Sep 042023
 


Claude Monet Japanese Footbridge 1899

 

A Comprehensive Ukrainian Defeat Is The Only Possible Outcome (Scott Ritter)
US Intelligence Sending Mixed Messages On Ukraine (Larry Johnson)
About 280,000 Individuals Enlisted By Contract From January 1 – Medvedev (TASS)
Hungary Calls For ‘Security Guarantees’ For Russia (RT)
G20: Last Waltz In A World Torn Apart (Bhadrakumar)
Ex-UK Defense Chief Sparked Rift With US Over Helicopter Deal (RT)
NATO May Collapse By 2025 – Academic (RT)
No Respite For France As A ‘New Africa’ Rises (Pepe Escobar)
US Dollar A ‘Very Problematic’ Currency – Zakharova (RT)
Gold’s Role Rises As Dollar Hegemony Falls (ZH)
Soros Vows to Stop ‘MAGA-Style Republicans’ From Winning 2024 Election (Sp.)
US Congress is Older Than Ever, But Reform is Unlikely (Sp.)
Biden Asserts Executive Privilege on Hunter Emails, But Waived Trump’s (GP)
Fani Willis Possesses Evidence Exonerating Georgia’s Alternate Electors (Fed.)
Ivermectin Is a Proven Cure for Covid (Paul Craig Roberts)

 

 

 

 

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Fauci masks

 

 

 

 

Macgregor

 

 

 

 

“Having articulated the Russian-Ukrainian conflict as an existential struggle where the very survival of NATO is on the line..”

Russians see an existential threat to their country.

In response, NATO pretends to see an existential threat to their power structure.

Not the same thing.

A Comprehensive Ukrainian Defeat Is The Only Possible Outcome (Scott Ritter)

First and foremost, Ukraine must reflect honestly about the causes of this conflict, and which side bears the burden of responsibility for the fighting. ‘Denazification’ is a term that the Russian government has used in describing one of its stated goals and objectives. President Vladimir Putin has made numerous references to the odious legacy of Stepan Bandera, the notorious mass murderer and associate of Nazi Germany who is feted by modern-day Ukrainian nationalists as a hero and all but a founding father of their nation. That present-day Ukraine would see fit to elevate a man such as Bandera to such a level speaks volumes about the rotten foundation of Kiev’s cause, and the dearth of moral fiber in the nation today.

The role played by the modern-day adherents of the Nazi collaborator’s hateful nationalist ideology in promulgating the key events that led to the initiation of the military operation by Russia can neither be ignored nor minimized. It was the Banderists, with their long relationship with the CIA and other foreign intelligence services hostile to Moscow, who used violence to oust the former president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovich, from office in February 2014. From the act of illicit politicized violence came the mainstreaming of the forces of ethnic and cultural genocide, manifested in the form of the present-day Banderists, who initiated acts of violence and oppression in eastern Ukraine. This, in turn, triggered the Russian response in Crimea and the actions of the citizens of Donbass, who organized to resist the rampage of the Bandera-affiliated Ukrainian nationalists.

Mariupol

The Minsk Accords, and the subsequent betrayal by Kiev and its Western partners of the potential path for peace that these represented, followed. Ukraine cannot disassociate itself from the role played by the modern-day Banderists in shaping the present reality. In this, Kiev mirrors the militarists of Imperial Japan, whose blind allegiance to the precepts of Bushido, the traditional ‘way of the warrior’ dating back to the Samurai of 17th century Japan, helped push the country into global conflict. Part of Japan’s obligations upon surrender was to purge its society of the influence of the militarists, and to enact a constitution that deplatformed them by making wars of aggression – and the military forces needed to wage them – unconstitutional.

Banderism, in all its manifestations, must be eradicated from Ukrainian society in the same manner that Bushido-inspired militarism was removed from Japan, to include the creation of a new constitution that enshrines this purge as law. Any failure to do so only allows the cancer of Banderism to survive, festering inside the defeated body of post-conflict Ukraine until some future time when it can metastasize once again to bring harm. This is precisely the message that was being sent by Putin when, during the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum this past July, he showed a video where the crimes of the Banderists during the Second World War were put on public display. “How can you not fight it?” Putin said. “And if this is not neo-Nazism in its current manifestation, then what is it?” he asked. “We have every right,” the Russian president declared, “to believe that the task of the denazification of Ukraine set by us is one of the key ones.”

As the Western establishment media begins to come to grips with the scope and scale of Ukraine’s eventual military defeat (and, by extension, the reality of a decisive Russian military victory), their political overseers in the US, NATO, and the European Union struggle to define what the endgame will be. Having articulated the Russian-Ukrainian conflict as an existential struggle where the very survival of NATO is on the line, these Western politicians now have the task of shaping public perception in a manner that mitigates any meaningful, sustained political blowback from constituents who have been deceived into tolerating the transfer of billions of dollars from their respective national treasuries, and billions more dollars’ worth of weapons from their respective arsenals, into a lost and disgraced cause.

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“Putin and his team are seen in the West as weak, control freaks who block the military from taking off the white gloves and making the magic happen..”

US Intelligence Sending Mixed Messages On Ukraine (Larry Johnson)

The U.S. Intelligence Community is not a monolith. It is more like a feudal society. The big three Feudal lords for intelligence analysis are the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). All three produce “raw intelligence” — the CIA’s case officers produce reports from foreigners who have agreed to work in secret for the United States, the NSA scoops up all forms of electronic intelligence (e.g., phone calls, emails) and the DIA produces reports from U.S. Defense Attaches assigned to U.S. embassies around the world. Each jealously guards its own product and the employees of these three agencies can be considered the vassals. (Gots to have a vassal if you’re a feudal lord.)

Then there is the Director of National Intelligence (aka DNI). This position/office was created in the aftermath of 9-11 and is supposed to “manage” and “coordinate” all members of the Intelligence Community. The standard solution in Washington, DC is to create another layer of bureaucracy to solve a failure of already behemoth bureaucracies who rarely cooperate. The reality is something else — the Big 3 do not always kow tow to the DNI. I am hearing that the CIA and the DIA are doing a pretty good job of reporting honestly what is taking place on the ground in Ukraine — i.e., Ukraine is suffering terrible casualties and the counter offensive is failing. Unfortunately, as Sy Hersh has reported previously, Biden and his National Security team are ignoring those intelligence reports and are embracing “analysis” coming out of the Office of the DNI.

The DNI reportedly is proffering the meme that Ukraine is grinding down the Russian military and that the United States and NATO only need to be patient and wait for Russia’s inevitable collapse. Some of the U.S. military leaders — who are flat out ignorant of Russia’s recent history in dealing with a domestic radical Islamic insurgency — firmly believe that Russia cannot win a military victory over Ukraine, that the war is a stalemate and the Russia will be bogged down for years battling Bandera insurgents. The leaders of the USIC and the military still believe in their initial conclusion that Russia is weak because it did not steamroll through Ukraine and rout Zelensky off 12 months ago. They attribute Russia’s “failure” to inept and corrupt bureaucrats keen on reining in the Russian military.

Putin also gets a heavy share of the blame by these leaders for allegedly not listening to the Russian military leaders and Wagner chiefs to do what is necessary to achieve victory. Putin and his team are seen in the West as weak, control freaks who block the military from taking off the white gloves and making the magic happen. Because the US intelligence and military leaders are looking at the war in Ukraine through this prism, the analysts and their managers, for the most part, face enormous pressure to conclude that Russia is a feckless and incompetent near-peer adversary and cannot last.

I continue to believe that the assumptions about Russia’s alleged failure is ignoring the contravening narrative:
• The Russian economy is robust and healthy despite Western sanctions.
• Russia’s political influence in the world is growing, not shrinking. BRICS is a case in point.
• Russia is inflicting enormous casualties on Ukraine’s military and decimating infrastructure critical to the Ukrainian military campaign.
• Russia’s defense industry has ramped up to levels of production that the West cannot match.
• Russia’s seemingly unlimited access to natural resources, energy and rare earth minerals strengthens Russia’s military position in the world.
• Russia enjoys a massive technological advantage over NATO in terms of electronic warfare, air defense systems, mine laying vehicles and hypersonic missiles.
• Russian leaders and their people genuinely believe they face an existential threat from the West.
• Ukraine is totally dependent on the West to provide money and weapons to continue to fight.

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No forced conscription.

About 280,000 Individuals Enlisted By Contract From January 1 – Medvedev (TASS)

Around 280,000 individuals were enlisted by contract with the Russian Armed Forces from January 1, 2023, Deputy Head of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev said. “Let us continue discussing the critical topic that gathered us here this time in the Far Eastern District. This time I meet heads of regions of the [Russian] Federation in person, in view of significant of the staffing work,” Medvedev said when opening the meeting. “According to data of the Defense Ministry, about 280,000 persons were enlisted by contracts to ranks of the [Russian] Armed Forces since January 1,” he noted. Some of them were in the reserve and the other ones are volunteers, Medvedev added.

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“..Russia does not pose a threat to Central Europe” because Moscow has not been able to accomplish a quick and resounding victory in the conflict..”

Hungary Calls For ‘Security Guarantees’ For Russia (RT)

A lasting peace following the Ukraine conflict can only be achieved if Russia receives security guarantees from the West, Gergely Gulyas, the minister in charge of the Hungarian prime minister’s office, has said. Speaking at a students’ event on Saturday, Gulyas stated that Kiev has no realistic chance of regaining the territories it claims as its own from Russia. He added that “it is also clear that Russia does not pose a threat to Central Europe” because Moscow has not been able to accomplish a quick and resounding victory in the conflict. According to Gulyas, peace talks between Russia and Ukraine are impossible without the involvement of the US.

He further stated that Kiev’s Western backers “must give security guarantees to Russia, but definitely not NATO membership to the Ukrainians,” adding that in the long run, peace between Moscow and Kiev could be maintained through the deployment of peacekeepers. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban told former Fox News host Tucker Carlson last month that “without involving the Russians in a security architecture of Europe, we cannot provide a safe life for its citizens.” Hungary is not the only Western nation to call for Russian interests to be taken into account. Last December, French President Emmanuel Macron urged the West to think about how to provide security guarantees not only to Ukraine, but also to Russia, arguing that NATO must address Moscow’s concerns about the US-led military bloc “coming right up to its doors and deploying weapons that could threaten Russia.”

The debate over security guarantees for Russia heated up before the start of the Ukraine conflict when in December 2021, Moscow presented a list of demands to the US and NATO, asking the West to impose a ban on Ukraine entering the military bloc, while insisting that the alliance should retreat to its borders as of 1997 before it expanded. The overture, however, was rebuffed by the West. President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said that Ukrainian neutrality is an issue of “fundamental importance” to Russia, arguing that Kiev’s push to join NATO was one of the key reasons behind the military operation in the neighboring country.

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“I am in blood / Stepped in so far, that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er.”

G20: Last Waltz In A World Torn Apart (Bhadrakumar)

The Modi government is not perplexed by the absence of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping in the G20 Summit on September 9-10. Its intuitive cognition helps to be stoical. This is, arguably, a Shakespearean predicament — “I am in blood / Stepped in so far, that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er.” [..] One doesn’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the common thread in the decisions taken in Moscow and Beijing is that their leaderships are not in the least interested in any interaction with the US President Joe Biden who will be camping in Delhi for four days with all the time at his disposal for some structured meetings, at the very least, some “pull asides” and the like at a minimum that could be caught on camera.

Biden’s considerations are political: anything that helps to distract attention from the gathering storm in US politics which is threatening to culminate in his impeachment that might in turn blight his candidacy in the 2024 election. Of course, this is not Biden’s Lyndon Johnson moment. Johnson made the tumultuous decision in March 1968 to retire from politics as a strong step toward healing the nation’s fissures, while agonising deeply that “There is division in the American house now.” But Biden is anything but a visionary. He was setting up a bear trap for Putin to reinforce his false narrative that if only the latter dismounted from his high horse, the Ukraine war would end overnight, whereas on its part, the Kremlin is well aware that the White House continues to be the strongest proponent of the thesis that a prolonged war would weaken Russia.

