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Debt Rattle November 23 2024

Nov 232024
 
 November 23, 2024  Posted by at 9:53 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  64 Responses »


Titian The rape of Europe 1560-62

 

• In the Weeds of the Swamp (Kunstler)
• Ukrainians Have Stolen Up To Half Of US Aid – Ex-Polish Deputy Minister (RT)
• Trump Eyes Richard Grenell As Special Envoy For Ukraine (RT)
• Ukrainian Military Plans For 2025 ‘Derailed’ – Moscow (RT)
• RFK Jr.’s Plans for Reshaping HHS Draw Strong Reactions (ET)
• Trump Names Billionaire Scott Bessent As Treasury Secretary (ZH)
• Washington Chose to Go to War with Russia (Paul Craig Roberts)
• World ‘Very Close To Point Of No Return’ – Scott Ritter (RT)
• US Investor Eyes Nord Stream 2 Purchase, Citing Strategic Value for US (Sp.)
• White House Refuses to Recognize Responsibility for Escalation in Ukraine (Sp.)
• Musk on His ‘To-Do List’ on Time Cover: We Need to Colonize Other Planets (Sp.)
• NY ‘Hush Money’ Judge Grants Trump Request To File For Dismissal (ZH)
• Israel Preparing to Attack Iranian Nuclear Facilities (Sp.)
• European States Vow To Arrest Netanyahu (RT)
• US Senator Threatens Invasion of Netherlands (RT)
• HBO Delivers Blow Against the Anti-Rowling, Anti-Free Speech Movement (Turley)
• British Operation KISS – “Kill Instantly Skripals” – Has Failed (Helmer)
• G20 Knocks Out G7 Agendas (Pepe Escobar)

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1859755179836371333

App

Cuts

DOGE

Ruhle

Ron Paul
https://twitter.com/Rothmus/status/1859512945127854571

Celente

 

 

 

 

 

 

“RussiaGate is starting to look like ancient history to many, but it is a giant slime trail of sedition and treason involving many people who are still very much alive..”

• In the Weeds of the Swamp (Kunstler)

Okay, you’ve had enough post-election euphoria. Time to wake TF up. Rats from inside the walls of the Deep State are trying to gnaw their way into the Trump cabinet. Ever hear of an outfit called Cipher Brief? Of course not. Cipher Brief is sort of the McKinsey of blob-world (a.k.a. the “national security” network), a combination Human Relations / Public Relations firm, totally spooked-up with former CIA officers. Quite a few of the spooks who signed the infamous letter in October 2020 that said Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation” are contractors there. They all knew the heinous laptop was genuine, though, and they did it anyway to queer the election for “Joe Biden.” Why? Because. . . Trump. One Cipher Brief operative is a character named Dan Hoffman, a retired CIA “clandestine service” officer who ran the agency’s Middle East Bureau, among other things. He’s now a sometime talking head on Fox News.

Hoffman has scuttled his way to the sidelines of the Trump transition team, trying to punk them on personnel. I received my own intel about Dan Hoffman and his current operations. “Hoffman talks the talk,” I’m informed. “He was involved in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. He is 100-percent Deep State. They think he is a brother-in-arms. He is not. Hoffman and the people around him are in direct contact with Tulsi Gabbard [DNI-designate] and John Ratcliffe [CIA Director-designate]. Remember, agency ops officers are trained to be all things to all people, to manipulate them, detect their vulnerabilities, and exploit them. Their game vis-a-vis Donald Trump? To kneecap his attempts to lower tensions world-wide, stop efforts to reduce and reform the intel and defense communities, push a generally Globalist policy agenda, keep the American ‘empire game’ running so they can cash out, and keep non-Beltway Americans from having any say in our foreign policy.

“Hoffman is not a minor figure. He is heading up the cabal trying to co-opt Ratcliffe and Gabbard. Understand that [this group] essentially took over Agency operations during the so-called Global War on Terror [GWOT] after 9/11. Not only did these assholes lead America into the quicksand of the Middle East, they feathered their own nests and those of their buddies with hundreds of millions in ‘contracts’. . . they cooked up the Ukraine War . . . . Nobody associated with Cipher Brief should be anywhere near Ratcliffe or Gabbard, period. They should be blacklisted. They are the people who worked to take down Trump, and now they are trying to cover their tracks and sneak into the new administration.” Dan Hoffman, remember the name.

And thus, the chatter this week about former Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Mike Rogers (a.k.a. Admiral Michael S. Rogers) floated as the next Director of the FBI. Oh, really? Not a joke (har har)? Mike Rogers was DNI throughout the first years (2016-17) of the FBI’s “Crossfire Hurricane” op to take down the then-new president Donald Trump using Hillary Clinton’s concocted “Steele Dossier,” known to be utter bullshit by all involved at the highest levels, but used anyway. Mike Rogers was in office when the FBI took down new National Security Advisor Mike Flynn in February, 2017, for talking to the Russian ambassador. (Since when are high US officials not allowed to speak with foreign diplomats?) By the way, Mike Rogers was endorsed for the FBI job this week by former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, one of the chief managers of The RussiaGate op, which included “Crossfire Hurricane,” and the FBIs programmatic lying to the FISA court.

RussiaGate is starting to look like ancient history to many, but it is a giant slime trail of sedition and treason involving many people who are still very much alive, and some who are still in positions of power (Christopher Wray). It is going to be re-litigated in the new administration, but many other crimes just as sinister, carried out under color-of-law by the FBI and its parent, the Department of Justice (DOJ), have followed since then. For instance: the January 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol instigated by “confidential human resources” (FBI plants), and actual FBI agents — labeled “the insurrection” by blob publicists. It was engineered by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, General Mark Milley, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, and others to prevent a public review of election irregularities in the joint session of Congress convened to certify the electoral vote. It succeeded splendidly, and was promptly converted into one of the worst national mind-fucks in US history. Debate over dubious vote-counts was squelched and objections were never allowed to be heard. From that sprung the “Big Lie” that anyone voicing skepticism over the 2020 election is a criminal — and thus, the two preposterous federal cases (plus the Fulton County, GA, case) cooked up against Mr. Trump three years later.

There is also the matter of the pipe bomb op at the DNC and RNC headquarters blocks away from the US Capitol the same hour of the same day, 1/6/21, when, for no good reason, Vice-president-elect Kamala Harris hid-out in the DNC building. (Why would she not have been attending the joint session of Congress in the Capitol at that hour when the signal achievement of her life to-date was to be grandly announced in front of all her colleagues?) I will tell you why: because the pipe bomb was supposed to be Plan-A for disrupting the electoral vote certification — to set off wild alarms about “terrorism” and scatter the lawmakers. It just happened that the riot at the Capitol (Plan-B) successfully stole the show and Nancy Pelosi got what she said she was “waiting for” — the means to permanently knock Donald Trump off the game-board.

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Americans too:

“..war-related corruption is linked not only with Ukraine, but also the supplier nation..”

• Ukrainians Have Stolen Up To Half Of US Aid – Ex-Polish Deputy Minister (RT)

Ukraine did not receive as much foreign aid as claimed by the administration of US President Joe Biden, and whatever help it did get was largely embezzled, a former Polish deputy minister has claimed. Up to a half of the funds that reached Kiev was stolen by Ukrainian officials, Piotr Kulpa has alleged. The political commentator previously held several posts in the Polish government, serving as deputy labor minister in the mid-2000s, and is currently a regular contributor on Ukrainian online shows. Kulpa is a vocal supporter of US President-elect Donald Trump, as evidenced by his remarks to Ukrainian journalist Lana Shevchuk on Thursday. “Everyone understands that war-related corruption is linked not only with Ukraine, but also the supplier nation,” he said. “Who would ever believe that the US burned through $2 trillion in Afghanistan? It’s delusional!”

US aid programs are a mechanism to “write off large sums of money that finance shady systems under the Democratic Party’s control,” he alleged. The incoming Trump administration could review government finances and discover the truth that “Ukraine got very little” compared to the amounts mentioned in public statements, Kulpa claimed. “But they will also find something else: that a huge portion of the funds was stolen in Ukraine. From 30% to 50%, regardless of the nature of the aid,” he added. If Kiev were to recover all the embezzled money for the Ukrainian budget, the country would have enough for a year, Kulpa said. He denounced senior Ukrainian officials, whose regular salaries and bonuses he believes are outrageously high.

“It’s a spit in the face of every Ukrainian,” the former minister asserted. “To every European and American taxpayer. This system is criminal from start to finish.” Trump and his allies have been highly critical of the amount of assistance that the Biden administration has sent to Kiev. The president-elect has argued that EU nations should assume the burden of propping up Ukraine, while the American government should focus on its own priorities. US concerns about graft in Kiev have been reflected in some government documents, such as a report that Pentagon Inspector General Robert Storch’s office released last week. It said corruption “continues to complicate Ukraine’s efforts to achieve its EU and NATO aspirations.”

