliances or support for Ukraine. Expect all of that to change tomorrow.

Meloni

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Where Meloni comes from.

• Thousands Of Firms In Italy On Brink Of Closure (RT)

Over 100,000 businesses in Italy are in danger of closing down due to soaring energy bills, the news outlet Corriere della Sera reported on Saturday, citing Carlo Sangalli, head of the Italian business association Confcommercio. “Already today many companies are reorganizing or reducing services… Between now and the first half of 2023, at least 120,000 small businesses in the service sector are at risk… This is a cautious estimate that does not take into account the largest companies,” Sangalli told the news outlet. According to the official, the situation could lead to the loss of more than 370,000 jobs. Sangalli noted that energy prices in Italy are much higher than in other countries, which puts a strain on small and medium-sized businesses.


“In terms of energy costs, our hotels, bars, restaurants and stores will pay 40-60% more on their bills this year than in Germany, and three times that than in France,” Sangalli said. He noted that the energy crisis may deal the final blow to many businesses that have already been made vulnerable by the Covid-19 pandemic. The official said the country needed “good reforms and good investments” that will “make our country work better and in a simpler way,” and called for some of the support measures introduced during the pandemic to be reinstated. Italy, along with other EU countries, has been battling a record-high inflation. Annual inflation in the country reached 8.4% in August, driven largely by energy costs. Italy relies on imports for nearly 75% of its energy. At the start of this year, it was importing 40% of its gas from Russia, but in July its Russian purchases dropped to 25% due to sanctions.

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Chris is getting too old. He’s glued to the rear view mirror.

• The Return of Fascism (Chris Hedges)

Meloni got her start in politics as a 15-year-old activist for the youth wing of the Italian Social Movement, founded after the World War II by supporters of Benito Mussolini. She calls EU bureaucrats agents of “nihilistic global elites driven by international finance.” She peddles the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory that non-white immigrants are being permitted to enter Western nations as part of a plot to undermine or “replace” the political power and culture of white people. She has called on the Italian navy to turn back boats with immigrants, which the far-right Interior Minister Matteo Salvini did in 2018. Her Fratelli d’Italia, Brothers of Italy, party is a close ally of Hungary’s President, Viktor Orban. A European Parliament resolution recently declared that Hungary can no longer be defined as a democracy.

Meloni and Orban are not alone. Sweden Democrats, which took over 20 percent of the vote in Sweden’s general election last week to become the country’s second largest political party, was formed in 1988 from a neo-Nazi group called B.S.S., or Keep Sweden Swedish. It has deep fascist roots. Of the party’s 30 founders, 18 had Nazi affiliations, including several who served in the Waffen SS, according to Tony Gustaffson a historian and former Sweden Democrat member. France’s Marine Le Pen took over 41 percent of the vote in April against Emmanuel Macron. In Spain, the hard-right Vox party is the third largest party in Spain’s Parliament. The far-right German AfD or Alternative for Germany party took over 12 percent in federal elections in 2017, making it the third largest party, though it lost a couple percentage points in the 2021 elections. The U.S. has its own version of fascism embodied in a Republican party that coalesces in cult-like fashion around Donald Trump, embraces the magical thinking, misogyny, homophobia and white supremacy of the Christian Right and actively subverts the election process.

Economic collapse was indispensable to the Nazis’ rise to power. In the 1928 elections in Germany, the Nazi party received less than 3 percent of the vote. Then came the global financial crash of 1929. By early 1932, 40 percent of the German insured workforce, six million people, were unemployed. That same year, the Nazis became the largest political party in the German parliament. The Weimar government, tone deaf and hostage to the big industrialists, prioritized paying bank loans and austerity rather than feeding and employing a desperate population. It foolishly imposed severe restrictions on who was eligible for unemployment insurance. Millions of Germans went hungry. Desperation and rage rippled through the population. Mass rallies, led by a collection of buffoonish Nazis in brown uniforms who would have felt at home at Mar-a-Lago, denounced Jews, Communists, intellectuals, artists and the ruling class, as internal enemies. Hate was their main currency. It sold well.

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“..talks between Ukraine and Russia collapsed after then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited Kiev in April and informed Zelensky that Putin “should be pressured, not negotiated with.”

• Russia Says US “Wrecked” Ukraine Talks, But Peace Is Still Possible (Maté)

In his Sept. 21 speech announcing an escalation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused NATO states of sabotaging a peace deal that could have ended it months ago. At talks brokered by Turkey in March, Putin said, “Kiev representatives voiced quite a positive response to our proposals… But a peaceful settlement obviously did not suit the West, which is why, after certain compromises were coordinated, Kiev was actually ordered to wreck all these agreements.” Speaking at the United Nations hours later, President Joe Biden criticized the Russian leader but did not address his claim that the US thwarted negotiations. Asked about Putin’s remarks, officials from the White House’s National Security Council (NSC) and the State Department offered differing responses.

An NSC official referred me to the Ukrainian government for comment about “their peace negotiations in the spring.” But overall, the official added, “it is inaccurate that the U.S. discouraged Ukraine from seeking a peace agreement. Throughout this conflict, we have said that it is up to Ukraine to make their own sovereign decisions.” A State Department spokesperson did not address Putin’s rendering of the March-April negotiations, and instead focused on the period before the invasion. “As part of our efforts to deter President Putin from launching a full-scale invasion of Ukraine’s sovereign territory on February 24, 2022, the United States consistently spoke of the two paths Russia could choose: dialogue and diplomacy, or escalation and massive consequences,” the State Department wrote. “We made genuine and sincere efforts to pursue the former, which we vastly preferred, but Putin chose war.”

Asked if it had any response to Putin’s account of the peace talks that occurred after the invasion, the State spokesperson did not respond. The Russian government has not offered any additional detail or evidence for Putin’s claim that Ukraine and Russia were close to a “settlement,” and that Kiev’s NATO backers intervened to “wreck” it. But the Kremlin is also not the first to assert it. The claim originated with sources to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who described the episode to Ukrainian media outlet Ukrayinska Pravda. According to their account, talks between Ukraine and Russia collapsed after then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited Kiev in April and informed Zelensky that Putin “should be pressured, not negotiated with.”

Johnson also relayed that “even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on [security] guarantees with Putin,” Western nations “are not.” That report was followed this month by an overlooked disclosure from former White House Russia expert Fiona Hill. Citing “multiple former senior U.S. officials,” Hill wrote that “Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement” in April. Russia would withdraw to its pre-invasion position, while Ukraine would pledge not to join NATO “and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries.”

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I see videos of people ostensibly being forced to vote Russia. Not exactly subtle. But who needs subtlety in an echo chamber?

• Early Turnout Numbers For Referendums On Joining Russia (RT)

The referendums on joining Russia are continuing in the Donbass republics and Russian-controlled regions of southern Ukraine. On Sunday, the turnout already reached the required 50% threshold in the Donetsk and Lugansk republics and Zaporozhye Region, with only Kherson lagging behind. In the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR), more than 76% of eligible voters have already cast their votes, according to official figures. The referendum in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) is proceeding at a similar pace, with some 77% of voters having shown up at the polling stations. Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions, which were largely seized by Russian forces amid the ongoing conflict, have demonstrated a lower turnout.


Still, the latter region has already met the required legal threshold, with some 51.55% of registered voters already casting their ballots, according to the head of the Zaporozhye electoral committee, Galina Katyshenko. Kherson has so far demonstrated lower turnout, with nearly 49% of voters showing up for the referendum. Polls across the two regions and in the Donbass republics are set to stay open for the next two days. Ukraine and its Western backers have rejected the referendums on joining Russia as illegal and have vowed to not recognize them regardless of their outcome. Speaking to US broadcaster CBS on Sunday, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky warned that should Russia complete the referendums, it would “make it impossible, in any case, to continue any diplomatic negotiations” with Moscow.

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It isn’t.

• Russia Says It’s Not Threatening Anyone With Nukes (Antiwar)

On Friday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said that Russia wasn’t threatening anyone with nuclear weapons and said Moscow doesn’t want a direct conflict with the US and NATO. “We are not threatening anyone with nuclear weapons,” Ryabkov said. “The criteria for their use are outlined in Russia’s military doctrine.” Russia’s doctrine is that it could use nuclear weapons if it is facing an “existential threat,” and Russian officials have made clear throughout the current war in Ukraine that this is still the policy. Russian President Vladimir Putin said last week that Moscow could use nuclear weapons to defend its “territorial integrity.” While his comments were a more explicit warning, it still falls in line with the doctrine. But Russian territory is set to expand into Ukraine after referendums that are being held in the Donbas, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia.


Ukraine is planning to launch more counter-offensives against these territories using weapons and intelligence provided by the US and other NATO countries. Ryabkov said that it’s not in Russia’s interest to be in a direct conflict with the US and NATO. “A face-off with the United States and NATO, which is fraught with an open armed conflict, is not in our interests,” he said. “We hope that the Biden administration understands the risks of uncontrolled escalation of the conflict in Ukraine, given the repeated statements by their officials that they don’t plan to send American servicemen to Ukraine,” Ryabkov added. President Biden has repeatedly stated that he won’t send US troops into Ukraine to fight Russia, although there is a CIA presence on the ground, according to a report from The New York Times that was published in June. The report also said special operations forces from Britain, France, Canada, and Lithuania are on the ground in Ukraine.

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“..the referendums that begin today in the liberated areas of Ukraine, which without question will succeed, promise to reduce the threat of Armageddon..”

• We Might Be Spared Nuclear War But Threat of Home Grown Tyranny Remains (PCR)

As readers know, I am convinced that Putin’s toleration of insults and provocations has had the effect of encouraging more and worse provocations and not, as he intended, to downplay conflict. As you also know, I am convinced that his “limited military operation” in Donbass designed to protect the Donbass Russians, formerly a part of Russia, from horrible abuse by Ukrainian forces and the neo-Nazi militias, was a mistake. It is a mistake because the West characterized a limited operation as an “invasion of Ukraine,” and used its slow progress as evidence of Russian failure. It is a mistake because the go-slow nature of the Russian offensive in order to minimize the impact on civilian lives and infrastructure gave the West plenty of time to convince itself to get more and more involved with diplomatic support, money, armaments and ammunition, training, and now with satellite information for targeting the Russian forces.

As I see it, Putin has been behaving as British Prime Minister Chamberlain is alleged to have behaved, thus encouraging more aggressive actions. Wanting peace at all costs brings war. As it is no longer possible for the Kremlin to speak of “our Western partners” or to deny that the West is at war with Russia, the Kremlin, trying to avoid a war that it knows would be nuclear, has reached my conclusion of eight years ago that if the areas in today’s artificial borders of Ukraine that require Russian protection were reincorporated into Russia, the conflict would have to cease or become direct Western military aggression against Russia. As Biden says he has no stomach for a war with Russia and will not permit one, and as NATO is incapable of such war, the referendums that begin today in the liberated areas of Ukraine, which without question will succeed, promise to reduce the threat of Armageddon.

