Russian oil Archives - The Automatic Earth

President Trump has announced that George Soros and his entire network will be investigated under RICO charges.

He claims Soros is behind the funding, training, and radicalization of young people, fueling terror and extremism. pic.twitter.com/wJ4lPINHb0
— Deep Leaks (@DeepLeaksHQ) October 1, 2026

https://twitter.com/Q_TheStormRider/status/2105631211444183069?s=20

It’s about time.

• Iran’s Regime Is Running Out of Options (Victor Davis Hanson)

Sami Winc: Iran, let’s turn to. It looks like internal strife is increasing, not because of the protesters out there, although I’m sure there are some. The women are openly defying the hijab in universities.

Victor Davis Hanson: They are. Daily, daily they do.
Sami Winc: But their administration knows it because they’ve increased patrols and checkpoints in fear of the protests from universities.
Victor Davis Hanson: For all you people who are worried and have sworn the war is lost, Robert Kagan, the whole left-wing media, what are you going to say when the people rise up? Three things are going to happen, and they’re not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Number one, the people are going to rise up, and this time when they try to kill them, the U.S. will add air support. Number two, they are so desperate for a deal. Today they said, “We have a deal, we have a deal.” You can’t trust anything they say, but they will basically give most of us what we want, and it won’t be worth anything.
And number three, they will have a final fireworks October surprise, where they’ll call everybody up. How many drones you have in that mountain over there? Don’t we have a tunnel over there somewhere with six more missiles? We want them all to go at the Saudi oil field or something. And when that happens, he will unload on them, and the regime will be destroyed, conventionally.
So it’s gonna be like Greenland. It’s going to be like the NATO problem. It’s gonna be solved, but it’s not gonna be solved in a way that’s gonna bring credit. It’s the most existential problem the United States has faced since the Cold War. A lunatic regime that’s going to get nuclear weapons and whose terrorists dominate the entire Middle East, terrify every Arab government that has Shia Arab minorities in it.
It’s gonna be solved, and it’s gonna be solved very quickly. And I’m sure the people who say that Donald Trump was a warmonger and a war criminal and it was a forever war, left and right. Tucker Carlson says he should be impeached. He’s satanic. He loves nuclear weapons. I’m sure they’re all going to say that when the people overthrow this government or this government dissolves, that it had nothing to do with Donald Trump. It had to do with their criticism of Donald Trump.
Sami Winc: Well, adjacent to that, did you see that there were passengers that rescued a plane? It was going from Dubai to Israel, Tel Aviv, and it was taken over by a terrorist who was one of the pilots, and the passengers wrested control of it. There were pilots among the passengers, wrested control of it and landed it safely.
Victor Davis Hanson: Now, there’s this preliminary. It happened early this morning as I speak. I think we’ll get the whole story. You really don’t wanna predict what the whole story will be, but from the fragmentary evidence adduced so far, I think you can come up with two or three legitimate suppositions.
One, any flight that leaves an Arab country, like even from moderate Dubai to Israel, there are Israeli security on that flight. And one of them or two of them know how to fly it. They’re probably ex-Israeli pilots, right? Military. So they not only know how to fly a plane, they know how to fly a plane in danger.
From what we can tell, as you said, the captain attacked the co-pilot, thinking that my mission is to hijack the plane and ram it and kill everybody and ram it into an iconic Israeli building when we get there 30 minutes later. [Editor’s Note: The co-pilot attacked the pilot.] Sami Winc: Yeah, we could guess in Tel Aviv maybe.
Victor Davis Hanson: Yes, it’s good. And so the Israelis, thinking way ahead of them, have people on every one of the flights. And number two, to enact that, I have to kill the co-pilot so there’s no other buddy that can grab the plane. And those cabins are locked. So I will be the only person here.
The co-pilot is dead or injured, and they can’t get me, and I’m just going to do what Mohamed Atta and those guys did. But what they didn’t know is that there were security, and Israelis are not normal people in the sense they just said, Oh my gosh, we’re hijacked. We’re all dead. They stormed and they broke through, and they rescued the co-pilot, and I guess they killed the pilot, and they got him out, and they had dropped about 12,000 feet in a minute, and the sheer stress on the airframe broke the rudder on the back of the tail.
[Editor’s note: The co-pilot who attacked the pilot was not killed.] So there was no way really, it was kind of wagging like a dog’s tail. And this pilot or pilots, Israeli I assume, were able to, as they do with fighter planes, use the wing flaps and rotate, I mean, wiggle back and forth and stabilize the plane, and they landed in a Saudi airport.
Three, I would not be surprised if that pilot had some connection with Iran. I don’t know how. In the same way, I would not be surprised as the five would be, I don’t know what we’d call them, would-be attackers of the RAF U.S. base in England had ties to Iran. But because that’s how Iran operates. And then they have deniability of culpability. Oh, we didn’t do that. That’s crazy. This guy was an Arab. He was Sunni. We have nothing to do with it. And then they brag, you know, in Farsi among themselves how they did this.
And we’ll see what happens, but I would be very careful if I was them. If this is traced … I’ll be candid. There’s an election coming up in Israel. It’s deadlocked. Has anybody noticed that of the missiles they’ve sent the last five months, most of them, half of them went to the UAE, over 5,000 of them, and Kuwait, less but substantial. A few on Qatar—their ally—Saudi Arabia, Oman, but not Israel. Not one on Israel.
And Benjamin Netanyahu‘s up for election, and he’s under pressure, and they’re promulgating this conspiracy theory that he knew about [the Oct. 7 massacre], and the UAE people told him, which we discussed was not true, I think.
So if this is traced, that they tried to … The Iranians used an agent to try to destroy a whole planeload, 737 Max, and then do so by ramming it into an iconic building, he’ll attack them. He’ll retaliate and he’ll get the entire support of the Israeli people and the United States, and Iran will be in big trouble because he had … The Israelis have a different…I don’t like to use that word existential, but they’re in a life-and-death situation with no margin of error.
So the Americans, we have kind of a reluctance of targeted assassinations. Barack Obama did 500 of them, but he was Obama, so they weren’t gonna criticize him, even when he killed, I think, three American citizens. But the Israelis have no compunction because it’s an existential fight. So that’s why they haven’t hit Israel, because the retaliation would take out the fourth and fifth tier of their leadership. But if this is traced to them, Israel, it’ll go after all of their grandees that are left running that country.
And it’ll be very interesting in the next few days to see what transpires, and it will ensure Netanyahu’s re-election. If that happens.

“The president had suggested Clayton would be chosen, and he’s expected to make an announcement on Truth Social as early as Friday.”

• Trump Expected To Name National Intelligence Head Clayton As 1st Ai Czar (JTN)

President Donald Trump is expected to name Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton as the artificial intelligence czar. The president had suggested Clayton would be chosen, and he’s expected to make an announcement on Truth Social as early as Friday, NBC News reported, citing an unnamed source.

The selection comes after executives of major technology companies met at the White House on Tuesday, a meeting that Clayton attended. He would assume the responsibilities of the AI czar role alongside those of his current role. A White House spokesperson told NBC that personnel announcements would come from the president and “reporting until then is baseless speculation.”

Sundance is dreaming of Tulsi.

• Super Interesting, as long as this AI/SI Czar Report is NOT a Leak Trap (CTH)

According to CNN, current Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton is likely to be appointed the AI/SI Czar. If that is accurate, and not a leak trap – which considering the source is sketchy, then that leaves the DNI position open again.

(VIA CNN) – President Donald Trump is expected to pick Jay Clayton to be the White House’s new czar of artificial intelligence, two sources familiar with the discussion told CNN. The president could announce his decision about Clayton, who is director of national intelligence, as early as Friday, one of the sources said.
Trump announced last month that he was planning to create an “AI Force” and name an AI czar as the government faces growing calls to impose guardrails on the technology’s rapid development. Trump gathered several AI and technology CEOs at the White House on Tuesday for a meeting that culminated in the signing of a new commitment aimed at better “self-policing” their companies’ AI models.
If it is accurate that Clayton is going to the Super Intelligence Czar position, and considering the sudden reappearance last week at the White House, is there a possibility of someone returning to the administration as DNI?

As he’s said for 26 years.

• Putin: Ready To Use ‘All Weapons’ Incl. Nuclear, If Kaliningrad Attacked (ZH)

Now it’s no longer just high-ranking Krezlin officials saying it, but Russian President Vladimir Putin has now directly weighed in amid the ongoing nuclear threat tit-for-tat involving European officials. Speaking at the Valdai Discussion Club in Moscow on Thursday, he warned the Western allies to cease their escalation in Ukraine, stressing he’s willing to use “all weapons” in the Russian arsenal in the scenario that Russia’s exclave of Kaliningrad comes under attack.

“The drills in the Baltic Sea, following one another… Then the attempts to arrest our ships and vessels. All this is an escalation. And then we began to hear statements regarding the Kaliningrad region,” Putin said. “If it comes to direct attack against the Russian Federation, in this case on Kaliningrad and possibly some other territories, of course the issue of using all weapons in our country’s arsenal will inevitably and unavoidably emerge on the agenda. This is unavoidable,” he asserted in a warning that includes nuclear weapons.

NATO held recent military drills near Kaliningrad which were broadly described as deterrence operations, which Putin referenced in the remarks.Rhetoric has been running particularly hot over the exclave which is sandwiched between NATO members Poland and Lithuania all week, as Associated Press earlier described: The warning sent to NATO echoed statements issued by several Russian embassies in Europe this week which said that Moscow has “information that NATO is preparing (an) air and naval blockade of Kaliningrad and Kaliningrad region.”
The embassies in the U.K. and Ireland posted their statements on their Telegram channels, and the embassy in Belgium released it to the Tass news agency. The ratcheting accusations from the European side have also centered on charges of a Russian sabotage campaign targeting the Baltics as well as Germany. Moscow at the start of the week took the rare step of submitting a formal letter to NATO leadership in Brussels.
The letter accused NATO of an “unprecedented escalation of the military-political situation around Russia’s region of Kaliningrad accompanied by highly provocative public statements by NATO Allies’ officials.””This dangerous and reckless course entails high risk of the outbreak of a direct armed conflict with the possibility of Russian strikes against decision-making centers of the alliance’s member states right from the outset of the conflict,” the letter said. NATO was especially incensed and alarmed at this key line of Moscow’s letter:
“Russia will be ready to use the entire arsenal of forces and capabilities at its disposal, including nuclear weapons, in order to defend its territory, should NATO countries undertake any attempt aimed at isolating the Kaliningrad region from the rest of the country.” Apparently this most recent tense back-and-forth over Kaliningrad was initially triggered by a television show which recently aired in the UK this month.
Preview of the provocative UK series The WarGame which started airing this month. The Kremlin has vehemently condemned it, and sees in it some clear messaging and an ominous threat:

Michael ‘The Gover’ Gove and ‘Bad Penny’ Mordaunt are loving their scripted roles in WarGames – just like the scripted parts they played for years in our Parliament.
This drama – documentary simulates an attack on the UK by Russia and was filmed 3 years ago.
Why do you think… pic.twitter.com/JYE8u5U8jH
— Andrew Bridgen (@ABridgen) September 22, 2026

Newsweek described, “The statement follows a miniseries aired by British broadcaster Sky News last week, The Wargame, which traces a hypothetical Russian attack on the U.K. and how the country might respond—including by authorizing operations against the Baltic territory of Kaliningrad.”

Nearly four years after Western governments set out to squeeze Russia’s oil revenues, Moscow is shipping crude worth more per week than at any point since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022.

• The West Tried To Rein In Russian Oil. What Went Wrong? (RT)

The gross value of Russia’s seaborne crude exports surged to $2.75 billion in the week through September 27, the highest weekly figure in four years, according to tanker-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg. Shipments averaged 3.71 million barrels per day over the latest four weeks, their highest since early August.

The rebound exposes a central problem with the Western strategy. Sanctions were designed to keep Russian oil on the global market to avoid a supply shock while forcing Moscow to sell it more cheaply.Instead, Russia rerouted crude from Europe to China, India, and other markets, built alternative shipping networks, and reduced its reliance on Western services. Now, soaring global prices fueled by the US-Israeli war on Iran are making those barrels more valuable.