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“..he has advocated for the creation of “autonomous zones” in the conflict area..”

• Trump Eyes Richard Grenell As Special Envoy For Ukraine (RT)

US President-elect Donald Trump is considering Richard Grenell, a veteran of his previous administration, for the position of special envoy for the Russia-Ukraine conflict, Reuters reported on Friday, citing sources. Grenell served as Washington’s ambassador to Germany and acting director of national intelligence. Trump’s plans to appoint a high-ranking diplomat tasked with “find[ing] a resolution, to get to a peace settlement” were first reported by Fox News last week, with its source saying the person in the position will have “a lot of credibility.” Four Reuters sources confirmed that Trump is thinking about creating the position of special envoy, with Grenell considered as a potential candidate. However, there is no guarantee that the position will be created, though the president-elect is strongly leaning toward doing so, the article said.

Grenell, a seasoned diplomat and political operative, served as the US ambassador to Germany from 2018 to 2020, and as acting director of national intelligence for several months in 2020. Days after his appointment as envoy to Berlin, Grenell faced criticism for what many EU leaders saw as his crude disregard for diplomatic finesse and nonchalant attempts to influence the domestic political landscape, as he urged European capitals to cut business ties with Iran while openly voicing support for local right-wing parties. As for Grenell’s stance on the Ukraine conflict, he has advocated for the creation of “autonomous zones” in the conflict area and insisted that Ukraine should not be brought into NATO anytime soon, a stance shared by many on the Trump team.

Supporters of Grenell point to his long diplomatic career and deep knowledge of European affairs, according to Reuters. He served as special presidential envoy for Serbia-Kosovo peace negotiations from 2019 to 2021. In September 2020, he brokered an agreement between the country and its breakaway region, which paved the way for economic normalization and helped defuse tensions at the time. Trump has vowed to swiftly put an end to the Ukraine conflict. One of the reported plans includes Kiev suspending its NATO ambitions and agreeing to a freeze along the current front line. Russia has ruled out a freeze of the conflict, insisting that all of the goals of the military operation, including Ukrainian neutrality, demilitarization, and denazification, should be fulfilled.

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“..ground down” Kiev’s best military units..”

• Ukrainian Military Plans For 2025 ‘Derailed’ – Moscow (RT)

Russian forces involved in repelling a Ukrainian incursion in Kursk Region have “ground down” Kiev’s best military units and have effectively “derailed [its] entire campaign of 2025,” Russian Defense Minister Andrey Belousov has claimed. Kiev sent some of its best-armed and most experienced troops across the northern border in August, claiming that securing control of Russian territory in Kursk would be of great benefit. Ukrainian officials said the move would slow down Russian advancement elsewhere on the front line and give their country an important bargaining chip in eventual peace talks. Belousov has visited a command and control site operated by the ‘North’ group of forces, responsible for Russia’s response to the Ukrainian operation, the Defense Ministry reported on Friday. The ministry released footage in which the minister praised soldiers and officers for thwarting Kiev’s plans for next year after hearing a report by General Aleksandr Lapin, the commander of the ‘North’ battlegroup.

Belousov was also given a tour of an exhibition of NATO weapons captured during the fighting, including communications equipment, drones, small arms, and man-portable heavy arms. He was told that much of the hardware was inferior to its Russian equivalent. The minister personally awarded military decorations to several service members who had shown valor on the battlefield. Moscow has described the Ukrainian incursion as a major turning point in the armed conflict. No peace talks can happen before all of Kiev’s troops are pushed out of Kursk Region, senior Russian officials have said. Ukrainian forces have suffered more than 34,500 casualties and lost hundreds of tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and other pieces of heavy weaponry in the operation, the Russian military has claimed.

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“He is dangerous to the health and well being of every American..”

• RFK Jr.’s Plans for Reshaping HHS Draw Strong Reactions (ET)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has vowed to “make America healthy again” through his platform as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The possibility of that happening has drawn praise from many Republican lawmakers and vaccine and food safety advocates. Multiple Democratic legislators and public health officials have criticized President-Elect Donald Trump’s nomination, calling Kennedy a “danger” to public health. Fighting chronic disease, improving children’s health, and addressing corporate influence on government agencies were vital parts of Kennedy’s campaign platform when he ran for president as a Democrat and then an independent. Kennedy suspended his presidential campaign and backed Trump in August. He previously told The Epoch Times that it was a “heart-wrenching decision” and a necessary step toward achieving his mission of saving Americans from the chronic disease epidemic.

Under the “Make America Healthy Again” campaign, Kennedy aims to curtail what he calls the chronic disease epidemic by addressing the so-called “corporate capture” of federal health agencies and removing toxic chemicals from the nation’s food supply, among other objectives. Trump’s naming Kennedy as his HHS secretary has drawn strong reactions. Donna Shalala, who was HHS secretary under former President Bill Clinton from 1993 to 2001, said Kennedy is not qualified for the position. “The nomination of RFK Jr. for HHS by President-elect Trump is shocking. … He is dangerous to the health and well being of every American,” Shalala wrote on X. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said on X that Kennedy would be the person to “detox the place after the Fauci era,” in reference to former NIH director Dr. Anthony Fauci. Kennedy and Paul have both been outspoken critics of Fauci’s policies related to vaccines and the public health response to COVID-19.

[..] Kennedy has said that he will urge Trump on day one to declare a national emergency for chronic disease. Kennedy said he believes little will change until the influence of giant or private corporations on the FDA, the CDC, and the Department of Agriculture is addressed. At a roundtable organized by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) in September, Kennedy said these agencies “advance the mercantile and commercial interests of the pharmaceutical industry that has transformed them and the food industry into sock puppets for the industry they’re supposed to regulate. Kennedy has vowed to dismiss the officials who lead those agencies and appoint replacements. “FDA’s war on public health is about to end,” he wrote on X on Oct. 25, adding his support for raw milk, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, foods with healing properties, and natural remedies such as sunshine.

In September, Kennedy told The Epoch Times that he would revamp the NIH to focus on the causes of autism, autoimmune diseases, and neurodevelopment diseases instead of developing drugs and serving as an incubator for pharmaceutical products. He has also vowed to lead efforts to address the issue of chemicals in ultra-processed foods. He told Fox News he would “get processed food out of school lunch immediately” and said federal food assistance such as food stamps should not go toward junk food.

RFK

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“..work to create an economy that places growth at the forefront, especially through our coming world energy dominance..”

• Trump Names Billionaire Scott Bessent As Treasury Secretary (ZH)

After Trump appointed Howard Lutnick as Commerce Secretary and Kevin Warsh was clearly being groomed as Powell’s replacement at the Fed, it was just a matter of time before the most important appointment in the Trump admin was made. That happened late on Friday when president-elect Donald Trump nominated Scott Bessent to lead the Department of the Treasury, ending days of speculation after other names emerged as competitors to the reported favorite. “Scott is widely respected as one of the world’s foremost international investors and geopolitical and economic strategists. Scott’s story is that of the American Dream,” Trump said in a statement on the nomination. Bessent, 62, is a Wall Street veteran who once worked for George Soros, and founder of international macro investment company Key Square Group. He served as a key economic adviser to Trump’s 2024 campaign.

Others contenders for the role included Howard Lutnick, the chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald and BGC Partners. He co-chairs the Trump–Vance transition team, which is in charge of selecting administration candidates, vetting personnel, and crafting policy. Lutnick was ultimately chosen on Nov. 19 to lead the Department of Commerce. Kevin Warsh, 54, a former Morgan Stanley banker and former Federal Reserve Board governor, likewise entered the conversation. He became the leading candidate for treasury secretary on the betting website Polymarket after reports emerged that the president-elect was expanding his search to fill the position. In his statement on Bessent’s nomination, Trump said that economic policy under his administration would maintain the U.S. dollar’s reserve currency status, fortify the United States’s position as the world’s strongest economy, and invigorate the private sector.

“As a lifelong champion of Main Street America and American industry, Scott will support my policies that will drive U.S. competitiveness, and stop unfair trade imbalances, work to create an economy that places growth at the forefront, especially through our coming world energy dominance,” Trump said. The president-elect also noted Bessent’s deep family roots in South Carolina, saying that he belongs to a historic French Huguenot Church, which members of his family founded in the 1680s, in the port city of Charleston. Like his predecessors, Bessent will now oversee a vast portfolio to employ the president’s economic agenda. As the Epoch Times notes, the two immediate issues Bessent will grapple with will be averting a default as the national debt ceiling limit will expire on Jan. 1, 2025, and extending the Trump-era Tax Cuts and Jobs Act due to expire at the end of next year.