Indeed, Biden has gone to extraordinary extents that none of this predecessors ever dared to reach — aiding and abetting Ukrainian terrorist attacks deep inside Russia. In a way, Xi Jinping also faces a trap, as Biden administration is going to great extent to project itself as conciliatory toward China, as the beeline of US officials heading for Beijing recently would testify — Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken in June; Treasury Secretary and Climate Envoy John Kerry in July; and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo in August. The New York Times on Tuesday carried a report titled U.S. Officials Are Streaming to China. Will Beijing Return the Favor? It chastised Beijing:

“China has much to gain from dispatching officials to the United States. It would signal to the world it was making an effort to ease tensions with Washington, particularly at a time when China needs to bolster confidence in its shaky economy. A visit could also help lay the groundwork for a potential, highly anticipated meeting between President Biden and China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, at a forum in San Francisco in November. “Beijing, however, has been noncommittal.”

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… and lost his job.

Ex-UK Defense Chief Sparked Rift With US Over Helicopter Deal (RT)

Former UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace tried to derail a major deal to buy heavy military helicopters from the US, triggering a diplomatic row between the two long-time allies, The Times reported on Saturday, citing sources. The incident is said to have occurred after Washington reportedly shunned Wallace’s bid to become the next NATO secretary general, although the outlet’s sources insisted that the two issues were not related. According to the paper, Wallace, who resigned on Thursday, spent his last weeks in office trying to cancel the purchase of 14 Boeing Chinook H-47 two-motor lift helicopters. The former defense secretary reportedly had serious doubts about the £2.3 billion ($2.9 billion) deal and suggested canceling it to ease the pressure on the defense budget.

Wallace argued that Britain already has the largest heavy-lift fleet in Europe and favored investment in medium-lift support helicopters, which would have allowed London to save money, the article said. Another concern, according to the report, was that Britain lacked the communications, satellite technology, and transport means to carry out special operations involving US-designed aircraft. However, the initiative left many UK officials unhappy, with one describing it as “mad.” Another Times source suggested that Wallace “was trying to piss off the Americans.” As the diplomatic row was reportedly brewing, Karen Pierce, the UK ambassador to the US, is said to have warned London that canceling the deal would be a bad idea. UK officials reportedly scrambled to calm down their America counterparts, telling them that the tensions would be defused once Wallace was out of the government.

“There has been a lot of reconciliation, just to keep the US reassured,” a source told the paper. The apparent controversy comes after US President Joe Biden refused to endorse Wallace’s candidacy to succeed long-serving NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. According to a Daily Telegraph report in July, Wallace, who was once considered a front-runner for the job, failed to secure Washington’s backing because the UK announced a coalition to help Ukraine procure F-16 fighter jets without first consulting the US. A Times source categorically rejected the “pathetic” speculation that Wallace’s apparent attempts to cancel the helicopter deal were linked to his NATO ambitions. However, one source said that he was “deeply disappointed” that his aspirations to succeed Stoltenberg had come to nothing, which he is said to have blamed on the White House.

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Funny, Tucker Carlson predicted the demise of NATO just a few days ago…

NATO May Collapse By 2025 – Academic (RT)

The return of Donald Trump to the White House could spell the end for US military aid to Ukraine, leaving a divided Europe to foot Kiev’s bills and ultimately ending the NATO pact, academic Phillips Payson O’Brien claimed in The Atlantic on Saturday. Opposition to arming Ukraine is now the position of Trump’s supporter base, who O’Brien estimated account for three quarters of the Republican Party’s electorate. Trump has repeatedly vowed to use military aid as leverage to force Ukraine into peace talks with Russia “within 24 hours” of his inauguration, while his two nearest competitors for the GOP’s nomination – Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy – have also discussed restricting support for Kiev.

Of the three potential candidates, Ramaswamy has gone the furthest, suggesting that the US recognize Russia’s territorial claims in Ukraine in exchange for Moscow distancing itself from Beijing. “If Trump or one of his imitators wins the presidency in November 2024, Europe could find itself faced with a new American administration that will halt all support for Ukraine,” O’Brien warned. In this scenario, he continued, European nations would be unable to make up for the loss of US military aid, resulting in a military defeat for Ukraine. With the US out of the picture, Europe would be divided on the issue too, he added, with the Eastern and Baltic nations eager but unable to keep the arms flowing to Kiev, and Western nations like France and Germany more likely to seek peace with Russia.

“The result could be a legacy of bitterness and distrust at best, and a permanent fracturing of European cooperation at worst,” he stated. A fervent supporter of Ukraine, O’Brien argued that European countries need to increase military production immediately to prepare for this possibility. However, with the Eurozone entering recession in the first three months of 2023 and industrial production down in Germany, European states are unlikely to be able to sustain the Ukrainian military on their own.

O’Brien’s predictions are based on the assumption that Ukraine will still be able to fight by 2025. According to Russian figures, Kiev lost 43,000 men in the first two months of its ongoing counteroffensive, without managing to penetrate the multiple layers of trenches and fortifications laid by Russia along the entire Kherson-Donetsk front line. Before the operation began in early June, multiple Western media reports suggested that continued US and NATO military aid to Kiev depended on the success of the offensive. Now, almost three months in, the counteroffensive is widely regarded as a failure.

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“..Over 30 percent of the population lives on less than $1 a day, and in over 60 percent of regions have zero access to healthcare and drinking water.”

No Respite For France As A ‘New Africa’ Rises (Pepe Escobar)

Africa still lags far behind its Eurasian cousins on the road toward breaking the shackles of neocolonialism. The continent today faces horrendous odds in its fight against the deeply entrenched financial and political institutions of colonization, especially when it comes to smashing French monetary hegemony in the form of the Franc CFA – or the Communauté Financière Africaine (African Financial Community). Still, one domino is falling after another – Chad, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and now Gabon. This process has already turned Burkina Faso’s President Captain Ibrahim Traoré, into a new hero of the multipolar world – as a dazed and confused collective west can’t even begin to comprehend the blowback represented by its 8 coups in West and Central Africa in less than 3 years.

Military officers decided to take power in Gabon after hyper pro-France President Ali Bongo won a dodgy election that “lacked credibility.” Institutions were dissolved. Borders with Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, and the Republic of Congo were closed. All security deals with France were annulled. No one knows what will happen with the French military base. All that was as popular as it comes: soldiers took to the streets of the capital Libreville in joyful singing, cheered on by onlookers. Bongo and his father, who preceded him, have ruled Gabon since 1967. He was educated at a French private school and graduated from the Sorbonne. Gabon is a small nation of 2.4 million with a small army of 5,000 personnel that could fit into Donald Trump’s penthouse. Over 30 percent of the population lives on less than $1 a day, and in over 60 percent of regions have zero access to healthcare and drinking water.

The military qualified Bongo’s 14-year rule as leading to a “deterioration in social cohesion” that was plunging the country “into chaos.” On cue, French mining company Eramet suspended its operations after the coup. That’s a near monopoly. Gabon is all about lavish mineral wealth – in gold, diamonds, manganese, uranium, niobium, iron ore, not to mention oil, natural gas, and hydropower. In OPEC-member Gabon, virtually the whole economy revolves around mining. The case of Niger is even more complex. France exploits uranium and high-purity petrol as well as other types of mineral wealth. And the Americans are on site, operating three bases in Niger with up to 4,000 military personnel. The key strategic node in their ‘Empire of Bases’ is the drone facility in Agadez, known as Niger Air Base 201, the second-largest in Africa after Djibouti.

French and American interests clash, though, when it comes to the saga over the Trans-Sahara gas pipeline. After Washington broke the umbilical steel cord between Russia and Europe by bombing the Nord Streams, the EU, and especially Germany, badly needed an alternative. Algerian gas supply can barely cover southern Europe. American gas is horribly expensive. The ideal solution for Europeans would be Nigerian gas crossing the Sahara and then the deep Mediterranean.

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“..the US initially proposed the dollar as an international currency “to make everyone’s life better, easier, more comfortable.”

US Dollar A ‘Very Problematic’ Currency – Zakharova (RT)

Ever more countries are turning to national currencies for trade rather than use the US dollar, which has become a “very problematic” means of payment, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stated in an interview with the Turkish news outlet Aydinlik published on Sunday. According to Zakharova, the US initially proposed the dollar as an international currency “to make everyone’s life better, easier, more comfortable.” “They were very insistent on this, saying that it would bring the world economy to a new level and simplify our transactions and relationships… And at the time, those who made such a policy in the US and abroad… probably wanted to take that first step towards globalization honestly.” Now, according to Zakharova, the dollar is used to pressure Washington’s political opponents.

“What we faced last year is something completely different,” she stated, referring to the numerous Western sanctions placed on Russia over the Ukraine conflict, including an effective ban on Russia using the dollar in international transactions. “There is no simplifying or making our lives easier. The currency is being used as a tool of hegemony and a new kind of colonialism, used to punish, segregate, and make our lives a nightmare.” According to Zakharova, the process of de-dollarization, which Russia and a growing number of other countries have been pursuing in cross-border trade, is not a goal in and of itself but a simple fact of reality.

“They say de-dollarization is a kind of ultimate goal of different organizations or some countries. But it is not. This is not our target. This is just a reality… The dollar is a very problematic currency these days. This is not my political view, it is an objective economic fact.” Zakharova noted that most global economic problems originate in the US, including the 2008 global economic crisis. National currencies, on the other hand, are more stable, which is why an increasing number of countries are opting for them, she believes. They want to establish and create a kind of a guarantee, a financial guarantee system in order not to once again be a victim of an American crisis… It is up to the countries to decide [how to do it], but as I understand it, more and more countries want to do something to avoid becoming another victim of the American financial system,” the official said.

Russia has been reducing the use of the dollar in foreign trade since 2014, but last year’s sanctions forced the country to step up these efforts. For instance, the share of national and ‘friendly’ currencies in the country’s trade with the Eurasian Economic Union grew to nearly 80% in 2022, and is expected to reach 90% by the end of this year. Last week, reports emerged that the BRICS group of emerging economies – which presently comprises Russia, Brazil, India, China, and South Africa, but is due to add six new members next year – is also considering switching all cross-border trade to national currencies.

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“.. this increasingly beleaguered, self-destructive, debased and less popular US currency.”

Gold’s Role Rises As Dollar Hegemony Falls (ZH)

Rickards noted, “It’s the weaponization of the dollar… you’re not just stealing our money with inflation, you’re actually telling us we can’t get it back,” emphasizing that while the BRICS countries might not fully trust each other, they are more likely to trust a “common trading currency backed by gold.” Rule described the U.S. dollar’s previous “exorbitant privilege” advantage is coming to an end, thereby making things more expensive for Americans. “The enemy of the U.S. dollar isn’t in Beijing or Moscow or Riyadh, it’s in Washington.” For Piepenburg, the end-game is clear. Debt drives policy and debt drives current market directions. This debt will not and cannot be sustained by GDP growth or tax revenues,… …which means ultimately money printers will continue to de-value that world reserve currency,… …and hence devalue the once hegemonic respect for the US holder of that currency.

Piepenburg states, “America doesn’t seem to be the America that it was in 1944 or the America that it was under Kissinger in the early 70s,” indicating a significant shift in global economic dynamics. While all experts seemed to agree that gold could play an increasingly important role, Piepenburg was skeptical that national leaders and central bankers would willingly give up their power to print money at will, dubbing this the “Nietzsche thesis,” questioning why leaders would want to “relinquish that ability to print at will.” Overall, the panel agreed that the weaponization and debasement of the dollar have diminished its credibility, setting the stage for other forms of currency or assets like gold to gain importance in protecting investors from this increasingly beleaguered, self-destructive, debased and less popular US currency.

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At your age, you’re supposed to be planting trees whose shade you’ll never sit in.

Soros Vows to Stop ‘MAGA-Style Republicans’ From Winning 2024 Election (Sp.)

The Soros family has waged a years-long political war against Donald Trump and his supporters, with George Soros calling Trump a “danger to the world” and characterizing his ideas as a “threat to democracy.” Trump has alleged that “district attorneys hand-picked and personally funded by” Soros are behind the ongoing effort to put him behind bars. Last month, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations soft power empire announced a dramatic scaling back of funding for operations in Europe, sparking an outcry from liberal activists, NGOs, and think tanks regarding the impact the end of the financial gravy train will have on their operations.