The plan: Keep Russian oil flowing but slash Moscow’s earnings
When the West moved against Russian oil in 2022, it faced an obvious problem: Russia was too large an exporter to remove from the market without risking a surge in global prices. The EU was also Moscow’s biggest oil market. Europe took more than half of Russia’s oil exports in 2021, while Russia was the EU’s largest crude supplier, accounting for roughly a quarter of its imports. China, by comparison, was Russia’s largest single-country buyer.
The EU banned most seaborne Russian crude imports in December 2022, while the G7-led bloc imposed a $60-per-barrel price cap. Western shipping, insurance, and other maritime services could still handle Russian crude, but only if it was sold below the ceiling. Sanctions on petroleum products followed in February 2023.The logic was simple: cut Russia’s revenues without removing its oil from the global market. The strategy therefore depended on keeping Russian crude flowing while using Western dominance of shipping and insurance services to constrain its price.
The plan backfired. The $60 cap initially coincided with steep discounts on Russia’s flagship Urals crude. But Moscow gradually reduced its dependence on Western shipping and insurance services by which the ceiling was supposed to be enforced.
Even the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) – a Helsinki-based research organization that has repeatedly advocated tougher sanctions on Moscow – now says the policy has “failed to impose a durable constraint on Russian crude export earnings.” It says the measure worked only for limited periods on Urals, while other grades and export channels were largely unaffected.
The EU repeatedly tightened the mechanism, lowering the ceiling first to $47.60 and then to $44.10 per barrel from February 2026. The latter was intended to remain 15% below the average market price for Urals.Yet Urals averaged $60.22 a barrel in July – roughly $16 above the EU and UK ceiling. Russia’s ESPO crude, heavily oriented toward Asian buyers, has also consistently traded above both the old and new caps, according to CREA.
Brussels has responded by sanctioning hundreds of tankers, targeting traders, and tightening restrictions on third-country entities accused of helping Moscow circumvent the measures. Russian crude, however, continues to flow.
Four years later: Where is Russian oil going?
Russia did not stop selling oil when its biggest European customers turned away. It found other customers. China and India emerged as the dominant destinations for Russian crude, while Türkiye also increased its role. In July alone, India imported $6.25 billion worth of Russian crude – a record high for a second consecutive month – while seaborne deliveries to China were 16% higher than a year earlier, according to CREA.
Russia also built up shipping capacity outside the traditional Western system. By June, sanctioned “shadow” tankers were carrying 66% of its seaborne crude exports, compared with just 31% aboard G7-linked vessels, CREA estimates. Sanctions changed the routes, ships, and customers. They did not stop millions of barrels of Russian crude from reaching the global market.
Why is Russian oil worth more now?
The biggest twist has come not from Brussels or Washington, but from the Middle East. The US-Israeli war on Iran and disruption around the Strait of Hormuz have pushed global crude prices sharply higher, while attacks on regional energy infrastructure have further strained supplies.
The result is precisely the type of supply shock Western governments sought to avoid when designing the price cap – and Russia is among the producers benefiting from higher prices.

There is no Russian nuclear threat. They simply say they will defend themselves if attacked.

“NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has argued that European members of the bloc should have attacked Iran when the US did.”

• NATO Chief Advocates War of Aggression (RT)

European NATO members should have been able to attack Iran instead of relying on the US and Israel, according to Secretary-General Mark Rutte, the head of the self-described defensive alliance. Iran has been attacked twice in two years, both times over allegations that it seeks to develop nuclear weapons, which Tehran rejects as false. Speaking at the Euronews Defence & Space Summit on Friday, Rutte endorsed the idea that European nations should acquire the military capabilities needed to carry out such wars of aggression themselves.

In the future, “the Europeans will be able to take care of their backyard themselves. It should be us doing this, not the Americans,” he said. “Europe was not able to take out the nuclear capability of Iran. We couldn’t. We didn’t have the capabilities. In 10 years, we can and we should,” he added, referring to multi-billion euro rearmament efforts now underway in European members of the military bloc.
Earlier in the day, the NATO chief dismissed Russian concerns over hostile rhetoric by some members of the bloc regarding the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad Region. “Basically what we said is, ‘hey, listen, we are a defensive alliance, and stop the nuclear threat’,” he told journalists when asked about a formal warning Moscow had sent to Brussels.
Russia cited remarks by Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, who proposed in September deploying additional troops near the Russian border so that Moscow would be “uncertain of what we will do.” Moscow said it would use its “entire available arsenal” to defend Russian territory from a possible attack by NATO states.
NATO was created in the early years of the Cold War, ensuring a continued US military presence in Western Europe. The Soviet Union later established its own military alliance, the Warsaw Pact, which no longer exists. While NATO describes itself as a defensive alliance, it has carried out military attacks against other countries, including the UK- and French-led 2011 intervention in Libya, after which the North African state was balkanized.
Russia considers NATO’s eastward expansion since the end of the Cold War a major national security threat and has cited it as one of the principal causes of the Ukraine conflict. Rutte’s argument in support of the US-Israeli attacks on Iran echoed remarks by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who said in June 2025 that the Israelis were doing “[the] dirty work for us.”

They will never acknowledge this.

How can your birthrate fall like crazy, and you still have a housing shortage?

“In a system that rejects mass immigration, the population can fall, opening up room for cheaper housing, lower rents, and even an increase in the birthrate.”

• Europe’s Housing Crisis Is An Immigration Crisis (RMX)

Across the West, native Europeans are dying out but rental prices continue to go up every year. While the left would like to point the finger at capitalists and greedy landlords, the primary factor driving the housing affordability crisis is mass immigration. Berlin is a prime example of this trend, as German journalist and author Jens Winter pointed out on X using clear population and housing data.

“Rental prices on the market have more than doubled in Berlin since 2011—plenty of money for corporations. But where is the increased demand coming from? While the native population of the capital has declined by 260,000 since 2011, the number of foreigners and people with a migration background has risen by 650,000 over the same period. That means: Without migration, there would be less demand for housing in Berlin today than in 2011,” he wrote. In a follow-up post, he wrote that the German “conservative” party is just as guilty as the left.
“The CDU-aligned real estate lobby is raking in big money with migration in Berlin. The Germans have a choice: dying out in the CDU’s multikulti capitalism or in the Left’s multikulti socialism. Understandable response: If we’re going to disappear anyway, why bust our asses for it?” he wrote.
While the doubling of rents is real, there is a basic supply and demand reality that the left would like to deny. It is indeed true that predatory property owners, major institutional players, and money printing have played contributing roles to the housing crisis, but no matter how many greedy property owners are involved, if the population of a city falls, rental and housing prices are almost inevitably going to fall.
Mass immigration means that population numbers never fall. Any breathing space for German families to repopulate, have more children, and fill in the gaps left by older generations passing away is immediately filled by hundreds of thousands of foreigners.
The data shows that the population of native Germans fell by 260,000 people. In a system that rejects mass immigration and foreign real estate investors, this could have been a boon for birthrates and increasing home ownership. For one, Germans who already lived in Berlin, and those looking to move to Berlin, would have been more easily able to afford rents and housing due to less competition on the housing market. Secondly, more native Germans would have had a chance to start families — and those who already had families could have afforded an extra child or two — by securing affordable housing.
However, Germany does not reject mass immigration. Instead, 650,000 foreigners arrived in the same period of time and housing and rental prices soared. The left, however, refuses to do simple math. There is of course another solution, but it is far more complicated than simply allowing population levels to fall in a country that has never had so many people living in it. Instead of ending mass immigration, left-wing parties, along with the CDU, demand more housing is built.
However, there are myriad reasons why the required housing is not being built, including high construction and material costs, red tape, zoning, and a lack of skilled workers. The same parties have been making the same demands for years now, but construction cannot keep pace with demand in Berlin or other major cities across Germany.
The Left Party may promise to build more, but the reality is that it will not happen. Nothing the left offers will lead to the necessary building. Before Olaf Scholz of the far-left Social Democrats (SPD) won the chancellorship, he promised that his “goal” was to create 400,000 new apartments per year, which would include 100,000 units of social housing, saying, “That’s not witchcraft, we just have to want to do it.” It never happened under Scholz and it won’t happen under a left-wing government in Berlin either.
Should more housing even be built?
As Western cities race to replace their native European populations, the question becomes whether life really becomes better in a crowded multicultural city when it means more traffic, longer waiting times at hospitals, crowded classrooms, and imported crime — just to name a few ills.
The newcomers also did not fix the skilled worker shortage that could potentially build all the homes and apartments politicians and lobbyists claim Europe needs. While a certain number of new houses and apartments always need to be built, the question then becomes should Western civilization really be involved in endless building to accommodate millions of foreigners.
On top of all of these questions, the buildings developers managed to build are now in fact uglier than ever, more expensive than ever, and are built more slowly than ever. In fact, data shows that the time from start to completion for a project is longer than it has been in decades. Again, where are all these young migrants from Africa and the Middle East to fuel a new construction boom with their master artisan and building skills?
The reality is they largely do not exist. Many skilled builders who are immigrants are from neighboring European countries, such as Poland, and they increasingly see fewer reasons to work in Germany.Winter’s X post is especially relevant given that the Left Party recently won a first place finish in Berlin elections, securing over 25 percent of the vote. Commentators and analysts have contributed the rise of the party in Germany’s capital due a variety of factors, but two major components are the party’s ability to secure the vote of German citizens with a migration background and young voters.
The second factor is Berlin’s housing crisis, which helped drive support from groups like non-voters, the young, and foreigners.
German taxpayer-funded Deutsche Welle, wrote: “That makes sense to 17-year-old Liska, who voted for the socialists: ‘The Left Party did appeal to me, especially because of the social issues — getting prices down, making rents more affordable.’ Rents in Berlin are indeed rising at a massive pace — by some 7% in the last two years alone — and first-time tenants are likely to be the hardest hit. Polls also showed that by far the biggest proportion of Berlin voters — 37% — thought that the Left Party was the most likely to create affordable housing.”
The Left Party and various other left-wing parties have convinced young people that there are easy fixes to the housing crisis. The problem is not relegated to Berlin, as all of Germany has seen tight vacancies as more and more migrants arrive, as Remix News previously reported.In the end, the left and its voters are choosing a path where more and more building only leads to overcrowding and environmental degradation.
Mass immigration and higher housing costs hurt birthrates
Numerous studies have shown that immigration has helped drive soaring rental and housing prices across the Western world — not just in Germany. In turn, studies have also shown that soaring housing prices have depressed birthrates, including in countries like the Netherlands, according to the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI).
Again, the same story is taking place in the Netherlands, with the natural population increase for the Dutch at near zero or negative. Nevertheless, the population rose from about 16.8 million in 2013 to 18.1 million in 2025, with net migration accounting for virtually all of the recent increase. It must also be remembered that just like in Germany, most of these migrants want to head to the major cities, such as Amsterdam.
Official housing-need forecasts in the Netherlands also attribute a large share of future extra demand, often 45 percent or more of the extra dwellings required, to population growth that is itself 95 percent migration-driven. Great for landlords, bad for the citizens. Of course, the Alternative for Germany has tried to tie the housing crisis to mass immigration, and they have successfully made this case to some extent.
https://twitter.com/RMXnews/status/1758244447630811445?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1758244447630811445%7Ctwgr%5E6a6a0002fa81d70c14f1195ae8b1b5c23809cd34%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fmarkets%2Feuropes-housing-crisis-immigration-crisis-berlin-data-confirms

The problem is that as more and more of the population becomes foreign, this argument holds less and less sway. Immigration may raise housing prices but if immigration brought a person to a country in the first place, and if more immigration might also enable more and more of their family members and fellow countrymen to arrive, then these voters have every incentive to keep immigration levels high regardless of housing costs.
Many of these migrants are not paying for rent anyway. There are millions of foreigners on social welfare, which means not only are they taking housing places of native Germans, but they are being paid to do it. They then often have far higher birthrates than native Germans, even with limited space, which entitles them to larger spaces. The cycle is self-reinforcing and relentless. That means unless dramatic action is taken against mass immigration, housing and rental prices may never truly come down.

One more final frontier lost. We did see the far west, and the new lands to be discovered by Columbus et al.

Now every move we make will be recorded.

• Always Watching (John Stossel)

Do you worry that you’re being watched? If you drive, you probably are. My new video covers the cameras that photograph the backs of millions of cars. A company called Flock has 80% of that market. Flock’s CEO says the goal is to “eliminate crime.” But lots of people hate the cameras. “We are asked to give up our privacy for really nothing in return,” says ACLU lawyer Chad Marlow. “These cameras save lives,” I push back, “catching criminals.”

When a car thief kidnapped a child in Atlanta last month, Flock cameras helped police find the car and arrest a man within 15 minutes. Marlow says, “That car could and would’ve been found anyway without violating the privacy rights of every single person in America … Surveillance doesn’t actually deter criminal activity, with one exception, car thefts in public parking lots.” “I hardly feel like my privacy’s invaded,” I tell him. “It’s just my license plate number. Anybody can see it.” Marlow replies that today, AI lets police use that photo to learn much more about us.
“The data they collect when combined with AI is terrifying. Combine them with all other sources of electronic data from the government and our own personal lives, you are literally looking at what George Orwell warned us about.” Is Flock really that much of a threat? Some cops have been jailed for using Flock data to track women. One Denver police officer casually boasted, “You can’t get a breath of fresh air without us knowing.” But there are limits. When using Flock’s camera database, police must give a reason.
Marlow laughs at that. “They have these security measures, but a 10-year-old could defeat them … (One) law enforcement department, 111 times, listed the reason for their investigation as ‘investigation.’ Twenty times, it was ‘hehehe.’ And it went through!” Public anger about Flock cameras has politicians on left and right moving to limit them. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pulled them from state highways. “Stop Flock,” says a tweet from Sen. Bernie Sanders.
This is a mistake, says Rafael Mangual of the Manhattan Institute. “They are a useful law enforcement tool with really incredible potential to aid investigations.” I point out the misuse, but Mangual replies, “That is no more a reason to ban the technology than it would be a reason to disarm police in response to a handful of bad shootings.”I remind him that when DeSantis shut down Florida’s cameras, he warned about a “surveillance state.”
“It’s not a surveillance state,” says Mangual. “These cameras see less than half a percent of the visible roadway. The idea that they can track you from place to place the way a GPS tracker attached to the bottom of your car is just wrong.”China is an actual surveillance state. Cameras track people’s movements, clothes, cars, even relationships. “It is only going to get worse as technology advances if we don’t stop it now,” says Marlow.
Flock has no plans to stop. The company now promotes surveillance drones. So far, I’m not very bothered by the privacy threat. I worry more about government’s endless wars, increased debt, inflation, growing handouts that make Americans dependent … Flock surveillance is way down on my list.
“That’s a mistake,” Michael Ricci, president of Stossel TV tells me. “Camera surveillance makes it easier for a tyrannical government to track where you go, and who you meet with. It also normalizes surveillance. As storage gets cheaper, maybe they will store videos instead of just photos. Maybe add facial recognition. Maybe they will connect the system to the ‘kill switch’ they’ve mandated in new cars. Government always finds ways to expand its powers.”
He makes good points. China’s surveillance did not start with its current system. They started with a few cameras. This is not a path we want to start traveling.Giving governments more power is always dangerous. Government is force. Only government can legally take our property and freedom.