Although in my opinion the leadership everywhere in the Western world is Satanic and insane, I do not think the Western governing elites are ready to commit suicide by attacking Russian territory. The West can say it doesn’t recognize the rights of people to self-determination, but if Russia says it is Russian territory, it is. So that you understand, the referendums are Putin’s way of ending the conflict before it widens into nuclear war. Putin’s rescue of the world from nuclear war will not be acknowledged by the Western presstitutes, Washington’s puppet EU and UK governments, or by the puppet who serves as NATO secretary general. But what they think does not matter. Putin, belatedly, is doing his best to save us all from nuclear war. Pray that he succeeds.

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“..historic tax cuts funded by huge increases in borrowing..”

• Pound Slumps To All-time Low Against Dollar (BBC)

The pound has fallen to its lowest level against the US dollar since decimalisation in 1971. In early Asia trade, sterling fell by more than 4% to $1.0327 before regaining some ground to around $1.05. That came after UK Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng unveiled historic tax cuts funded by huge increases in borrowing. The pound has also been under pressure as the dollar has been boosted by the US central bank continuing to raise interest rates. The euro also touched a fresh 20-year-low against the dollar in morning Asia trade amid investor concerns about the risk of recession as winter approaches with no sign of an end to the energy crisis or the war in Ukraine.


Peter Escho, the co-founder of investment firm Wealthi, said: “All currencies are getting sold off against the US dollar, so there is a large element of US dollar strength. But with the pound, it has really been exacerbated by news that the new government will be cutting taxes, which is inflationary. “Add to that recent energy subsidies and news that the Bank of England might need to have an emergency rate-hike meeting, this all results in a sense of panic,” he added. Some investors think the Bank of England will be forced to take emergency action to halt the pound’s slide. “To stop the bleeding even temporarily, the BOE may well enter ‘whatever it takes’ territory to bring inflation down. An emergency meeting rate hike could happen as soon as this week to regain credibility in the market. We could even see a hike today,” Stephen Innes, managing partner at SPI Asset Management told the BBC.

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Add Chucky the Third and you have a crazy winter.

• UK To Double Military Spending Amid Cost-of-living Crisis (RT)

Britain will boost its military spending considerably in the coming years, Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has revealed, despite the fact the nation is facing an economic crisis stemming from Covid-19 measures and London’s sanctions on Moscow. In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph published on Sunday, Wallace said the British government will shell out at least £52 billion ($56.5 billion) to shore up the military, which is “actually going to grow.” The plans are in keeping with Prime Minister Liz Truss’ campaign promise to boost defense spending. According to the official, Britain’s annual defense budget will amount to £100 billion by 2030. Wallace also took aim at former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak and the Treasury for what he described as a “corporate raid” of the armed forces which started back in the 1990s.

He claimed that the Treasury had even tried to “stipulate the size of the Army.” “My department has been so used to 30 or 40 years of defending against cuts or reconciling cuts with modern fighting, they’re going to have to get used to a completely different culture,” the defence secretary noted. Wallace expressed confidence, however, that Sunak’s successor in the office, Kwasi Kwarteng, would show more understanding toward the military’s needs. The defence secretary, who retained his post after Liz Truss defeated Sunak in the race to become prime minister in early September, told journalists that the new leader’s willingness to spend more on the military was one of the key factors for him in deciding which candidate to back for prime minister. “The reason I supported Liz Truss was that the risks we were prepared to tolerate in the middle of the decade are not risks I want to tolerate any more in light of Russian aggression,” Wallace said.

Addressing world leaders at the UN General Assembly in New York, Truss reiterated her campaign pledge to spend 3% of GDP on defense by 2030. According to Bloomberg, the new prime minister reversed former PM Boris Johnson’s plans to slash the military by 9,500 personnel. Commenting on the changes, which are expected to be unveiled by the end of 2022, Downing Street clarified that they were needed to “stand firm against coercion from authoritarian powers like Russia and China.” The decision comes despite the UK government’s interest payable on debt hitting the highest level on record, as reported by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) earlier this week. Inflation, food, and energy prices have also soared, while the British pound and consumer confidence have hit the lowest levelsin decades.

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“The idea of the cap on bankers’ bonuses was to remove the perverse incentive whereby a banker got a bonus of ten years salary by creating “assets” of bad loans..”

• The Tories Declare Class War (Craig Murray)

The “cap” on bankers bonuses that the Tories have just removed had been set at double their annual salary. Yes, double ptheir annual salary. So a banker on £320,000 a year could only get an annual bonus of £640,000. That has now been lifted so they will be able to get annual bonuses of millions again. On each million of which they will also benefit from a new £55,000 tax cut. The greatest irony of this is that the first multimillion pound bankers’ bonuses will be going this Christmas to bankers who shorted the pound before Kwasi Kwarteng’s “mini-budget”. The cap on bankers’ bonuses was largely a sop to the public who had bailed out the bankers with public money borrowed – with trillions in interest – from the very bankers we were bailing out.

In effect Gordon Brown created sterling and gave it free to the bankers who caused the collapse, so they could lend it to the public purse and we could pay it back over two decades of public austerity. The idea of the cap on bankers’ bonuses was to remove the perverse incentive whereby a banker got a bonus of ten years salary by creating “assets” of bad loans, with no care whether those loans collapsed or not two years later, as he already had his ten years’ bonus. The Tories have just brought back that perverse incentive. Krug all round in the City!! It’s a bonanza for lap dance club owners and cocaine dealers. It’s a disaster for us. This perverse incentive will be needed to keep any money flowing into UK mortgages.

With the Bank rate sure to exceed 5% in the next few months and inflation continuing, mortgage rates will be in double digits by this time next year, and we are only a couple of years away from mass default and repossession. The wealthy will of course be able to use some of their tax cut money to take advantage of the stamp duty cut and snap up the repossessed properties as buy to let. That is what the Tories call growing the economy. Over 50% of the money from the tax cuts will benefit the top 5% of earners. If wealth inequality were the primary driver of economic growth – and that is the basis of Kwarteng’s economic theory – then how do you explain that the UK already has the second highest wealth inequality in the G7, behind only the USA, yet the lowest economic growth?

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“.. they are up by a whopping 300% from a few years ago..”

• US Facing Natural Gas Shortage – Reuters (RT)

Shale producers in the United States are struggling to meet growing domestic and international natural gas demand, according to an analysis by Reuters. The report concluded that a hotter-than-expected summer and a lack of alternative energy sources have left the nation’s inventories below the seasonal average. It added that there were no signs of improvement in the level of inventories, despite the rise in gas prices. The latest data showed that the Permian Shale Basin, which contributes some 12% of US total gas output, and the rig count in the Permian, has been down for two weeks in a row. “Less drilling means less associated gas to add to the national total,” the news outlet reported.


While American energy companies have been exporting liquified natural gas (LNG) to Europe at record rates, calls have emerged lately to reduce those supplies to make sure there is enough for the US market. “With heating season around the corner in both Europe and the United States and with a lot of people in both places using gas for heating, the price outlook for gas does not look good from a consumer’s perspective,” Reuters wrote. The report noted that it is unlikely US gas prices will climb anywhere near European levels, “but they are up by a whopping 300% from a few years ago when gas was cheap because it was abundant.”

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WEF needs to go.

• New Zealand Prime Minister Calls for a Global Censorship System (Turley)

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is the latest liberal leader to call for an international alliance to censor speech. Unsatisfied with the unprecedented corporate censorship of social media companies, leaders like Hillary Clinton have turned from private censorship to good old-fashioned state censorship. Speech regulation has become an article of faith on the left. Ardern used her speech this week to the United Nations General Assembly to call for censorship on a global scale. Ardern lashed out at “disinformation” and called for a global coalition to control speech. After nodding toward free speech, she proceeded to lay out a plan for its demise through government regulation:

But what if that lie, told repeatedly, and across many platforms, prompts, inspires, or motivates others to take up arms. To threaten the security of others. To turn a blind eye to atrocities, or worse, to become complicit in them. What then? This is no longer a hypothetical. The weapons of war have changed, they are upon us and require the same level of action and activity that we put into the weapons of old. We recognized the threats that the old weapons created. We came together as communities to minimize these threats. We created international rules, norms and expectations. We never saw that as a threat to our individual liberties – rather, it was a preservation of them. The same must apply now as we take on these new challenges.

Ardern noted how extremists use speech to spread lies without noting that non-extremists use the same free speech to counter such views. To answer her question on “how do you tackle climate change if people do not believe it exists” is that you convince people using the same free speech. Instead, Ardern appears to want to silence those who have doubts. While referring to a global censorship coalition as a “light-touch approach to disinformation,” Ardern revealed how sweeping such a system would likely be. She defended the need for such global censorship on having to combat those who question climate change and the need to stop “hateful and dangerous rhetoric and ideology.”

“After all, how do you successfully end a war if people are led to believe the reason for its existence is not only legal but noble? How do you tackle climate change if people do not believe it exists? How do you ensure the human rights of others are upheld, when they are subjected to hateful and dangerous rhetoric and ideology?” That is the same rationale used by authoritarian countries like China, Iran, and Russia to censor dissidents, minority groups, and political rivals. What is “hateful” and “dangerous” is a fluid concept that government have historically used to silence critics or dissenters. Ardern is the smiling face of the new generation of censors. At least the old generation of censors like the Iranians do not pretend to support free speech and openly admit that they are crushing dissent. The point is that we need to be equally on guard when censorship is pushed from the left with the best of motivations and the worst of means.

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Oh, right, MSNBC.

• Psaki : If Midterms Are A ‘Referendum’ On Biden, Democrats Are Doomed (NYP)

Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki bluntly admitted that if the November midterm elections are a “referendum” on President Biden, the Democrats will lose. Psaki, who left the White House in May to take a job at MSNBC, said if the midterms focus on the “most extreme” party, mentioning Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene by name, then Democrats will be celebrating on election day. “If it is a referendum on the president, they will lose. And they know that. They also know that crime is a huge vulnerability for Democrats, I would say one of the biggest vulnerabilities,” Psaki said Sunday on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”


She said she has been watching the US Senate race play out in Pennsylvania between Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic candidate, and GOP celebrity heart surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz, and noted that Republicans are running ads painting Fetterman as soft on crime. What’s been interesting to me is it’s always you follow the money, and where are people spending money. And in Pennsylvania, the Republicans have been spending millions of dollars on the air on crime ads against Fetterman because that’s where they see his vulnerability , Biden’s one-time chief spokeswoman said. So yes, the economy is hanging over everything. But you do have to look at state-by-state factors, and crime is a huge issue in the Pennsylvania race, she said. While Biden’s approval ratings have recently climbed into the mid-40s from the dregs in recent polls, a Washington Post/ABC News survey released Sunday found it remains below that at 39%. The president’s disapproval rating is at 53%, the poll found.

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Peace is not welcome in Krakow.