Alexander Soros, the 37-year-old son of the Hungarian-born US billionaire who took the reins at the OSF in June, responded with a manifesto-style appeal this week explaining the shift in focus under his leadership, assuring that the OSF isn’t really “leaving Europe,” and that the region “remains of huge strategic importance.” Rather, Soros indicated, the shift in funding is the result of a shift in focus, from Western to Eastern Europe and the United States. “The future of accountable, democratic government in Europe is now being determined not just in Paris and Berlin but also in Warsaw, Kiev and Prague,” he wrote. “This isn’t about funding levels – it’s about priorities as the focus of funding shifts back to the continent’s east,” Soros Jr. noted, recalling that, after all, his father’s soft power meddling in nations’ political affairs began in Eastern Europe in the 1980s.

Spending in Ukraine won’t be affected by the cuts, Soros assured, recalling with “pride” the $250 million in cash funneled into the country since the 2014 Euromaidan coup, and which played “such an important role in Kiev’s resilience” amid the ongoing NATO-backed proxy war against Russia. The OSF will also continue to “support” operations in Moldova and the Western Balkans, per Soros, and Central European University – the Vienna-based school booted out of Budapest in 2019 amid allegations of meddling in Hungary’s politics. The reorganization will also include a redoubling of Soros foundations’ efforts against Donald Trump and MAGA-style Republicans, Soros indicated, expressing concerns over the impact Trump’s possible return to power in 2024 would have on the OSF’s global agenda.

“As someone who spends up to half their time working on the continent and thinks former United States President Donald Trump – or at least someone with his isolationist and anti-European policies –will be the Republican nominee, I believe a MAGA-style Republican victory in next year’s US presidential election could, in the end, be worse for the EU than for the US. Such an outcome will imperil European unity and undermine the progress achieved on many fronts in response to the war in Ukraine,” Soros opined. Accordingly, he noted, the OSF is being “adapted” to “be able to respond to whatever scenarios might emerge, on both sides of the Atlantic.”

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Same here: plant trees your grandchildren will enjoy.

US Congress is Older Than Ever, But Reform is Unlikely (Sp.)

McConnell is not the only prominent member of US legislature whose health became a point of discussion. Last year, media reported US lawmakers questioning the mental fitness of long-time US senator Dianne Feinstein, who has served as a member of the US Senate since 1992, representing California. In 2023, Feinstein, now aged 90, announced that she will not run for reelection in 2024. This illustrates a trend of US political class becoming older compared with the past, with the 80-year-old incumbent president, Joe Biden, being the most prominent example as the oldest sitting US leader. His predecessor and likely opponent during the 2024 election, Donald Trump, is not that far behind, being 77 years old. According to the FiveThirtyEight polling website, both House and Senate are older than ever before, with the median age for US representatives and senators being 57.8 and 65.3, respectively.

Similar to Feinstein and McConnell, many of those people have been in Congress for decades. “The US Congress and the Presidency constitute a gerontocracy, and I see no chance that such graybeards will reform themselves on that score anytime soon,” John Seery, the George Irving Thompson memorial professor of government and professor of politics at Pomona College, summarized the situation. This development has triggered a conversation about whether it is appropriate for a senior lawmaker to stay in power well into their old age, especially since there is no mechanism to remove them similar to the Constitution’s 25th Amendment, which outlines the procedures for replacing the president or vice president in the event of death, removal, resignation, or incapacitation.

While the both chambers of Congress can expel members with a two-third majority, only 20 lawmakers have been removed this way since 1789, with a majority of those cases involving support for Confederacy during the Civil War.
There have been proposals to introduce age limits for elected officials, which is also not that out of the ordinary, considering there are already minimum age requirements for holding political office. “Now that Americans are living longer, and the consequences of having octogenarians running the country (specifically President Biden and Senator McConnell) are apparent, a conversation around age limits in needed. Public opinion polling has shown that a majority of Americans are in favor of this.

It could also be a consideration for the Supreme Court, as it tends to have the same issues around older justices becoming unwell in post and potentially leaving the bench short of a member,” Clodagh Harrington, a lecturer in US politics at University College Cork, said. When asked whether a version of the 25th Amendment for members of Congress could be passed, the expert noted that even that addition to the constitution has been controversial. “The few times in the modern era that it has been considered in relation to, for example, President [Ronald] Reagan, have caused significant unease. No-one wants to be the person informing the president that they are no longer considered fit for office,” she explained.

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You cannot have two different justice systems for long.

Biden Asserts Executive Privilege on Hunter Emails, But Waived Trump’s (GP)

On Wednesday, America First Legal (AFL) revealed they obtained “over 1,000 emails between Rosemont Seneca and the Office of the Vice (OVP) President” from the National Archives (NARA) via a lawsuit. AFL started the thread on X by saying “The sheer volume of emails exchanged between Hunter and his associates at Rosemont Seneca and the Office of the Vice President is telling in itself.” Joe Biden asserted executive privilege over 200 emails because “release would disclose confidential advice between the President and his advisors, or between such advisors.” Meanwhile, President Trump’s executive privilege was obliterated by Joe Biden. The Biden White House worked directly with the Justice Department and National Archives to facilitate the investigation into Trump’s handling of documents, according to memos reviewed by investigative reporter John Solomon.

Joe Biden’s spokeswoman has repeatedly claimed Joe Biden had no knowledge of the raid and that he found out about it in the media. According to the memos, the Biden White House instigated the criminal investigation by eliminating Trump’s claims to executive privilege. Joe Biden paved the way for his Justice Department to arrest his political opponent after he retroactively revoked Trump’s executive privilege. Biden revoking Trump’s executive privilege opened the door for the former president to be subpoenaed – the subpoena then opened the door for the Justice Department to charge Trump with federal crimes. “By May, [White House Deputy Counsel Jonathan] Su conveyed to the Archives that President Joe Biden would not object to waiving his predecessor’s claims to executive claims, a decision that opened the door for DOJ to get a grand jury to issue a subpoena compelling Trump to turn over any remaining materials he possessed from his presidency.” – John Solomon reported last August.

On May 10, 2022, Acting National Archivist Debra Steidel Wall sent Trump’s lawyers a letter revealing the Biden White House’s involvement. According to John Solomon, within two weeks of Debra Steidel Wall’s letter to Trump’s lawyers, the DOJ sent a grand jury subpoena to Trump’s counsel demanding he return documents stored at Mar-a-Lago. Shortly after Trump was subpoenaed, the feds showed up to Mar-a-Lago and retrieved some documents and told the former president to put an extra lock on the storage locker. Two months later the FBI descended on Mar-a-Lago and rummaged through Trump’s belongings without allowing any of his lawyers in the area.

By November 2022, shortly after the Mar-a-Lago raid, Jack Smith was appointed special counsel to investigate the documents stored at Trump’s Florida residence. By June 2023 Trump was indicted on 37 counts related to Jack Smith’s classified documents case – 31 counts for willful retention and the other 6 counts included conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document or record, corruptly concealing a document or record, concealing a document in a federal investigation, scheme to conceal, false statements and representations. Meanwhile, Joe Biden hasn’t even been interviewed yet by the special counsel investigating his stolen SCIF-designated documents and he was able to assert executive privilege over 200 emails related to his son Hunter.

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I don’t see Fani last for much longer. What a mess.

Fani Willis Possesses Evidence Exonerating Georgia’s Alternate Electors (Fed.)

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis possesses evidence that exonerates several Republicans she’s targeting in her legal crusade against former President Donald Trump and other Republicans for their lawful contesting of Georgia’s flawed 2020 election. In her Aug. 14 indictment, Willis alleged the existence of Republican electors for Trump constituted an unlawful “conspiracy” to overturn the Peach State’s 2020 election results. Among those charged for partaking in this so-called “conspiracy” are David Shafer, one of Georgia’s 2020 Republican electors, and Ray Smith, who served as one of Trump’s lawyers at the time of the contest. Specifically, Willis claimed Shafer and the other alternate electors “unlawfully falsely held themselves out” as Georgia’s “duly elected and qualified” presidential electors.

She further insisted these electors — with Smith’s assistance — intentionally attempted to “mislead” figures such as then-Vice President Mike Pence and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger “into believing that they actually were such officers.” However, among the documents Willis obtained during her years-long investigation of Republicans was a meeting transcript refuting her allegations. A transcript of the Georgia Republican electors’ Dec. 14, 2020, meeting, obtained by The Federalist, explicitly shows the intent behind casting alternate electors was not to impersonate public officers, as Willis alleged, but to lawfully preserve Trump’s legal challenge to the state’s election results. At the meeting’s outset, Shafer specifically noted how he and his fellow Republicans were acting as “Republican nominees for Presidential Elector,” not as “duly elected and qualified” presidential electors.

“[President Trump] has filed a contest to the certified returns. That contest — is pending [and has] not been decided or even heard by any judge with the authority to hear it,” Shafer said. “And so in order to preserve his rights, it’s important that the Republican nominees for Presidential Elector meet here today and cast their votes.” For context, Shafer and Trump filed a lawsuit against Secretary of State Raffensberger in Fulton County state court on Dec. 4, 2020, alleging tens of thousands of illegal votes had been cast in the state’s presidential election. The suit came after a recount, requested by Trump, deemed Biden the winner of Georgia’s 16 electoral votes by a margin of 11,779. The recount prompted Raffensberger to recertify the election on Dec. 7 while Trump’s legal challenge remained ongoing.

By the time Dec. 14, 2020, arrived — the day on which nominees for presidential electors are required by federal law to meet — Trump and Shafer’s lawsuit was still pending. As such, Georgia’s Republican nominees, including Shafer, cast their electoral votes for Trump while the state’s Democrat nominees cast theirs for Biden. During the Dec. 14, 2020, meeting, Shafer further clarified the legal rationale for filing alternate electors in a conversation with Smith, asking Trump’s then-lawyer: “And so the only way for us to have any judge consider the merits of our complaint, the thousands of people we allege voted unlawfully, is for us to have this meeting and permit the contest to continue?” “That’s correct,” Smith replied.

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Coming from a Reagan economist.

Ivermectin Is a Proven Cure for Covid (Paul Craig Roberts)

The Covid years taught me that relatively few doctors are competent, capable of independent thinking, and have the interest to find approved medicines, such as Ivermectin, that are effective against new pathogens. Those doctors saved patients lives to the great distress of the Medical Establishment, and the doctors who saved their patients’ lives are still being punished for doing so. In September 2021, the corrupt American Medical Association told doctors to stop prescribing Ivermectin for COVID-19. In a statement, AMA, along with the American Pharmacists Association (APhA) and American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP), warned:

“We are alarmed by reports that outpatient prescribing for and dispensing of ivermectin have increased 24-fold since before the pandemic and increased exponentially over the past few months. As such, we are calling for an immediate end to the prescribing, dispensing, and use of ivermectin for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 outside of a clinical trial.” “In addition, we are urging physicians, pharmacists, and other prescribers — trusted health care professionals in their communities — to warn patients against the use of ivermectin outside of FDA-approved indications and guidance, whether intended for use in humans or animals, as well as purchasing ivermectin from online stores.”

Dr. Joseph Mercola asks. “How many died unnecessarily as a result of these commands?” Mercola’s question is a good one. Those who died from Covid died because of a lack of treatment. For an untested vaccine to be put into use under “emergency use authorization” there must be no cures. Therefore the Medical Establishment, which serves as a marketing agent for Big Pharma, had to deny that there were any cures and to prevent doctors from curing patients with Ivermectin and HCQ before the knowledge of the cure spread. Otherwise the agendas served by the Death Shot would be blocked.

Now that the Medical Establishment has a new Covid variant with which to scare people and an updated dangerous vax, there is talk of a new round of vax, mask, and lockdown mandates. These measures are very dangerous and totally unnecessary. But they maximize profit and control, and that is their purpose. My advice is that if you have a doctor who warns you away from Ivermectin, you have a dumbshit or corrupt doctor who is very dangerous to your life and health. Quickly find another one who has the interest to know the facts and the determination to put his patients ahead of Big Pharma’s profits. And certainly do not trust any corporate hospital.