More importantly, Bessent will also be tasked with the delicate, if not conflicting, job of championing Trump’s trade proposals, including across-the-board tariffs, on one hand, while keeping the debt and deficit in check and preventing bond yields and the dollar from rising too high, too fast, as an even more rapid tightening in financial conditions will surely tip the US economy into recession.

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“We Are Faced with the Extraordinary Event that..”

• Washington Chose to Go to War with Russia (Paul Craig Roberts)

This interview from two days ago explains the dangerous situation into which the Biden Regime has placed life on earth by Washington’s conscious decision to go to war with Russia. The Russian government made it completely clear that a decision to fire missiles into Russia means the West is at war with Russia. Nevertheless, the insane West fired missiles into Russia. Putin responded with a demonstration of a new hypersonic missile that completely destroyed a Ukrainian armaments production facility. The missile travels at speed that the West has no capability to intercept and was designed to carry nuclear warheads. The message to the West is clear: If you persist in your war with Russia, you can expect widespread destruction. What will the insane West do? Will it come to its senses, or is it more important to widen the war in order to lock Trump in and prevent him from reaching a peaceful end to the conflict?

The Russian-hating Jew that Washington installed as its agent in Ukraine is demanding a “strong response” from the West. In other words, Zelensky is demanding Europe and the US put themselves at risk of destruction simply because Russia responded to a missile attack by the West from Ukrainian soil with a missile attack on a Ukrainian military facility. What sense does this make? None. It is unclear that the American people and those of Europe will survive their acceptance of the theft by the Democrats of the 2020 US presidential election. The consequence of the theft of the presidential election was an insane regime in Washington that has consistently step-by-step widened a local conflict into a war of the West with Russia. The British have not helped the situation by electing a prime minister as unhinged as Biden. In the West it seems that only Hungary’s Viktor Orban understands the seriousness of the situation.

I will briefly review the situation as Putin has stated it to the Russian people and to the dumbshits ruling in the West. Putin said the West’s missile attack on Russia drastically changed the nature of the conflict in Ukraine. The conflict has been transformed into a war of the West against Russia. This intentional decision by the West to go to war with Russia was taken despite Russia’s clear warning. Putin reminded everyone that the conflict in Ukraine was provoked by Washington which refused Russia’s peaceful approach of the Minsk Agreement and refused Russia’s request for a mutual security agreement. Putin made the point that Washington and NATO have deliberately escalated the conflict and are making it into global war. Putin pointed out that Washington has deliberately “destroyed the system on international security” and is “pushing the whole world toward a global conflict.”

Putin made the point that although the West has no defense against Russian missiles, Russia prefers diplomacy to war, but if the West persists in war, the West will suffer the consequences Certainly, Ukraine’s retention of Donbas, formerly a part of Russia herself that Soviet leaders attached to the Soviet Union’s Ukrainian province, is not worth a devastating, perhaps final, war. What madness is driving the West’s irresponsible attitude toward life? It appears to be the neoconservatives’ agenda of US and Israeli hegemony, egged on by profit and power for the US military/security complex and the unrealistic belief of Americans in their invincibility. The question before us is: Will the hubris of the West destroy the World?

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“They are ‘Trump proofing’ NATO, Ukraine and the deep state..”

• World ‘Very Close To Point Of No Return’ – Scott Ritter (RT)

Russia’s strike on a Ukrainian defense industrial facility using a new hypersonic ballistic missile system has shown the West that a policy of further escalation will lead to devastating consequences, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter has said. America’s recklessness in dealing with Russia, as well as underestimating Moscow’s readiness to respond, has already brought the world dangerously close to an all-out nuclear war, the former US marine officer claimed on the ‘Judging Freedom’ YouTube show on Thursday. Earlier in the day, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that the country’s military successfully hit a Ukrainian target with a new intermediate-range ballistic missile called the Oreshnik. The strike was a response to Kiev using US-made ATACMS and HIMARS systems, as well as British-made Storm Shadow missiles in strikes on internationally-recognized Russian territory earlier this week, he added.

The missile launch is a clear signal to the West that Moscow was not bluffing when it said the US and its allies would not get away with aiding Kiev in striking Russia with Western-made weapons, Ritter argued. “The missile that they used is a nuclear-capable system. It had a conventional warhead but could be used for nuclear purposes. Putin basically said that this missile can cover all of Europe and that in the future, he will mirror every action by Ukraine and the West; that any escalation will immediately be responded to,” Ritter told the host of Judging Freedom, Andrew Napolitano. The former UN weapons inspector also called the development a “qualitative advancement” that brought a completely new type of weapon to the conflict between Moscow and Kiev. Everyone who believed that Russia was bluffing “has now been put on notice” that it is not, he added.

A continuation of the current Western policy towards the Ukraine conflict and Russia would be dangerous and irresponsible under such circumstances, Ritter believes. “We are very, very close to reaching the point of no return when it comes to a nuclear war,” he warned. He particularly slammed remarks by US Strategic Command (STRATCOM) spokesman Rear Admiral Thomas Buchanan, who said on Thursday that Washington was ready to launch nuclear strikes but would only do so “on terms that are most acceptable to the US.” Such statements sound as if the US is ready for a “pre-emptive strike” against Russia, Ritter said, adding that taking out Russia’s nuclear capabilities first was “the only way an exchange works that you can walk away from.” Such rhetoric is bound to put Moscow on edge, according to the former UN weapons inspector.

The “lame duck” administration of President Joe Biden might have made a U-turn on allowing Kiev to use Western long-range weapons for strikes on undisputed Russian territory to make life difficult for their successors, opined Ritter, a former RT contributor. “They are ‘Trump proofing’ NATO, Ukraine and the deep state” in order to make the Ukraine conflict problem “so hard” that President-elect Donald Trump will not be able to resolve it as he intends, he said. Trump has vowed to swiftly end the Ukraine conflict upon assuming office. One possibility would be to force Ukraine to drop its NATO ambitions and agree to freeze the conflict, according to reports. Moscow has ruled out the latter, insisting that all the goals of its military operation – including Ukraine’s demilitarization and denazification – must be fulfilled.

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Much of it was financed by Gazprom. They won’t sell.. You gonna seize control?

• US Investor Eyes Nord Stream 2 Purchase, Citing Strategic Value for US (Sp.)

American investor Stephen P. Lynch has expressed an interest in buying the Nord Stream 2 pipeline if it is put up for auction as part of the bankruptcy proceedings in Switzerland, The Wall Street Journal reports. “An American investor with a history of dealmaking in Russia has asked the U.S. government to allow him to bid on the sabotaged Nord Stream Pipeline 2 if it comes up for auction in a Swiss bankruptcy proceeding,” the report said. According to sources cited by the newspaper, Lynch expressed determination to buy the $11 billion Nord Stream 2 pipeline and applied to the US Treasury in February for a license to negotiate its construction with entities under US sanctions, noting that many investors might avoid the auction due to the difficult geopolitical situation. Lynch has advocated to US officials and lawmakers that owning the pipeline would give the United States a powerful tool in negotiating peace with Russia to resolve the conflict in Ukraine, while also supporting broader American strategic objectives.

“The bottom line is this: This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for American and European control over European energy supply for the rest of the fossil-fuel era,” the newspaper quotes Lynch as saying. The Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines, built to deliver gas under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Europe, were hit by explosions on September 26, 2022. Germany, Denmark, and Sweden have not ruled out deliberate sabotage. The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office has opened an investigation into it as an act of international terrorism. Russia has repeatedly requested information on other countries’ investigations into the explosions, but never received it, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.

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“Every step of escalation comes from Russia. They are the ones who are escalating it..”

• White House Refuses to Recognize Responsibility for Escalation in Ukraine (Sp.)

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Thursday declined to acknowledge that US President Joe Biden’s authorization of long-range strikes on Russia with ATACMS missiles had contributed to escalating the conflict, instead placing the blame on Russia. “Every step of escalation comes from Russia. They are the ones who are escalating it,” she alleged when asked whether Biden’s decision to authorize strikes using long-range ATACMS missiles deep into Russian territory was a factor in escalating the conflict in Ukraine. Jean-Pierre claimed that neither Ukraine nor the United States bears responsibility for the escalation. The launch of a Russian missile will not deter US policy towards Ukraine, the press secretary added. The United States will continue to provide new weapons packages to Ukraine and work to expedite their delivery, she said.

Washington has not seen any signs of Russia preparing to use a nuclear weapon in Ukraine, the White House spokesperson admitted. Washington is not seeking war with Moscow but will continue to send weapons to Ukraine, Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh added. Russia notified the US briefly before launching an intermediate-range ballistic missile against Ukraine, the Pentagon spokesperson acknowledged. Earlier in the day, President Vladimir Putin said that Russia fired a non-nuclear hypersonic version of a ballistic missile, striking a Ukrainian arms manufacturer in the city of Dnepropetrovsk in response to Kiev’s use of US and UK longer-range weapons to strike Russian territory.