• Roger Waters Cancels Poland Concerts After Ukraine War Remarks (RFE)

Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters has canceled concerts planned in Poland amid anger over his stance on Russia’s unprovoked war against Ukraine, Polish media reported. An official with the Tauron Arena in Krakow, where Waters was scheduled to perform two concerts in April, said they would no longer take place. “Roger Waters’ manager decided to withdraw…without giving any reason,” Lukasz Pytko from Tauron Arena Krakow said on September 24 in comments carried by Polish media outlets. The website for Waters’ This Is Not a Drill concert tour did not list the Krakow concerts previously scheduled for April 21 and 22.


City councilors in Krakow were expected to vote next week on a proposal to name Waters as a persona non grata, expressing “indignation” over the musician’s stance on the war in Ukraine. Allowing “Roger Waters, an open supporter of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, to play in Krakow…would be shameful for our city,” city councilor Lukasz Wantuch said last week on social media. “Let him sing in Moscow.” Waters wrote an open letter to Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska earlier this month in which he blamed “extreme nationalists” in Ukraine for having “set your country on the path to this disastrous war.” Waters has also criticized NATO, accusing it of provoking Russia.

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Malhotra

 

 


This is not stained glass. It’s a dragonfly’s wing seen up close. Dragonfly wings kill bacteria on contact by ripping apart their cell membranes with sharp nanopillars.

 

 

Bolt

 

 


Hydrosaurus, aka the Sailfin Dragon, is found in the rainforests of the Philippines

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

Debt Rattle September 7 2022

Sep 072022
 
 September 7, 2022  Posted by at 8:22 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  58 Responses »


Salvador Dali Cabaret scene 1922

 

• Putin Has Pushed Europe Into Inflationary Depression, Currency Collapse (Every)
• West Reluctant To Put Putin On Trial, Say Ukrainian Officials (G.)
• US Shares Blame In Ruined Ties With Russia – Clinton’s Defense Secretary (RT)
• Open Letter To Olena Zelenska – Stop The Slaughter (Roger Waters)
• Salvini: Russia Sanctions Backfired, Citizens Are ‘On Their Knees’ (Celente)
• Our Latest Interview with Jacques Baud (Postil)
• Sanctioned Russian Bank Bypasses SWIFT (RT)
• Gazprom Signs Gas Deal With China To Convert Payments To Ruble, Yuan (Fox)
• The Case for a New American Civil War (Dmitri Orlov)
• Stop Pretending US Is a Functioning Democracy (Chris Hedges)
• Greece Braces For Tougher, Bolder Erdogan As Turkish Media Enters ‘War Mode’ (ZH)
• Greece Tells Erdogan: “We Completely Reject Neo-Ottoman Bullies” (KTG)
• Global Covid19 Vax Propaganda Means Mass Casualties – Dr. Pierre Kory (USAW)
• BioNtech Sued For Vaccine Damage For 1st Time In Germany (R24)

 

 

 

 

Europe needs to find €2 trillion in energy costs. Good luck.

 

 

 

 

40% is like a war. Edward Dowd has almost entirely been banned, censored, disappeared. But not 100%.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1566995822616748032

 

 

 

 

 

 

US SPR at lowest level since 1984

 

 

Trump – A Nation in Decline

 

 

Barron Trump is reportedly considering getting into crack cocaine, Russian prostitutes, and corrupt international business dealings to get the FBI to leave him alone.

 

 

 

 

No, he has not. They did it themselves. That is elementary.

• Putin Has Pushed Europe Into Inflationary Depression, Currency Collapse (Every)

As pointed out on Twitter, Russia’s move is so blatant there is no way Europe can fudge an agreement with it the way some might have over ‘technical issues’ with the pipeline. (As was Russian President Putin also approving a new foreign policy doctrine backing a “Russian world” covering all Russian speakers, including some in the EU, while building up relations with all the countries the USSR was friendly with to boot.) This is a gun to the EU’s head. So was OPEC+ agreeing on a token 100,000 barrel a day cut to production. So was Iran saying no to the nuclear deal unless the IAEA backs off from investigating the serious breaches of the last nuclear deal it didn’t stick to.

Assuming Europe cannot retreat, that means a severe recession with very high inflation, and if anything were to happen to gas flows via Ukraine, which could easily occur, Europe would need to make swinging cuts to demand in order to avoid unplanned ‘gas outs’. German Economy Minister Habeck just said: “Expect the worst.” As mentioned yesterday, existential choices now need to be made, because there may not enough energy to go round. The choices are obviously unappetising. First, Germany is to delay mothballing some nuclear reactors – so common sense at gunpoint. Yet Europe and the UK will not ration energy by price because it means the staggering bills already being seen, and then stagflation, incession, or ‘inpression’ (an inflationary depression).

They will instead subsidize businesses and households even if that means wholesale energy prices march even higher. Germany’s latest EUR65bn energy bailout will do just that; so will Sweden’s and the Netherlands’ measures, and France’s and Spain’s: and Brussels is talking about an EU-wide energy price cap. Only part of these subsidies will flow from windfall taxes (which also remove the industry capital needed to invest in new energy supply). New UK PM Truss, just selected with an underwhelming 57% mandate of a tiny Tory electorate, has also floated Covid-furlough sized spending to cap business and household energy bills; and huge tax cuts; and a 2.5% trend GDP growth rate target. Good luck with the latter.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1567315217935114241

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You would have to put Zelensky on trial, too. And a whole range of western leaders.

• West Reluctant To Put Putin On Trial, Say Ukrainian Officials (G.)

Ukraine’s major western allies have yet to sign up to establish a tribunal to try Vladimir Putin and his inner circle for the crime of aggression, wanting to leave space for future relations with Russia, according to Ukraine’s top officials. “It’s big politics. On the one hand, countries publicly condemn the aggression but on the other, they are putting their foot in the closing door on relations with Russia so that it doesn’t close completely,” said Andriy Smyrnov, deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential administration, who is leading the country’s effort to establish the international tribunal. “They are attempting to keep some space for diplomatic manoeuvres,” said Smyrnov. “We know that agreements with Russia are not worth the paper they are written on.”

His claims come as the US president, Joe Biden, said on Monday that Russia should not be designated as a state sponsor of terrorism, something Ukrainian officials and some US politicians had pushed for. Russia had previously said such a designation would mean Washington had crossed the point of no return. Ukrainian officials say that since April, they have been trying to convince their western allies to establish an ad hoc tribunal which would hold Russia’s senior leadership responsible for the crime of aggression for invading Ukraine. Aggression is viewed as the supreme crime under international law because without the transgression of borders during an invasion, subsequent war crimes would not have been committed.

So far only the Baltic states and Poland have pledged support for the tribunal, said Ukraine’s officials. “We are expecting broader support,” said Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Andriy Kostin. “For us, the support of the UK and the US is very important as well as the rest of the civilised world,” said Smyrnov. The UK’s newly elected prime minister, Liz Truss, told Times Radio in May, when she was foreign secretary, that she would consider supporting the tribunal. The Council of Europe is due to discuss support for such a measure on 13 September.

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Just 30 years ago, the official attitude was much less hawkish.

• US Shares Blame In Ruined Ties With Russia – Clinton’s Defense Secretary (RT)

The US antagonized Russia by ignoring its post-USSR suffering and intrinsic security interests and needs to acknowledge this before ties with Moscow can be mended, William J. Perry, who served as secretary of defense under President Bill Clinton has said. Perry, a veteran advocate for the reduction of weapons of mass destruction, called for some introspection in Washington DC in an opinion piece published on Monday by the outlet Outrider. Subsequent US administrations pursued policies that antagonized the Russian people after the collapse of the USSR, Perry argued. The US didn’t care much about the suffering that Russia’s transition to a capitalist economy brought and ignored Russian concerns about NATO’s encroachment on its borders, he said.

“The combination of the West failing to act during Russia’s financial crisis, and ignoring their strongly-held views on NATO expansion, reinforced a prevailing Russian belief that we didn’t take them seriously,” the article said. “Indeed, many in the West saw Russia only as the loser of the Cold War, not worthy of our respect.” Perry, who headed up the Pentagon between 1994 and 1997, was a strong supporter of a program called Partnership for Peace. This was a compromise that allowed Eastern European nations and Russia to train with NATO troops but, in a nod to Russian objections, didn’t bring former Warsaw Pact nations into NATO.

The Clinton administration ultimately pushed for a formal expansion of the military bloc, setting the stage for an increasingly tense relationship with Russia that culminated in the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. The American attitude pushed Russians towards supporting Vladimir Putin, a person he describes as “an autocratic leader who would instead demand respect and power through force.” Perry said he considers the Russian leader an enemy of the US but argued that “there is no organic reason” why Russia itself should be one. “We must work to rebuild connections with Russia, treat the Russian people with respect, and rebuild our relationships, in the hopes that we can once again return to the path of friendship,” he concluded.

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“He stood on the election platform of the following promises. • To end the civil war in the East and bring peace to the Donbas and partial autonomy to Donetsk and Luhansk. • And to ratify and implement the rest of the body of the Minsk 2 agreements.”

• Open Letter To Olena Zelenska – Stop The Slaughter (Roger Waters)

Dear Mrs Zelenska,

My heart bleeds for you and all the Ukrainian and Russian families, devastated by the terrible war in Ukraine. I’m in Kansas City, USA. Iread an article on BBC.com apparently taken from an interview you have already recorded for a program called Sunday with Laura Kuenssburg which broadcasted on the BBC on September 4th. BBC.com quotes you as saying that if support for Ukraine is strong the crisis will be shorter. Hmmm? I guess that might depend on what you mean by “support for Ukraine?” If by “support for Ukraine,” you mean the West continuing to supply arms to the Kiev government’s armies, I fear you may be tragically mistaken. Throwing fuel, in the form of armaments, into a firefight, has never worked to shorten a war in the past, and it won’t work now, particularly because, in this case, most of the fuel is (a) being thrown into the fire from Washington DC, which is at a relatively safe distance from the conflagration, and (b) because the “fuel throwers” have already declared an interest in the war going on for as long as possible.

People like you and me actually want peace in Ukraine, don’t want the outcome to be that you have to fight to the last Ukrainian life – and possibly even, if the worst comes to the worst, to the last human life. If we, instead, wish to achieve a different outcome we may have to seek a different route and that route may lie in your husband’s previously stated good intentions. Yes, I mean the platform upon which he so laudably ran for the office of President of Ukraine, the platform upon which he won his historic landslide victory in the democratic election in 2019. He stood on the election platform of the following promises. • To end the civil war in the East and bring peace to the Donbas and partial autonomy to Donetsk and Luhansk. • And to ratify and implement the rest of the body of the Minsk 2 agreements.

One can only assume that your husband’s electoral policies didn’t sit well with certain political factions in Kiev and that those factions persuaded your husband to diametrically change course ignoring the people’s mandate. Sadly, your old man agreed to those totalitarian, anti-democratic dismissals of the will of the Ukrainian people, and the forces of extreme nationalism that had lurked, malevolent, in the shadows, have, since then, ruled the Ukraine. They have, also since then, crossed any number of red lines that had been set out quite clearly over a number of years by your neighbors the Russian Federation and in consequence they, the extreme nationalists, have set your country on the path to this disastrous war.