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Lambs and birds

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Jul 262023
 


Andy Warhol Mick Jagger 1975

 

Glimpses Of An Endgame In Ukraine (Bhadrakumar)
Major Advancements For Russia, Ukraine On Its Last Legs – Macgregor (WF)
Even Strong Western Economies Turn Into Colonies – Zakharova (TASS)
Who Can Give Security Guarantees To Ukraine? (MoA)
IAEA Discovers Anti-Personnel Mines Near Zaporozhye Nuke Plant (TASS)
NATO Countries Using Ukraine to Get Rid of Outdated Weapons (Sp.)
The Polish Response To Putin’s Challenge (Helmer)
Zelensky Associate Was Present at Biden Bribery Meetings (GP)
Biden Claims To Have ‘Ended Cancer’ (RT)
Biden’s Dog Attacks 8 White House Staffers in Cover-Up (Sp.)
Biden Changes Long-Standing Position on Hunter’s Foreign Deals (Turley)
Hunter Biden’s Memoir Became Source of Tax Evasion Evidence (Sp.)
Members and the Media Panic as the Biden Scandal Mounts (Turley)
Twitter Rebrand to ‘X’ Fraught With Permit, Trademark Issues (DeMartino)
Musk: ‘X Will Become Most Valuable Brand on Earth’ (Sp.)

 

 

 

 

RFK Hannity
https://twitter.com/i/status/1684030867264643072
https://twitter.com/i/status/1684017271012995075

 

 

Azov

 

 

 

 

Tucker Ice Cube


https://twitter.com/i/status/1684017033174827008

 

 

 

 

“..Polish leadership’s concern, paradoxically, will be that Donald Trump may not return as president in 2024..”

Glimpses Of An Endgame In Ukraine (Bhadrakumar)

It is one thing that the Russian people are well aware that their country is de facto fighting the NATO in Ukraine. But it is an entirely different matter that the war may dramatically escalate to a war with Poland, a NATO army that the US regards as its most important partner in continental Europe. By dwelling at some length on Polish revanchism, which has a controversial record in modern European history, Putin probably calculated that in Europe, including in Poland, there could be resistance to the machinations that might drag NATO into a continental war with Russia. Equally, Poland must be dithering too. According to Politico, Poland’s military is about 150,000 strong, out of which 30,000 belong to a new territorial defence force who are “weekend soldiers who undergo 16 days of training followed up by refresher courses.”

Again, Poland’s military might doesn’t translate into political influence in Europe because the centrist forces that dominate the EU distrust Warsaw, which is controlled by the nationalist Law and Justice Party whose disregard for democratic norms and the rule of law has damaged Poland’s reputation across the bloc. Above all, Poland has reason to be worried about the reliability of Washington. Going forward, Polish leadership’s concern, paradoxically, will be that Donald Trump may not return as president in 2024. Despite the cooperation with the Pentagon over the Ukraine war, Poland’s current leadership remains distrustful of President Joe Biden — much like Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

On balance, therefore, it stands to reason that the sabre-rattling by Lukashenko and Putin’s lesson on European history can be taken as more of a forewarning to the West with a view to modulate an endgame in Ukraine that is optimal for Russian interests. A dismemberment of Ukraine or an uncontrollable expansion of the war beyond its borders will not be in the Russian interests. But the Kremlin leadership will factor in the contingency that Washington’s follies stemming out of its desperate need to save face from a humiliating defeat in the proxy war, may leave no choice to the Russian forces but to cross the Dnieper and advance all the way to Poland’s border to prevent an occupation of Western Ukraine by the so-called Lublin Triangle, a regional alliance with virulent anti-Russian orientation comprising Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine, formed in July 2020 and promoted by Washington.

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Article is bits and pieces thrown together, but still interesting.

Major Advancements For Russia, Ukraine On Its Last Legs – Macgregor (WF)

The same people driving this war in Eastern Europe and Ukraine are the people dominating the financial markets, dominating media and ultimately shaping policy for our government.. Government by donors. This is entirely a function of people with a lot of money. – Douglas MacGregor Ret. Col. Douglas Macgregor: “[Putin] represents, in the minds of many people around the world, someone who has decided to challenge not just American military and political hegemony, but American and Western financial hegemony.

Macgregor

The World Bank and associated institutions have effectively been puppets for the US… We talk all the time about the Chinese supposedly blackmailing people by lending them lots of money and then holding them accountable. Well, we do the same thing, only we do it in more subtle ways that are actually more damaging to the society, because we’re very intrusive… The bottom line is this is a new era that is coming, and they’ve already got 40 plus nations willing to join this new currency. India, China and Russia, of course, are at the center of this, at the core of it. And this is seen as a rebellion against our financial dominance. That has been so, from their standpoint, certainly destructive in so many ways for so long.”

WAKE UP: If Russia was the aggressor against Ukraine, the situation would be different now, and we would see Russians on the borders of Poland after they destroyed Ukraine, but this did not happen, because the Russians do not want this. – Col. Douglas Macgregor “It’s stupid to threaten Russia with nuclear weapons,” – said Douglas Macgregor, ex-adviser to the head of the Pentagon. “The Russians can flood the Atlantic with their submarines, as well as the Pacific Ocean, where they will be supported by the Chinese Navy..”

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They’re no longer strong.

Even Strong Western Economies Turn Into Colonies – Zakharova (TASS)

Even economically strong and developed Western countries have turned into colonies, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Monday. “Western countries, even strong and developed economies, have become colonies,” the diplomat noted, addressing a Russian-African women’s forum. “The most interesting thing is that European Union nations and NATO countries have already become neo-colonies. They are economically strong; they have a long history of democratic development, and many have given birth to democratic freedoms in the past. However, today, they are not just dependent, but they are completely subordinate to the will of their metropolis – that is, the Anglo-Saxon world – in terms of the economy, politics and morality.


However, the world is unwilling to follow the old path, get back on the same old track and repeat the same mistakes,” she added. “We are not only fighting for ourselves; we are fighting for the future of the world, deciding whether it will be a free world or we will return to the colonial past,” Zakharova noted. Still, the diplomat pointed out that Russia and Africa weren’t ready to sacrifice freedom for material benefits the way some Western countries did. “Although we appreciate material welfare, there are more important things. Welfare turns against humans when there is no internal freedom, free will, and an understanding of what’s good and bad,” Zakharova emphasized.

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How about Russia?

Who Can Give Security Guarantees To Ukraine? (MoA)

In 2013 the European Union pressed the Ukraine to sign a free trade agreement with it. Russia, which was the biggest trading partner of Ukraine, made a counter offer that was financially better and had less political restrictions attached to it. Then President Victor Yanukovych of Ukraine had to reject the EU agreement. The U.S., together with the German secret service BND, had long standing ties with the right-wing groups in west-Ukraine which had previously cooperated with Nazi Germany and had been attached to the German Nazi-Wehrmacht. The CIA reactivated these groups and instigated a violent color-revolution in Kiev. That revolution led to a civil war as large parts of the ethic Russians in east Ukraine rejected the new regime that had been installed by a west Ukrainian minority.

While the ethnic Russians in Ukraine lost control over most of their original areas they also soon defeated what was left of the Ukraine army. They did so twice. Since 2015 the conflict was stalled. The Minsk agreements, under which Ukraine was supposed to became federalized, were signed, but Ukraine stalled their implementation. Meanwhile the U.S. and Britain used the time to reinstate and rearm the Ukrainian army. By 2021 the Ukraine was ready to attack the People’s Republics of Luhansk and Donetsk. Russia activated its army and warned that it would have to interfere with such plans. The imminent launch of an Ukrainian attack was called off. In early 2022 the U.S. gave the Ukrainians a green light to launch their long planned attack. Russia intervened and the current war started.

The U.S. plans behind the war expected that the pre-coordinated western sanctions that immediately followed would ruin Russia, that Russia would be shunned by the rest of the world and that a military defeat of the Russian army would lead to regime change in Moscow. The Ukraine expected that, after winning a war against its separatists, it would immediately become a member of NATO. Neither of the (totally unrealistic) expectations was met. The Ukraine is now obviously losing the war. It will soon need to sign a capitulation like ceasefire agreement with Russia. But who or what can guarantee that any such agreement will be held up? NATO membership is no longer an option.

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Whose are they?

IAEA Discovers Anti-Personnel Mines Near Zaporozhye Nuke Plant (TASS)

Experts from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have observed directional anti-personnel mines on the periphery of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP), the agency’s Director General Rafael Grossi said. According to him, while inspecting the site on July 23, the IAEA experts saw some mines located in a buffer zone between the site’s internal and external perimeter barriers. The experts reported that the mines were in a restricted area that plant personnel cannot access. No mines were discovered within the site. “As I have reported earlier, the IAEA has been aware of the previous placement of mines outside the site perimeter and also at particular places inside. Our team has raised this specific finding with the plant and they have been told that it is a military decision, and in an area controlled by military,” Grossi said.

According to him, “having such explosives on the site is inconsistent with the IAEA safety standards and nuclear security guidance.” That said, the IAEA experts concluded that “any detonation of these mines should not affect the site’s nuclear safety and security systems.” On June 22, ahead of Grossi’s visit to Russia, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky accused Russia of plotting a terror attack on the Zaporozhye NPP. He said as much to the United States, Brazil, India, China, European, Middle East and African countries but provided no evidence to back up his allegation.

Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov refuted these allegations as yet another lie. According to Renat Karchaa, adviser to the CEO of Russian state nuclear power corporation Rosenergoatom, Zelensky’s statements may indicate that Kiev is plotting a terror attack or a strike on the ZNPP in a bid to drag NATO into the conflict. Russia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya said on June 23 that Russia was alarmed over Kiev’s repeated allegations that Russian forces were mining the nuclear facility.

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And they don’t produce enough to replace them.

NATO Countries Using Ukraine to Get Rid of Outdated Weapons (Sp.)

NATO countries have been pumping weapons into Ukraine since the beginning of the conflict with Russia, but most of them are outdated and have been mothballed for decades, military expert and former high-ranking NATO artillery officer Pierre Henrot told Sputnik. “NATO countries in fact only send their oldest equipment to Ukraine and take the opportunity to replenish their armament for their armies with new generations of equipment. Examples abound: the Poles, who are the most committed alongside Ukraine, to the point that they are talking about entering western Ukraine themselves, provided very early [on] all their Soviet-era tanks to the Ukrainians and have just received for the Polish army a first contingent of American Abrams tanks, brand new and manufactured for them,” Henrot said.

Other countries have also provided decommissioned equipment, including 88 German Leopard 1 tanks that were withdrawn from arsenals in 2003, and French AMX 10-RC light tanks that were developed in the 1970s and have been decommissioned by the French army as well, the former officer added. “The worst is probably the delivery by France of VAB armoured infantry vehicles (Vehicules de l’Avant Blindes), in a four-wheeled version, which invariably gets bogged down in the autumn mud. Entering service in 1979, it has proven to be a rolling coffin for Ukrainian infantry over the past year,” the expert further explained. Some countries, including the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania, also sent Ukraine all their Soviet MiG or Sukhoi fighters, he said.

Another problem with such ragtag deliveries is that the spare parts and ammunition for such weapons are often different and incompatible with one another, Henrot pointed out. “It is as if the NATO partners were getting rid of their outdated weapons, already mothballed,” the former officer said. However, some of Western military aid is useful for the Ukrainian military, and of good quality, the expert noted, adding that it is usually equipment for small arms, bulletproof vests and night sight systems, as well as US-made Stingers and Javelins. “Where the Americans provided suitable and effective weapons, it was with the 2,000 portable anti-aircraft Stingers delivered or with the 10,000 Javelin anti-armor weapons provided; formidable weapons in the hands of infantrymen. It is the same for the NLAW [Next Generation Light AntiTank Weapons], a useful weapon on the battlefield,” he stated.