“I will throw you in prison. I want Chinese style communism to happen inside of the democratic party right now. I want to do cultural revolution shit.” —Hasan Piker, DSA Spox

• The Ancient Parable (James Howard Kunstler)

Translation: Chuck Schumer knows that the Democrats have already been thwarted from rigging the election, from flooding the polls with illegal immigrant voters, with dead voters, with voters who moved out of state but still got mail-in ballots sent to their old addresses, with voters registered as living in Walmart parking lots, and so on. Chuck Schumer knows that the Civil Rights Division of DOJ is sending hundreds of lawyers to observe the action in swing state polling places. ICE might even be on hand to see who turns up.

So, Chuck Schumer is pretending that the Republicans will try to do what the Democrats actually did in several previous elections (including the last midterm, 2022, viz., AZ, GA, NV), and would have liked to do in this midterm, but can’t. The Democrats will holler like crazy about it before the election to plant this idea in credulous minds. They will jump up and down going woo-woo-woo on Election Day itself to water the idea. And after the election they will blitz every critical precinct with lawsuits to prevent the vote from being certified, using select “activist” judges to issue TROs and writs to delay election results and de-legitimize the vote.
And if none of that avails — which it won’t — they’ll call out their ground troops, Antifa, BLM, Free Palestine, LGBTQ2S+, the furious transsexuals, the hysterical cat ladies, and suchlike to make a giant ruckus so as to provoke the president to invoke emergency powers to quell the mayhem. And then they’ll point at Mr. Trump shrieking, “See! Tyrant!”
Chuck Schumer is such a shithead. Everybody knows that he intends for the Democratic Party to inflict lawfare and commit warfare on the midterm election (in that order), and hence on the American people, behind an Alinsky-grade cloud of gaslight claiming the other side is doing it.
Of course, it’s the president’s constitutional duty (Article II, Section 3) to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. You have seen that Mr. Trump is taking a good deal of care vis-à-vis this midterm election to avoid any hint of interference. You can infer that’s at least one reason we have seen no indictments of the Deep State sedition artists operating so brazenly since 2016.
By the way, doing what’s possible to make sure that only citizens can vote is taking care to faithfully execute the law, in case there’s any question about that. A September 25 SCOTUS decision in Department of Homeland Security v. League of Women Voters (No. 26A308), a 6-3 majority (usual suspects dissenting) paused by lower-court judge Sparkle Sooknanan that had blocked the Dept. of Homeland Security’s Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements system — further proof that the Lefty-left won’t abide any restrictions on who can vote.
The SCOTUS stay allows state and local officials to match their voter rolls against federal Social Security records, to sort out who can legally vote. AI could do this with novel efficiency. The catch is, states’ participation is voluntary. Only twenty-seven states have moved to participate in this record-sharing. Another catch is that SCOTUS waited, for unknown reasons, before issuing their ruling until well into the “90-day rule window” (in the National Voter Registration Act) that doesn’t allow actual changes in the voter rolls during this period, only identification of problems. We’ll see if any of that dissuades non-citizens from attempting to cast a vote.
You have to wonder why the Democratic Party is acting like they’ve already won the midterms. After ten years of narrative control through their allies in the network media and what’s left of the major newspapers, the Democrats apparently believe that if you assert an outcome often enough, Oprah Winfrey style, it will come true.
It’s just another gaslighting op. Look at the Democratic Party’s marquee candidates, a ragtag and bobtail of avowed jihadis, communists, neo-Jacobins, and plain old creeps such as Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, Melat Kiros in Colorado, Darializa Avila Chevalier and Claire Valdez in New York, Angie Nixon in Florida, James Talarico in Texas, and Troy Jackson up in Maine. The old Chuck Schumer / Hakeem Jeffries wing of the party pretends to support this rabble, who have declared they are merely running under the party’s banner for convenience and aim to deep-six the likes of Schumer and Jeffries at the first opportunity.
Will the Democrats still try to cheat their way through the midterms despite the obstacles and disincentives piling up around them? Probably, yes, because that will trigger conflict between the states and the Feds, and post-election chaos is what the party needs to keep hope alive, as they like to say. They want the results to remain in limbo as long as possible, with maximum lawfare around it to further confuse and confound the outcome. It’s in their nature. They are the scorpion riding the frog across the river in the ancient parable.

Sounds cute Judge Nap, but did you point this out about Bush, Obama and Biden, too? If not, that’s a problem.

You can claim that Trump is more of a threat, but in the end that’s just a partisan thing to say.

• The Tyranny Of One Man’s Opinion (Judge Andrew P. Napolitano)

Thomas Cromwell was the Lord Chancellor of England for much of the reign of King Henry VIII. He engineered the convictions and executions of many whom Henry wanted out of the way, including his two predecessors in office – one of whom was St. Thomas More – and even the king’s second wife, Queen Anne.

When Cromwell’s son Gregory, who became sickened as he watched his father devolving from counselor to monster, learned that an executioner for the queen had been sent for from France a week before her trial, he asked his father what the purpose of her trial was if the king had preordained the queen’s guilt and prepaid the executioner. Cromwell replied that the king needed a jury to give the appearance of legitimacy to her conviction and prevent the public perception of “the tyranny of one man’s opinion.”
In America, we have a Constitution not only to prevent the perception but also the reality of the tyranny of one man’s opinion. The Constitution’s Fifth Amendment makes clear that if the government wants life, liberty or property, it cannot take it by executive command, but only by due process – a fair jury trial and all its constitutional protections; and Article I makes it clear that if the government wants war, it cannot commence it by executive command, but only by congressional declaration.
We have a Constitution also to assure the separation of powers in the federal government. Congress writes the laws, appropriates the taxpayers’ money and funds borrowed in their names and declares war when the United States is in danger of imminent foreign threat. The president enforces the laws, spends money as Congress directs and wages the wars Congress has authorized. The judiciary decides what the Constitution and the laws mean and, if properly challenged, determines if the president and Congress or the states have exercised their duties lawfully and constitutionally.
The central constitutional question is not whether a president sincerely believes that his policies are necessary. It is whether the Constitution permits personal liberty and limited government to depend upon the opinion of one man. That is the danger of executive government without effective legislative and judicial checks. A fair reading of the Constitution begins with a truism: Presidential power is not whatever the president believes it to be. It is only what the Constitution and laws actually confer.
Consider the administration’s attacks on alleged drug-trafficking boats. President Donald Trump says he has directed military forces to strike narcotrafficking vessels and describes the operation as part of his campaign against fentanyl and cartels. But the constitutional question is separate from the president’s characterization of the targets. A person suspected of being a drug trafficker – or even a mass murderer – does not thereby become condemned to death. Criminal guilt always requires accusation, evidence and adjudication according to law, before punishment.
These boat killings are unlawful extrajudicial executions. In the language all Americans can understand, they are murders. The same principle applies to Iran. The Framers deliberately divided the war powers. Article I gives Congress the power to declare war, authorize military force, regulate the armed forces and control appropriations. Article II makes the president commander in chief. The distinction matters. The president commands forces; Congress determines where and under what circumstances the president does so.
Trump has openly declared an American blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and said that the United States controls which ships pass through it. He has also imposed sanctions which deny food, medicine and currency stability to millions of innocent Iranians. He even threatened to murder all Iranians – beyond the thousands he has already killed – if a peace agreement is not soon reached. Those statements highlight what the Constitution was designed to prevent one individual from addressing alone: Whether the United States should wage military and economic hostilities against the population of another nation.
Congress has repeatedly resisted treating the Iran conflict as a matter solely for presidential discretion. Just two weeks ago, support for Trump’s war failed to muster majorities in both houses of Congress.Nor can the president’s personal assessment of Iran’s nuclear intentions settle the matter. In 2018, his State Department’s compliance report said Iran was fulfilling its nuclear-related non-proliferation commitments and U.S. intelligence had assessed with high confidence that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003.
In 2020, his State Department again said that Iran was not then engaged in key activities associated with designing and developing a nuclear weapon. In 2025, his Director of National Intelligence testified that the entire U.S. intelligence community continued to assess that Iran was not building nuclear weapons.Those facts alone establish something constitutionally important: The president’s personal belief – whether informed or uninformed – is not evidence or law or a substitute for congressional authorization.
The same textual principle reaches domestic spending and taxation. Article I provides that only Congress can impose taxes, and money may be drawn from the Treasury only pursuant to appropriations made by law. Even though the Supreme Court has invalidated Trump’s tariffs, he continues to impose them. Even though Congress has not authorized funds for Trump’s vanity projects, he continues to spend tax dollars on them. The Constitution does not grant any branch of government carte blanche. It has separated powers precisely because legislators, presidents and judges can all succumb to the corruption of power – and can all be wrong.
That is the deeper meaning of the tyranny of one man’s opinion. The danger is not merely that one president might be wrong. It is that a constitutional system becomes meaningless if one man’s conclusions about war, crime, taxation, spending, foreign threats or national security become the sole basis for government actions – particularly actions that kill innocents. The Founders separated the sword from the purse and divided governmental power because they understood a truism: Personal liberty and limited government cannot long survive when entrusted to one man’s opinion.

Elon Musk: "I think we're going to see widespread slaughter in Europe."

"You're clearly seeing a massive increase in the number of attacks."

"And the legacy media downplays these attacks. But the attacks, the terrorism, the killing of innocent people is rising. Every week,… pic.twitter.com/Z2UYAbpJ1c
— Wiki Leaks 1.0 (@WikiLeaksQ) September 30, 2026

Elon Musk has a message: start learning robotics.

"There will be at least a billion robots in 10 years, each producing at least 5x the output of a human."

Morgan Stanley pegs the robotics market at $5 TRILLION by 2050.

Whoever builds these machines won't need to think about… pic.twitter.com/hhIrxk7syA
— AI Evolution (@AiEvolutio58513) October 1, 2026

I’m tired of pretending that all religions are equal…

There are 4,000 religions in the world.

1 is responsible for 96% of terror attacks.

George W. Bush called Islam the ‘Religion of Peace’ while we were still pulling warm bodies from Ground Zero. Since then Muslims have… pic.twitter.com/SsFnqT1AsI
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) October 1, 2026

The Golden Era (5000 years) pic.twitter.com/jOwmzn4yiT
— Willem Middelkoop (@wmiddelkoop) October 1, 2026

Optimus

Coming to a theater near you pic.twitter.com/cxTHFZsqDT
— Optimus (@Optimus_RH) October 1, 2026

The Russian calm at the center of a NATO storm

Baltik is the home of the Russian Baltic Fleet, whose ships, aircraft and Marines would play a central role in defending Kaliningrad from any NATO attack.

I paid a visit to the port city of Baltik, the western-most populated center… pic.twitter.com/4tPVMwhP0h
— Scott Ritter (@RealScottRitter) October 2, 2026

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Debt Rattle April 24 2023

Apr 242023

April 24, 2023 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 8:55 am Finance Tagged with: black market, Borrell, cyber truck, Greens, Greer, kidney transplant, Melnik, Prigozhin, Russian oil 62 Responses »

Piet Mondriaan Victory Boogie Woogie 1942-44

• America’s Empire Is Bankrupt (John Michael Greer)

• West Knows Ukraine Weapons Leaking To Black Market – Seymour Hersh (RT)

• Ukraine Says Western Military Aid Is ‘Not Enough’, Demands 10x More (RT)

• Revolts Erupt Among Ukrainian Troops In Donetsk Cities – Prigozhin (TASS)

• Seymour Hersh Reacts To NYT Helping Track Down Pentagon Leaker (RT)

• Russia Warns Of Repercussions From US Visa Refusal (RT)

• Musk Claims He Donated $100 Million To Ukraine (RT)

• The Greens Are Dragging Germany Down With Foreign And Energy Policies (Fomenko)

• EU Legislators Urge France To Declare Chinese Envoy Persona Non Grata (TASS)

• EU’s Top Diplomat Wants Naval Patrols Off Taiwan (RT)

• China’s Big Refiners Snapping Up Russian Oil – Reuters (RT)

• Russia Has Enough Coal For 300 Years – Energy Ministry (RT)

• The UK Faces a Steep Climb Out of a Deep Hole (Spiegel)

• Mother of 7 Denied Kidney Transplant for Refusing COVID Shot in Georgia (ET)

The last thing they want is Biden debating JFK jr.

Comer: “There’s not gonna be anybody left for a Christmas picture… it’s the entire family..”

SHOCK: Congress now has evidence that at least 12 members of the Biden family received money from China, Russia, Ukraine, and/or the Middle East from the sale of Joe’s influence.
pic.twitter.com/WMcjVbnesi

— @amuse (@amuse) April 23, 2023

Biden 2024

OFFICIAL ENDORSEMENT

I hereby officially declare that I will be supporting Biden in the 2024 election.

Not Joe—Hunter!#HunterBiden2024 pic.twitter.com/XZSW5u8yBu

— Gonzalo Lira (@GonzaloLira1968) April 23, 2023

Macgregor
https://twitter.com/i/status/1650272330546049024

Cyber truck
https://twitter.com/i/status/1649791215703867392

RFK jr Bill Gates
https://twitter.com/i/status/1649969733838446594

“The good news is that there’s a solution to all this. The bad news is that it’s going to take a couple of decades of serious turmoil to get there.”