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“I am trying to make life multiplanetary to maximize the probable lifespan of consciousness..”

• Musk on His ‘To-Do List’ on Time Cover: We Need to Colonize Other Planets (Sp.)

US entrepreneur Elon Musk, commenting on his “to-do list” on the cover of Time magazine, has said that it is not really his checklist, but that some items are needed to achieve a global goal of human colonization of other planets. Earlier in the week, Time released the cover of its December issue featuring the entrepreneur and his alleged tasks or accomplishments, including two items that have not yet been completed, including reducing US government spending by $2 trillion and flying to Mars. “To be clear, I have not done any media interviews and this is not actually my checklist. I am trying to make life multiplanetary to maximize the probable lifespan of consciousness. Some of the items below are needed for that,” Musk said on X.

Last month, Musk said that if Trump won the US presidential election, the entrepreneur would reduce state budget spending by $2 trillion. The presidential election took place in the United States on November 5. Republican candidate Donald Trump, who served as the US president from 2017-2021, was declared the winner by all leading race callers and networks. Democratic candidate Kamala Harris conceded defeat in an address to supporters. The Electoral College will vote in accordance with the will of the voters on December 17, and the new Congress will approve the results of the vote on January 6. The presidential inauguration will take place on January 20.

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Even Merchan folds. Alvin Bragg: Bye!

• NY ‘Hush Money’ Judge Grants Trump Request To File For Dismissal (ZH)

Liberals will be tearing what’s left of their hair out even more this morning as Judge Juan Merchan just granted President-elect Trump’s request to file a motion to dismiss the charges in the Stormy Daniels’ ‘hush money’ case and removed the sentencing date for the president-elect from the schedule. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) is opposing that request. Instead, Bragg floated that Merchan could freeze the proceedings while Trump is in office, meaning the conviction would remain on the books but sentencing wouldn’t occur until 2029, at the earliest. Merchan ordered Trump to file his formal motion asking for dismissal by Dec. 2 and Bragg to respond by Dec. 9. Merchan also confirmed the stay in sentencing for Trump, which was requested by both Trump and Bragg attorneys.

The sentencing was scheduled for Nov. 26, but on Friday, Merchan said that date “is adjourned.” The judge will then decide how to proceed. In a letter to Merchan on Wednesday, Trump defense attorney and now-nominee for Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche demanded the case against President-elect Donald Trump be tossed. “On November 5, 2024, the Nation’s People issued a mandate that supersedes the political motivations of DANY’s ‘People,’” Blanche wrote. “This case must be immediately dismissed.” Blanche said that “immediate dismissal of this case is mandated by the federal Constitution, the Presidential Transition Act of 1963, and the interests of justice, in order to facilitate the orderly transition of Executive power following President Trump’s overwhelming victory in the 2024 Presidential Election.” Trump’s imminent return to the White House has already pumped the brakes on his other criminal prosecutions.

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Russia guards Iran.

• Israel Preparing to Attack Iranian Nuclear Facilities (Sp.)

The Israeli authorities reached a consensus at all levels of the security system and political echelon on the need to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, Israeli news portal Walla reported, citing a high-ranking source. Israel also allegedly has the technological capability to carry out such an attack, the report said on Thursday. Israel will not allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons, the source noted. Economic sanctions against Tehran serve only as a deterrent and are not intended to eliminate Iran’s nuclear project, the source added.

Last week, the Axios news portal reported that Israel’s attack on Iran that took place in late October destroyed an active top secret nuclear weapons research facility of the Parchin military complex and affected the country’s capability to resume nuclear arms research. The destroyed facility reportedly was a part of Iran’s Amad nuclear weapons program, which Tehran is believed to have halted in 2003. In late October, the Israel Defense Forces said that they struck military targets in Iran in response to the October 1 attacks on the Jewish state. Media reported that the Israeli attack on Iran was limited to military assets and did not target nuclear or oil facilities.

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Britain joined in.

• European States Vow To Arrest Netanyahu (RT)

Several Western states have pledged to execute an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Hague-based court on Thursday issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu along with former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas commander Ibrahim al-Masri. West Jerusalem claims that al-Masri is already dead. The warrants are for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity linked to the Gaza conflict. The decision has elicited mixed reactions in the West. Several nations emphasized their respect for the independence of the court, while others voiced support for Israel. The Netherlands, Switzerland, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, Belgium, and Norway all claimed they would meet their commitments and obligations under the Rome Statute and international law.

However, Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto stressed that the ICC was “wrong” to put Netanyahu and Gallant on the same level as Hamas. Austria also said that it would obey the decision, but its foreign minister, Alexander Schallenberg, added that the warrant was “utterly incomprehensible.” Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp assured the country’s parliament that the authorities would act on the warrants and avoid non-essential contacts with those named. Geert Wilders, the head of the Netherlands’ Party for Freedom, a member of the ruling coalition, condemned the decision, saying that the Israeli authorities are being confronted with arrest warrants instead of receiving international understanding and support.

Earlier this month, the Dutch capital saw rioting between Israeli soccer fans, who chanted anti-Palestinian slogans, and pro-Palestinian locals. In France, Foreign Ministry spokesman Christophe Lemoine said that potentially acting on the warrants was a “complex legal issue” while admitting the importance of acting in line with ICC statutes. At the same time, Lemoine declined to say whether France would arrest Netanyahu or Gallant if they came to the country. Meanwhile, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban denounced the ICC’s decision, telling a state radio station that he would invite the Israeli leader to Hungary.

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ICC.

• US Senator Threatens Invasion of Netherlands (RT)

US Senator Tom Cotton has lashed out at the International Criminal Court (ICC) over its decision to issue an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He invoked a US law which greenlights the use of military force against the Netherlands-based court. The Republican senator threatened the ICC by referring to the American Service-Members’ Protection Act, informally referred to as the ‘Hague Invasion Act’, which permits the US president to use “all means necessary and appropriate” to free Americans or allied individuals detained at the request of the court. The ICC on Thursday issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity in connection with the Gaza conflict. Chief prosecutor Karim Khan also announced similar charges against Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif.

Cotton condemned the ICC in a post on X on Thursday, branding it a “kangaroo court” and labeling its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, a “deranged fanatic.” “Woe to him and anyone who tries to enforce these outlaw warrants. Let me give them all a friendly reminder: the American law on the ICC is known as The Hague Invasion Act for a reason. Think about it,” Cotton warned. Passed by Congress in 2002, the ‘Hague Invasion Act’ was designed to shield US personnel from the court’s jurisdiction. It authorizes military action to rescue any American or allied citizen held by the court in The Hague. Civil rights groups argued the law aims to intimidate nations that support the ICC treaty. Washington, Israel’s main ally, has opposed the court’s decision, and a number of US politicians have called for the White House to impose sanctions on the ICC for issuing warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant.

The EU, however, has taken a different stance. Italy, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Ireland, and Norway are among the countries that have said they will comply with the ICC’s request. While Israel is not a party to the Rome Statute, under the treaty that established the court, Netanyahu and Gallant could be detained in any of 124 countries that recognize the its authority. The ICC has accused Netanyahu and Gallant of using starvation as a method of warfare in Gaza, and deliberately depriving the enclave’s civilian population of essential supplies such as food, water, and medicine without any “obvious military necessity.” The charges are part of a broader ICC investigation that includes alleged crimes Hamas committed during its October 7 attacks on Israel.

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JK Rowling should be celebrated. She created an entire world of her own. How many people can say that?

• HBO Delivers Blow Against the Anti-Rowling, Anti-Free Speech Movement (Turley)

This week, HBO delivered the corporate version of the Expelliarmus or disarming curse for the long-standing cancel campaign targeting “Harry Potter” creator J.K. Rowling. We have been discussing this campaign against Rowling, a feminist who has opposed transgender policies that she views as inimical to the rights of women. The cancel campaign against Rowling has been extreme and unhinged from blacklisting her books to even barring the playing of Harry Potter games in pubs. Even authors who support Rowling’s free speech have been targeted. Nevertheless, HBO, which has also been targeted in the past, is now saying enough. Rowling’s work will continue to be featured and developed by the company.

HBO has enraged the anti-Rowling movement by announcing that it will not yield and will continue to work with the author: “J.K. Rowling has a right to express her personal views. We will remain focused on the development of the new series, which will only benefit from her involvement.” It added that “her contribution has been invaluable.” HBO has a new upcoming Potter series set to premiere on HBO’s Max streaming platform in 2026. Both Harry Potter stars, Daniel Radcliffe, who played Harry Potter, and Emma Watson, who played Hermine Granger, have joined the criticism of Rowling. However, the criticism itself is not the primary problem, even if they unfairly characterize Rowlings’ actual statements. That is a use of their own free speech rights.