I won’t go on. If I’m wrong, please help me to understand how? If I’m not wrong, please help me in my honest endeavors to persuade our leaders to stop the slaughter, the slaughter which serves only the interests of the ruling classes and extreme nationalists both here in the West, and in your beautiful country, at the expense of the rest of us ordinary people both here in the West, and in the Ukraine, and in fact ordinary people everywhere all over the world. Might it not be better to demand the implementation of your husband’s election promises and put an end to this deadly war?

Love,
Roger Waters

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Kim Dotcom: “The biggest army in the history of the world will soon achieve a decisive victory against the US proxy war in Ukraine: European protesters.”

• Salvini: Russia Sanctions Backfired, Citizens Are ‘On Their Knees’ (Celente)

Matteo Salvini, leader of Italy’s far-Right League party, said Sunday that the economic sanctions that have been leveled against Russia are taking their toll on the average Italian and are leaving citizens “on their knees.” Daniele Franco, Italy’s economy minister, recently announced that the country’s net energy import costs will likely double this year and that Rome will not be able to “indefinitely to cushion the blow on the economy,” Reuters reported. “To keep offsetting, at least in part, rising energy prices through public finances is very costly and we could never do enough,” he said. “What matters is to bring the price of gas and energy back to sustainable levels.”

“Several months have passed and people are paying two, three, even four times more for their bills. And after seven months, the war continues and Russian Federation coffers are filling with money,” he told RTL radio. He tweeted earlier that “those who have been sanctioned are winners and those who put the sanctions in place are on their knees.” He called on the EU to “protect businesses and families” like it did during the COVID-19 outbreak. Russia’s Gazprom announced that it will indefinitely suspend gas flow on its Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which sent the price of the benchmark Dutch TTF hub up to €281 per megawatt hour, up 31 percent. Russia blamed technical issues that cannot be resolved due to sanctions that have been imposed.

EURACTIV said it obtained a leaked paper that outlines the European Commission plan to cap wholesale gas prices that would target Russia. The process would cap the price of imported gas from Moscow and would set up pricing zones for countries that are particularly impacted by the prices. The paper admitted that the pricing zones will be more challenging to implement and “would require significant regulatory and technical complex preparations,” the report said.

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Jacques Baud is a former Swiss army colonel, now intelligence & security consultant.

“..the exclusion of disabled athletes, cats, even Russian trees from competitions, the dismissal of conductors, the de-platforming of Russian artists, such as Dostoyevsky, or even the renaming of paintings..”

• Our Latest Interview with Jacques Baud (Postil)

You have just published your latest book on the war in Ukraine—Operation Z. “The aim of this book is to show how the misinformation propagated by our media has contributed to push Ukraine in the wrong direction. I wrote it under the motto “from the way we understand crises derives the way we solve them.” By hiding many aspects of this conflict, the Western media has presented us with a caricatural and artificial image of the situation, which has resulted in the polarization of minds. This has led to a widespread mindset that makes any attempt to negotiate virtually impossible. The one-sided and biased representation provided by mainstream media is not intended to help us solve the problem, but to promote hatred of Russia.

Thus, the exclusion of disabled athletes, cats, even Russian trees from competitions, the dismissal of conductors, the de-platforming of Russian artists, such as Dostoyevsky, or even the renaming of paintings aims at excluding the Russian population from society! In France, bank accounts of individuals with Russian-sounding names were even blocked. Social networks Facebook and Twitter have systematically blocked the disclosure of Ukrainian crimes under the pretext of “hate speech” but allow the call for violence against Russians. None of these actions had any effect on the conflict, except to stimulate hatred and violence against the Russians in our countries. This manipulation is so bad that we would rather see Ukrainians die than to seek a diplomatic solution.

As Republican Senator Lindsey Graham recently said, it is a matter of letting the Ukrainians fight to the last man. It is commonly assumed that journalists work according to standards of quality and ethics to inform us in the most honest way possible. These standards are set by the Munich Charter of 1971. While writing my book I found out that no French-speaking mainstream media in Europe respects this charter as far as Russia and China are concerned. In fact, they shamelessly support an immoral policy towards Ukraine, described by Andrés Manuel López Obrador, president of Mexico, as “We provide the weapons, you provide the corpses!”

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Still relatively small amounts; $1.6 million. But that will grow.

• Sanctioned Russian Bank Bypasses SWIFT (RT)

One of Russia’s top banks, VTB has become the first lender in the country to launch money transfers to China in yuan, sidestepping the global financial messaging system SWIFT. “The new reality is leading to a massive abandoning of the use of the US dollar and the euro in international payments,” VTB CEO Andrey Kostin said in a statement, highlighting the importance of creating and developing payment systems as an alternative to SWIFT. “We are the first Russian bank to install an alternative cross-border bank transfer service with China and plan to increase the volume of these transactions by five times by next year,”he added.


According to a VTB press release, the maximum amount of a single money transfer was equivalent to 20 million rubles ($325,000) with the maximum monthly limit set at 100 million rubles ($1.6 million). The bank also announced plans to begin lending in the yuan and other non-Western currencies later this year. “The launch of the yuan transfer system is expected to significantly simplify the work of Russian companies and individuals with Chinese partners, increasing the popularity of the yuan in our country,” Kostin added. Ukraine-related sanctions cut Russia’s biggest banks off from SWIFT, limiting their access to the dollar and euro markets. The drastic measures forced Moscow to develop its own financial infrastructure in cooperation with nations that haven’t imposed sanctions.

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As goes your gas, so goes your currency.

• Gazprom Signs Gas Deal With China To Convert Payments To Ruble, Yuan (Fox)

Russia’s Gazprom on Tuesday said it had reached an agreement with China to start fulfilling its gas supply contracts with payments made in rubles or yuan instead of euros or dollars. The announcement on Telegram comes just six months after a 30-year deal was signed between Gazprom and the China National Petroleum Corporation in early February, which said Russian gas supplies would be paid in euros as Russia looked to separate itself from the U.S. just weeks before it invaded Ukraine. Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said the payment arrangement would prove “mutually beneficial” for both state owned energy agencies as Russia and China look to bolster their economies amid flagging relations with the West.


“I believe that it will simplify the calculations, become an excellent example for other companies, and give an additional impetus to the development of our economies,” Miller said. Russian President Vladimir Putin enforced a mandate in March that required all Gazprom sales to Europe be paid in rubles after the U.S. and NATO hit Moscow with steep international sanctions immediately following its invasion in Ukraine. Moscow has since cut gas to several European nations including Germany, Denmark, Poland, Bulgaria, Finland and the Netherlands after they refused to abide by Putin’s mandate. Gazprom, which has repeatedly staunched its supplies to Europe over alleged “maintenance” issues, said Monday it would not resume pumping gas until Germany energy company Siemens Energy adheres to its equipment repair demands.

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“To keep the US population at bay, the oligarchy must keep it supplied with vast quantities of junk food, liquor, drugs and pornography…”

• The Case for a New American Civil War (Dmitri Orlov)

Will the USA hold together through 2024? Earlier this year Covid-related complications took the life of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the bombastic perennial leader of Russia’s Liberal Democratic Party. He was known not just for his inimitable oratory but also for the uncanny accuracy of his predictions. For example, he predicted the start of Russia’s Special Military Operation in the Ukraine almost to the day—months before the fact and at a time when nobody else had much of a clue as to what would happen. Another prediction of his reads as follows: “There won’t be a US presidential election in 2024 because there will no longer be a United States.” Will he turn out to be prescient on this count too? Let’s watch!

Zhirinovsky is by no means alone with making such a prediction. Recent opinion polls show over 40% of Americans expressing apprehensions that a new civil war is likely to break out over the next decade or so. Perish the thought that the good people surveyed had performed an independent analysis, based on which they were able to compute the probability of a civil war! By now, the vast majority of the people in the US have been conditioned to perceive reality as a mosaic composed of short news clips, sound bites, scenes no longer than can fit between two television commercials and miniature narratives that present this or that imaginary object in a positive or a negative light. They think that a civil war is likely because that’s what they have been told through mass media or the invisibly yet relentlessly chaperoned social media.

The oligarchy, which controls all of the above, is toying with two alternative business plans. Plan A, which is more profitable and less risky, doesn’t feature a civil war while Plan B, risky though still profitable, does. In either case, the profits accrue from confiscating wealth from the population; with Plan A, less of that wealth gets blown up, hence more profit. But Plan A requires securing complete obedience and docility from an increasingly distressed and restive population. Paraphrasing Klaus Schwab, they have to put up with having nothing and pretend to be happy (as a condition for being allowed to stay indoors and fed).

To keep the US population at bay, the oligarchy must keep it supplied with vast quantities of junk food, liquor, drugs and pornography. And in spite of all the propaganda urging people to sort themselves into a rainbow of genders, most of them sterile, some women may still manage to get pregnant, refuse to have an abortion and actually give birth to children, preventing the population from shrinking as fast as the dwindling resource base. “Listen, women are getting pregnant every day in America, and this is a real issue,” quoth VP Kamala Harris. In spite of the politically incorrect term “women”—wombed men, that is—her message is crystal clear: her fellow-Americans should be spayed and neutered like the proper domestic animals she thinks they are. Your pets aren’t sterilized, don’t you now; they are transgender! Doesn’t that sound much more fashionable?

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“..the poorer and more vulnerable you are, the more you are exploited, thrust into a hellish debt peonage from which there is no escape..”

• Stop Pretending US Is a Functioning Democracy (Chris Hedges)

The U.S. continues to posit itself as a champion of opportunity, freedom, human rights and civil liberties, even as half the country struggles at subsistence level, militarized police gun down and imprison the poor with impunity, and the primary business of the state is war. This collective self-delusion masks what America has become — a nation where the citizenry has been stripped of economic and political power and where the brutal militarism practiced overseas is practiced at home. In classical totalitarian regimes, such as Nazi Germany or Stalin’s Soviet Union, economics was subordinate to politics. But under inverted totalitarianism, the reverse is true. There is no attempt, unlike fascism and state socialism, to address the needs of the poor.

Rather, the poorer and more vulnerable you are, the more you are exploited, thrust into a hellish debt peonage from which there is no escape. Social services, from education to health care, are anemic, nonexistent or privatized to gouge the impoverished. Further ravaged by 8.5 percent inflation, wages have decelerated sharply since 1979. Jobs often do not offer benefits or security. In my book America: The Farewell Tour, I examined the social indicators of a nation in serious trouble. Life expectancy in the U.S. fell in 2021, for the second year in a row. There have been over 300 mass shootings this year. Close to a million people have died from drug overdoses since 1999. There are an average of 132 suicides every day. Nearly 42 percent of the country is classified as obese, with one in 11 adults considered severely obese.