• America’s Empire Is Bankrupt (John Michael Greer)

We’ve still got some of the natural resources, but nothing like what we once had. The thrifty habits? Those went whistling down the wind a long time ago. In the late stages of an empire, exploiting flows of unearned wealth from abroad is far more profitable than trying to produce wealth at home, and most people direct their efforts accordingly. That’s how you end up with the typical late-imperial economy, with a governing class that flaunts fantastic levels of paper wealth, a parasite class of hangers-on that thrive by catering to the very rich or staffing the baroque bureaucratic systems that permeate public and private life, and the vast majority of the population impoverished, sullen, and unwilling to lift a finger to save their soi-disant betters from the consequences of their own actions.

The good news is that there’s a solution to all this. The bad news is that it’s going to take a couple of decades of serious turmoil to get there. The solution is that the US economy will retool itself to produce earned wealth in the form of real goods and non-financial services. That’ll happen inevitably as the flows of unearned wealth falter, foreign goods become unaffordable to most Americans, and it becomes profitable to produce things here in the US again. The difficulty, of course, is that most of a century of economic and political choices meant to support our former imperial project are going to have to be undone.

The most obvious example? The metastatic bloat of government, corporate and non-profit managerial jobs in American life. That’s a sensible move in an age of empire, as it funnels money into the consumer economy, which provides what jobs exist for the impoverished classes. Public and private offices alike teem with legions of office workers whose labour contributes nothing to national prosperity but whose pay cheques prop up the consumer sector. That bubble is already losing air. It’s indicative that Elon Musk, after his takeover of Twitter, fired some 80% of that company’s staff; other huge internet combines are pruning their workforce in the same way, though not yet to the same degree.

The recent hullaballoo about artificial intelligence is helping to amplify the same trend. Behind the chatbots are programs called large language models (LLMs), which are very good at imitating the more predictable uses of human language. A very large number of office jobs these days spend most of their time producing texts that fall into that category: contracts, legal briefs, press releases, media stories and so on. Those jobs are going away. Computer coding is even more amenable to LLM production, so you can kiss a great many software jobs goodbye as well. Any other form of economic activity that involves assembling predictable sequences of symbols is facing the same crunch. A recent paper by Goldman Sachs estimates that something like 300 million jobs across the industrial world will be wholly or partly replaced by LLMs in the years immediately ahead.

Another technology with similar results is CGI image creation. Levi’s announced not long ago that all its future catalogues and advertising will use CGI images instead of highly-paid models and photographers. Expect the same thing to spread generally. Oh, and Hollywood’s next. We’re not too far from the point at which a program can harvest all the footage of Marilyn Monroe from her films, and use that to generate new Marilyn Monroe movies for a tiny fraction of what it costs to hire living actors, camera crews and the rest. The result will be a drastic decrease in high-paying jobs across a broad swathe of the economy.

“..only 30% of military aid actually reached the frontline..”

“..Maria Zakharova said in October [..] she estimated the black market turnover at $1 billion per month..”

• West Knows Ukraine Weapons Leaking To Black Market – Seymour Hersh (RT)

Western-supplied arms are being sold by Ukrainian commanders to smugglers in Poland, Romania and other states, veteran American journalist Seymour Hersh has claimed. The Pulitzer Prize winner, speaking to Afshin Rattansi on his program ‘Going Underground,’ said the West is aware of this black market trade, as some reports about missing arms shipments have even appeared in the US media. Hersh claimed that, according to his data, almost immediately after the conflict broke out between Kiev and Moscow last February, “Poland, Romania, other countries on the border were being flooded with weapons we [the US and allies] were shipping for the war to Ukraine.” “Often, it wasn’t generals, it was colonels and others, who were given shipments of some weapons, [who] would personally resell them… to the dark market,” he explained.

The journalist noted that there was concern in the West last year that some of the arms sent to Ukraine, such as Stinger shoulder-launched missiles, could be used to “shoot down an airplane at considerable height.” As for Western-supplied weapons ending up on the black market, “CBS wrote a story about it that they were forced to retract,” Hersh said. When asked about why the piece was retracted, the journalist said the media is supporting the stance of the US government that “we’re on the side of Ukraine. We all hate Russia.” Hersh was likely referring to the documentary “Arming Ukraine,” which CBS aired last August. The promo for the film, which included a claim by the founder of pro-Ukraine NGO Blue-Yellow, Jonas Ohman, that only 30% of military aid actually reached the frontline, was removed, while the documentary itself and the story accompanying it were redacted.

Russian officials have on many occasions warned about Western-supplied arms being smuggled outside Ukraine, thus deteriorating the security situation elsewhere around the globe. “NATO military supplies intended for the Kiev regime end up in the hands of terrorists, extremists and criminal groups in the Middle East, Central Africa, Southeast Asia,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in October. At the time, she estimated the black market turnover at $1billion per month. An investigation by RT last summer also revealed how various weapons supplied to Kiev by the West were being sold on the dark net. The journalists were able to swiftly negotiate to the purchase of a US-made kamikaze drone with smugglers. However, it impossible to confirm whether the sellers actually had the weapons in stock, as the reporters did not complete the purchase.

Putin

Listen to the Russian side of the story from Vladimir Putin

Kiev regime sabotaged peaceful resolution

Ukraine took steps to enter NATO

Ukraine wants own nuclear weapons

Bio weapons labs in Ukraine under the command of the Pentagon

Would you want bio weapons labs within 600… pic.twitter.com/jQpe2sufgL

— • ᗰISᑕᕼIᗴᖴ ™ • (@4Mischief) April 23, 2023

Melnik is a piece of work.

• Ukraine Says Western Military Aid Is ‘Not Enough’, Demands 10x More (RT)

Western nations should allocate 1% of their GDP for weapons deliveries to Ukraine amid the country’s conflict with Russia, controversial Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Melnik has said. “We are thankful to our allies for their military help. But: it is not enough,” Melnik wrote on Twitter on Saturday. The US has already provided more that $35.4 billion worth of arms to Kiev since the start of the fighting last February, with the EU and its member states adding another $13.3 billion. But Melnik insisted that “Ukraine needs 10 times more to finish Russian aggression this year.” “We call upon our partners to cross all artificial ‘red lines’ and devote 1% of GDP for weapons deliveries,” the diplomat said.

NATO demands that its member states allocate 2% of their GDP to defense spending. However, the bloc’s annual report, which was published in March, revealed that only seven of its 30 members had been able to meet that target in 2022. Kiev, which secured a promise to supply main battle tanks from the US, UK, Germany and some other countries earlier this year, is now pressuring its foreign backers to provide warplanes too. In another tweet on Saturday, Melnik mocked German Foreign Minister Boris Pistorius for suggesting that Tornado and Eurofighter jets would be “unsuitable” for the Ukrainian military. “Oh, yes?.. Really?” the deputy foreign minister wrote. Berlin had originally ruled out delivering its Leopard 2 tanks, but is now “so proud” to be sending 18 of them to Kiev, he noted.

Melnik was Ukraine’s ambassador in Germany until last July, and often made headlines in this role with scandalous comments. He labeled German Chancellor Olaf Scholz an “offended liverwurst” for his unwillingness to visit Kiev, but later apologized. He also told Elon Musk to “f**k off” in relation to the billionaire’s peace proposals. In one interview as ambassador, Melnik defended controversial Ukrainian hero Stepan Bandera, who collaborated with the Nazis during WWII and is accused of the mass murder of Jews and Poles, comparing him to noble thief Robin Hood. Melnik wasn’t without a job for long following his dismissal, having been promoted to deputy foreign minister last November.

Chasov Yar is about 10km west from Bakhmut, Konstantinovka 10km from there.

• Revolts Erupt Among Ukrainian Troops In Donetsk Cities – Prigozhin (TASS)

Rebellions have begun among Ukrainian servicemen in Chasov Yar and Konstantinovka, as they are dropping their arms and walking out, Yevgeny Prigozhin, founder of the PMC Wagner, said on Saturday. “Revolts have begun among the servicemen of the Ukrainian armed forces in Chasov Yar and Konstantinovka. They are dropping their arms, rising and leaving,” said Prigozhin, cited on his press service’s Telegram channel. This is how Prigozhin responded to a request to comment on reports that Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky had demanded from Ground Forces Commander Alexander Syrsky that his troops stand their ground in Artyomovsk (known as Bakhmut in Ukraine) until May 9, so as “to prevent a big informational victory of Russia.” Artyomovsk, located in the Kiev-controlled area of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), is a major transport hub supplying the Ukrainian military grouping in Donbass. Yan Gagin, an advisor to DPR head, told TASS on April 18 that Russia’s forces had taken control of nearly 90% of Artyomovsk.

“..you can’t be shocked that the Times would be – as a good citizen – turning to the FBI… of course, I am [shocked], but you can’t be.”

• Seymour Hersh Reacts To NYT Helping Track Down Pentagon Leaker (RT)

Seymour Hersh has slammed the New York Times over its pro-government stance and treatment of sources, and the way it helped the FBI track down suspected Pentagon leaker Jack Teixeira. The veteran investigative journalist gave an interview to Afshin Rattansi on ‘Going Underground.’ Teixeira, who posted classified US intelligence data on the conflict in Ukraine and other issues in an online gaming forum, was apprehended by the FBI last week. The arrest took place after the NYT and the Washington Post – in cooperation with Western-funded “open source investigations” outfit Bellingcat – tracked down the source of the documents and publicly exposed his identity. The NYT also located Teixeira’s home in Massachusetts and spoke with his mother.

“Don’t get me going on the press; the press is a no-win situation for me,” Hersh said when asked about the issue during the program. The veteran journalist mentioned that he worked at the NYT for many years and “won a lot of prizes,” at a time when the paper was much better at protecting its sources. “One of the most important stories I wrote [in 1974] about the CIA spying on American citizens had nobody named in it,” he said. The NYT has shown itself to be completely “pro-Biden” as it doesn’t criticize the US president at all, Hersh argued. The Pulitzer Prize winner said that along with other major outlets, the paper did not report on his recent bombshell article blaming the Biden administration for the explosions on the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea last September.

They only published “counter stories given by the intelligence community,” the 86-year-old added. Hersh went on to claim that Donald Trump “terrified” the media when he became US president in 2017 despite “all the mocking they did… And they’re terrified again. I’ll tell you there’s a lot of people very worried that we might end with Biden-Trump ticket in 2024.” In such a situation, “you can’t be shocked that the Times would be – as a good citizen – turning to the FBI… of course, I am [shocked], but you can’t be.”

The CIA reprimanded Zelensky for his love of luxury and expensive Mercedes
The head of the CIA, Burns, reprimanded Zelensky as a boy for the fact that Ukrainian officials and generals are driving around Kyiv in new Mercedes.
told by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh on RT. pic.twitter.com/m8iAvdEw7z

— Spriter (@Spriter99880) April 23, 2023

Weaponizing UN headquarters.

• Russia Warns Of Repercussions From US Visa Refusal (RT)

The US has failed to grant visas to accredited journalists from the media pool traveling with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Moscow said on Sunday. Lavrov and his delegation are scheduled to take part in UN Security Council meetings in New York City next week, with Russia currently holding the rotating presidency of the UNSC. Russia’s top diplomat blasted the withholding of visas as “stupid,”exposing the true worth of Washington’s “oaths about protecting freedom of speech, about access to information, and so on.” “Of course, I understood how notorious our American colleagues are for such things but I was sure that, this time, given the attention that was drawn to their ugly behavior, everything would be different. But I was wrong,” Lavrov told reporters.

Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov revealed that the US had been “pretending” until the very last moment that it was trying to sort out the visa issue. Now, Moscow is compelled to respond to the fresh hostile move, he warned. “It’s yet another proof that not only should our colleagues in Washington not be trusted, but also not-listened-to altogether,”Ryabkov stated. “I stress, we will find ways to respond, to make Americans remember that things should not be done in such a fashion. And they will remember.” Lavrov is set to preside at two UNSC meetings this week, meet with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, and to hold other bilateral meetings in New York. The diplomatic activities are set to become “major newsbreak events” and barring the pool reporters from participating is completely unacceptable, Ryabkov said.

Russia assumed the rotating presidency of the Security Council on April 1, amid the ongoing standoff with the collective West over Moscow’s special military operation in Ukraine. The UNSC presidency has been riddled with assorted issues, with the American side also delaying granting permission for the arrival of Lavrov’s plane. The pool journalists traveling with the Russian delegation were supposed to have a visa appointment as early as March 31 yet these meetings were canceled, Anatoly Antonov, Russia’s ambassador to Washington, revealed last week. The Russian Foreign Minister and multiple other senior officials were subjected to US sanctions last year over the Ukraine conflict. At the same time, as the host-nation of the UN headquarters, Washington has obligations not to hamper with the work of its diplomats and foreign dignitaries, or with that of accredited journalists, whatever the circumstances.

Weaponizing Starlink.

• Musk Claims He Donated $100 Million To Ukraine (RT)

Elon Musk claimed to have donated $100 million to support Kiev in its conflict with Moscow during an argument on social media with US author Stephen King on Sunday. Last year, the SpaceX, Tesla and Twitter CEO oversaw the introduction of the Starlink telecommunications system in Ukraine. “I’ve donated $100m to Ukraine, how much have you donated?” Musk asked King in a tweet on Sunday after the author suggested that the billionaire should donate a portion of the proceeds from the social media platform’s new paid-verification model to Kiev. Musk also retweeted an October message from Ukrainian Technologies Minister Mikhail Federov, in which he thanked the SpaceX CEO for the provision of the company’s Starlink satellite network to Ukraine, which he described as “critically important.”