However, the cancel campaigns are far more damaging for free speech, as I discuss in my book, The Indispensable Right. The issue of cancel campaigns came up in my recent debate at Harvard Law School on free speech with Professor Randall Kennedy. Kennedy defended cancel campaigns as the exercise of free speech. There is no question that such campaigns involve the act of free speech as people rallying for or against viewpoints. However, the impact of such campaigns, particularly in higher education, is to limit the diversity of viewpoints and reinforce an orthodoxy on our campuses. It is not to express a view but to seek to silence an opposing view. It is the antithesis of free speech values in higher education.

It also has a damaging effect on an academic community. When students see faculty supporting the canceling of conservative, libertarian, or dissenting speakers, it is hardly an invitation to speak freely yourself in class. The same is true for publishers. We have discussed companies discontinuing publication of Rowling’s work and both editors and writers joining blacklisting campaigns against her and others. We have even seen the embracing of book burning. For the activists behind this massive cancel campaign, HBO’s announcement is nothing short of a corporate Cruciatus (torture) Curse. However, both the arts and free speech are the winners in Rowling’s continuing to produce and expand her legendary body of work.

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Motive: “..they believed Sergei Skripal was planning to return home to Russia, and that the GRU was planning an exfiltration operation..”

• British Operation KISS – “Kill Instantly Skripals” – Has Failed (Helmer)

This is the comic book version of what really happened, as revealed by the clumsiest judge in England – Anthony Hughes (titled Lord Hughes of Ombersley, lead image, right). Even if all the evidence presented to Hughes and already endorsed by him is true – on the record of six and half years of British Government investigations and twenty-one days of hearings with concealed witness faces, censored documents, missing CCTV — there remains no direct evidence that the Russians attacked the Skripals by poisoning their front-door handle when they were inside their home, four hours before their collapse. Instead, Hughes and his lawyers have directed the police and other witnesses to stretch their circumstantial evidence and dictated their inferences of Russian guilt. In New York, the legal textbook difference between direct and circumstantial evidence is this.

To stretch the circumstantial evidence and inferences beyond the criminal standard of reasonable doubt, Hughes has prevented direct evidence from being presented, stopping the Skripals from testifying themselves. Their Home Office lawyer purportedly representing the Skripals in the hearings has said nothing at all; Hughes’s lawyers have manipulated witnesses with leading questions; alternative explanations for the circumstantial evidence have been blocked by Hughes from the hospital doctors and independent experts. The way in which this has been done is comic book jurisprudence. The judges of the former British empire aren’t laughing; this is how they say the means and opportunity of a capital crime must be prosecuted, then judged.

The CCTV and other evidence presented at the Hughes hearings shows the Russians knew they had been marked by MI6 from the minute they booked their flights and landed at Gatwick Airport; and they then encouraged the video recording which took place, often mugging in front of the CCTV cameras for that purpose. There is no evidence of their coming close enough to the Skripal house, or to Sergei and Yulia Skripal in person, in order to attack them. Ergo, the evidence of the murder act is missing; the evidence of the murder weapon is missing; the evidence of the murder attempt at the bench is missing. Means, opportunity, motive are all missing from the British prosecution of the Russians for the crime. Yulia Skripal has testified that the poison attack took place when she and her father were sprayed as they were eating lunch inside Zizzi’s Restaurant. They then walked outside, felt ill, sat down on a city bench, and collapsed. Yulia Skripal’s evidence indicates the attackers were British.

The refusal of the British chemical warfare laboratory to name the weapon by its organophosphate name, and reveal its molecular composition and mass conceals the origin of the weapon. In police, forensic or courtroom practice, this is the equivalent of concealing ballistic evidence determining whether a fatal bullet was fired from the gun in the alleged shooter’s hand. The evidence, collected by the police and Porton Down agents, then analysed by Porton Down, then announced publicly by then-Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson days before he told Prime Minister May’s meeting of Cabinet, is as likely to be of a British-made organophosphate nerve agent subsequently called Novichok as of a Russian-made nerve agent. What motive: why would the British attack the Skripals?

Their reason was that they believed Sergei Skripal was planning to return home to Russia, and that the GRU was planning an exfiltration operation on March 4, 2018. The Russians knew that MI6 would be suspicious, so they prepared decoys. These are the two men, Alexander Petrov (Alexander Mishkin) and Ruslan Boshirov (Anatoly Chepiga), now accused of the Novichok attack. The British planned to kill the Skripals but camouflage the operation, as they have done. Motive was pressing for the British if Sergei Skripal had returned to Russia, revealing himself in Moscow to be one of the first successful triple agents in modern espionage history. The Russian exfiltration failed; the British failed to execute the Skripals on the spot; for a few minutes from her hospital bed on March 8, Yulia Skripal revealed what had happened before she was put into an artificial coma, then silenced with a tracheostomy on March 21, and kept incommunicado ever since.

The British camouflage for their operation – Operation KISS, “Kill Instantly the Skripals” — relied on the door-handle as “ground zero” – the original source of the Novichok – and on Porton Down to replace the inconclusive or negative tests conducted by doctors treating the Skripals at Salisbury District Hospital. A corpse had to be found, dead enough not to be able to testify otherwise as Yulia Skripal had done. That turned out to be Dawn Sturgess, who died at her home on June 30, 2018, of cardiac arrest and brain hypoxia after consuming a combination of sleeping and anti-anxiety medications, cocaine, and fentanyl. The Novichok weapon, fabricated in a perfume atomiser by MI6 and Porton Down, was then placed on Sturgess’s kitchen table for the police to discover eleven days after her drug binge and collapse; and after medics and police had failed to find it through multiple and repeated searches

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“..trade with the US represents only 2.4 percent of Chinese GDP..”

• G20 Knocks Out G7 Agendas (Pepe Escobar)

The G20 summit in Rio earlier this week offered the quite intriguing spectacle of a deeply divided world, geopolitically and geoeconomically, trying to put on a brave ‘holiday in the sun’ face. There was plenty of fluff to amuse attentive audiences. French President Emmanuel Macron surrounded by a beefy security detail strolling on Copacabana beach near midnight; European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen barefoot in the sand, stunned by the lapping waves; the White House lodger, US President Joe Biden – with his expiry date in less than two months – missing the G20 family pic because he was talking to a palm tree. Right before the summit, Biden posed on a soundstage in the rainforest, complete with two giant teleprompters, pledging to save the Amazon just as his handlers in Washington let leak the “authorization” for Ukraine to attack targets inside the Russian Federation with ATACMS; a qualified preamble for a possible WWIII.

With Rio providing the ultimately gorgeous set, at the very least, tempers at the renovated Museum of Modern Art, the G20 venue with the Sugarloaf in the background, were bound to mellow out. This even allowed for a short, tense handshake between Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a true leader of the Global South, and Argentina’s President Javier Milei, a US asset who hates Lula’s guts. The populist Brazilian head of state, whose political capital transcends all barriers, was, of course, an impeccable master of ceremonies, but the real star of the show was Chinese President Xi Jinping – fresh from his previous triumph, when he was for all practical purposes coronated King of Peru during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Lima – complete with the inauguration of the $1.3 billion port of Chancay, the new South American node of the Pacific Maritime Silk Road. As China is all about global connectivity corridors, Chancay-Shanghai became an instant new motto ringing all across the Global South.

Beijing’s prime role as an engine and cooperation propeller across Asia–Pacific also applies to most of the G20 members. China is the largest trading partner of the 13 APEC economies, and is responsible for 64.2 percent of Asia-Pacific’s economic growth. This prime role extrapolates to China’s BRICS colleagues among the G20, as well as brand-new BRICS partner-nations such as Indonesia and Turkiye. Compare that with the G7/NATOstan contingent of the G20, starting with the United States, whose main global offerings range from Forever Wars and color revolutions to weaponizing of news and culture, trade wars, a tsunami of sanctions, and confiscation/theft of assets. So, predictably, there was some serious underlying tension permeating the G20, especially when it came to the face-off between the G7 and the Russia-China strategic partnership. Russian President Vladimir Putin didn’t even bother to attend, sending his uber-competent Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov instead.

As for Beijing, after 7 years of combined Trump-Biden trade and tech war, the Chinese economy continues to grow by 5.2 percent a year. Exports now account for only 16 percent of China’s GDP, so the economic powerhouse is far less vulnerable to foreign trade machinations. And the US share of that 16 percent is now only 15 percent; that is, trade with the US represents only 2.4 percent of Chinese GDP. Even under what can be described as NATOstan’s all-out tech sanctions, Chinese tech firms are growing at warp speed. As a result, all western tech companies are in deep trouble: massive retrenchment, factory downsizes, and shutdowns. Meanwhile, China’s trade surplus with the rest of the world has expanded to a record one trillion US dollars. That’s what horrified Western economists qualify as China on a “collision course” with some of the world’s biggest – yet dwindling – economies.