At the same time, the Western countries often lack sufficient capacities to produce weapons required by the Ukrainian military, Henrot mentioned. “NATO countries fail to keep up with the production of ammunition for artillery and even for small arms. Again, the variety of calibres is very large; it’s a headache, but above all, there are not enough production chains, and industrialists are reluctant to launch production units for an effort that could stop quite quickly, and they have not received a firm long-term contract from Western governments,” the expert explained. Henrot believes that the recent widely criticized decision of the United States to send cluster bombs to Ukraine is the demonstration of the same problem. “The Americans for their part have almost openly admitted that it was their last ammo in stock and that they have nothing left to deliver,” Henrot concluded.

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“The Polish authorities, who are nurturing their revanchist ambitions, hide the truth from their people. The truth is that the Ukrainian cannon fodder is no longer enough for the West.”

The Polish Response To Putin’s Challenge (Helmer)

[Putin] warned that President Vladimir Zelensky’s regime in Kiev may be contemplating a trade with Poland of the territory around Lvov in exchange for Polish military intervention to support Kiev against Russia: “Today we see that the regime in Kiev is ready to go to any length to save its treacherous hide and to prolong its existence. They do not care for the people of Ukraine or Ukrainian sovereignty or national interests. They are ready to sell anything, including people and land, just like their ideological forefathers led by Petlyura, who signed the so-called secret conventions with Poland in 1920 under which they ceded Galicia and Western Volhynia to Poland in return for military support. Traitors like them are ready now to open the gate to their foreign handlers and to sell Ukraine again.”

“As for the Polish leaders, they probably hope to form a coalition under the NATO umbrella in order to directly intervene in the conflict in Ukraine and to bite off as much as possible, to ‘regain’, as they see it, their historical territories, that is, modern-day Western Ukraine. It is also common knowledge that they dream about Belarusian land.” If that were to happen, Putin said Russia would support a Ukrainian regime replacing Zelensky and opposing the Poles. “The Polish authorities, who are nurturing their revanchist ambitions, hide the truth from their people. The truth is that the Ukrainian cannon fodder is no longer enough for the West. That is why it is planning to use other expendables – Poles, Lithuanians and everyone else they do not care about. I can tell you that this is an extremely dangerous game, and the authors of such plans should think about the consequences.”

The Polish state media have ignored Putin’s historical precedents and the deal-making underway between the Ukrainian military command and its Polish counterpart. The Polish commercial network TVN24, which is owned by the US media corporation Warner Bros. Discovery, broadcast a discussion with a think-tank academic and a retired military intelligence colonel. “‘The Russians are trying to drive a wedge between Poland and Ukraine,’ Agnieszka Legucka, an analyst for Russia at the Polish Institute of International Affairs, said in the Fakty po Faktach [Facts after Facts] programme. ‘Putin has recently been portraying himself as such an expert in history. Anyway, in 2019 he launched attacks on Poland, in particular when it comes to this historical dimension. He accused us of starting World War II,’ she said.

‘And Poland now, especially when it supports Ukraine so much both militarily and humanely, has become one of the countries that is attacked by the Russian authorities directly, including Vladimir Putin and Dmitri Medvedev.’ According to the expert, the Russians ‘are trying to drive a wedge between Poland and Ukraine. And the issue of the alleged separation of Ukraine and even Belarus is very eagerly raised by both Russian and Belarusian propaganda,’ she added.”

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“..if that document is true, who wants to believe that President Zelensky and his administration have not used that as leverage over Joe Biden..”

Zelensky Associate Was Present at Biden Bribery Meetings (GP)

Author Peter Schweizer went on with Jesse Watters on Monday night where he proceeded to drop another bomb on the Biden Crime Family. According to Schweizer, who wrote a best-seller “Secret Empires” on the Biden Family crimes, told Jesse that one of Vlodomyr Zelensky’s top officials was sitting in the room when they were discussing bribing the Bidens, Joe and Hunter. Ukrainian President Zelensky has a top official who was sitting in on meetings where they talked about bribing the Bidens. Schweizer suggests Zelensky is using this as leverage over the Biden regime for weapons and billions in US dollars. Peter Schweizer: We’ve been at this since 2018. ** They initially said there were no foreign deals. ** Then they shifted and said there were. There might have been foreign deals, but the Bidens made no money. ** Then it became Joe Biden didn’t know about any of the deals. ** Then it became Joe Biden didn’t participate in any of the deals. ** And now it’s that he was not in business with his son.


Look, the implications for this are huge, Jesse. If you look at that 1023 form that the FBI released, if that document is true, that document reveals that one of the people that was at those meetings that heard the conversations about bribing the Bidens worked for – President Zelensky. Who really wants to believe, if that meeting took place and that document is accurate, that that individual did not go and report to President Zelensky what he heard? And again, if that document is true, who wants to believe that President Zelensky and his administration have not used that as leverage over Joe Biden when it comes to negotiations on Ukraine policy? We may all have to start learning the Ukrainian word for compromise because this is a very clear indication of how this has shaped this administration’s policy towards Ukraine and also towards China. It is also convenient for Zelensky that there is not a team of US auditors in his country tracking where all of this money went.

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“Biden cured cancer in the same way that he marched for civil rights, was arrested trying to see Nelson Mandela, grew up in the black church, was raised in the Puerto Rican community, was a professor at UPenn, built the greatest economy in the world, and never spoke to his son about business..”

Biden Claims To Have ‘Ended Cancer’ (RT)

During a speech on Tuesday, US President Joe Biden seemed to claim that his administration had cured cancer. “I said I’d cure cancer. They looked at me like, ‘Why cancer’? Because no one thinks we can. That’s why. And we can. We ended cancer as we know it,” Biden said during a speech in the East Room of the White House. Biden was scheduled to speak about expanding Americans’ access to mental health care. After the cancer remark, he continued to talk about healthcare for military veterans, which is run by the federal government. The strange claim was quickly noticed by Republicans, who have often accused the 80-year-old Democrat of behaving as if afflicted by dementia. “Biden just told everyone that he cured cancer. I feel like that would have at least gotten a press release,” quipped Congresswoman Lauren Boebert of Colorado.

“Biden cured cancer in the same way that he marched for civil rights, was arrested trying to see Nelson Mandela, grew up in the black church, was raised in the Puerto Rican community, was a professor at UPenn, built the greatest economy in the world, and never spoke to his son about business,” tweeted Texas activist Christian Collins. Those were just some of the claims Biden had made over his 50-year political career that turned out to be tall tales. The longtime Democrat also has a history of misspeaking in public. Just last week, he introduced himself as an artificial intelligence. The week before, in Europe, he urged Russia to “stop attacking Russia.” Earlier this month, he also claimed that Moscow was “losing the war in Iraq.”


Biden’s elder son Beau passed away in 2015 from an aggressive brain cancer, which his father has publicly attributed to “burn pits,” a method used by the US military to dispose of garbage. Beau Biden was reportedly exposed to the toxic pits during his 2008 deployment in Iraq as a military lawyer, and earlier as a contractor in Kosovo. In February 2022, Biden announced a government program to find a cure for cancer, dubbing it a re-launch of the Obama administration’s 2016 ‘Cancer Moonshot’. The new program’s goal was to “reduce the cancer death rate by half within 25 years and improve the lives of people with cancer and cancer survivors,” according to the National Cancer Institute. In March this year, Biden had surgery to remove from his chest a “small skin lesion” that had “basal cell carcinoma,” according to the White House physician.

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I think I count 8 reported cases. In 4 months. Madness.

Biden’s Dog Attacks 8 White House Staffers in Cover-Up (Sp.)

Commander, President Joe Biden’s soon-to-be two-year canine, has been implicated in seven biting assaults within four months, attacking Secret Service and White House personnel, reports have claimed. A series of alarming occurrences featuring Commander have emerged, all of which were kept undisclosed until now. These incidents are reminiscent of attacks associated with Major, whom the White House claimed was handed over to the president’s close acquaintances in 2021 due to his biting spree. On November 3, Commander was at the center of a serious biting incident when he attacked a Secret Service uniformed officer, inflicting injuries on the arm and thigh before the victim was hospitalized.

The details of this incident were brought to public attention when relevant emails were disclosed to the conservative legal organization Judicial Watch under the Freedom of Information Act. In another occurrence, Commander, broke the skin of another Secret Service member’s hand and arm. Additionally, Commander bit a security technician at President Biden’s home in Wilmington, Delaware, the following month. “This is a special sort of craziness and corruption where a president would allow his dog to repeatedly attack and bite Secret Service and White House personnel. And rather than protect its agents, the Secret Service tried to illegally hide documents about the abuse of its agents and officers by the Biden family,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton noted. Reports suggest that Biden doubted the claims about Major attacking a Secret Service agent. Moreover, the White House has not revealed any biting events implicating Commander.

According to the reported emails, agents disclosed a series of incidents that occurred discreetly. On October 3, 2022, near the East Wing garden, Commander “inflicted a ‘friendly soft bite’ on [a Secret Service agent’s] forearm as [he] held the door open,” regardless “no skin was broken from the bite.” On the morning of October 5, 2022, the first recorded incident involved Commander hopping on an emergency response technician on the grounds of the presidential villa and biting their “arm/wrist area.” On November 10, a Secret Service Uniformed Division officer was bitten on the left thigh as First Lady Jill Biden walked Commander in the Kennedy Garden near the East Wing. Media sources reveal that the officer reported experiencing “bruising, tenderness, and pain” in the bite area. On November 14, one other Secret Service officer recounted an incident via email where they had to defend themselves as Commander charged toward them.

The officer described grabbing a black chair they were sitting on, making eye contact with the dog, and backing away to avoid being attacked. On December 11, Commander bit a Secret Service special agent in the Presidential Protective Division. This event transpired after the president yanked Commander’s leash following a movie. The agent reported being double-bitten, first on the arm with a 1.5cm cut and lesions, and a 1cm cut on their hand and thumb sustained from a second bite. On December 16, another Secret Service member was attacked and inflicted with canine bites, as indicated in a workplace injury form available to media sources. “I was walking across the complex, and a dog bit my left arm,” the officer wrote, expressing the wound as “Dog bite, superficial laceration, contusion, soreness, and bruising.”

On 2022’s Christmas Eve, a Secret Service inspector notified colleagues that another officer had been wounded at [undisclosed location] the day before. The inspector’s email cited that nearly every official in the room discussed specific incidents involving the First Family’s dog. On January 2 this year, an agency technical security investigator was the victim of an attack while responding to an alarm at the president’s Wilmington residence, frequently visited during weekends. “Commander squeezed his way through the door and immediately bit/latched onto the lower right side of my back,” the attack victim emailed. “These shocking records raise fundamental questions about President Biden and the Secret Service,” Fitton remarked.

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“The answer remains the same. The president was never in business with his son.”

That’s not “the same”. It is a big change from “I never talked to him about his business”.

Biden Changes Long-Standing Position on Hunter’s Foreign Deals (Turley)

Starting with his campaign for the presidency and continuing until this week, President Joe Biden has maintained one clear and consistent position on his son’s influence peddling schemes. As a virtual mantra, Biden — and the White House staff — have categorically maintained that he had no knowledge of any foreign dealings of his son. That has been proven to be a lie, but Biden continued to maintain the position. Yet, on the eve of the testimony of a key Biden associate, the White House has changed its position. Now the President is only claiming that he was “not in business” with his son.Some of us have written multiple columns over the last four years arguing that the President was clearly and knowingly lying in his denials of knowledge and discussions of these deals. Even when he made the statement, it was clearly untrue but most of the media shrugged and happily walked away.