These diseases of despair are rooted in the disconnect between a society’s expectations of a better future and the reality of a system that does not provide a meaningful place for its citizens. Loss of a sustainable income and social stagnation causes more than financial distress. As Émile Durkheim points out in The Division of Labor in Society, it severs the social bonds that give us meaning. A decline in status and power, an inability to advance, a lack of education and adequate health care, and a loss of hope result in crippling forms of humiliation. This humiliation fuels loneliness, frustration, anger and feelings of worthlessness.

Read more …

Erdogan has elections next year. His base is nationalists. Inflation in Turkey is 90+%. Nuff said.

• Greece Braces For Tougher, Bolder Erdogan As Turkish Media Enters ‘War Mode’ (ZH)

Both Turkish and Greek media reports over the last days have been filled by heightened speculation that the two Mediterranean powers (and NATO “allies”… ironically enough) could be headed to war. This follows Saturday comments from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan wherein he issued a thinly veiled threat of military action against Greece. Charging that Greece is “occupying” islands off Turkey’s coast and militarizing them, Erdogan said in a fiery speech aimed at Athens that “When the time comes, we’ll do what’s necessary. As we say, we may come down suddenly one night.” He added: “Look at history, if you go further, the price will be heavy.”

An English-language publication covering Greece, The National Herald, observed on Monday in follow-up to Erdogan’s threat: “Greece is bracing for what’s expected to be an emboldened Turkish President Recep Tayyip drawing lines in the sea and becoming more aggressive in asserting his claims to areas in the Aegean and East Mediterranean.” Via Anadolu Agency: In his message, Erdogan mentions Izmir, a province on Türkiye’s western Aegean Sea coast that the Turkish army liberated from Greek occupation in 1922 during its War of Independence. The publication notes that something seems different this time compared to prior threatening rhetoric coming from top Turkish officials over the past two years: Erdogan typically mouths off against Greece with fiery rhetoric that frequently is followed by him backing away from threats but he’s been upping the ante and the volume, raising tension and growing worries of a conflict.

Seeing the European Union, NATO, United Nations and United States reluctant to provoke him, the hard-line Turkish leader has demanded Greece remove troops from islands near Turkey’s coast and said it would be a cause for war if Greece doubles its maritime boundaries to 12 miles. All of this comes also as Ankara has lodged a formal complaint with NATO headquarters, saying that Greece last month achieved radar lock on its F-16s which had been flying over the Mediterranean. Further, Turkey has charged that Greek jets have violated its airspace over 250 times in harassing maneuvers. “The ministry also informed that the Greek warplanes violated the Turkish airspace 256 times since the beginning of 2022,” Hurriyet reported. “In addition, they harassed the Turkish jets 158 times this year, the ministry said. On the sea, the Greek coastal guards violated the Turkish territorial waters 33 times, it added.”

Read more …

“We might come suddenly one night..”

• Greece Tells Erdogan: “We Completely Reject Neo-Ottoman Bullies” (KTG)

“It is unacceptable for Greece to be receiving threats that reach the point of disputing Greek sovereignty from a country that is an ally within NATO, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said at noon on Tuesday as Ankara has increased his escalating hostile rhetoric and threats and thus via the president himself Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “Greece’s fixed position supports dialogue on the basis of international law, the international law of the sea and good-neighbor relations, the PM said during a meeting with the President of Slovakia, Zuzana Caputova who is officially visiting Greece. “Turkey creates tension undermining security and stability in the region,” the PM underlined.

Tuesday afternoon, it was the turn of Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias to respond to Erdogan’s unprecedented threats “We completely reject the Neo-Ottoman bullies,” Dendias stressed during a meeting with his French counterpart Catherine Colonna. The FM said that Greece daily faces a series of threats and statements that he described as “outrageous”, pointing out to “maps that are periodically published depicting Greek islands as Turkish territory.”

Recalling Erdogan’s latest threat “We might come suddenly one night” that is a clear statement implying an invasion of Greek territory, Dendias “advised” “anyone who dreams of attacks and conquests to think 3 or 4 times, adding “we are sufficient to defend the integrity and territorial independence.” He recalled also that Turkey threatens Greece with a casus belli if Athens exercises its rights as they derive from the International Law. The Greek FM sent a clear message to Turkey saying that Greece has faced much more serious threats in its history and stressed “we completely reject the neo-Ottoman bullies.”

Read more …

“We have never had this much power and this much propaganda . . . never the same story being told to the entire globe at the same time and the same lie.”

“..It’s not going to start in America because this is the United States of Pharma.”

• Global Covid19 Vax Propaganda Means Mass Casualties – Dr. Pierre Kory (USAW)

Dr. Kory is actively trying to find treatments for people harmed by the CV19 vax, but that is not the biggest problem he faces. Dr. Kory says, “People are being told things (like getting CV19 booster shots) that are putting them at grave risk. I don’t know how to combat a global technological propaganda instrument. We have never had that before. I don’t think we have ever had the same messages and the same stories being shot out 24/7. I have been saying this for a while, and the world has gone mad because of unrelenting propaganda and censorship. We have never had this much power and this much propaganda . . . never the same story being told to the entire globe at the same time and the same lie.”


Dr. Kory says, “Not only no more shots, but I would say we need a national cry to stop the vaccine campaign. . . It’s not going to start in America because this is the United States of Pharma.” This is why cheap, effective drugs such as Ivermectin are being banned here in America and around the world. Dr. Kory says, “We are at war here. You cannot have Ivermectin in the marketplace. It threatens the vaccine, Paxlovid, monoclonal-antibodies and Remdesivir. Ivermectin is a drug that is the biggest financial threat to the biggest market in pharmaceutical history.”

Read more …

Google translate.

• BioNtech Sued For Vaccine Damage For 1st Time In Germany (R24)

A Dusseldorf law firm has filed six-figure lawsuits against vaccine manufacturer Biontech for damage to health caused by their vaccine. The lawyers denounce the company’s disrespectful and irresponsible treatment of people who have been vaccinated. According to media reports, the law firm Rogert and Ulbrich stated that they could not reach an out-of-court agreement with Biontech. As a result, lawsuits in the six-figure range have now been filed in several matters. The lawyers sharply criticize the behavior of the vaccine manufacturer: Instead of reacting correctly to claims for damages and information and dealing with the respective facts, they merely referred to a Pfizer form. Marco Rogert stated: “The victims feel that they are not being taken seriously.

They are not only plagued by significant, life-limiting health problems since the vaccination. Now the company responsible is arrogantly giving them the cold shoulder instead of fulfilling their responsibility.” The lawyer’s clients had usually already described their tale of woe elsewhere, for example to the EMA or the PEI. “Especially in cases involving significant damage to health, the least the victims can expect would be for the facts to be dealt with seriously.” Tobias Ulbrich sees a clear connection between Covid vaccination and various diseases: “More and more vaccine damage is coming to light worldwide and many vaccinated people are only now beginning to realize that their current diseases are related to the mRNA injection,” he stated.

In fact, Ulbrich has already commented on this topic several times before on Twitter – he tweeted on August 28 that “VAIDS” is not a disease, but a description of the condition, because the values of those affected confirmed an impairment of the immune system after the vaccination. He sees the vaccine manufacturers as having a duty to prove that there is no connection between the health problems and the vaccination – and not the vaccinees. This is regulated in the Medicines Act. The law firm Rogert and Ulbrich in Düsseldorf has specialized in the legal processing of vaccination damage and its consequences. Those affected by the facility-related vaccination requirement are also advised and represented.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

Puzzle

 

 

 

 

Prophet 2020

 

 

 

 

Peacock
https://twitter.com/i/status/1567262158295076866

 

 

Kookaburra

 

 

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Debt Rattle September 3 2019

Sep 032019
 
 September 3, 2019  Posted by at 8:49 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  11 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Head of a woman 1939

 

• Resurrecting the American Economy With Stalinism 2.0 (Dmitry Orlov)
• Use Old Chinese Debt To Default On Beijing’s $1 Trillion Treasuries (RT)
• Boris Johnson Faces Showdown In Parliament (BBC)
• The Realities Of A No-Deal Brexit (Ivan Rogers)
• Ahead of Brexit, UK Factories Go Quiet (R.)
• Hong Kong Leader Says She Would ‘Quit’ If She Could (R.)
• Carrie Lam: Hong Kong Leader ‘Never Tendered Resignation To Beijing’ (BBC)
• The Quickening (Kunstler)
• Jeffrey Epstein’s Model-Scouting Pal Has ‘Disappeared Without A Trace’ (NYP)
• New Delays Could Keep Boeing 737 MAX Grounded Into Holiday Travel Season (MW)
• All Of Us Are In Danger: John Pilger Has Chilling Warning From Assange (RT)

 

 

Lovely from Dmitry. Do read the whole thing. What the US must do to save its economy is imitate China.

• Resurrecting the American Economy With Stalinism 2.0 (Dmitry Orlov)

Donald Trump has recently ordered US corporations to move production out of China and into the US. Easier said than done!—or, rather, undone. Moving production to China (and, in case of IT, to India) allowed US corporations to benefit from the large wage differential and an easier regulatory environment in order to be more profitable. They spent these excess profits by buying back their own stock, paying generous dividends to their shareholders and using their artificially inflated stock prices to justify exorbitant executive salaries and bonuses.

Along the way, they impoverished American workers by depriving them of gainful deployment, eroded the skill base of the American population and, perhaps most importantly, destroyed demand for their products because more and more Americans could no longer afford them. As these trends played out, making China prosperous and the US increasingly distressed and impoverished, with close to 100 million working-age people permanently jobless, US corporations could no longer profit from their offshored production to the same extent, and so they took advantage of low interest rates to borrow huge sums of money and use it to continue buying back their own shares, paying dividends and continuing with the exorbitant executive compensation.


By now, many of the major US corporations are financial zombies, waiting for an uptick in interest rates to drive them into bankruptcy. And it is these zombies that are being tasked with bringing production back to the US. Good luck with that! Which is to say, it is highly unlikely that such an effort could possibly succeed. But even if it could succeed, would it solve the problem—which is that the US is gradually degenerating into a bankrupt third world country? Perhaps not, because, you see, the entire theory of “making America great again” is based on a fallacy—which is that China became the world’s largest economy (by purchasing power) and the world’s factory simply by virtue of the fact that American corporations offshored production to it.

Read more …

The webs we weave…

• Use Old Chinese Debt To Default On Beijing’s $1 Trillion Treasuries (RT)

[..] the trade war adversaries are already considering options beyond tariffs. Beijing, which enjoys a trade surplus with the US, has hinted it could use rare earth metals as a leverage. There is also China’s “nuclear” option of dumping US Treasuries. Meanwhile, Washington has been reminded of China’s century-old bonds incurred before the nation adopted communism, which, adjusted for inflation, interest and other fees, amount to around $1 trillion, perfectly covering Beijing’s holdings of US Treasury Bills. “The US will simply default on $1 trillion of UST bonds held by China and claim, based on these old bonds, that they are justified in doing so,” Max Keiser, the host of RT’s Keiser Report, said.