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Carvey
https://twitter.com/i/status/1859790685542482146

 

 

Volvo

 

 

Goat
https://twitter.com/i/status/1859924986032447632

 

 

Fright

 

 

Henson
https://twitter.com/i/status/1859646855803801928

 

 

Quarry

 

 

Street food

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle October 1 2024

Oct 012024
 
 October 1, 2024  Posted by at 8:25 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  74 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Sleeping peasants 1919

 

• Israel Launches Ground Invasion Of Lebanon: Operation Northern Arrows (ZH)
• The Lands of Islam Get Ready To Channel Their Rage (Pepe Escobar)
• Biden And Harris Called Out Over Botched Hurricane Response (ZH)
• Democrats May ‘Destroy’ US Constitution If They Win Elections – Musk (Sp.)
• MTG Warns ‘Most Dangerous Phase’ in 2024 Election Has Begun (HUSA) /span>
• Heroes and Villains (Kunstler)
• Letitia James May be Winning the Lawfare but Losing the War (Turley)
• US Port Strike Could Begin Tuesday (ZH)
• Life, Pre-empted (Scott Ritter)
• Britain Goes Full Orwell Accusing Putin of Imperialism (Amar)
• The Pentagon Goes to School (Hartung)
• Zelensky Ready To Fire Spy Chief – Media (RT)
• Will The Suffocating Cage of Leviathan Be Avoided? (Alastair Crooke)
• The End of the Skripals (Helmer)
• Pavel Durov, The Superfluous Man (Karganovic)
• The Case Of Pavel Durov Ends On A French Letter With A Loophole (Helmer)

 

 

 

 

RFK

 

 

Flynn

 

 

Starlink

 

 

Devine
https://twitter.com/i/status/1840390154931913081

 

 

Duda

 

 

 

 

The mental state is Middle Ages, the weapons are not.

• Israel Launches Ground Invasion Of Lebanon: Operation Northern Arrows (ZH)

Update(1630ET): The Israeli ground invasion of Lebanon has begun, with various regional news correspondents saying IDF tanks have been spotted breaching areas earlier deemed ‘closed military zones’. “Israeli forces have launched limited incursions in Lebanon, the United States said, as Israel vowed to keep fighting Hezbollah and sealed part of the border after killing the Iran-backed militants’ leader,” AFP reports. “This is the moment,” Retired Israeli Brig. Gen. Aviv Amiri has told CNN. The southern areas were reportedly subject to carpet bombing raids within the hours prior to the border breach. “We cannot create terms for Israelis to return to their homes without pushing Hezbollah out of South Lebanon, certainly at minimum eight miles, which would be anti-tank missile range,” Amiri has said. Israel’s military has also issued new warnings telling Lebanese civilians in the southern suburbs of Beirut to evacuate, ahead of more imminent airstrikes on Hezbollah locations.

Thus a ground war has begun in Lebanon a mere month before the US presidential election. Meanwhile neither President Biden nor VP Kamala Harris have had much to say. Quite the opposite: they might prefer to hide from the media. There are meanwhile reports that it was a US-provided 2,000 pound bomb which killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah last Friday. Israel’s use of the US-supplied “bunker busters” has been described Monday as follows: A video published by the Israeli military on Saturday showed jets it said were used to carry out the attack carrying at least 15 2,000-pound bombs, including the US-made BLU-109, according to Trevor Ball, a former senior explosive ordnance technician for the US Army who reviewed the footage for CNN. Biden has meekly called for ceasefire, while simultaneously backing the high level assassination.

Update(1908ET): Israel has named the new cross-border offensive “Operation Northern Arrows”. Below is an early description by the IDF as posted to Telegram and other government channels: “IDF troops have begun limited, localized and targeted raids against Hezbollah terror targets in the border area of southern Lebanon In accordance with the decision of the political echelon, a few hours ago, the IDF began limited, localized, and targeted ground raids based on precise intelligence against Hezbollah terrorist targets and infrastructure in southern Lebanon. These targets are located in villages close to the border and pose an immediate threat to Israeli communities in northern Israel.

The IDF is operating according to a methodical plan set out by the General Staff and the Northern Command which IDF soldiers have trained and prepared for in recent months. The Israeli Air Force and IDF Artillery are supporting the ground forces with precise strikes on military targets in the area.” Some Lebanese accounts have claimed that Hezbollah has already killed and wounded some invading Israeli soldiers, but these reports will remain hard to verify within the opening hours of the campaign and amid the fog of war. Heavy strikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs during the night hours (local).

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“..instances of entities which cannot be really qualified as proper nation-states. They are more like severe bacteriological infections. The only thing they specialize in is kill, kill, kill..”

• The Lands of Islam Get Ready To Channel Their Rage (Pepe Escobar)

A symbol was shattered. A legend is born. The Resistance, more than ever, won’t back down. That was framed not by a Shi’ite, but by a Lebanese Christian leader, encapsulating how a true Political Islam icon is capable of transcending all – artificial – borders. This decade, that I defined as The Raging Twenties, started with a murder: the – all-American – targeted assassination of Quds-Force leader Gen Soleimani and Hashd al-Shaabi commander Abu Mohandes just outside Baghdad airport. Gen Soleimani, more than a symbol, was the conceptualizer of the Axis of Resistance. For all its setbacks, especially in the past few weeks, the Axis of Resistance is much stronger now than in January 2000. Soleimani – the martyr, the legend – left an unparalleled legacy that will never cease to inspire all the West Asian nodes of the Resistance.

The same will happen to Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. More than a symbol, he was the Face of the Axis of Resistance, extraordinary popular and respected all across the Arab street and the lands of Islam. For all its setbacks, especially in the past few weeks, the Axis of Resistance will be much stronger in the next few years than in September 2024. Nasrallah – the martyr, the legend – leaves a legacy comparable to Soleimani’s, to whom, incidentally, he was always in awe in military matters, and always learning. As a politician though, as well as a fatherly, spiritual source of wisdom, Nasrallah was peerless. Now let’s descend from the stars to the gutter.

An unredeemable serial war criminal and psychopathic genocidal, violating scores of UN resolutions, popped up at the UN General Assembly in New York and then ordered, from inside the building, yet another war crime: wiping out an entire block in southern Beirut with dozens of American bunker buster bombs, including the BLU-109 with a JDAM precision guiding system – leaving countless civilians still unaccounted for under the rubble, including Sayyed Nasrallah. As the war criminal addressed the UN General Assembly, over half of the delegates staged a mass walkout: the hall was de facto nearly empty of real Global South diplomats. The remaining audience was presented with yet another trademark display of IQ-impaired “maps” featuring the “blessed” – Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Egypt, Jordan, UAE – and the “cursed” – Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen.

A rabid, lowly interloper from Polish extraction – a complete fake – passing judgment on ancient civilizations does not even qualify as gutter-level trash. History is replete with instances of entities which cannot be really qualified as proper nation-states. They are more like severe bacteriological infections. The only thing they specialize in is kill, kill, kill. Preferably unarmed civilians – as a terrorist tactic. Terribly dangerous, of course. History also tells us the only way they must be dealt with.

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There’s only one real president.

• Biden And Harris Called Out Over Botched Hurricane Response (ZH)

When natural disasters strike in the United States, the president and VP have historically responded immediately – offering support, condolences, and generally letting the public know that the situation is – or will soon be – under control. After making landfall Thursday night in Florida’s Big Bend region, Hurricane Helene proceeded to tear through several states – resulting in 116 deaths and causing devastating floods in Western North Carolina. Yet, it took three days for the White House to get their act together. On Sunday, Vice President Kamala Harris posted a photo on Air Force Two – in which she appears with blank pieces of paper and unplugged headphones (maybe she was using her earrings?) to ‘respond’ to the disaster.

And on Monday, President Biden read a teleprompter response to the disaster, claiming that he’ll visit the affected areas on Wednesday.

Trump, meanwhile, is in Georgia to help support victims and their families… “We are now heading to Valdosta, Georgia, in order to pay my respects and bring lots of relief material, including fuel, equipment, water, and other things, to the State,” Trump posted to X, adding “I was also going to stop into North Carolina, which has really been hit hard. I have a lot of supplies ready for them, but access and communication is now restricted, and we want to make sure that Local Emergency Management is able to focus on helping the people most affected, and not being concerned with me.”

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No Supreme Court and no Constitution. That’s the idea.

• Democrats May ‘Destroy’ US Constitution If They Win Elections – Musk (Sp.)

US entrepreneur Elon Musk said that he considers Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry’s statement that the US Constitution prevents fighting “disinformation” to be a threat to the country’s main law, adding that the Democratic Party will “destroy” the constitution of the US if they win the November 5 elections. Kerry expressed his concern earlier that the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which guarantees freedom of speech, poses an obstacle to fighting “disinformation” on social media. The envoy also stated that the Democrats need to win elections in order to have the opportunity to make changes without precising the particular changes.