Then the evidence began to mount. The laptop includes pictures and appointments of Hunter’s foreign business associates with Joe Biden. There is also a recording of Joe Biden discussing a Times report on Dec. 12, 2018, detailing Hunter’s dealings with Ye Jianming, the head of CEFC China Energy Company. He assures his son that “I think you’re clear” after lawyers worked on the New York Times before the story ran. There is also a recording of his uncle James assuring Hunter that he and his father were going to arrange for “safe harbor” for him as his world began to collapse. Then there is the July 30, 2017 Whatsapp message from Hunter Biden to one of his Chinese associates, Henry Zhao, the director of Harvest Fund Management and Communist Party official. Zhao was funneling money to Hunter’s firm BHR Partners. Hunter is quoted as writing:

“I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight. And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.” Nevertheless, the White House has maintained the total denial . . . until this week before the testimony of Devon Archer. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked by Fox News journalist Gillian Turner:

“Chairman James Comer today says that the Oversight Committee has evidence that the president in the past communicated directly with foreign business associates of his son Hunter Biden many times. Curious if the White House and the president still stand behind his comment that he’s never been involved and has never even spoken to his son about his business?” The response from Jean-Pierre was surprising: “So, I’ve been I’ve been asked this question a million times. The answer is not going to change. The answer remains the same. The president was never in business with his son. I just don’t have anything else to add.” It takes an utter contempt for the intelligence of the public to insist that “the answer remains the same” and then give an entirely new answer. However, that is only if most of the public is informed of the contradiction. None of the media in the White House press corp followed up on Turner’s questions when Jean-Pierre immediately moved on.

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“[Hunter Biden] was money laundering. He was racketeering. He committed wire fraud. He violated the Mann Act. The list goes on and on and on..”

Hunter’s plea deal covers two years of tax evasion. But “IRS agents saw evidence that the first son was engaged in tax evasion that “stretched back two decades.”

Hunter Biden’s Memoir Became Source of Tax Evasion Evidence (Sp.)

US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agent Joseph Ziegler, who was known only as “Whistleblower X” in the Hunter Biden tax case prior to his testimony at the House Oversight Committee last Wednesday, said that some of the alleged tax evasion schemes in which Hunter Biden reportedly engaged in were detailed in his 2021 work, “Beautiful Things: A Memoir.” As per Ziegler, the opus showed that some of the expenses described by Hunter were for personal choices and not corporate benefit. “That’s almost the biggest component of this that I don’t think that the general public understands: You have statements being made in a book that are talking about going out to California, leaving your life and then going to start this new life. Yet, on your tax return you’re essentially stating things that are completely different,” Ziegler told the John Solomon Reports podcast.

The whistleblower said he and IRS supervisory agent Gary Shapley, also known as the first IRS whistleblower in Hunter Biden’s case, are gathering more documents to provide to Congress. The trove reportedly includes WhatsApp messages in addition to the one made public from 2017 in which Hunter invoked his father’s name to force his Chinese associate into forking out large sums of money. The whistleblower said there is evidence of US President Joe Biden’s association in the Hunter tax case. Earlier, the president repeatedly denied being related to his son’s business dealing or knowing anything about them. Ziegler told the media outlet that a family friend named Rob Walker told the FBI that then-Vice President Joe Biden attended a meeting with the Chinese executives, and that his son deducted as a business expense a hotel room in father’s name.

Ziegler highlighted his team was prevented from finding out whether Joe Biden actually used the room or was present at the hotel. “But what I think it’s important to know is that that was a deduction that was taken on Hunter’s tax return,” he said. Moreover, per the whistleblower, IRS agents saw evidence that the first son was engaged in tax evasion that “stretched back two decades.” “In my transcript, I talked about certain issues that Hunter had, I think, going back to the early 2000s,” he said.

In June, the younger Biden struck a plea deal with federal prosecutors on two minor tax crimes and a gun case. However, Republican congressmen said they are determined to get to the bottom of Hunter’s alleged crimes. Last week, House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer said he expects to file “between six and 10 criminal referrals” with the Justice Department related to Hunter after the congressional probe is completed.
“[Hunter Biden] was money laundering. He was racketeering. He committed wire fraud. He violated the Mann Act. The list goes on and on and on,” Comer alleged.

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Devon Archer is scheduled to testify on Friday. Will that happen? Will he be alive?

Members and the Media Panic as the Biden Scandal Mounts (Turley)

Now, Archer is expected to testify that Joe Biden participated in actual telephone calls with them. That will allow investigators to build further on the foundation Goldman laid. Archer will join other witnesses like Hunter’s business associate Tony Bobulinski, who said that he sat down with Joe Biden to discuss the deals. Bobulinski was instructed by Biden associate James Gilliar not to speak of the former veep’s connection to any transactions. No matter the severity of the revelations, the liberal media calls the investigations a “clown show.” Others have continued to tell the public that there remain no alleged ties from Hunter to President Biden despite emails, pictures and witness testimony. Yet it is becoming harder and harder to avoid these details.

With the possible testimony of Hunter’s business associates, the only hope is that Republicans might be convinced to “move on.” What was most notable about the question to Christie was the reference to the plea bargain. A year ago, I wrote a column on how the political and media establishment would likely use a “scandal implosion” approach as the evidence mounted over the corruption allegations. After the Democrats lost the House, there was a need to cap off the scandal and I suggested that the Justice Department would secure a light plea on a couple tax counts with little or no jail time. Members and the media would then declare the scandal closed and demand that we all “move on.” It is unnerving to see how the response unfolded so precisely as predicted. Members made repeated reference to the plea bargain to avoid further discussion.

Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D.-Md.) was positively irate that “We are doing this all over again for the Hunter Biden show to someone who has pleaded guilty and has taken responsibility for not filing taxes for two years. This is ludicrous. Beam me up, Scotty. There’s no intelligent life down here. None.” He then tore up papers in disgust. Members and the media were literally citing a plea bargain as dispositive, even as two lead investigators were saying it was fixed and politically influenced. Some in the media attacked these two IRS veterans as “so-called whistleblowers” (just as members previously attacked “so called journalists” for discussing censorship records). Others insisted that the allegations were still “unproven” or “unverified” while showing the same lack of interest in establishing the truth. Notably, these same media outlets did wall-to-wall coverage of the false Russian collusion claims in the Steele dossier.

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There’s a lot of X’s out there.

Twitter Rebrand to ‘X’ Fraught With Permit, Trademark Issues (DeMartino)

Later Sunday night, the logo began appearing in place of the social media site’s iconic bird logo for some users on some platforms. While the old Twitter branding remains for some users on some platforms, Musk promised in a Tweet (or an “X”) that the old branding would soon be gone completely. “And soon we shall bid adieu to the Twitter brand and, gradually, all the birds,” Musk wrote. Musk also changed his profile picture and the profile picture of the official “Twitter” account to the site’s new logo. X.com also now redirects to Twitter.com. X users responded to the delayed signage removal and the rebrand in general with a mix of mocking and indifference, while others took the opportunity to dunk on the city of San Francisco.

At present, there is also a question of whether the “X” branding is even available for Musk to use for social media sites. Both Microsoft and Meta* hold trademarks of “X.” The Meta patent lists the service as potentially “providing interactive websites featuring technology that enable online users to create personal profiles” that users can use “for broadcasting, transmitting, receiving, accessing, viewing, uploading, downloading, sharing, integrating, encoding, decoding, displaying, formatting, organizing, storing, caching, transferring and streaming of data, text, games, game content, digital media, images, music, audio, video and animations.” Another listed use for the Meta trademark of X includes “online social networking services.”

Microsoft’s patent, first filed in 2002, lists “on-line chatrooms” and “electronic bulletin boards” for users to share messages about video games and an online video game storefront. Both patents, particularly the Meta one, which seems related to a social media site, could cause legal problems for Musk, who has been in an online feud with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Musk has threatened to sue Meta for launching an X competitor called “Threads” and the two floated a potential cage fight being aired on Pay-Per-View.

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“Musk foresees these payment capabilities potentially becoming half of the global financial system.”

Musk: ‘X Will Become Most Valuable Brand on Earth’ (Sp.)

The rebranding of Twitter to “X” was announced over the weekend and near instantly began to face varying hurdles, from potential legal challenges to a barrage of criticism from users thrown off by the platform’s redesign. Some forecasts indicated the change could result in billions’ worth in losses for the firm’s value. Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur and CEO of companies Tesla and SpaceX, announced his confidence in the success of X social media on Tuesday, vowing that the Twitter rebrand would make the platform the “most valuable brand on Earth.” Musk’s statement came in response to a US media article that estimated the rebranding could potentially decrease Twitter’s value by $4 billion to $20 billion.

Nevertheless, Musk remains undeterred, envisioning “X” as a comprehensive communication platform that also offers robust financial transactions. The potential integration of payment systems into Twitter/X has sparked speculation that users may soon be able to send and receive money directly through the platform. Musk foresees these payment capabilities potentially becoming half of the global financial system. While specific details about the payment systems have not been revealed, Musk emphasized the importance of executing them correctly for the magnum opus of Twitter/X to become a reality, noting his intentions to revolutionize the financial world. Linda Yaccarino, Twitter’s new CEO, has expressed enthusiasm about the transformation and hinted at more changes to come, signaling the company is just getting started.

Under Yaccarino’s leadership, the platform aims to fulfill its immense potential and meet the expectations of fans and critics alike. Since acquiring Twitter for $44 billion in October 2022, Musk has embarked on a series of changes to enhance the user experience and drive innovation on the platform. The rebranding to “X” was the latest in a series of moves aimed at revitalizing Twitter and positioning it as a leader in the ever-evolving social media landscape. With popular platforms such as TikTok vying for users’ attention, critics have underscored that the success of Musk’s rebranding strategy will undoubtedly face challenges as the viability of company’s future remains uncertain.

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Plimer

 

 

Viper
https://twitter.com/i/status/1683884068000215044

 

 

Peacock

 

 

Idolomantis diabolica
https://twitter.com/i/status/1683874828694982657

 

 


The exact moment the sunlight penetrates the wings of a Black and white Jacobin hummingbird revealing a secret of nature that cannot be seen with our eyes. No digital manipulation. IG: christianspencerphoto

 

 

Metallica
https://twitter.com/i/status/1683773227389140992

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Dec 042022
 


Paul Gauguin Road in Tahiti 1891

 

How’s the War on Truth Going? (Jim Kunstler)
The Trumpification of Elon Musk (RCP)
“A Cautionary Tale for Everyone”: The Media Mob Turns on Taibbi (Turley)
‘Twitter Files’ Make It Impossible For Democrats To Deny Their Censorship (RT)
“Damning”: The Twitter Files And The FBI (Techno Fog)
New Zealand Admits It Has Direct Access To Facebook Takedown Portal (RTN)
Apple and China Want to Delete Apps on Your Phone (Flynn)
Macron Talks Security Guarantees For Russia (RT)
Russia Forms ‘Shadow Fleet’ To Bypass Oil Sanctions (RT)
Germany ‘Sleepwalking’ Into New Migration Crisis – Top EU MP (RT)
UN Ignores Abuse Of Ukrainian Women In Sweden – Moscow (RT)
In The End The $ Goes To Zero And The US Defaults (Von Greyerz)
Not Even N95 Masks Work To Stop Covid (Miller)

 

 

“In past 30d, Europe experienced a Dunkelflaute, a period of little wind or sunlight. During that period, 4GW installed nuclear produced as much power as 125GW installed wind & solar. Coal kept lights on. Both sources are scheduled to be turned off. Vorsprung durch Technik.”

 

 

The Big Biden Circus

 

 

 

 

Kyoto University Professor Fukushima Vax Truth Bombs “We need to stop The Vax rollout and investigate all the Cases” “You have Vaxxed so many people. Yet, less than 10% of the Ministry of Health who are leading the vax campaign have been vaxxed.”
https://twitter.com/i/status/1599160471046983680

 

 

Julian

 

 

 

 

“..human nature has not changed so much in ten thousand years, despite the discoveries of Prozac and plant-based meat..”

How’s the War on Truth Going? (Jim Kunstler)

Barreling down to Christmas and the bitter butt end of a bad year, a primal fear of the deepening darkness makes people desperate — another reminder that human nature has not changed so much in ten thousand years, despite the discoveries of Prozac and plant-based meat. Yet Freud was right: death has its attractions for tormented minds. Thus, our nation appears to hasten to its own funeral. Can anyone actually grok how “progressive” thinking works these days? This faction now in charge of so many things has decided in the starkest terms that freedom of speech has got to go. For some years, the Party of Chaos had achieved such exquisite control of all national debate by seizing the dials and toggles of social media that they made reality itself their hostage. The truth was only what they said it was, and anyone who said otherwise got banished, cancelled, and even destroyed. There seemed to be no way to overcome this death grip on the process of consensus, the formation of a coherent collective idea about what is going on in the world. And so, any number of scams could be run on the people of this land.