While it’s really doubtful that China would ever pay out, the US’ attempt to claim the money would only trigger serious economic problems and make the already turbulent situation worse, investment guru Jim Rogers told RT. “If America gets a ruling that they [China] must pay then what America would do is freeze Chinese assets in America… take those assets or seize those assets. And then you have a very serious trade war going on,” Rogers said, adding that China would certainly retaliate to such a move. The individual holders of the antique bonds can do little to get any money from China, which has never recognized the debt. Firstly, they would have to have their claim recognized, win the case, and then find some way to force China to cash out, according to Duke University professor Mitu Gulati. However, it would be a completely different story if the Trump administration steps in.

Read more …

How does he feel about Bitcoin?

• ECB Official Mersch Calls Facebook’s Libra ‘Treacherous’ (MW)

A high-ranking European Central Bank official on Monday outlined problems with the planned cryptocurrency Libra, the latest in a series of warnings from government officials. “I sincerely hope that the people of Europe will not be tempted to leave behind the safety and soundness of established payment solutions and channels in favor of the beguiling but treacherous promises of Facebook’s siren call,” said Yves Mersch, a member of the ECB’s executive board.

In a speech at a Frankfurt legal conference, he wryly noted that Libra was coming from “the very same people who had to explain themselves in front of legislators in the United States and the European Union on the threats to our democracies resulting from their handling of personal data on their social media platform,” a reference to Facebook. One concern Mersch raised is that the Libra coins will be issued by a cartel of players in the fields of payments, technology, e-commerce and telecommunications. Called the Libra Association, it will control the blockchain and collect the seigniorage income. Libra Association members include Mastercard, PayPal, eBay, and Uber.


“With such a setup, it is difficult to discern the foundational promises of decentralization and disintermediation normally associated with cryptocurrencies and other digital currencies. On the contrary, similarly to public money, Libra will actually be highly centralized, with Facebook and its partners acting as quasi-sovereign issuers of currency,” he said. Public money also is centralized, but unlike Libra, has a “sovereign entity and a central issuance authority.” The corporate entities, by contrast, are accountable to their shareholders and will “get privileged access to private data that they can abusively monetize.”

Read more …

More than one. Chaos galore.

• Boris Johnson Faces Showdown In Parliament (BBC)

Boris Johnson faces a showdown in Parliament later after No 10 officials warned he would call for a snap general election on 14 October if MPs succeed in seizing control of Commons business. Rebel Tories and Labour MPs are planning a bill to stop the UK leaving the EU on 31 October without a deal. Mr Johnson said he did not want an election, but progress with the EU would be “impossible” if the MPs win. Jeremy Corbyn said the Labour Party was ready for a general election. But shadow Northern Ireland secretary Tony Lloyd later said Labour would vote against any government plans to hold a general election before the UK is due to leave the EU on 31 October.


He said Labour “will not have Boris Johnson dictate the terms of an election that crashes this country out with no deal”. Under the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, Mr Johnson would require the backing of two-thirds of the UK’s 650 MPs to trigger a poll in the autumn. A number of MPs have come together across party political lines in a fresh bid to stop a no-deal Brexit, after Mr Johnson vowed to leave the EU with or without a deal on 31 October. When Parliament returns on Tuesday after recess, they are expected to put forward legislation under Standing Order 24 – a rule that allows urgent debates to be heard.

Read more …

Rogers was the Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom to the European Union from 4 November 2013 until 3 January 2017.

• The Realities Of A No-Deal Brexit (Ivan Rogers)

No developed country has taken itself out of a trade bloc since the war because the costs of deliberately making trade substantially more difficult with your closest neighbours are obviously large. No trade deal has ever been struck between partners actively seeking to get further apart. Trade deals have always been between those aspiring to converge and to increase trade flows, not diverge and decrease them. No amount of repetition of ‘this will all be terribly easy’ ever makes it true. It is not unpatriotic or ‘declinist’ to point out that a process of ‘differential disentanglement’ – which is actually what Brexit is – will be hard, complex and lengthy. How, seriously, after more than three years can so much of our political elite still be in denial on this?

If you leave a club whose other members are prepared to integrate more deeply politically and juridically than you, because they see economic and political benefits from doing so, you cannot tell the public that any adverse consequences of leaving are all the club’s fault, for wilfully not carrying on giving you club benefits when you leave. Nor can you just wish away issues at borders, whether on land or cross-Channel, when the entire purpose of leaving the Single Market and Customs Union must be to run deliberately different regulatory regimes – chosen by your own Parliament – where you believe it suits you. Such choices by definition entail a hard border. Borders across the whole world demarcate different regulatory regimes.


Even the border between Sweden and Norway, one in the EU, the other out of it but wanting to remain much closer ‘in’ to EU institutional and legal frameworks (Single Market, Schengen) than our government, is a hard border. If alternative arrangements currently existed which obviated the need for any such border, they would already be operating right there. They are not.

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“Another contraction in the current quarter would officially herald a recession.”

• Ahead of Brexit, UK Factories Go Quiet (R.)

British manufacturing contracted last month at the fastest rate in seven years, rocked by the deepening Brexit crisis and the global downturn, boding poorly for the chances of an economic rebound in the third quarter, a survey showed on Monday. The IHS Markit/CIPS UK Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) fell to 47.4 from 48.0 in July, a full point lower than the median forecast in a Reuters poll of economists and well below the 50 dividing line for growth and contraction.


Only German manufacturing fared worse among the national PMIs produced for Europe by data company IHS Markit. “The big picture is that manufacturing is on track to contract for a second consecutive quarter, and a meaningful recovery is unlikely given the ongoing struggles of global manufacturing,” Andrew Wishart, UK economist at consultancy Capital Economics, said. Britain’s overall economy shrank in the second quarter too, a hangover from the stockpiling boom in advance of the original March Brexit deadline. Another contraction in the current quarter would officially herald a recession.

Read more …

What she said in private…

• Hong Kong Leader Says She Would ‘Quit’ If She Could (R.)

Embattled Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam said she has caused “unforgivable havoc” by igniting the political crisis engulfing the city and would quit if she had a choice, according to an audio recording of remarks she made last week to a group of businesspeople. At the closed-door meeting, Lam told the group that she now has “very limited” room to resolve the crisis because the unrest has become a national security and sovereignty issue for China amid rising tensions with the United States. “If I have a choice,” she said, speaking in English, “the first thing is to quit, having made a deep apology.”

Lam’s dramatic and at times anguished remarks offer the clearest view yet into the thinking of the Chinese leadership as it navigates the unrest in Hong Kong, the biggest political crisis to grip the country since the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Hong Kong has been convulsed by sometimes violent protests and mass demonstrations since June, in response to a proposed law by Lam’s administration that would allow people suspected of crimes on the mainland to be extradited to face trial in Chinese courts. The law has been shelved, but Lam has been unable to end the upheaval. Protesters have expanded their demands to include complete withdrawal of the proposal, a concession her administration has so far refused. Large demonstrations wracked the city again over the weekend.


Lam suggested that Beijing had not yet reached a turning point. She said Beijing had not imposed any deadline for ending the crisis ahead of National Day celebrations scheduled for October 1. And she said China had “absolutely no plan” to deploy People’s Liberation Army troops on Hong Kong streets. World leaders have been closely watching whether China will send in the military to quell the protests, as it did a generation ago in the bloody Tiananmen crackdown in Beijing. Lam noted, however, that she had few options once an issue had been elevated “to a national level,” a reference to the leadership in Beijing, “to a sort of sovereignty and security level, let alone in the midst of this sort of unprecedented tension between the two big economies in the world.”

Read more …

… and now denies in public.

• Carrie Lam: Hong Kong Leader ‘Never Tendered Resignation To Beijing’ (BBC)

Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam has denied ever offering to resign, after audio was leaked of her saying she would if she could. Yesterday a recording of a private meeting emerged where she is heard saying: “If I have a choice, the first thing is to quit.” On Tuesday she said she had “never tendered any resignation”, but did not deny the authenticity of the recording. [..] The audio, published by Reuters on Monday, was recorded at a private meeting of business leaders that Ms Lam attended last week. In it she is heard blaming herself for igniting the territory’s political crisis, saying it was unforgiveable of her to have caused such huge havoc. “If I have a choice, the first thing is to quit, having made a deep apology, is to step down,” the voice on the tape says.


[..] She also says in the recording that China does not have a deadline by which it wants to solve the crisis in Hong Kong, and that Chinese authorities would not send in troops to end the protests. At a weekly press conference, Ms Lam was asked about the leaked audio. She said it was “totally unacceptable” that her remarks made in private had been recorded and passed to the media. “I have never tendered a resignation to the Central People’s Government,” the chief executive told reporters. “I have not even contemplated to discuss a resignation with the Central People’s Government.” “The choice of not resigning is my own choice,” she said, insisting she wanted “to help Hong Kong in a very difficult situation and to serve the people of Hong Kong”.

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“..the RussiaGate ploy alerted Americans that there truly is a Deep State with its own self-winding agenda.”

• The Quickening (Kunstler)

Cue the rise of the redistributionists, that is, the people who want the government to determine who gets what and where to get it. Or, shall we say, who to take it from. Elizabeth Warren is leading the pack for now — the Oklahoma once-Republican grandma turned Leon Trotsky wannabe. I’ll give her this: she’s a helluva cheerleader. And she’s energetic for an old broad, prancing around the stage in her spandex yoga pants, arms akimbo, head vibrating. I wonder, though, whether voters (those aforesaid citizens) will remember that she vowed to give free health care to border-jumpers. Or that she pretended to be a Cherokee for career advancement at snooty Harvard. A rowdy-dowdy financial smash-up will tarnish the Trump MAGA brand for sure.


But will the Golden Golem of Greatness simply stew in the oval office or try some desperate new stunts to salvage his quixotic political career? And will his shaky marriage with the Republican Party veer into divorce court, with the party turning to a steadier and more conventional figure in the coming election year? They’ll get beat anyway as economic depression mounts, but they’ll save face in defeat. That is, if Mr. Trump manages to not start World War Three in the meantime. Odious as he is to many, history will record one salutary effect of his term in office: the RussiaGate ploy alerted Americans that there truly is a Deep State with its own self-winding agenda. A few perp-walks upcoming may have a chastening effect on future Swamp critters entertaining a higher calling, as the slippery James Comey put it — meaning, using the powerful machinery of government for your own purposes.

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Can’t find any of his accomplices, can we?

• Jeffrey Epstein’s Model-Scouting Pal Has ‘Disappeared Without A Trace’ (NYP)

The model agency boss accused of scouting young girls for pedophile pal Jeffrey Epstein has disappeared like a “ghost,” as investigators scour the globe searching for him, a new report said. French authorities want to quiz Jean-Luc Brunel, 72, over his ties to Epstein as part of their own probe into the late financier who had a house in Paris, according to the Daily Mirror. “He is a ghost who has disappeared without a trace,” a legal source in Paris told the paper of Brunel, who discovered some of the biggest names in modeling, including Christy Turlington and Angie Everhardt. Investigators have made inquiries throughout the US and Europe, as well as Brazil, where the Frenchman was seen looking for girls just three months before Epstein, 66, was arrested, the paper says. “There is no address for him, all his internet accounts, including social media, have been wiped out. He is uncontactable,” the source told the Mirror.