One of X users posted a screenshot of the headline of an article about Kerry’s speech and said that if the Democrats won, it would be the last elections. “And they will destroy the Constitution,” Musk added on X, reposting the publication. The US presidential election will be held on November 5. The incumbent vice president, Kamala Harris, a Democrat, and former US President Donald Trump, a Republican, are both running for the country’s top job.

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Is this an echo?: “..some Democrats face accusations of potentially refusing to certify the results should Trump win the presidency.”

• MTG Warns ‘Most Dangerous Phase’ in 2024 Election Has Begun (HUSA)

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene issued a stark warning on Saturday about “the most dangerous phase” of the 2024 presidential election. With President Donald Trump leading Vice President Kamala Harris in several polls, Greene suggested that Democrats “will do anything to stop him,” later emphasizing, “Anything.” In a grim post on X, Greene wrote, “The momentum shift has happened and Trump is leading and his support is rapidly accelerating.” She then added, “They’ve already been trying to put him in prison and literally assassinate him.” Greene then ominously questioned, “What comes next?” hinting at further “assassination attempts” or potential efforts to “delay the election.” She urged Americans to be “prepared” for the future. Greene’s comments come just two weeks after Trump survived a second assassination attempt by Ryan Routh, a Democratic voter and donor.

This follows an earlier shooting on July 13 at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where Trump narrowly escaped the bullets of gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks, a Democrat donor. Beyond assassination attempts, Democrats had previously tried to bar Trump from appearing on primary ballots, claiming he was unqualified over his alleged role in what they claimed was an insurrection on Jan. 6. The Supreme Court had to intervene earlier this year, ruling that Trump remained eligible. Meanwhile, Trump faces criminal cases on several fronts. Special Counsel Jack Smith, appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland, indicted Trump over Jan. 6 and the dispute over classified documents with the National Archives. The Supreme Court intervened again in the Jan. 6 case, ruling that Trump enjoys presidential immunity for acts carried out while in office. In a separate ruling, Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the documents case, declaring Smith’s appointment unconstitutional.

On the civil side, New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a lawsuit against the Trump Organization, accusing Trump of inflating property values to secure generous loans. A New York appeals court is currently reviewing the case. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has also indicted Trump on charges related to falsified business records tied to payments made to Michael Cohen. This case has drawn criticism, even from some Democratic legal scholars. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis—a Democrat who came under fire for holding an affair with the prosecutor she hired to go after Trump—accused Trump of illegally questioning the results of the 2020 election in Georgia. During his tenure as president, Trump was impeached twice by Democrats, an effort they planned since he was first inaugurated. Now, with the 2024 election approaching, some Democrats face accusations of potentially refusing to certify the results should Trump win the presidency.

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“..the “danger” Mr. Trump poses is to them personally and directly, certainly not to “our democracy,” their phony war-cry..”

• Heroes and Villains (Kunstler)

Just yesterday, former Attorney General Eric Holder, speaking of Mr. Trump returning to office, told MSNBC’s Jen Psaki: “They will use the mechanisms of the DOJ to go after people who are their political foes. This is something that has never really happened in the history of this republic.” Mr. Holder may have been born at night, but probably not the night before last. Apparently, he has not noticed the uses to which current AG Merrick Garland has put “Joe Biden’s” DOJ, bending heaven, earth, and the law to put Mr. Trump behind bars and bankrupt him — not to mention the scores of Trump-adjacent lawyers prosecuted in cockamamie cases based on their efforts to pursue ballot fraud in the 2020 elections.

Hillary Clinton was similarly on-point last week with Margaret Hoover on PBS’s Firing Line, declaring: “The press needs a consistent narrative about the danger that Trump poses.” Of course, she asserts this incessantly — and the media parrots her — without ever specifying what that danger is. So, I will tell you: Hillary Clinton and hundreds of Democratic Party affiliated officials past and present fear that they will be subjected to legal process in crimes ranging all the way up to treason for their conduct the past decade, including the mass murder and injury of millions with their Covid policy, their deliberate abetting of millions crossing the border illegally, their use of several government agencies to abridge the First Amendment, their abuse of DOJ and FBI power in malicious prosecutions, their shell games funneling taxpayers’ money to hundreds of crony NGOs, and their use of Ukraine as a money laundry for the entire Beltway criminal cartel. Surely even more than that.

It was the last item on that list that prompted impeachment No. 1 of Mr. Trump, who came uncomfortably close to inquiring about it in that fateful 2019 phone call to President Zelensky. And, of course, it was exactly in that maw of corruption that the Biden family helped itself to millions of grifted dollars while Joe was out-of-office, and his bagman-crackhead son gamboled about the globe shaking loose more millions from exotic money-trees wherever he landed. All of which is to say that the “danger” Mr. Trump poses is to them personally and directly, certainly not to “our democracy,” their phony war-cry. So, now you know.

Many of these players have gone to ground the past year or more. You don’t hear much these days from the likes of Jim Comey, John Brennan, Jim Clapper, Andy McCabe, Tony Fauci, Peter Hotez, and many more who were so active shooting their mouths off on cable news after the blob managed to install “Joe Biden” as its “beard” in the Oval Office. Now, they all lie low in terror as the immense battery of lawfare against Mr. Trump failed spectacularly to stop him from running again, and the first two attempts on his life went awry. Meanwhile, Garland, Mayorkas, Christopher Wray, remain in the trenches, reduced to stonewalling every and all efforts to get straight answers out of them as to how badly they are running things. And out in front of all of them you have their supposed protector, Kamala Harris, the most feckless candidate imaginable. No wonder they’re so desperate.

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“How do you tether the amount that was assessed by [Engoron] to the harm that was caused here where the parties left these transactions happy?”

• Letitia James May be Winning the Lawfare but Losing the War (Turley)

In an age of lawfare, New York Attorney General Letitia James has always embraced the total war option. Her very appeal has been her willingness to use any means against political opponents. James first ran for her office by pledging to bag Donald Trump on something, anything. She did not specify the violation, only that she would deliver the ultimate trophy kill for Democratic voters. James follows the view of what Prussian General Carl von Clausewitz said about war, law is merely politics “by other means.” Yet, the political success of James in weaponizing her office has been in stark contrast with her legal setbacks in courts. James earlier sought to use her office to disband the National Rifle Association, the most powerful gun rights organization in the country, due to self-dealing and corruption of executives. James notably did not target liberal groups accused of similar violations. The ridiculous effort to disband the NRA collapsed in court.

It did not matter. James knew that such efforts were performative and that New York voters did not care if such attacks failed. She will continue to win the lawfare battles, even if she loses the war. This week, two of James’s best-known campaigns were struggling in court. James is best known for her fraud case against Trump, in which she secured a $464 million fine and a ban on Trump from the New York real estate business for three years. That penalty, which has now risen to $489 million with interest, was in a case where no one had lost a dime due to the alleged inaccurate property valuations in bank loans secured by the Trump organization. Not only where the banks fully paid on the loans and made considerable profits, but they wanted to make additional loans to the Trump organization. In appellate arguments this week, James’s office faced openly skeptical justices who raised the very arguments that some of us have made for years about the ludicrous fine imposed by Judge Arthur Engoron.

Justice David Friedman noted that this law “is supposed to protect the market and the consumers — I don’t see it here.” His colleague Justice Peter Moulton told her office “The immense penalty in this case is troubling” and added, “How do you tether the amount that was assessed by [Engoron] to the harm that was caused here where the parties left these transactions happy?” The answer, of course, is the case was never about markets. It was about politics. The fact that the banks were “happy” is immaterial. Happiness in New York is a political, not legal calculus. The justices did not rule this week, but an opinion could be issued within a month. In the same week, James faced a stinging defeat in another popular cause. James had targeted pro-life organizations for spreading supposed “disinformation” in not just opposing the use of mifepristone (the abortion pill used in the majority of abortions in the United States), but in advocating the use of reversal procedures if mothers change their minds before taking the second drug in the treatment regimen.

Critics charge that, while there are some studies showing successful reversal cases, the treatment remains unproven and unapproved. It remains an intense debate. James, however, wanted to end the debate. She targeted pregnancy centers and was then sued by two pro-life ministries, Summit Life Outreach Center and the Evergreen Association. Judge John Sinatra Jr. blocked James‘s crackdown as a denial of free speech. Notably, these centers were not profiting by sharing this information or advocating such reversal treatment. James merely declared that people advocating such reversal treatments are engaged in “spreading dangerous misinformation by advertising…without any medical and scientific proof.” It is a familiar rationale on the left and discussed in my latest book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”

It is the same rationale that led to the banning and blacklisting of experts during the pandemic for views that have now been vindicated on the efficacy of masks and other issues. They were silenced by those who declared their viewpoints as dangerously unproven or unapproved, but who were themselves wrong.