The Woke-Jacobins could rig elections in plain sight. They could surreptitiously suspend due process of law when it suited them. They could send national police thugs to your door at five-o’clock in the morning with riot guns, body armor, flash bangs, and bogus warrants. They could take your livelihoods, your freedom to move about, your childrens’ minds and bodies, and your dignity. Finally, they could take your life with false vaccines — and, unlike the Nazis in 1944, get the private sector to dispose of the corpses. And now a struggle ensues over the relationship between the truth and the making of a consensus. Elon Musk bought Twitter — the horror! — and methodically set about to liberate this new digital “public square” from insidious and nefarious manipulation.

It’s not a trifling matter, of course, but it’s amusing to watch Elon play with our nation’s overlords; and even more entertaining to see these tyrants strain and bluster to justify their war against free speech. How did the cognitive elite, America’s thinking class — the law professors, the editors and pundits, the public intellectuals, the managers of most everything — ever find themselves so self-owned in idiocy? [..] So now, one big truth has come nakedly into the open: the Left is at war with the First Amendment to the Constitution. Free speech, they say repeatedly now, makes our democracy unsafe. It can’t be allowed. They say that because they don’t have a better argument. The safety talking-point is a shopworn cliché from their grab-bag of Woke shibboleths that the public is sick of hearing. Anyone with half a brain can see how transparently dishonest and stupid it is. It’s not going over well, even among a people so sorely gaslighted as the USA in late 2022.

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“This was a soft coup, a nonviolent version of Jan. 6 that was far more dangerous than the Capitol riot.”

The Trumpification of Elon Musk (RCP)

The relentless attacks on Elon Musk since he purchased Twitter should be familiar to most Americans. It’s exactly what Democrats and their media and corporate allies did to demonize Donald Trump. The McCarthyite formula is simple: Claim you are defending high-minded principles (Democracy! The rule of law! Civil discourse!) to justify efforts to delegitimize someone you’ve identified as a political opponent. Democrats denied Trump’s presidency from day one; Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden themselves declared for years that he had stolen the 2016 election. In the name of election integrity, Democrats turned a bogus conspiracy theory cooked up by Clinton’s campaign about Russian collusion into years of official investigations that undermined and tainted Trump.

When Special Counsel Robert Mueller proved that a lie, Democrats immediately seized on a few innocuous sentences in a Trump phone call with a foreign leader to launch just the third presidential impeachment in U.S. history. Those events are well-known, but ponder them for a moment. This was a soft coup, a nonviolent version of Jan. 6 that was far more dangerous than the Capitol riot. The effort to remove a lawfully elected president was planned and orchestrated by officials at the highest level of government and the media. While Jan. 6 was a one-off eruption of crazed anger, the false attacks on Trump edged our political discourse toward Orwellian Newspeak by presenting lies and smears as ringing defenses of sacred constitutional values.

The ongoing attacks against Musk are following the same playbook. The man once hailed by liberals as a genius for developing electric vehicles is now Public Enemy No. 1 because he says Twitter should allow more free speech. Ponder that as well: Musk’s enemies are casting him as a threat to the country because of his commitment to one of America’s most cherished freedoms. Progressives have abandoned their longstanding anti-corporate stance to argue that an unelected, unaccountable company must aggressively censor the vox populi. We saw the same dizzying turnabout in Russiagate, where the left abandoned its historic defense of Russia to cast dealings with that nation as un-American (making Joe McCarthy their new “Uncle Joe”).

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“America says go ahead and die, but just don’t die on my lawn.”

“A Cautionary Tale for Everyone”: The Media Mob Turns on Taibbi (Turley)

No one is suggesting that the New York Post should receive a Pulitzer Prize for its long fight to prove the truth about the Hunter Biden laptop. Despite an alliance of most of the media and political establishment arrayed against it, the New York Post fought censorship and unrelenting attacks to bring this massive influence peddling operation to light. (Of course, the New York Times and Washington Post can keep Pulitzer Prizes for reporting on debunked Russian collusion claims created and pushed by the Clinton campaign). In the case of journalist Matt Taibbi, his analysis of thousands of documents has met with the standard scorched earth campaign from liberal reporters and pundits.

As discussed in today’s Hill column, the document dump confirmed what had long been suspected: Biden and Democratic party officials succeeded in getting Twitter to block the New York Post story and suspend those who even tried to retweet or link to the story before the election. I will not repeat the content of those emails on how Twitter “handled” demands from the Biden campaign and the DNC for censorship. Musk gave the material to Taibbi to synthesize the voluminous record. That is when the familiar media flash mob formed. NBC Reporter Ben Collins attacked Taibbi on Twitter and said “Imagine throwing it all away to do PR work for the richest person in the world. Humiliating s***.” New York Times contributor Wajahat Ali also attacked Taibbi:

“Matt Taibbi…what sad, disgraceful downfall. I swear, kids, he did good work back in the day. Should be a cautionary tale for everyone. Selling your soul for the richest white nationalist on Earth. Well, he’ll eat well for the rest of his life I guess. But is it worth it?” So Taibbi’s reported downfall as a writer is due to his role in disclosing a massive censorship system operated at the direction or behest of one political party and one political family. He is “disgraceful” because he is suggesting that the media and social media companies should not have censored a story on a multimillion dollar influence peddling scheme run by the Biden family.

Taibbi is not alone in such disgrace, according to Ali. He has also attacked former New York Times writer Bari Weiss, including for her statement that she was tired of the pandemic as being somehow racist. (“It reflects America’s cruelty, right?…we have also had cruelty, White supremacy, misogyny. America says go ahead and die, but just don’t die on my lawn.”)

Tucker Twitter

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“Twitter acting by itself to suppress free speech is not a 1st amendment violation, but acting under orders from the government to suppress free speech, with no judicial review, is.”

‘Twitter Files’ Make It Impossible For Democrats To Deny Their Censorship (RT)

The refusal to report on the story was so blatant that two years since the exposé, outlets such as the New York Times and Washington Post, finally admitted that the laptop and its contents are real, only to offer even more cover for Joe Biden. Both papers had joined in the drive to suppress reporting on the laptop. One of the lines of defense was to play it up as “Russian disinformation,” citing dozens of former intel officials who cast doubt on its provenance. This type of decision-making by the media is also concerning, as it set a dangerous precedent for future elections. If the media can decide to ignore certain stories, regardless of their potential significance or importance, then it is possible that other stories of similar magnitude could go unreported.

Enter Elon Musk. Following his takeover and new ownership of Twitter – a platform that participated in the suppression of the report – Musk publicly announced his decision to reveal what happened behind the scenes at the San Francisco-based social media company when the Hunter laptop report dropped. A series of tweets by independent journalist Matt Taibbi, using materials provided by Elon Musk, details how the company “just freelanced” its decision to censor the bombshell New York Post report in the run-up to the 2020 presidential election. The emails reveal how chaos and confusion reigned at the platform in the immediate aftermath of the report. Top-level Twitter executives discussed how to suppress the story, ultimately deciding to shut it down using policies enacted in 2018, created in response to Donald Trump’s presidential victory in 2016. The decision, according to Taibbi, was taken without the knowledge of then-CEO Jack Dorsey.

[..] For now, it is unclear what kind of legal action could be taken against all of the parties involved in Big Tech’s suppression of the New York Post report. However, Musk stated that “Twitter acting by itself to suppress free speech is not a 1st amendment violation, but acting under orders from the government to suppress free speech, with no judicial review, is.” Musk asked: “If this isn’t a violation of the Constitution’s First Amendment, what is?” Even if some of the revelations were not necessarily news to anyone who’s followed the story closely, the contents of the emails prove what many have suspected but have never been able to prove.

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“..the lies of the FBI to keep politically damaging – and true – material away from Americans..”

“Damning”: The Twitter Files And The FBI (Techno Fog)

As Miranda Devine observed today, there is much more to be divulged. Specifically, the FBI’s meddling in the 2020 election and the FBI’s pressure of social media companies, including Facebook and Twitter, to essentially censor the Hunter Biden story. It’s the story of FBI Supervisory Special Agent Elvis Chan, who recently testified he was part of that effort: “During the deposition, Chan said that he, along with the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force and senior Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency officials, had weekly meetings with major social media companies to warn against Russian disinformation attempts ahead of the 2020 election, according to a source in the Missouri attorney general’s office.”

These FBI warnings had to do with the potential Russian “hack and dump” or “hack and leak” of sensitive materials. And they may have contributed to Twitter’s assessment that the Hunter Biden materials may have been hacked, justifying Twitter’s censorship of the story. FBI Director Christopher Wray actually took pride in these efforts, admitting to the agency’s involvement with social media companies “to make sure that their platforms are not used by foreign adversaries to spread disinformation and propaganda.” The censorship was directed from the top. Not that any of this matters to much of the left. The clichés started once the story was posted. Twitter’s former former head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, complained that the leaks were essentially “violence” and put the censors in danger.

The media’s response to the Twitter File story was equally predictable and boring. It was a non-story, it was public relations for the world’s richest man. They misrepresented the leak, ignored the merits, downplayed the significance of the Hunter Biden story by focusing on scandalous photos and not corruption and influence peddling and tax evasion and violations of federal law, and criticized Taibbi for posting the story on Twitter. Undertones of jealousy and resentment. As if we expected anything else. If their attacks are anything, they’re unoriginal. By this time we know what they’re gonna say before they say it. Thankfully, we were able to see the documents for themselves. They’re damning, demonstrating the danger of the political control of social media.

The DNC and Biden Team knew they had friends at Twitter who would do their bidding during the election. And Twitter lied to the FEC about that influence. But that’s just at the surface. There’s something worse underneath it all, hidden from public: governmental influence and coercion over social media platforms, and the lies of the FBI to keep politically damaging – and true – material away from Americans. It’s the massive “censorship enterprise” by the Federal Government. It’s the one-sided influence operation on American soil. (The CIA would be proud.) It was there in 2016, and it continued through the 2020 election to the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic and the development of the COVID-19 vaccines. And it’s slowly coming into view.

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Big brother.

New Zealand Admits It Has Direct Access To Facebook Takedown Portal (RTN)

New Zealand’s government has officially admitted that it has partner access to Facebook’s controversial content takedown portal. This portal is designed specifically for government agencies to flag content to Facebook for censorship. According to The Intercept, which reported on the portal in October, government partners can also use the portal to “report disinformation directly” to Facebook. And in a recent response to a New Zealand Official Information Act (OIA) request, which asked whether the government has partner access to Facebook’s takedown portal, the New Zealand government confirmed that the Department of Internal Affairs has access. While this was the only government department that was confirmed to have access to the portal, the OIA response also said “we cannot advise if any other government agency has access to the takedown portal.” We obtained a copy of the OIA response for you here.

The OIA response didn’t detail how much content had been censored via this Facebook takedown portal. However, other reports on similar types of backdoor content takedown arrangements between governments and Big Tech have shown that governments regularly use them to target legal content such as parody accounts, accounts questioning the effectiveness of Covid vaccines, and so-called election misinformation.” Publicly, the New Zealand government has endorsed the censorship of legal content with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern saying “disinformation” should be regulated like guns, bombs, and nuclear weapons. Big Tech companies have also agreed to a censorship pact in the country where they suppress “misinformation” and “harmful content.”


Most other governments haven’t admitted that they have access to these portals. However, last year The White House did admit that the United States (US) Surgeon General’s Office is flagging posts for Facebook to censor. The Intercept’s report on this Facebook content takedown portal claimed that several other United States (US) government agencies have access to the portal, including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

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“..big sister is watching!”

Apple and China Want to Delete Apps on Your Phone (Flynn)

In China, authoritarians flood Twitter with ads for prostitutes and pornography in an effort to prevent users from obtaining information about protests. Authoritarians in the United States threaten to remove Twitter from more than 1.5 billion devices worldwide. “Apple has also threatened to withhold Twitter from its App Store,” Elon Musk tweeted, “but won’t tell us why.” The powerful few want to impede the free flow of information to the vulnerable many. Suppression strikes intelligent observers as not a Chinese thing but a fetish of the powerful in whatever nation they reside. It appears cruder and more thuggish in China, and more passive-aggressive and sophisticated in the United States. But whether the state or a monopoly suppresses expression, does the crushing effect of it on a free society really differ?