Read more …

Sounds crazy: Boeing simply doesn’t answer questions.

• New Delays Could Keep Boeing 737 MAX Grounded Into Holiday Travel Season (MW)

Friction between Boeing and international air-safety authorities threatens a new delay in bringing the grounded 737 MAX fleet back into service, according to government and pilot union officials briefed on the matter. The latest complication in the long-running saga, these officials said, stems from a Boeing briefing in August that was cut short by regulators from the U.S., Europe, Brazil and elsewhere, who complained that the plane maker had failed to provide technical details and answer specific questions about modifications in the operation of MAX flight-control computers.


Boeing as a result now has to resubmit briefing documents describing proposed software changes, these people said. The changes then have to be vetted by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration before a follow-up meeting with the same participants can be held and crucial simulator and flight tests of the final software revisions scheduled. The upshot, the people said, is likely to be several more weeks of delay that could significantly reduce the likelihood that many of the planes would be back flying passengers in North America during the Christmas holidays, as Boeing and some U.S. carriers have publicly projected. The meetings and the fallout haven’t been reported before.

Read more …

At the Roger Waters performance of Wish You Were Here last night.

• All Of Us Are In Danger: John Pilger Has Chilling Warning From Assange (RT)

Journalist John Pilger has delivered a stark warning from WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange, who said that his persecution is intended to kill dissent. “Speak up now,” Pilger said, or face “the silence of a new kind of tyranny.” Assange is currently serving a 50 week sentence in Belmarsh Prison for skipping a bail hearing in 2012. US authorities are seeking his extradition for his role in publishing classified documents, accusing him of espionage. Speaking at a rally outside the Home Office in London on Monday, Pilger passed on a message from the WikiLeaks editor who, if extradited and convicted, could be sentenced to 175 years in prison.

It’s not just me. It’s much wider. It’s all of us. It’s all journalists, and all publishers who do their job who are in danger.


“The danger Julian Assange faces can easily spread to the present and past editors of the Guardian, the New York Times, Der Spiegel, El Pais in Spain, the Sydney Morning Herald, and many other newspapers and media outlets that published the WikiLeaks revelations about the lies and crimes of our governments,” Pilger continued. “By defending Julian Assange we defend our most sacred rights,” Pilger warned. “Speak up now or wake up one morning to the silence of a new kind of tyranny.”

Read more …

 

In these difficult times, the UK press asks the hard-hitting questions:

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle September 1 2019

Sep 012019
 
 September 1, 2019  Posted by at 9:23 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  7 Responses »


Edouard Vuillard The two sisters 1899

 

• Hong Kong Protesters Plan To Disrupt Airport After Night Of Chaos (R.)
• The Sheer Scale Of The Crisis Facing Britain’s Decrepit Constitution (O.)
• How A Secret Plan To Close Parliament Sparked Uproar Across Britain (O.)
• British PM Johnson Challenges Lawmakers To Deliver Brexit (R.)
• EU’s Barnier Not Optimistic About Avoiding A No-Deal Brexit (R.)
• Lagarde Says Negative Rates Have Helped Europe More Than They’ve Hurt (MW)
• Bianco Warns “Negative Rates Are Extremely Toxic” (Gisiger)
• Low Interest Rates Compound The Big Problems Facing Pension Funds (MW)
• Bernie Sanders Proposes Canceling $81 Billion US Medical Debt (R.)
• Breaking The Media Blackout on the Imprisonment of Julian Assange (MPN)
• Fifty Shades of Epstein (Hope Kesselring)

 

 

Get the parties involved around a table before people get killed.

• Hong Kong Protesters Plan To Disrupt Airport After Night Of Chaos (R.)

Pro-democracy demonstrators planned on Sunday to choke travel routes to Hong Kong’s international airport after a chaotic night of running battles between police and masked protesters, the latest wave of unrest to hit the Chinese-ruled city. Protest organizers have urged the public to overwhelm road and rail links to the airport, one of the world’s busiest, on Sunday and Monday, potentially disrupting flights. People would begin gathering at 1 p.m. (0500 GMT), protest groups said. The airport closed one of its car parks and advised passengers to use public transport, without giving a reason.

A similar so-called “stress test” of the airport last weekend failed to gain momentum. Three weeks ago, some flights were delayed or canceled after protesters swarmed the airport. Late on Saturday and into the early hours, police fired tear gas, water cannon and rubber bullets and protesters threw petrol bombs, escalating clashes that have plunged the Asian financial center into its worst political crisis in decades. As government helicopters hovered overhead, protesters who had been banned from demonstrating set fires in the streets and threw bricks at police near government offices and Chinese military headquarters.

Officers fired two warning shots in the air to scare off a group of protesters who had them surrounded and were trying to steal their pistols, the police said, only the second time live rounds have been used in more than three months of unrest. Police sprayed demonstrators with blue-dyed water to make it easier to identify them later. Parts of the metro system ground to a halt as skirmishes spread to the subway, with television showing images of people being beaten as they cowered on the floor behind umbrellas. Police said they arrested 40 people inside Prince Edward metro station on suspicion of obstructing officers, unlawful assembly and criminal damage. Three stations stayed shut on Sunday.

Read more …

“..the eight-word British constitution established in 1689 – What The Crown Assents In Parliament Is Law – is a decaying, time-worn construct on which to protect and advance today’s democracy..”

• The Sheer Scale Of The Crisis Facing Britain’s Decrepit Constitution (O.)

To prorogue parliament for no better reason than to avoid parliamentary scrutiny of a no-deal Brexit may have been an intolerable abuse of power, and an affront to democracy, but in Britain it is constitutionally possible. As a result, for all the threats of judicial review and court actions, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to challenge. For the prime minister controls everything, from the business of the House of Commons to the ability to prorogue it. He or she is lent monarchial sovereignty, the same sovereignty that Charles 1 tried to justify because the monarch was supposedly God’s representative on Earth: the divine right of kings, now transmuted into the divine right of Boris.

Part of the-then cleverness of the 17th-century deal was that it co-opted the crown into being the above-the-fray, holder-of-the-ring of proper parliamentary procedure and process. But today, that capacity has evaporated. So when Jacob Rees-Mogg travelled to Balmoral last week to ask the Queen to prorogue parliament, there was virtually no prospect of her refusing – as an elected head of state might have done. She did have the option of saying that on such a controversial use of prerogative power she wanted to go beyond the minimum quorate of three for a privy council meeting (the chief whip and leader of the House of Lords accompanied Rees-Mogg on a separate plane to Balmoral to avoid suspicion) and call for a full meeting including former ministers from other parties, purportedly the constitutional forum to advise her on use of the royal prerogative.

But that would have been seen as a political act. She folded. Exposed as a constitutional cipher, the case for an elected head of state has suddenly become unanswerable. It is but one of the many constitutional earthquakes triggered by Brexit whose aftershocks will be felt for decades. Even the character of the referendum itself is testament to our lack of a constitution. No super-majority was required for this fundamental change in Britain’s relationship with Europe, any more than it was for the Scottish referendum: amazingly, a 42-year and a 300-year union could be ripped apart by a majority of one citizen’s vote.

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It is a peculiar chain of events no matter what you think of it.

• How A Secret Plan To Close Parliament Sparked Uproar Across Britain (O.)

For much of August the plan to shut down parliament for five weeks was kept a very tight secret at the heart of government. For the few Whitehall officials who were made aware of it early on, however, it was not difficult to decipher whose fingerprints were all over it. It was clear to that small group that the bombshell idea had been hatched by Boris Johnson’s closest adviser, Dominic Cummings, and No 10’s director of legislative affairs, Nikki da Costa. Cummings has long been known at Westminster for his disdain for Whitehall and the way the entire system of British government works. He doesn’t mince his words or tolerate those he regards as fools. “If he meets resistance from ministers or officials he will just tell them to fuck off, whoever they are,” said one Whitehall source, who has worked with him.

[..] Last Friday an email between a Whitehall official and No 10 was leaked to this newspaper. It made clear that Johnson had approached Cox for advice on a five-week suspension from around 9 September to 14 October. Cox’s initial view, the correspondence made clear, was that it would probably be legal, unless various court actions being planned by Remainers to block prorogation were successful. Downing Street’s official response when asked about the leak was, at first, muted. “No 10 officials ask for legal and policy advice every day,” said a government source.

But when the Observer story broke last Saturday evening, as Johnson and his team were in Biarritz for the G7 summit preparing for meetings with US president Donald Trump and EU council president Donald Tusk the next day, Downing Street changed tack and tried to dismiss the story in a way that was to backfire spectacularly. Johnson’s press team issued a statement saying that “the claim that the government is considering proroguing parliament in September in order to stop MPs debating Brexit is entirely false”. It did not deny that the attorney general had been consulted about prorogation but its intent was clear: to create the impression that shutting down parliament was not going to happen.

But less than 72 hours later more leaks were to follow from people inside the government machine to media organisations saying that the prime minister was to make an announcement about prorogation on Wednesday morning. After the BBC got wind of the new leaks, some senior staff were initially dubious that they were genuine, given No 10’s previous denials. When Johnson announced the exact same plan on which his team had poured buckets of cold water four days earlier, large sections of the media, as well as MPs and much of the country, were understandably furious.

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Johnson is just a figurehead.

• British PM Johnson Challenges Lawmakers To Deliver Brexit (R.)

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson challenged lawmakers to deliver on the Brexit vote and not thwart his plans to take Britain out of the European Union on October 31. Johnson has pledged to deliver Brexit with or without a deal, but opposition lawmakers – and several lawmakers from Johnson’s Conservatives – want to act to rule out a no deal Brexit when parliament returns from recess on Tuesday. Previous votes have indicated a majority in parliament opposing a no-deal Brexit, but in a newspaper interview, Johnson said that backing opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn risked there being no Brexit at all.


“The fundamental choice is this: are you going to side with Jeremy Corbyn and those who want to cancel the referendum? Are you going to side with those who want to scrub the democratic verdict of the people — and plunge this country into chaos?,” Johnson told the Sunday Times. “Or are you going to side with those of us who want to get on, deliver on the mandate of the people and focus with absolute, laser-like precision on the domestic agenda? That’s the choice.”

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He’s seen enough.

• EU’s Barnier Not Optimistic About Avoiding A No-Deal Brexit (R.)

The European Union’s top Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said he was not optimistic about avoiding a no-deal scenario as the EU could not meet Britain’s demands that the backstop for the Irish border is removed from the withdrawal agreement. Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Barnier said that the so-called “backstop” had to stay to protect the integrity of the EU’s single market while ensuring an open border on the island of Ireland. “I am not optimistic about avoiding a no-deal scenario, but we should all continue to work with determination,” Barnier said, according to extracts of his article on the newspaper’s front page.