The Twitter owner also noted that SpaceX had turned down funding from the US Department of Defense to help pay for the system’s operational costs – which he estimated last year would reach $100 million by the end of 2022. Soon after the beginning of the conflict last year, Musk made Starlink – a low Earth orbit constellation of satellites that provides internet access – available in Ukraine following a request from Federov. The communications network was deployed by Kiev to monitor troop movements and other military information-gathering methods, particularly as Ukraine’s pre-existing internet infrastructure was regularly inoperable.

However, in February, Kiev responded angrily after Musk and SpaceX imposed limits on the use of Starlink in Ukraine amid reports that the technology was being harnessed for the use of drones. Mikhail Podolyak, a senior adviser to Vladimir Zelensky, argued at the time that SpaceX must decide if it is “on the side of the right to freedom.” Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX’s chief operating officer, said during a news conference in the United States last February that the system was not intended for use in Ukraine for “offensive purposes,” and that it was “never, never meant to be weaponized.”

“The Greens are subserviating Germany to the US agenda and are actively dismantling everything that has made Germany successful, in exchange for practically nothing.”

• The Greens Are Dragging Germany Down With Foreign And Energy Policies (Fomenko)

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock described her recent visit to China as “more than shocking,” arguing that while Germany should not “decouple” from Beijing, it should no longer be Berlin’s most important trading partner. Baerbock was in Beijing on an apparent damage-control visit, following Emmanuel Macron’s widely publicized trip to the country and subsequent criticism of the US. Her critical remarks on China came on Wednesday, as she spoke to the Bundestag. The Green Party of Germany, which is part of a governing coalition with the larger Social Democratic Party (SPD), has always been known for its hawkish and neoconservative foreign policies. This stems from the fact that ‘Green politics’, although based on a tradition of environmentalism, is simply a more radical offshoot of liberalism, emphasizing the preaching of universalist values.

Thus, many Western Green parties (the left-leaning, anti-war US Green Party being perhaps an ironic exception) have typically espoused human rights zealotry. Therefore, they have been hostile to China, which is why so many of the parties’ elected representatives are present in the international Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC). Accordingly, the German Greens, having seized control of the country’s foreign ministry, are seeking to dismantle Berlin’s highly favorable geopolitical relationship with China while also going full-throttle in their confrontation with Moscow. Gone are the days of pragmatism, prudence and common sense, and here are the days of divisive liberal fundamentalism, which has allowed the US to readily dismantle the foundations of Germany’s prosperity and economic strength. Baerbock is a disaster, and she’s taking Germany down with her.

Despite being the largest and most powerful economy in Europe, which has shaped the direction and integration of a whole continent, Germany’s future now looks bleak. The escalation of the Ukraine conflict, combined with Washington’s likely but vehemently denied destruction of Nord Stream 2, has destroyed the foundations of the country’s energy security and its industrial competitiveness. The damage done is evidenced by the fact that it’s forecasted to scrape a 0.3% GDP growth rate in 2023, while year-on-year inflation stood at 8.7% in February. Baerbock now seems content to swing the demolition ball at her country’s relationship with China, its largest trading partner. She has sought to unveil new rules to discourage the expansion of German businesses in the country, using the talking point of “reducing dependence.”

Germany’s trade with China was worth €245 billion ($270.8 billion) in 2021. But the question is, if not China, then who? Because look at the consequences of this ‘reduced dependence’ on Russia. The Greens are subserviating Germany to the US agenda and are actively dismantling everything that has made Germany successful, in exchange for practically nothing.

The fanatical environmental policies of the Greens, mixed with their foreign policy, are making the situation even worse. Despite the fact that the country has suffered an energy crisis, having lost its partnership with Russia, the Greens have pursued their obsessive anti-nuclear stance. This has forced the country to stay on the self-destructive route of abandoning nuclear power, despite overwhelming consensus that it is cheap, safe, and of course strategically important in the environment they are creating. Germany shut down its last nuclear power plants last week in a move that baffled international commentators and energy experts.

Because of these policies, Germany is under threat of national decline. The legacy of the influence of the Green Party in Olaf Scholz’s government has been to dismantle the foundations of its economic growth, expand the influence of the US over Germany wholesale, and of course rip up geopolitical partnerships that were built on realism and self-interest. Under Merkel, Germany was a powerful and influential player because it acted as a maverick, without deviating from the values it deemed important. The price of ripping up these legacies, cheered on by US-sponsored think-tankers targeting Berlin relentlessly, has been to create a Germany which will be weaker, poorer and less relevant – an American vassal. Who needs multipolarity when you can put a Green Party in charge of your foreign ministry? Germany is thus experiencing a slow death at the hands of the Greens.

He questioned the legal status of former Soviet countries. Crimea! Shut him up!

• EU Legislators Urge France To Declare Chinese Envoy Persona Non Grata (TASS)

A group of 80 delegates from the European Parliament has sent a letter to French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna requesting to declare Chinese Ambassador to Paris Lu Shaye persona non grata over his remarks about the status of former Soviet republics. “Ambassador Lu Shaye has publicly stated that the former republics of the Soviet Union do not have effective status within the framework of international law,” their letter published in Le Monde on Sunday said. “We urge to declare China’s envoy persona non grata over his unacceptable behavior,” the lawmakers demanded.

According to them, the Chinese ambassador’s remarks “insulted the history, culture and integrity of the countries.” On Friday on its Twitter page, France’s LCI TV channel quoted an interview with the diplomat who, commenting on Crimea’s status, said that “even these ex-Soviet Union countries do not have effective status, as we say, under international law because there is no international accord to concretize their status as a sovereign country.”.

And China will patrol the North Sea?!

• EU’s Top Diplomat Wants Naval Patrols Off Taiwan (RT)

European navies should “patrol” the Taiwan Strait, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has said, arguing that the move would help to maintain the “status quo” in the region. The diplomat floated the idea in an opinion piece published by the Journal Du Dimanche on Saturday. The EU continues to view China as “a partner, a competitor and a rival all at the same time,” in line with its strategy adopted back in 2019, Borrell wrote. The bloc should assert itself more firmly on the Taiwan issue, “which concerns us economically, commercially and technologically,” he argued. “This is why I call on European navies to patrol the Taiwan Strait to signify Europe’s commitment to freedom of navigation in this absolutely crucial area,” he continued.

“On Taiwan, our position is simple and consistent. In our view, there is only one China. But not under any conditions. And certainly not through the use of force,” Borrell wrote, claiming that “vast majority of Taiwanese people believe that [maintaining] the peaceful status quo is the most appropriate solution.” The EU official pledged to put the idea of conducting patrols to the bloc’s foreign ministers on Monday, when they are set to convene to discuss Brussels’ policies towards Beijing. At the same time, he admitted the patrols should be set up carefully, and EU nations should “be vigilant against provocations and overbidding.” The proposal is similar to the US practice of so-called “freedom of navigation” patrols involving military vessels routinely dispatched to the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, and other regions.

The patrols have long been an issue in bilateral ties between Washington and Beijing, with the latter arguing that the practice only stirs up tensions rather than helping to bring ‘stability’ to the contentious waterways. In his piece, Borrell also touched on one of the most controversial international issues of recent months – the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine. While Beijing has maintained a neutral stance, urging all parties to exercise restraint and seek a diplomatic solution to the hostilities, it has been repeatedly accused by Kiev’s Western backers of supporting Moscow. “We have said it over and over again to the Chinese: it is not in your interest to support Russia. Especially since by supporting it you will only increase the polarization of the international system that you claim to want to fight,” Borrell wrote, pledging to reiterate this stance at the upcoming ministerial meeting.

There will always be buyers.

• China’s Big Refiners Snapping Up Russian Oil – Reuters (RT)

China’s largest state-owned and private refineries are buying more Russian crude, driving up its price, and forcing smaller independent producers, known as ‘teapots’, to search for cheaper options, Reuters reported this week. Top Chinese buyers, which shunned Russian oil when the EU and G7 imposed an embargo and a price cap on the commodity in December, have restored confidence since then and joined the race for discounted oil. In February, state refiners PetroChina and Sinopec resumed imports, and in March, large private oil refiners Hengli Petrochemical and Jiangsu Eastern Shenghong Co followed suit, according to traders and shiptracking data from Refinitiv, Kpler and Vortexa.

In March, China’s overall Russian crude imports, including pipeline deliveries and seaborne supplies, surged to a record 9.61 million tons, which is the equivalent to 2.26 million barrels per day (bpd), customs data showed on Friday. “China’s imports of Russian Urals are on track to break March’s record [in April] as more refiners start to tap on the discounted crude from Russia’s Baltics,” said Vortexa analyst Emma Li, adding that around 700,000 bpd of Urals may reach China in April, up from 600,000 bpd in the previous month. Meanwhile, smaller refiners had to opt for alternatives such as Russian Arctic grades, Iranian and Venezuelan oil as the big buyers are back on the market.

In March alone, a record 4.2 million barrels of Varandey blend from the Russian Arctic were delivered to China’s Shandong province, home to most of the teapots, Kpler data showed. Loadings of crude from Russia’s western ports in April is expected to reach the highest level since 2019, above 2.4 million barrels per day (bpd), despite Moscow’s pledge to cut oil production, trading and shipping sources said. At the same time, discounts that Russia was offering as it sought to divert supplies away from the West are narrowing. Discounts for the country’s flagship Urals blend contracted in China for July have reduced to about $9-$10 a barrel to ICE Brent futures on a delivered ex-ship (DES) basis, from around $14 a barrel for March deliveries, according to Reuters.

100 years of oil, 300 years of coal.

• Russia Has Enough Coal For 300 Years – Energy Ministry (RT)

Russia has enough coal reserves to last for centuries, deputy head of the country’s Energy Ministry, Sergey Mochalnikov, said on Friday during a board meeting of the Federal Subsoil Resources Management Agency. When taking into account both tapped and untapped subsoil resources, the country will be well supplied with the coal for 300 years, he said. “We have enough reserves. In terms of coal, we have more than 100 years of explored reserves, and if we use all the resources, we can add another 200 years or more to that. We are doing well with both resources and reserves, and this allows the country as a whole to be secure in terms of energy,” Mochalnikov stated.

The deputy minister added that all domestic needs in coal are currently fulfilled by Russian producers. Meanwhile, he also noted that exports have been the main driver of the coal industry, with new deposits and energy clusters opening in the country’s easternmost regions. Russia produced 443.6 million tons of coal in 2022, a 0.3% increase from 2021. Exports fell 7.5% to 210.9 million tons following the introduction of embargoes last August on Russian coal by the EU and UK, which had previously been the recipient of nearly a third of Russian coal exports.

Coal producers ramped up supplies to the domestic market by 12.2% to just over 172 million tons while also boosting exports to ‘friendly’ countries, particularly China. Russia increased shipments to the Asian nation by 11.2% to 59.5 million tons last year, as Moscow sought to reorient its trade and China was increasing coal consumption amid the post-pandemic rebound in industrial activity. China has continued to stock up on Russian coal this year, with the volume of imports hitting a record high last month at 8.8 million tons, up 29% over February and almost three times more than in March 2022 (3.1 million tons), according to Chinese customs data.

“..nowhere is the feeling of having “lost the future” stronger than in Britain..”

• The UK Faces a Steep Climb Out of a Deep Hole (Spiegel)

Things aren’t going well for the United Kingdom these days. For the past several months, the flow of bad news has been constant, the country’s coffers are empty, public administration is ineffective and the nation’s corporations are struggling. As this winter came to an end, more than 7 million people were waiting for a doctor’s appointment, including tens of thousands of people suffering from heart disease and cancer. According to government estimates, some 650,000 legal cases are still waiting to be addressed in a court of law. And those needing a passport or driver’s license must frequently wait for several months. Boarded up windows and signs reading “To Let” and “To Rent” have become a common sight on the country’s high streets, while numerous products have disappeared from supermarket shelves. Recently, a number of chains announced that they would be rationing cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers for the foreseeable future.

Last year, 560 pubs closed their doors forever, with thousands more soon to follow, according to the industry association. Without Oxfam, the Salvation Army and other charitable organizations that operate second-hand stores, numerous city centers would have almost no shops left at all. Last week, the International Monetary Fund forecast that in no other industrialized nation would the economy develop as poorly as in Britain this year. Even Russia is expected to end up ahead of the UK. Whereas the number of billionaires in the UK – at 177 – is higher than it has ever been, millions of Britons have slid into poverty. Newspapers and television channels are full of cheap recipes and shows like Jamie Oliver’s “£1 Wonders.” Since December, hardly a day has passed without a strike by bus drivers, medical workers, teachers, public servants, university employees or rail workers. Last week, assistant doctors across the country went on strike for four days, with the media calling on the populace to avoid all activities that could result in injury.

For many, the situation is reminiscent of the 1970s, when high debt, punishing inflation and widespread protests brought the country to its knees – leading Henry Kissinger, who was U.S. secretary of state at the time, to grumble from across the Atlantic: “Britain is a tragedy, reduced to begging, borrowing and stealing.” To be sure, after two years of pandemic and one year of war, the rest of Europe isn’t doing particularly well either. But nowhere is the feeling of having “lost the future” stronger than in Britain, according to the public opinion pollsters from Ipsos. In 2008, the year of the banking and financial crisis, 12 percent of people in the UK believed that their children would be worse off than them. Now, that number is 41 percent, Ipsos has found. One significant reason for that pessimism is the fact that many simply no longer trust their speechifying politicians in Westminster to get much done. The Tory party, which has been in power now for a dozen years, has gone through four prime ministers since 2016 alone.

There’s a word for this: Murder.