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre spoke of “monitoring” and “keeping a close eye” on Twitter (big sister is watching!), which, she claims, bears a responsibility to “take action” against “misinformation” and “hate.” Does not the federal government bear a responsibility to ensure that the United States remains a free society? Instead of breaking out of the stranglehold Apple and Google have placed upon the information that we consume, the White House publicly nudges tech companies to censor. Traditionally, the federal government assumed a massive role in ensuring, particularly when it came to communications, that no company controlled too much of the market share.

During the 1940s, the feds forced NBC’s Blue Network to separate from the parent company. It eventually became NBC’s competitor ABC. Later, after decades of litigation, the government broke up the Bell System into the seven “Baby Bells” (four of which once again folded into “Ma Bell,” otherwise known as AT&T). This similarly resulted in a competitor to the monopoly in Verizon. Now people in positions of power cheer on the consolidation of information. Instead of breaking out of the stranglehold Apple and Google have placed upon the information that we consume, the White House publicly nudges tech companies to censor. Privately, we may learn that political actors do much more than nudge.

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The west is not capable of discussing an outcome where Russia does not lose. That is what keeps the war going.

Macron Talks Security Guarantees For Russia (RT)

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Saturday that NATO should weigh on eventual guarantees for Russia’s security in the settlement of the conflict in Ukraine. Macron is the second leader of the EU country this week to openly discuss Europe’s future relationship with Russia. In an interview with France’s TF1 and LCI networks, Macron described his meeting with US President Joe Biden this week as a “success,” adding that the two leaders had begun to discuss what “the peace” following the ongoing conflict would look like. Macron acknowledged Russian President Vladimir Putin’s concern that “NATO will deploy weapons that will threaten Russia,” and said that members of the US-led alliance “need to prepare” to offer “guarantees of the security of the Russian Federation” when Moscow joins Kiev and the West at the negotiating table.

However, while Macron focused on the peace settlement, he pledged to “do the maximum” to bolster Kiev’s military in the meantime. Ukraine abruptly withdrew from talks with Russia in April. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has since outlawed negotiations with Moscow and declared his intention to capture the Russian territory of Crimea. While the Russian Foreign Ministry states it remains open to resuming negotiations with Kiev, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in October that other parties will have to be involved, as any agreement between Ukraine and Russia would be “instantly canceled upon orders” from the West. Macron is not the only leader of an EU nation to publicly discuss a potential post-conflict arrangement in recent days.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told the Berlin Security Forum on Wednesday that while his country would likely never return to its pre-2022 “partnership” with Russia, Germany would be willing to discuss arms control and missile deployment treaties with Moscow in the future. Such agreements, he said, formed “the basis for the peace and security order” in Europe since the end of the Cold War. Like Macron, however, Scholz promised to keep the supply of arms to Ukraine flowing “for as long as it takes,” a phrase that both leaders, as well as Biden, have frequently used when referring to their multibillion-dollar arms shipments to Kiev. Russia has repeatedly cautioned that these deliveries risk prolonging the conflict, while making the West a de-facto participant.

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“Western companies will be prohibited from insuring or financing vessels carrying Russian crude unless it is sold for under $60 per barrel..”

Russia Forms ‘Shadow Fleet’ To Bypass Oil Sanctions (RT)

Russia has assembled a ‘shadow fleet’ to circumvent Western oil sanctions, the Financial Times claimed on Saturday. According to the outlet, Moscow has “quietly amassed a fleet of over 100 aging tankers.” Citing the energy consultancy Rystad, FT reported that Russia has taken control of 103 tankers since the start of the year, either by repurposing ships previously involved in conveying oil cargo to and from Iran or Venezuela or by purchasing tankers outright. On Friday, the EU and G7 finally agreed to cap the price of seaborne Russian crude at $60 per barrel. The decision came after weeks of argument between countries, who thought the proposed cap was “too generous,” such as Poland and the Baltic states, and some maritime nations, including Greece, who wanted the ceiling to be set at around $70 per barrel.

Western companies will be prohibited from insuring or financing vessels carrying Russian crude unless it is sold for under $60 per barrel under the new rules, which Moscow has made clear it does not plan to accept. The head of VTB Bank, Andrei Kostin, said in October that Russia had to spend “at least 1 trillion rubles ($16.2 billion)” on “the tanker fleet’s expansion.” Western analysts interpreted this statement to mean that Moscow was investing in very large crude carriers (VLCCs, which can hold as many as 2 million barrels of crude each), Suezmax tankers (which carry as many as 1 million barrels each), and Aframax tankers (which hold as many as 700,000 barrels each).

According to FT, international observers have commented that Russia will likely use its “shadow fleet” of aging oil tankers to sell growing volumes of energy to countries like India, China, and Türkiye that are not subject to EU or US sanctions and other trading restrictions. On Saturday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow is not planning to recognize a Western-imposed price cap on Russian seaborne oil exports. He added that the government is currently carrying out a review of the situation.

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“..we have to be ready for a large number of Ukrainians coming to the EU this winter – and many of them to Germany.”

Germany ‘Sleepwalking’ Into New Migration Crisis – Top EU MP (RT)

Germany is facing a new refugee influx fueled by the Ukraine conflict and the country is doing nothing to prepare for it, Manfred Weber, the president of the European People’s Party (EPP), said on Saturday. Speaking to Welt am Sonntag newspaper, Weber, who is also the leader of the EPP Group in the European Parliament, claimed that Germany “is sleepwalking into a new migration crisis.” To prove his point, he said that accommodation centers in Germany were already full, with municipal authorities in a number of other European countries under strain as well. The politician stressed that due to the destruction of Ukrainian energy infrastructure by Russian strikes, “we have to be ready for a large number of Ukrainians coming to the EU this winter – and many of them to Germany.”

“I’m afraid we will experience a dramatic exodus this winter,” he said. It is possible that Germany will have to accommodate Ukrainians in gyms, as well as restricting school and business activities to handle the crisis, Weber noted. “Germany is not prepared for this situation. The federal government simply ignores the challenges,” he added. Russian strikes on Ukraine’s power plants have knocked out a significant portion of the country’s energy grid. The bombardments follow Moscow’s accusation that Kiev conducted “terrorist attacks” on Russian infrastructure, including the strategic Crimean Bridge.

Weber also addressed the issue of refugees coming to Europe from Africa via Italy. According to him, Germany should help Italy handle the crisis not through supporting rescue efforts, but rather by organizing joint European patrols “at the external borders of the Mediterranean.” “If you do not have a visa, a passport or a reason for asylum, you should be returned immediately,” he said. In recent months, various European countries have been stocking up on food and other supplies in anticipation of a winter influx of Ukrainian refugees. According to UN data, about 4.8 million refugees are currently registered with various national protection schemes in Europe, with almost eight million displaced Ukrainians recorded across Europe in total.

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“..Patten previously acknowledged during a prank call that her harsh “rape” claims concerning the Russian military were based solely on what Ukrainian officials had told her..”

UN Ignores Abuse Of Ukrainian Women In Sweden – Moscow (RT)

The UN and human rights bodies are turning a blind eye to reports of sexual exploitation of female Ukrainian refugees in Sweden, the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, has said. In a post on Telegram on Saturday, Zakharova called attention to a statement made last month by the Swedish Gender Equality Agency, which sounded the alarm over “an increased risk of Ukrainian refugees being exposed to human trafficking, labor exploitation and prostitution in Sweden.” The police have been investigating some 20 such cases, but many more offenses remain unreported, according to the agency. There has also been a rise in the number of prostitutes from Ukraine in Sweden since the outbreak of the conflict between Kiev and Moscow in late February, it added.

The statement was widely reported by the Swedish media, “but no reaction from Kiev or the international community followed,” the spokeswoman pointed out. She noted how UN special representative on sexual violence Pramila Patten claimed in October that the Russian military has been pursuing a deliberate “rape strategy” during its military operation in Ukraine. The Foreign Ministry spokeswoman also recalled the former Ukrainian human rights commissioner, Lyudmila Denisova, who had been behind the claims of sexual abuse by Russian troops early in the conflict, but ended up being fired by Kiev in May. “Denisova admitted that she simply lied, ‘trying to persuade the world to provide weapons [to Ukraine] and put pressure on Russia,’” Zakharova wrote.

“The real threat to Ukrainian women doesn’t come from Russia, but awaits them in Europe,” the spokeswoman insisted. The UN and human rights bodies, however, “are silent because it’s not in their rules to draw attention to a real humanitarian problem; or because they are performing yet another political order,” Zakharova said. She added that neither option looked good. The spokeswoman also advised Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba to stop attacking Moscow and switch his attention to Stockholm. Patten previously acknowledged during a prank call that her harsh “rape” claims concerning the Russian military were based solely on what Ukrainian officials had told her and that she didn’t have any actual proof to back them up.

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“..every single currency has always gone to ZERO..”

In The End The $ Goes To Zero And The US Defaults (Von Greyerz)

If a country prints worthless debt that nobody will buy in a currency that no one wants to hold, the country has definitely defaulted whatever spin they put on it. In the next few years, not just US but all sovereign debt will only have one buyer which is the country that issues the debt. And every time a sovereign state buys its own debt, it has to issue more worthless debt that nobody will touch with a barge pole. Printing more money to pay for previous sins has never worked and never will. And this is how money dies, just like it has throughout history. The current monetary era started with the foundation of the Fed in 1913 and the acceleration of debt and currency debasement since 1971 when Nixon closed the gold window.

With just over 100 years into this era, it is now approaching the end, like they all do. Global currencies are already down 97-99% since 1971 and we can now expect the final 1-3% decline for all money to become virtually worthless. This is of course nothing new in history since every single currency has always gone to ZERO. We must of course remember that the final 1-3% move means a 100% fall from today. The final collapse is always the quickest so it could easily happen in the next 2-5 years. Let’s look at how it has all evolved.

Although US debt has increased virtually every year since 1930, the acceleration started in the late 1960s and 1970s. With gold backing the dollar and therefore most currencies UNTIL 1971, the ability to borrow more money was restricted without depleting the gold reserves. Since the gold standard prevented Nixon to print money and buy votes to stay in power, he conveniently got rid of those shackles “temporarily” as he declared on August 15, 1971. Politicians don’t change. Powell and Lagarde recently called the increase in inflation “transitory” but in spite of their bogus prediction, inflation has continued to rise.

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Why do we have to endlessly rehash what is already known? Does science really mean nothing anymore?

Not Even N95 Masks Work To Stop Covid (Miller)

The Experts™” have repeatedly tried to deflect from the failure of their policies with misdirection. The reason lockdowns didn’t work in the United States or the United Kingdom is because they weren’t strict enough, according to many in the expert community. Of course, their excuses have been conveniently ignored as China’s repressive zero COVID lockdowns have continued, with horrific consequences. Now that mass protests have broken out in the country that “The Experts™” revered for their COVID handling, there’s a massive effort to disregard their own previous advocacy. This is perhaps best exemplified by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau who clearly used authoritarian measures to suppress the protests in his own country, while now supporting Chinese demonstrations.

The bewildering lack of awareness of their own hypocrisy seems to be a feature of COVID obsessed politicians and public health authorities. Another similar, oft-repeated assertion is that the failure of universal masking can be explained by the type of masks being used by the public. Even though the CDC and Dr. Fauci explicitly claimed that wearing anything to cover your face would be effective at preventing transmission, many have now quietly dismissed that messaging. Fauci specifically said that “cloth coverings work,” not just surgical or N95’s. Former Surgeon General Jerome Adams famously suggested that rolling up a t-shirt in front of your face would be effective protection.

Yet public health departments and the media are now highlighting the importance of “high quality,” “well fitted” masks. Their desperation to justify masking has led to remarkably poor studies being released to support their anti-science messaging. There is new research that has been released showing that masks are ineffective, regardless of type. And it’s not just new research, it’s high quality research. The Annals of Internal Medicine just published a randomized controlled trial comparing the ability of medical masks to prevent COVID infection to fit-tested N95’s.

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