“The backstop is the maximum amount of flexibility that the EU can offer to a non-member state.” Prime Minister Boris Johnson has vowed to take Britain out of the EU with or without a deal on October 31. Opposition lawmakers plan to act next week to stop no-deal in parliament. Writing in the same newspaper, Johnson’s de facto deputy Michael Gove said that to remove the option of a no-deal Brexit on Oct 31 would “diminish” the “chances of securing changes” to the Brexit deal that could get it passed through parliament.

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Translation: the new ECB head does not have confidence in free markets. She thinks central bankers can do a better job.

• Lagarde Says Negative Rates Have Helped Europe More Than They’ve Hurt (MW)

The next head of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, appears to be as much of a fan of negative interest rates as the current chief, Mario Draghi. In written answers provided to the European Parliament that were released on Thursday, Lagarde said negative interest rates have helped Europe. The ECB’s deposit rate is negative 0.4%. “On the one hand, banks may decide to pass the negative deposit rate on to depositors, lowering the interest rates the latter get on their savings,” she wrote. “On the other hand, the same depositors are also consumers, workers, and borrowers. As such they benefit from stronger economic momentum, lower unemployment and lower borrowing costs.


“All things considered, in the absence of the unconventional monetary policy adopted by the ECB – including the introduction of negative interest rates – euro area citizens would be, overall, worse off.” European banks have complained about the impact on profitability, but even there the current managing director of the International Monetary Fund defended the move. “With regard to the impact of negative rates on banks’ profitability, empirical analysis suggests that the negative effects on banks’ net interest income have been so far more than offset by the benefits from more bank lending and lower costs for provisions and impairments due to the better macroeconomic environment, which to a significant extent is a result of accommodative monetary policy,” she wrote.

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“..Trump is “going to eleven” on trade: He’s going to turn it up so high that there is going to have to be a deal. That’s the way he wants to do this. He will just make it intolerable so everybody has to sit down and cut a deal.”

• Bianco Warns “Negative Rates Are Extremely Toxic” (Gisiger)

Jim Bianco, President of Bianco Research, cautions against evermore unconventional monetary policy interventions. He fears that the global slowdown is going to get worse and he spots opportunities in long-term bonds and gold. The global economy is on the brink: Europe is headed for recession, Japan as well and China’s growth rate is the slowest in almost thirty years. Only the economy in the United States seems to hold up. But for how long? «We live in a global world and if Japan and Europe are struggling and the world has a problem it’s going to come to the US eventually», says Jim Bianco. According to the internationally renowned macro strategist, the biggest threat to the US economy is the inverted yield curve.

«This is the market’s way of saying the Federal Funds Rate is too high and must come down», Mr. Bianco is convinced. Against this backdrop, the founder and President of Chicago based Bianco Research argues that the Federal Reserve should cut its target rate by 50 basis points at the next FOMC meeting. He also cautions against introducing negative interest rates in the United States during the next recession because in his view that would cripple the global financial system.

[..] First, the trade and currency wars where the situation reminds me somewhat of «This Is Spinal Tap». It’s a cult satire movie from the eighties about a rock band and they coined the phrase «up to eleven» because that’s how high their amplifier went. So the expression «turning it up to eleven» refers to the act of taking something to an extreme. I’m saying this because I think Trump is “going to eleven” on trade: He’s going to turn it up so high that there is going to have to be a deal. That’s the way he wants to do this. He will just make it intolerable so everybody has to sit down and cut a deal.

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Pension funds are dead.

• Low Interest Rates Compound The Big Problems Facing Pension Funds (MW)

The largest public pension funds have over $1 trillion in aggregate unfunded liabilities. Low interest rates are going to make it harder for these and other pension plans to rely on investment returns alone to meet their obligations to retirees. Interest rates in the U.S. have been declining for over 20 years, and short-term rates have been hovering close to zero over the last decade. Negative interest rates in Japan and Europe and mounting expectations of rate cuts by the Federal Reserve have expanded the pool of bonds with negative yields to more than $16 trillion, or around 27% of the global bond market. Initially, low interest rates are good for asset prices.

Simplistically, this is because investors seeking similar returns as before are now forced to take capital that they would have otherwise invested in safe government bonds and deploy it into riskier assets (equities, high yield bonds, etc.), thereby driving up prices of these assets. In addition to stronger economic growth coming out of the 2008 financial crisis, this is one of the factors leading to strong performance of equities over the past decade. However, going forward it is unlikely that asset returns are going to be similar to what we witnessed over the last decade. One of the reasons is that risky asset returns are generally priced as a spread over risk-free real returns (i.e. inflation-adjusted returns). This makes intuitive sense, as investors would demand additional return for taking on risk.

If the risk-free rate is low, and there is high demand for risky assets, then the total investment return (risk free rate + risk premia/spread) will likely be lower than in a scenario with higher interest rates, all else being equal. According to Voya Investment Management’s capital market assumptions, expected returns for equities over the next 10 years is likely to be around 1.50 percentage points to 3.3 percentage points lower than assumptions in 2013.

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Like with student debt, helping only some people appears counter-productive.

• Bernie Sanders Proposes Canceling $81 Billion US Medical Debt (R.)

U.S. presidential contender Bernie Sanders proposed a plan on Saturday to cancel $81 billion in existing past-due medical debt for Americans, but offered no details on how it would be financed. Sanders, an independent U.S. senator from Vermont, said in a statement that under his plan, the government would negotiate and pay off past-due medical bills that have been reported to credit agencies. The proposal, he said, would also repeal some elements of the 2005 Bankruptcy reform bill and allow other existing and future medical debt to be discharged. “In the United States of America, your financial life and future should not be destroyed because you or a member of your family gets sick,” said Sanders.


“That is unacceptable. I am sick and tired of seeing over 500,000 Americans declare bankruptcy each year because they cannot pay off the outrageous cost of a medical emergency or a hospital stay.” According to Sanders, medical debt is the leading cause of consumer bankruptcy, with more than half a million Americans filing due to medical expenses each year. He said the 2005 Bankruptcy reform bill made it difficult to discharge medical debt by imposing strict means tests and eliminated fundamental consumer protections for Americans. “It also trapped families with medical debt in long-term poverty, mandated that they pay for credit counseling before filing for bankruptcy, and increased the need for expensive legal services when filing a case for medical bankruptcy,” the senator said.

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“..the strategy of the powerful appears to be to know as much as possible about the rest of us while ensuring that we know as little as possible about them and how they operate..”

• Breaking The Media Blackout on the Imprisonment of Julian Assange (MPN)

The role of journalism in a democracy is publishing information that holds the powerful to account — the kind of information that empowers the public to become more engaged citizens in their communities so that we can vote in representatives that work in the interest of “we the people.” There is perhaps no better example of watchdog journalism that holds the powerful to account and exposes their corruption than that of WikiLeaks, which exposed to the world evidence of widespread war crimes the U.S. military was committing in Iraq, including the killing of two Reuters journalists; showed that the U.S. government and large corporations were using private intelligence agencies to spy on activists and protesters; and revealed how the military hid tortured Guantanamo Bay prisoners from Red Cross inspectors.

It’s this kind of real journalism that our First Amendment was meant to protect but engaging in it has instead made WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange the target of a massive smear campaign for the last several years — including false claims that Assange is working with Vladimir Putin and the Russians and hackers, as well as open calls by corporate media pundits for him to be assassinated. The allegations that Assange conspired with Putin to undermine the 2016 election and American democracy as a whole fell completely flat earlier this month when a U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York dismissed this case as “factually implausible,” with the judge noting that at no point does the prosecution’s “threadbare” argument show “any facts” at all, and concluding that the idea that Assange conspired with Russia against the Democratic Party or America is “entirely divorced from the facts.”


[..] It is important to ask ourselves what Julian Assange’s real crime is. In an era, dubbed the Information Age, where the strategy of the powerful appears to be to know as much as possible about the rest of us while ensuring that we know as little as possible about them and how they operate, Assange worked to prevent that imbalance from becoming a rout, and stuck like a bone in the throat of the mighty.

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Interesting take for sure.

• Fifty Shades of Epstein (Hope Kesselring)

A few weeks ago, half the top ten Amazon best sellers in romantic erotica were based around the trope of the BDSM billionaire, with Grey by E. L. James holding firm in the top ten. In the world of erotic romance, the 50 Shades of Grey series has been a continuous presence for over seven years. Thousands of riffs on the sexy and sadistic billionaire exist: Russian billionaire, billionaire blackmailer, billionaire stepbrother. I’m not trying to kink shame, but it would take a lot of money to convince me to write detailed descriptions of torture sessions in a gilded dungeon. This is especially true in the shadow of financier Jeffrey Epstein’s death. Mental and sexual abuse by an obscenely wealthy man now just seems, well, obscene.


I should point out that James’ character, Christian Grey, strikes me as more a domestic abuser than a real BDSM enthusiast. He is a billionaire in the tech industry who fixates on Ana, a 21-year old virgin. He puts surveillance software on her phone. He harasses her to sign a submissive’s contract, and even though she never signs it, he still treats her like a sex slave. He manipulates Ana into doing sex acts for which she doesn’t give consent. Blatant consumerism sits on the page in stark contrast to real life. 50 Shades of Grey eroticizes money and abuse. The writing is universally panned and mocked by critics, yet it’s sold 125 million copies. How in the world of publishing did it even come to be? Let’s go back to 2008. That year the economy was melting down, Jeffrey Epstein pleaded guilty to a felony sex offense, and the Twilight series of vampire romance novels for teen girls were bestsellers.

Twilight was a young adult twist on the long-popular vampire romance, which had flourished in that market since Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire appeared. Probably some of Epstein’s victims read the Twilight books. 50 Shades of Grey marks a shift in the erotic romance genre from vampires to billionaires. In 2009, E. L. James started publishing her version of Twilight on fanfiction websites, churning out a chapter every couple of days. Master of the Universe, as it was called then, was popular but criticized for being too racy, so she moved it to her own website and renamed the characters. James didn’t know it yet, but she was about to be catapulted to international fame by some upper middle class moms in the suburbs of New York City.


[..] In the autumn of 2011, news about Occupy Wall Street, a movement that began in reaction to the deeds of the predatory class, dominated headlines. Posters portrayed the 1% as greedy Monopoly men, far from sexy. Occupy protesters had the media’s attention for a short time before the idea was squashed. That November, Jeffrey Epstein registered as a sex offender in New York after completing his jail term and moving back into his Manhattan mansion, free to continue abusing girls. 2012 was E. L. James’ year. A prominent lifestyle blog (started by an NYU communications graduate married to a talent manager) promoted James’ fanfiction novel as sexually liberating to fashion-conscious moms in upscale suburban New York. James got a book deal and “mommy porn” was born. Paperbacks with necktie covers appeared on bookshelves and in beach bags everywhere.

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