“..Doe had already recovered from a bout with COVID and that her antibody numbers were actually stronger than those found in many people who were fully vaccinated for 90 days.”

• Mother of 7 Denied Kidney Transplant for Refusing COVID Shot in Georgia (ET)

On dialysis and potentially facing death, a 41-year-old homeschooling mother of seven young children has been rejected as a candidate for a life-saving kidney transplant by Emory Healthcare Inc. of Atlanta. The reason? The woman, who has already had COVID-19, refused to receive the COVID-19 vaccine on religious and medical grounds. To protect her privacy, the patient will be referred to in this article as Jane Doe. Emory Healthcare did not respond to a request for comment. Affiliated with Emory University, Emory Healthcare is one of the leading organ transplant centers in the South. According to Liberty Counsel (LC), a national non-profit legal organization helping Doe, she was referred to Emory by her nephrologist after suddenly coming down with end-stage kidney disease.

The seriousness of Doe’s condition necessitates her undergoing dialysis three times a week to keep her alive. Following an evaluation by one of the transplant center’s nurse practitioners, Doe was initially found to be an acceptable candidate for a new kidney, even though Doe reported she had not been vaccinated against COVID-19. Doe’s hopes were soon dashed when, after another consultation with Emory staffers, a social worker informed her that she could not move forward to the transplant program’s “active waiting list” until she took the shot. Emory Healthcare is one of 35 percent of the nation’s transplant centers that are still requiring their patients to be vaccinated for COVID-19, according to a Liberty Counsel analysis. This is despite the fact that on April 11, President Joe Biden declared the national emergency caused by the COVID-19 pandemic officially over.

On April 17, LC sent a letter to Emory Healthcare requesting that no later than April 30, Doe be granted religious and medical exemptions from its COVID-19 vaccination mandate and asked that she be reactivated and placed on the kidney transplant active waiting list. The nine-page letter alleges that every available COVID-19 vaccine is associated with aborted “fetal cell lines.” It cites evidence from the public health departments of North Dakota and Louisiana as proof. Doe, a devout Roman Catholic, is opposed to ingesting or being injected with such vaccines based on her religious beliefs. The Liberty Counsel also informed Emory Healthcare that there were strong medical reasons for Doe’s refusal to get the jab. The demand letter stated that Doe had already recovered from a bout with COVID and that her antibody numbers were actually stronger than those found in many people who were fully vaccinated for 90 days.

Ian Plimer

Australian geologist, Ian Plimer:

"What the children are not taught is that the climate always changes, and it has for 4,567,000,000 years. The very slight changes we are measuring today are nothing compared with those in the past."

"We have lost knowledge, and by losing that… pic.twitter.com/pzBcl6oQsA

— Wide Awake Media (@wideawake_media) April 23, 2023

Silky Anteater

The silky anteater is the smallest of all known anteaters. Adults have a total length ranging from 36 to 45 cm with a dense, soft yellowish fur

[read more: https://t.co/uwmLURhV5m]
[Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute: https://t.co/ymnrJfLKIE]pic.twitter.com/pHetzr8Mb1

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) April 23, 2023

Panulirus ornatus is a large spiny lobster with 11 larval stages. It migrates annually from the Torres Strait to Yule Island in the Gulf of Papua in order to breed

Sand cats

This is the Sand Cat: the only cat where the adults look like kittens, and the kittens look like… smaller kittens.pic.twitter.com/9SUrSrcwPN

— Nature is Amazing ☘️ (@AMAZlNGNATURE) April 23, 2023

The great eared nightjar (Lyncornis macrotis)

Friends

Friends forever pic.twitter.com/pC650Wyije

— VIPAN ❃ (@Soulincanvas) April 23, 2023

It looks like an ordinary tree, but look closer

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Debt Rattle February 2 2023

Feb 022023

February 2, 2023 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:40 am Finance Tagged with: Assange, Erdogan, ground forces, Hunter Biden, mad scientist, Metabiota, objectivity, Russian oil, Zakharova 79 Responses »

Andre Derain The port of Collioure 1905

• Former UK Defense Minister: NATO May Need To Send Ground Forces To Ukraine (ZH)

• NATO Involved In Hybrid War Against Russia For A Long Time – Lavrov (TASS)

• ‘At War with Russia’, Europe Peers Down the Abyss (Alastair Crooke)

• Trials and Tribulations of the Collective West (Escobar)

• Sending Tanks To Kiev Not To Help Resolve Ukraine Conflict – Erdogan (TASS)

• Zakharova: Jet Deliveries To Kiev Not Leading To Escalation ‘Absurd’ (TASS)

• Russia Ramps Up EU-Bound Gas Transit Via Ukraine (RT)

• Russia’s Pipeline Gas Exports To Europe Slump To Record Low (ZH)

• Ukraine Attacks Pipeline Pumping Russian Oil To EU – Transneft (RT)

• EU-Owned Tankers Boost Russian Oil Shipments (RT)

• “Objectivity Has Got To Go” (Turley)

• Hunter Biden’s Metabiota Labs Received $10s of Millions in DOD Contracts (GP)

• Hunter Biden Demands Investigations Into Reporting On His Laptop (JTN)

• The Press Versus The President, Part Three (CJR)

• Why Did UK Wait 3 Months to Disclose Data Showing COVID Vaccine Risks? (CHD)

• Is a Mad Scientist Set to Become Chief Scientist at the WHO? (CHD)

• Sweden Destroyed Substantial Part Of Its Documents On Julian Assange (Maurizi)

Crazy Twitter

What are the @Twitter engineers finding under the hood? @RubinReport tells @StreitMarissa that @elonmusk and the team are hard at work behind the scenes. pic.twitter.com/QGgh0kFECy

— PragerU (@prageru) February 1, 2023

Kamala

Our dear Kamala educates us on space & rockets pic.twitter.com/aeon925Aqs

— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2023) February 1, 2023

Gonzalo 2023.02.01 The West Is Now Impotent In The Ukraine Conflict

“Are western citizens willing to fight and die for Ukraine? It’s highly unlikely.”

• Former UK Defense Minister: NATO May Need To Send Ground Forces To Ukraine (ZH)

The “domino theory” was once used to great effect in order to manipulate the American public into supporting the Vietnam War, but will the same narrative work to get the west to support World War III with Russia? Former UK Defense Minister Sir Gerald Howarth seems to think so as he uses this exact claim to justify NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine.

FORMER DEFENSE MINISTER OF UK SAYS NATO FORCES MAY NEED TO FACE RUSSIA ON THE GROUND pic.twitter.com/7LJ3Nksniq

— The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) January 31, 2023

It should be noted that a large percentage of the American populace and most of Europe have no interest whatsoever in engaging with Russia and possibly its allies in all out war, but the establishment appears intent on forcing the issue anyway. The delivery of NATO tanks and the possibility of longer range missiles will no doubt trigger a wider response from Russia, which will then be used by NATO as a reason to escalate further. At the very least, Howarth does admit what many in the alternative media have been saying for some time – That Ukraine’s efforts have ground to a halt without further support from NATO troops. The deliveries of money and weapons are nothing more than a stop-gap; wars are won by men.

The former minister suggests that Ukraine is essentially too big to fail and that NATO cannot allow Russia to prevail in the region, otherwise they will be emboldened to strike other nearby nations. There is zero evidence to support this argument, but it is clear that NATO talking heads are desperate to drum up some kind of public fervor. Are western citizens willing to fight and die for Ukraine? It’s highly unlikely.

“..take necessary measures in order to prevent further attempt to turn Ukraine into an even sharper threat for our security..”

• NATO Involved In Hybrid War Against Russia For A Long Time – Lavrov (TASS)

NATO has been involved in a hybrid war against Russia for quite a long time, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said during a press conference after the talks with Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry Tuesday. “Whatever our Western partners may say, however they try to justify their actions on pumping Ukraine with weapons – including the known slogans that the path to peace lies through arms shipments – everyone understands everything. We are talking about NATO being involved in a hybrid war against Russia for a rather long time, a war that is being refracted in its hot displays, in actions of the Kiev regime,” he said. Lavrov noted that Moscow is taking necessary measures in order to prevent attempts to turn Ukraine into an even sharper threat to Russia’s security.

“Of course, we watch how discussions develop in the West about further pumping of Ukraine with increasingly serious weapons, including offensive weapons. Of course, we see it all, and we not merely observer, but take necessary measures in order to prevent further attempt to turn Ukraine into an even sharper threat for our security, and to prevent the Kiev regime from prevailing in its policy of discrimination and destruction of rights of all those Ukrainian citizens and former Ukrainian citizens, who felt involved in Russian history, Russian culture and Russian traditions,” he said. Lavrov underscored that Russia is watching this process, while the armed forces take all necessary measures to prevent Western plans from coming to fruition. “And they will not [come to fruition],” Lavrov underscored.

“..the neo-cons ultimate intent: Poland, already mobilising a 200,000 man military force, would become the new proxy (and the largest army in Europe) in a wider European war against Russia.”

• ‘At War with Russia’, Europe Peers Down the Abyss (Alastair Crooke)

‘Serendipitously’ – at this moment of Davos decay – a raucous, distracting noise started up: Abrahams M1s and Leopards for Ukraine. German FM, Baerbock declares Germany and the EU family are “at war with Russia”. The noise, as usual, succeeds in obscuring any wider picture. Yes, point one, we do have mission creep: We won’t send offensive weapons, but then they did. We won’t send long-range weapons M777), but then they did. We won’t send multiple missile launch systems (HIMARS), but then they did. We won’t send tanks, but now they are. No NATO boots on the ground, but they have been there since 2014.

Point two: Colonel Douglas Macgregor, a former adviser to a U.S. Defence Secretary, says that the mood in Washington has notably changed: DC gets it – the U.S. is losing the proxy war. This fact however, Macgregor says, still remains ‘under the radar’ in respect to the main-stream media. The more important point Macgregor makes is that this late ‘awakening’ to reality is not shifting the stance of the neocons hawks, one jot. They want escalation (as do one small faction in Germany – the Greens; as well as a leading faction in Poland and, as usual, the Baltic states). And Biden has surrounded himself with State Department war-hawks.

Point three: the contrarian ‘reality’ is that the ‘uniformed’ militaries of Europe also ‘get it’: that Ukraine is losing, and now are very worried by the prospect of escalation – and of war engulfing eastern Europe. The tanks have nothing to do with their calculus about the war outcome. The professionals know the Abrams or Leopards will neither change the course of the war, nor will they arrive before it is too late to alter anything. The European military cadre do not want war with Russia: They know the EU has no ‘surge’ manufacturing capacity to sustain war against Russia beyond a very small window. Popular opinion, and key strands of élite opinion in Germany (and elsewhere in Europe), are becoming hardened in opposition to the war. The concern is that the emphasis on sending exactly German tanks, with their dark symbolism of past bloody battles, is intended to bury any prospect of any future German relationship with Russia – for good.

Further, German military officers worry that a failing Ukrainian military might fall back to the Polish border – and even across it – before the tanks are delivered. The tanks then would be absorbed by the Polish military. There is a thought in these military circles that this might, in fact, be the neo-cons ultimate intent: Poland, already mobilising a 200,000 man military force, would become the new proxy (and the largest army in Europe) in a wider European war against Russia.

“..nearly every possible scenario gamed in Washington and Brussels finishes with NATO like a giant, armoured version of Wile E. Coyote plunging to the depths of the Grand Canyon..”

• Trials and Tribulations of the Collective West (Escobar)

Every military analyst with an IQ over room temperature knows all those Leopards will be duly incinerated – or better yet, captured, and dissected by Russian military specialists. So what happens next is yet another vector of the – very successful so far – U.S.-unleashed German de-industrualization racket: the Americans will invade the German industrial military complex with their “much improved” Abrams – which may perhaps arrive in 2024, when only a rump Ukraine may still exist, or never arrive at all. So no need for the Abrams to prove themselves in actual combat – as in being captured and/or incinerated. Rumors in Washington advance that the U.S. “strategy” in Ukraine – extensively detailed by endless think tank reports – had to be adapted. It’s not about “defeating Russia” anymore, but providing Kiev with the means to “scare” Russia.

The Russian General Staff must be trembling in their boots. Meanwhile, in real life, nearly every possible scenario gamed in Washington and Brussels finishes with NATO like a giant, armoured version of Wile E. Coyote plunging to the depths of the Grand Canyon. And that happens even if the much ballyhooded “Big Arrow” Russian offensive starts in a few days or weeks, or never starts at all. Arguably the Russian General Staff has concluded a long time ago there’s no point in reducing Ukraine to rubble in a matter of hours – something they could easily accomplish. Thus the fabled mincing machine approach – offering no excuses for NATO to “escalate” (which they continue to do anyway, as Jens “War is Peace” Stoltenberg is so fond of parroting).

The trick is that NATO’s escalation overdrive, as it happens, is somewhat controlled by the Russian General Staff, which is always calculating which optimal maneuvers will consume NATO’s military hardware faster. Call it a Russian version of the popular axiom “frog in a boiling pot doesn’t realize it’s being cooked until it croaks.” Absolute desperation is now graphically extrapolating into attacks on Iran. Both Russia and China have Iran as their key ally in West Asia for the whole, complex process of Eurasia integration; strategic partnerships interlink the trio. So attacking the Ministry of Defense in Isfahan with drones – total fail – and bombing an IRGC convoy of humanitarian aid crossing from Iraq to Syria is a serious U.S.-Israel-coordinated provocation.

Essentially these are also attacks against Russia and China. Israel cannot lift its hand or foot without U.S. permission. Iranian intel may be able to establish how the Straussian neo-con and neoliberal-con cabal in charge of U.S. foreign policy authorized if not ordered these attacks, which of course are directly connected to NATO’s desperation in Ukraine. When in doubt, just come back to Zbig “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski: “Potentially, the most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition of China, Russia and perhaps, Iran, an ‘anti-hegemonic’ coalition united not by ideology but by contemporary grievances. It would be reminiscent in scale and scope of the challenge once posed by the Sino-Soviet bloc.” And mirroring Ukraine/Russia there’s of course Taiwan/China.

“..this risky step is especially profitable for arms barons.”

• Sending Tanks To Kiev Not To Help Resolve Ukraine Conflict – Erdogan (TASS)

The West’s supply of weapons, including tanks, to Kiev will not bring about the solution to the Ukraine conflict, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said in a televised interview with the TRT channel on Wednesday. “I cannot say that I believe that sending tanks is a step towards resolving [the Ukraine conflict],” he said. “We expect Western countries to back our calls for negotiations between Ukraine and Russia.” Referring to the buildup of arms supply to Kiev, Erdogan emphasized that “this risky step is especially profitable for arms barons.” Nevertheless, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that weapons supplies to Ukraine may create conditions for “a negotiated peaceful solution” in the future.

On January 25, the United States pledged to send 31 M1 Abrams tanks to Kiev. On the same day, Germany confirmed that it would transfer 14 Leopard 2A6 tanks to Ukraine and would allow other countries to re-export these combat vehicles to Ukraine. According to German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, the Leopard 2 tanks would be sent to Ukraine “before the end of March.” Norway, Slovakia, the UK, Poland, and France have also pledged to provide Kiev with Western-made tanks. Kiev expects to receive up to 140 tanks from 12 countries as the first batch. Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that tensions around the situation in Ukraine are rising due to Washington’s decisions and US pressure on other countries.

‘Nothing is forbidden in principle, provided that it will be useful, in particular, for the Ukrainian armed forces, will not lead to an escalation of the conflict and strikes on Russian territory..”

• Zakharova: Jet Deliveries To Kiev Not Leading To Escalation ‘Absurd’ (TASS)

French President Emmanuel Macron’s statement that the possible delivery of military aircraft to Ukraine will not lead to an escalation is absurd, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing on Wednesday. “We’ve paid attention to the words of French President [Emmanuel] Macron, who, responding to a question about the possible supply of aircraft to Ukraine, said: ‘Nothing is forbidden in principle, provided that it will be useful, in particular, for the Ukrainian armed forces, will not lead to an escalation of the conflict and strikes on Russian territory, will not weaken the defense capability of France itself.’ Forgive me, but it’s some kind of absurdity,” Zakharova said, “Sorry, but Paris’ readiness to supply Kiev with fighter jets was confirmed by the French Defense Minister [Sebastien Lecornu] who visited Ukraine on January 28.”

“Is the French president really sure that supplying the Kiev regime with arms, heavy weapons and aircraft for combat operations will not escalate the situation? I refuse to believe that a grown man can have such logic,” the diplomat added, “Such statements only increase the already irrepressible appetite of [Ukrainian President Vladimir] Zelensky’s regime, which, by shelling hospitals and massacring civilians, has clearly demonstrated that Western military injections – how did Mr. Macron put it? – will not lead to an escalation of the conflict. Well, of course, they ‘give’ peace. Obviously these planes are going to be used to drop cookies and candy, right? I have a different feeling.”

The diplomat stressed that Russia strongly condemned “the increasingly aggressive and bellicose rhetoric of Western officials, who have not been shy about making loud statements on the Ukrainian conflict lately.” “I understand them. They feel the deadlock of their own position and the lack of arguments to explain to their own citizens what they have done, in particular to the European continent. Hence the tearing and shouting, trying to find some kind of explanation for what they are doing,” she added.

4 articles on Russian gas to EU that seem to contradict each other. Is the volume going up or down? You tell me.

• Russia Ramps Up EU-Bound Gas Transit Via Ukraine (RT)

Russian energy giant Gazprom has increased its daily volume of gas transit through Ukraine to the EU by 20% for the first time in weeks, the company announced on Wednesday. Supplies jumped to 29.4 million cubic meters (mcm) on February 1, compared to 24.5 mcm pumped the previous day through the Sudzha entry point, which remains the only operating interconnector in Ukraine. “Gazprom supplies Russian gas for transit through the territory of Ukraine in the amount confirmed by the Ukrainian side through Sudzha – 29.4 mcm as of February 1,” Gazprom spokesperson Sergey Kupriyanov told reporters. Kupriyanov added that an application had been rejected for the Sokhranovka transit point, which previously served as a key gas transit route through Ukraine and handled about a third of the Russian gas flowing through the country to the EU.

Ukraine shut down transit through Sokhranovka in early May, citing “interference by the occupying forces.” Russian gas deliveries to the EU via Ukraine were slashed from last May in the aftermath of the bloc’s sweeping anti-Russia sanctions, and stood between 40 to 43 mcm per day. This year, shipments declined sharply from 35.5 mcm in early January to 24 mcm by the end of the month. Analysts attributed the lower volumes to warm winter temperatures in Europe and to high stocks of gas in underground storage facilities. Imports have somewhat rebounded after gas prices began to rise on expectations of colder weather next week. Flows are still about 27% lower than levels at the start of the winter gas season last year, according to Reuters estimates.

Meanwhile, requests for Russian gas from Ukraine to Slovakia via the Velke Kapusany border point also surged to 23.7 mcm compared to 18.6 mcm the previous day, Ukrainian transmission system data showed. Gas transit through Ukraine remains the only route for Russian supplies to the countries of Western and Central Europe after sabotage attacks in September rendered the Nord Stream pipeline inoperable. Gazprom also exports gas via the Turkish Stream and Blue Stream pipelines to Southern and South-Eastern Europe.

The article above: “Russian energy giant Gazprom has increased its daily volume of gas transit through Ukraine to the EU by 20% for the first time in weeks..”

This article: “Russia’s pipeline gas exports to Europe slumped to a new monthly record-low in January, falling by nearly 30% from December..”

• Russia’s Pipeline Gas Exports To Europe Slump To Record Low (ZH)

Russia’s pipeline gas exports to Europe slumped to a new monthly record-low in January, falling by nearly 30% from December due to lower prices on the spot market, according to Reuters calculations. Russia’s gas giant Gazprom has seen exports to Europe decline since the Russian invasion of Ukraine last year as Russia cut off gas supplies to a number of countries in Europe. Russia cut off supply to Poland, Bulgaria, and Finland in April and May, slashed gas deliveries via Nord Stream to Germany in June, then off Nord Stream supply in early September. Russia still sends some gas via pipelines to Europe via one transit route through Ukraine, and via TurkStream.

This month, Gazprom has reduced pipeline gas transit flows to Europe via Ukraine on some days. Analysts have said that the lower pipeline flows were the result of lower demand for gas under long-term contracts, considering the milder weather in parts of Europe earlier in January and the fact that spot supply is currently cheaper. Per Reuters calculations, which are based on daily data of flows from Russia via the transit route through Ukraine and via TurkStream, pipeline gas exports from Russia to Europe dropped to around some 1.8 billion cubic meters (bcm) in January, down from 2.5 bcm in December.

Gazprom hasn’t released January export data yet, but its exports to Europe via pipelines plunged to a post-Soviet low in 2022, according to data from the Russian firm calculated by Reuters. Last year’s Russian gas exports slumped by 45% year on year to reach 100.9 bcm in 2022. Germany, Russia’s biggest customer of gas before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, doesn’t import any Russian gas via pipeline now. Norway became Germany’s single-largest natural gas supplier in 2022, overtaking Russia, as total German gas imports dropped by 12.3% compared to 2021.

“..Transneft workers are currently repairing the damage caused by the attack and that the pipeline continues to operate normally..”

• Ukraine Attacks Pipeline Pumping Russian Oil To EU – Transneft (RT)

A Ukrainian rocket has reportedly struck near an oil pumping station connected to the Druzhba pipeline in Russia’s Bryansk Region, the operator Transneft claimed on Wednesday. Speaking to the TASS news agency, Igor Demin, a spokesman for the company, said the shell landed on the territory of the Novozybkovo station in the late hours of January 31. He noted that the attempted attack ultimately failed to cause any casualties or hinder the work of the pipeline. According to initial reporting by the Mash news agency, the strike was carried out using a Tochka-U rocket. Workers reportedly found a 20-meter crater on the territory of the station, which lost power as a result of the attack.

Demin explained that the Novozybkovo oil pumping station, which was the apparent target, is only temporarily used at peak times on the Druzhba pipeline and was last turned on in 2022 for only a few hours. He noted that Transneft workers are currently repairing the damage caused by the attack and that the pipeline continues to operate normally. The Druzhba (Friendship) oil pipeline is one of the longest in the world and connects eastern parts of Russia to several points in Europe, including Ukraine, Belarus, Poland and Germany.

The segment that was apparently being targeted by Kiev’s forces on Tuesday is located some 39km from the Russian-Ukrainian border and leads directly into Belarus, where it branches off into two sections: one going to Germany and Poland and the other delivering oil to Ukraine, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria and the Czech Republic. Germany, however, has not received any oil since the start of the year after Berlin and Poland both pledged to stop all imports of Russian crude. According to Bryansk Governor Aleksander Bogomaz, Kiev’s forces also launched several artillery strikes against civilian targets across the region on Tuesday. Although no casualties have been reported, Bogomaz said the attack damaged over a dozen residential buildings, a WWII memorial, and a shop. The strikes also cut off power to several villages, he said, later adding that these issues had been promptly resolved by emergency services.

Price cap is $60. The average price for Urals oil blend was at $49.50 per barrel.

• EU-Owned Tankers Boost Russian Oil Shipments (RT)

Exports of Russian oil loaded in Western-insured tankers surged in January as prices for Moscow’s flagship Urals grade stood below the cap set by the Group of Seven (G7) countries and the European Union, Reuters reported, citing tracking data. The price cap on Russian seaborne oil exports of $60 per barrel was introduced by the EU, G7 countries, and Australia on December 5. It bans Western companies from providing insurance and other services to shipments of Russian oil unless the cargo is purchased at or below the set price. The average price for Urals oil blend was at $49.50 per barrel on a free-on-board basis (FOB) on Tuesday for shipments from the port of Primorsk, and at $47.83 FOB from Novorossiisk, traders told the outlet. Western tankers are set to carry more than 9.5 million tons of crude from the Russia, hitting a multi-month high in January as soaring Asian demand pushes up prices.

This month’s loadings of crude from Russia and Kazakhstan from only two ports of Ust-Luga and Primorsk are expected to reach the highest volumes since 2019, amounting to 7.4 million tons, traders’ data showed. A quarter of all Urals shipments from Russia in January were handled by EU-owned vessels mainly from Greece, twice as much as in December. Meanwhile, other Russian export blends such as Sokol and ESPO are trading well above the price cap, with Sokol being contracted at about $78 per barrel and ESPO trading at over $72 per barrel as of Tuesday. Russia has been opposed to the price cap initiative from the start. Last month, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree banning the supply of Russian oil and oil products to foreign buyers that “directly or indirectly” mention the cap in their contracts. The ban came into force on February 1, and will be valid for at least five months.

The blessings of bias.

• “Objectivity Has Got To Go” (Turley)

Columbia Journalism Dean and New Yorker writer Steve Coll decried how the First Amendment right to freedom of speech was being “weaponized” to protect disinformation. In an interview with The Stanford Daily, Stanford journalism professor, Ted Glasser, insisted that journalism needed to “free itself from this notion of objectivity to develop a sense of social justice.” He rejected the notion that journalism is based on objectivity and said that he views “journalists as activists because journalism at its best — and indeed history at its best — is all about morality.” Thus, “Journalists need to be overt and candid advocates for social justice, and it’s hard to do that under the constraints of objectivity.” Lauren Wolfe, the fired freelance editor for the New York Times, has not only gone public to defend her pro-Biden tweet but published a piece titled “I’m a Biased Journalist and I’m Okay With That.”

Former New York Times writer (and now Howard University Journalism Professor) Nikole Hannah-Jones is a leading voice for advocacy journalism. Indeed, Hannah-Jones has declared “all journalism is activism.” Her 1619 Project has been challenged as deeply flawed and she has a long record as a journalist of intolerance, controversial positions on rioting, and fostering conspiracy theories. Hannah-Jones would later help lead the effort at the Times to get rid of an editor and apologize for publishing a column from Sen. Tom Cotten as inaccurate and inflammatory. Polls show trust in the media at an all-time low with less than 20 percent of citizens trusting television or print media. Yet, reporters and academics continue to destroy the core principles that sustain journalism and ultimately the role of a free press in our society.

Notably, writers who have been repeatedly charged with false or misleading columns are some of the greatest advocates for dropping objectivity in journalism. Now the leaders of media companies are joining this self-destructive movement. They are not speaking of columnists or cable hosts who routinely share opinions. They are speaking of actual journalists, the people who are relied upon to report the news. Saying that “Objectivity has got to go” is, of course, liberating. You can dispense with the necessities of neutrality and balance. You can cater to your “base” like columnists and opinion writers. Sharing the opposing view is now dismissed as “bothsidesism.” Done. No need to give credence to opposing views. It is a familiar reality for those of us in higher education, which has been increasingly intolerant of opposing or dissenting views.

“..they had also helped it “get new customers,” including “government agencies” in the case of Metabiota..”

• Hunter Biden’s Metabiota Labs Received $10s of Millions in DOD Contracts (GP)

According to USASpending.gov, a database of spending by the US federal government, the Department of Defense (DoD) awarded tens of millions of dollars in contracts to Hunter Biden’s Metabiota labs. Metabiota is a San Francisco-based health startup known for tracking epidemics. The company is mentioned on the Hunter Biden laptop. Hunter Biden’s investment firm, Rosemont Seneca, invested $500,000 in Metabiota, and the company went on to raise several million more from investment giants like Goldman Sachs. The firm has biolabs in several countries, including Ukraine, where Hunter played an important role in the company’s activities. In their pitches to potential backers, Hunter bragged that they had done more than just get financing for the company; they had also helped it “get new customers,” including “government agencies” in the case of Metabiota, according to Daily Mail.

Government data shows Hunter Biden secured millions in government funding and grants for Metabiota after he became part owner of the firm. Metabiota was one of the 46 Ukrainian Bioweapon labs that the US government partnered with, per DC Draino. Following Hunter Biden and his company, Rosemont Seneca’s acquisition of a 50% ownership stake in the Metabiota, the government contracts and grants started flowing. Before the Rosemont Senaca agreement, Metabiota was given a $349,513 contract from the government. Following Hunter’s involvement, Metabiota was awarded a contract with the Department of Defense worth $23.9 million. Before Hunter was involved, Metabiota received a $649,882 grant from the US government. After Hunter became involved, Metabiota received several million in government grants.

According to Daily Mail, Hunter Biden connected a corrupt Ukrainian gas company called Burisma with the Metabiota for an undisclosed “scientific project.” The outlet added that Metabiota is supposedly a medical data company, but in 2014, Metabiota Vice President Mary Guttieri contacted Hunter explaining how they could “assert Ukraine’s cultural and economic independence from Russia,” an unusual ambition for a biotech corporation. “Thanks so much for taking time out of your intense schedule to meet with Kathy and I on Tuesday. We very much enjoyed our discussion. As promised, I’ve prepared the attached memo, which provides an overview of Metabiota, our engagement in Ukraine, and how we can potentially leverage our team, networks, and concepts to assert Ukraine’s cultural and economic independence from Russia and continued integration into Western society,” the email reads.

“[n]o one thinks this strategy of putting Hunter Biden front and center is smart… No one, including the White House, thinks this is a smart strategy.”

• Hunter Biden Demands Investigations Into Reporting On His Laptop (JTN)

First son Hunter Biden and his legal team sent a slew of letters to government agencies on Wednesday demanding investigations into the dissemination of materials from his laptop, while also threatening to sue Fox News host Tucker Carlson. A source familiar with the letters, obtained by CBS News, indicated to the outlet that the scandal-plagued Biden intends to take the initiative in combatting negative press and Republican-led investigations. “He is not going to sit quietly by as questionable characters continue to violate his rights and media organizations peddling in lies try to defame him,” the source said. The letter to Carlson demands that the Fox host retract statements describing a “money laundering scheme” connected to Biden allegedly paying his father “rent” money.

The letter acknowledges that other outlets have retracted such claims. Other letters went to the Delaware attorney general, the IRS, and the Department of Justice seeking investigations related to the publication of the laptop, the authenticity of which has since been verified. The letters appear to mark a direct admission from Biden’s legal team that the laptop does indeed belong to Biden and that the contents are authentic. “This failed dirty political trick directly resulted in the exposure, exploitation, and manipulation of Mr. Biden’s private and personal information,” read the letter to Delaware AG Kathy Jennings. “Mr. Mac Isaac’s intentional, reckless and unlawful conduct allowed for hundreds of gigabytes of Mr. Biden’s personal data, without any discretion, to be circulated around the Internet.

Specifically, Biden wants investigations into laptop repairman John Paul Mac Isaac, at whose store the younger Biden left the laptop, as well as various Trump aides connected to the publication of its contents. Biden alleges that many of these aides may have broken the law in obtaining and distributing the laptop’s contents. Biden also has asked the IRS to review the tax-exempt status of Marco Polo, the organization operated by former Trump aide Garrett Ziegler that published a lengthy report on the laptop’s contents. Reports emerged in December that Hunter Biden was mounting a legal and media blitz to combat conservative criticism and allegations of legal improprieties. A source at the White House expressed concerns to the Washington Post about Hunter’s plans at the time, saying “[n]o one thinks this strategy of putting Hunter Biden front and center is smart… No one, including the White House, thinks this is a smart strategy.”

The “Russia thing”.

• The Press Versus The President, Part Three (CJR)

Trump’s firing of Comey on May 9 was nothing like his hit TV show, The Apprentice. The boss couldn’t move on to the next episode, nor would the ousted employee quietly walk away. The firestorm that erupted in the aftermath of Comey being axed required a do-over, in part because of shifting White House explanations for his dismissal. So Trump sat down two days later for an interview with Lester Holt, the Nightly News anchor for NBC. But instead of tamping down the controversy, it fanned the Russia flames for the media. A tweet from the show on May 11 set the narrative for the Holt interview: “Trump on firing Comey: ‘I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story.’” Those few words, by suggesting Comey’s firing was aimed at getting the FBI inquiry off his back, provided fresh ammunition to anti-Trumpers.

The full interview, which was available online, presented a more nuanced story, and appeared to reflect what his advisers told him: firing Comey could prolong, not end, the investigation. Trump told Holt, soon after the controversial words, that the firing “might even lengthen out the investigation” and he expected the FBI “to continue the investigation,” to do it “properly,” and “to get to the bottom.” The media focused on the “Russia thing” quote; the New York Times did five stories over the next week citing the “Russia thing” remarks but leaving out the fuller context. The Post and CNN, by comparison, included additional language in their first-day story. The White House was upset and repeatedly asked reporters to look at the full transcript, according to a former Trump aide and two reporters.

On the heels of the NBC interview came a leak of Comey’s notes of private conversations with Trump, including one at a dinner in January where Trump was said to have asked the FBI director to pledge loyalty to him. The Times piece reported that the inquiry into Trump and Russia “has since gained momentum as investigators have developed new evidence and leads.” Comey, once out of office, had his internal memos leaked to the Times, hoping that might “help prompt” the appointment of a special counsel, he testified to Congress a few weeks later. At the same hearing, he criticized the paper’s story of February 14, one of whose authors was Michael Schmidt, the reporter who received his leaked memos. On June 8, at a Senate hearing, Comey was asked whether the Times story was “almost entirely wrong.” He said yes.

“.. there were a total of 1,250 serious adverse events for every 1 million people vaccinated..”

• Why Did UK Wait 3 Months to Disclose Data Showing COVID Vaccine Risks? (CHD)

A Jan. 25 report by the U.K government showed the risks of serious adverse effects from mRNA COVID-19 vaccines largely outweigh the benefits, according to John Campbell, Ph.D., who analyzed the U.K. data used for the report. U.K. health officials knew about the data in October 2022, but didn’t change their recommendations for the shots until the day they released the report and announced they will no longer recommend COVID-19 boosters for healthy people under 50. They also said they will discontinue free distribution of the primary two-shot series. In his latest video, Campbell, a retired nurse teacher in England, summarized the results of the report, which calculated how many people had to be vaccinated in different age groups and risk profiles in order to avoid a single hospitalization.

Campbell compared the results to peer-reviewed data on serious adverse events reported following mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. The report was based on an October 2022 UK Health Security Agency presentation to the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI). Despite the “massive shift” in vaccine risk-benefit analysis that was already clear in the October presentation, Campbell said, “the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation carried on without modification to the autumn booster program.” “My question to the Joint Committee on Vaccination Immunisation is why?” said Campbell, who noted that the agency is 85% funded by industry.

Summary of the analysis: ‘number needed to vaccinate’ versus risk of serious adverse events The U.K. study analyzed the “number needed to vaccinate” by age group to prevent either hospitalization or “serious hospitalization,” which is when someone needs oxygen or a ventilator — though Campbell noted that it is common, in general, to oxygenate in hospitals. For example, healthcare providers would need to vaccinate 43,000 people in the 50 to 59 age group to prevent one hospitalization and more than 256,400 people in that age group to prevent a serious hospitalization. Campbell compared the numbers in the report to a peer-reviewed study published in Vaccine that re-analyzed the original phase 3 trials for Pfizer and Moderna to identify serious adverse events of special interest following the mRNA vaccines.

In the Moderna trials, the risk of serious adverse events was 15.1 per 10,000 doses. In other words, 1 in 662 vaccines administered produced a serious adverse event. In the Pfizer trials, the risk of serious adverse events was 10.1 per 10,000, which breaks down to 1 in 990 vaccines administered producing a serious adverse event. On average, there were 12.5 serious adverse events per 10,000 people vaccinated, which is 1 in 800. That means there were a total of 1,250 serious adverse events for every 1 million people vaccinated, according to the study.

“What we see with Farrar is a recipe for disaster when it comes to imposing experimental medical technology on the population during public health crises..”

• Is a Mad Scientist Set to Become Chief Scientist at the WHO? (CHD)

The World Health Organization (WHO) last month named Dr. Jeremy Farrar its new chief scientist. Farrar will step down Feb. 25 as director of the Wellcome Trust, the largest funder of medical research in the U.K. and one of the largest in the world. Farrar and the Wellcome Trust are less well-known relative to similar global public health giants, such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation — and that’s “to people’s detriment,” investigative journalist Whitney Webb told journalist Kim Iversen on a recent episode of “The Kim Iversen Show”: “If what is essentially a power grab by the World Health Organization gets put into force, then Jeremy Farrar will have essentially total authority to impose upon member states what medical responses they would have to implement in the event of another pandemic.”

Webb referred to proposals in the works to transform the WHO from an advisory organization to a global governing body whose policies would be legally binding for member states in the case of a global health emergency. While at Wellcome Trust, Farrar was the architect of several key WHO COVID-19 pandemic policy directives, including lockdowns, masking and mass vaccination. “What we see with Farrar is a recipe for disaster when it comes to imposing experimental medical technology on the population during public health crises. This is a guy who was very much invested in this stuff,” Webb said. It’s something out of ‘Brave New World’ Iversen asked about links between the Gates Foundation and the Wellcome Trust.

While there is no direct link, Webb said, “The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and a lot of these other organizations, including the Wellcome Trust, are very much pushing an agenda that I would argue is sort of the fusion of Big Pharma and Big Tech.” “Essentially Big Pharma is looking for new markets and new products and Big Tech can help them accomplish that,” she said. Over the last several decades, Big Pharma and “billionaire philanthropists” have come to dominate the WHO, Webb told Iversen. They are the ones, “in my opinion, executing this power grab more than the WHO itself,” she said. There are also key ties between Big Tech and national security agencies, Webb said. Farrar has connections to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA, the Pentagon’s research arm, Webb said.

Stefania Maurizi has been tirelessly filing FOIA requests for years in Sweden, Britain, the United States and Australia.

• Sweden Destroyed Substantial Part Of Its Documents On Julian Assange (Maurizi)

A substantial portion of the documents on Julian Assange were destroyed by the Swedish Prosecution Authority, which investigated him for rape in a criminal investigation opened and closed three times between August 2010 and November 2019. The materials destroyed were correspondence between the Swedish Prosecution Authority (SPA) and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) which was providing the SPA with support on the case, since Assange was under investigation in Sweden but had been in London since 2010. The correspondence between the SPA and CPS is absolutely crucial to understand and reconstruct what really happened in the Swedish rape investigation. That investigation was ultimately dropped once and for all without Assange ever being charged, but for almost a decade has deprived him of the empathy of public opinion.

Especially the empathy of that segment of the public more sensitive to the WikiLeaks revelations on war crimes and torture, often the segment also more mindful of women’s rights. The highly anomalous handling of the Swedish case by prosecutor Marianne Ny resulted in justice for no one, contributed to the devastation of Assange’s health, cost British taxpayers at least 13.2 million pounds to keep the Ecuadorian embassy under siege by Scotland Yard from 2012 to 2015, and resulted in the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention decision that Sweden and the United Kingdom had arbitrarily detained Assange since 2010, in the case of Sweden the first time the UN Group had ever made such a decision in the country’s history. In September 2019, the then UN Special Rapporteur on Torture who had investigated the case, Nils Melzer, listed fifty perceived due process violations, including “Proactive manipulation of evidence”, in an official letter to the Swedish government.

[..] The fact that documents were destroyed by the Swedish Prosecution Authority has just surfaced thanks to our lengthy FOIA litigation, and comes almost six years after that very same FOIA litigation unearthed that key documents were destroyed by the Crown Prosecution Service. It is now clear that both of the authorities handling the Swedish case, the SPA and the CPS, destroyed a large part of their email exchanges. Why? What did those documents contain and on whose instructions were those materials destroyed? Now more than ever some sort of explanation is urgently needed, considering that the United States is currently acting through the Crown Prosecution Service itself in the extradition proceeding against Julian Assange.

Since 2015, we have been engaged in trench warfare in Sweden, Britain, the United States and Australia to access the full documentation on the case under FOIA, represented by seven lawyers. This investigative work has allowed us to find the answer to one of the key questions around the Swedish case: why did Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny, who reopened the rape case in September 2010 after Stockholm’s chief prosecutor, Eva Finné, had immediately dismissed it (because, in her judgement, the suspect’s conduct “disclosed no crime at all”) refuse to question Assange in London for six years?

Baldwin

JAMES BALDWIN addresses the the University Of Cambridge during his epochal debate with William F. Buckley in 1965.

This is oratory and content of the very very highest order.
To listen is to learn. pic.twitter.com/FCaXVJH6MF

— Michael Warburton (@MichaelWarbur17) February 1, 2023