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Has anyone blamed Trump yet?

• US Port Strike Could Begin Tuesday (ZH)

Time is running out for the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) and the US Maritime Alliance (USMX)—a coalition of port operators and carriers—to form a new labor contract as the existing one expires at midnight. A no-deal scenario would mean thousands of longshoremen at three dozen facilities across 14 Gulf and East Coast ports would begin striking at 12:01 am EST. Tuesday would mark the beginning of a major supply chain storm (inflation surge) in a no-deal scenario. Goldman analyst explained last week that a walkout by ILA members would jeopardize $5 billion in daily international trade coming into the Gulf and East Coast ports.

Goldman’s Jordan Alliger told clients, “Upwards of $4.9bn per day is at risk in international trade along the East and Gulf coasts, along with the potential for supply chains to likely become less fluid due to emergent congestion, which in turn could result in a re-emergence of transport price inflation.” “The biggest wild card in the presidential election that nobody’s talking about? The looming port strike that could shut down all East and Gulf Coast ports just 36 days before the election,” Flexport CEO Ryan Petersen wrote on X earlier this month. On Monday morning, with just a little over half the day left, a team of Goldman analysts led by Brooke Roach provided clients with the “current state of the supply chain and freight environment for the retail industry.”

What is happening: The International Longshoreman Association and US Maritime Alliance contract is set to expire on September 30th. Our US transports analyst, Jordan Alliger, detailed the potential ramifications should labor disruption arise at East / Gulf Coast Ports in this note published on 9/26. While we take no view on the likelihood of any outcome, our team has fielded an increased number of investor queries focused on potential disruption to US retail as a result of potential congestion, which could come at a critical shipping period for US retailers ahead of the holidays.

Comments from retail associations: The American Apparel and Footwear Association estimates that 53% of all US apparel, footwear, and accessories imports are routed through the East and Gulf Coast ports. The AAFA also noted risk from East Coast / Gulf port disruption to impact West Coast port operations, creating strains/delays across the supply chain. Separately, the Retail Industry Leaders Association has also stated that while retailers have activated contingency plans to mitigate potential effects of work disruption, it becomes harder to mitigate the longer a work stoppage goes on.

Our view on potential impact: We surveyed our hardlines and softlines coverage universe to assess exposure, and we found the majority of companies who responded pointed to the following: (1) A higher rate of reliance on West Coast ports for their primarily Asia-sourced product; (2) Proactive rerouting and other plans ahead of potential disruption to ensure critical product arrives on-time for holiday; (3) Other contingency plans in place, including airfreight for select items. Many companies indicated they were already planning for higher freight expense in 2H due to a variety of risk factors, with port contract negotiations one factor alongside ongoing Red Sea disruption and higher rates on spot product. That said, we note that the magnitude of potential disruption is likely a function of the length of any work disruption and subsequent port congestion (which could likely impact both West and East Coast ports). Historically, a longer period of congestion for retailers has typically been associated with a higher risk of delayed product arrival, which can be a headwind to full-price sales for holiday or seasonal items.

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“Last week we came closer to a nuclear conflict between the US and Russia than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Today we are even closer.”

• Life, Pre-empted (Scott Ritter)

What would you do to save Democracy? To save America? To save the world? How will you vote in November? If you’re not thinking about the end of the world by now, you’re either braindead or stuck in some remote corner of the world, totally removed from access to news. Last week we came closer to a nuclear conflict between the US and Russia than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Today we are even closer. Most scenarios being bandied about in the western mainstream media that involve a nuclear conflict between Russia and the United States have Russia initiating the exchange by using nuclear weapons against Ukraine in response to deteriorating military, economic, and/or political conditions brought on by the US and NATO successfully leveraging Ukraine as a proxy to achieve the strategic defeat of Russia. Understand, this is what both Ukraine and the Biden administration mean when they speak of Ukraine “winning the war.”

This is a continuation of the policy objective set forth by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in April 2022, “to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine,” meaning that Russia should “not have the capability to very quickly reproduce” the forces and equipment that it loses in Ukraine. This policy has failed; Russia has absorbed four new territories—Kherson, Zaporizhia, Donetsk and Lugansk—into the Russian Federation, and the Russian defense industry has not only replaced losses sustained in the Ukrainian conflict, but is currently arming and equipping an additional 600,000 troops that have been added to the Russian military since February 2022. It is the United States and its NATO allies that find themselves on their back feet, with Europe facing economic hardship as a result of the extreme blowback that has transpired because of its sanctioning of Russian energy, and the United States watching helplessly as Russia, together with China, turns the once passive BRICS economic forum into a geopolitical juggernaut capable of challenging and surpassing the US-led G7 as the world’s most influential non-governmental organization.

As a result of this abysmal failure, policymakers in both the US and Europe are undertaking increasingly brazen acts of escalation designed to bring Russia to the breaking point, all premised on the assumption that all so-called “red lines” established by Russia regarding escalation are illusionary—Russia, they believe, is bluffing. And if Russia is not bluffing? Then, the western-generated scenario paints an apocalyptic picture which has a weak, defeated Russia using nuclear weapons against Ukraine in a last, desperate act of vengeance. According to this scenario, which the US and NATO not only war-gamed out but made ready to implement when these entities imagined that Russia was preparing to employ nuclear weapons back in late 2022-early 2023, the US and NATO would launch a devastating response against Russian targets deep inside Russia designed to punitively degrade Russian command and control, logistics, and warfighting capacity.

This would be done using conventional weapons. If Russia opted to retaliate against NATO targets, then the US would have to make a decision—continue to climb the escalation ladder, matching Russia punch for punch until one side became exhausted, or preemptively using nuclear weapons as a means of escalating to de-escalate—launch a limited nuclear strike using low-yield nuclear weapons in hopes that Russia would back down out of fear of what would come next—a general nuclear war. The Pentagon has integrated such a scenario into the range of nuclear pre-emption options available to the President of the United States. Indeed, in early 2020 US Strategic Command conducted an exercise where the Secretary of Defense gave the launch instructions for a US Ohio class submarine to launch a Trident missile carrying W-76-2 low yield nuclear warheads against a Russian target in a scenario involving Russian aggression against the Baltics in which Russia used a tactical nuclear weapon to strike a NATO target.

The insanity of this scenario is that it ignores published Russian nuclear doctrine, which holds that Russia will respond with the full power of its strategic nuclear arsenal in the case of a nuclear attack against Russian soil. Once again, US nuclear war planners believe that Russia is bluffing.

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“..as if trying to outdo his infamous German colleague Annalena ‘360 Degrees of Anti-Diplomacy’ Baerbock..”

• Britain Goes Full Orwell Accusing Putin of Imperialism (Amar)

There are intriguing and disappointing – though not surprising – continuities between Great Britain under the conservative Tories and the current iteration under a hardly less rightwing version of the Labour party. Crony corruption scandals that reveal the British political elite as comically greedy and petty are already erupting again. Ordinary people still face an unforgiving search for “austerity”; indeed, given recent Labour moves on the budget, for instance on the winter fuel allowance, affecting over ten million frequently vulnerable pensioners, the so-called “Left” is now outdoing the Right in cruelty toward the common man and woman. And the fairly new prime minister, Keir Starmer, is already as deeply unpopular as his predecessor Rishi Sunak was when he called the elections that predictably finished him off.

And then there is foreign policy. There as well, it is hard to spot a difference. It is true, we have just learned that, once, former Tory Prime Minister Boris Johnson was seriously considering an “aquatic raid” (say that with a Churchill growl, please) on the Netherlands, a NATO ally, to seize Covid vaccines. We have not yet heard of similarly exotic plots laid by Starmer. But otherwise, same old, same old. The UK elite remains fatally addicted to a blind loyalty toward its special relationship with the US that sometimes could make even the Germans blanch with envy. And they know a thing or two about absolute submission.

London also won’t let go of its position as Europe’s hottest cheerleader for the proxy war against Russia via Ukraine, at least outside the Baltics. Officially, the British government is still promoting the idea of co-launching Western-supplied missiles from Ukraine deep into Russia. Never mind that Moscow has made it clear that it will consider such a policy as bringing all of NATO and Russia into direct military conflict – not (barely) indirect as up until now. Moreover, the Russian leadership has also put the West on notice that cut-out games won’t work. The core point about its recent revision of Russia’s nuclear doctrine is that not only the ostentatious direct attacker state but its supporters as well are fair game – as they should be – for retaliation.

There may well be an element of fairly cheap theater in London’s posturing as a missile street tough. Think of a dog madly barking behind a closed gate, precisely because it knows the gate is closed and it won’t have to act on its ferocious threats. The role of the gate is played by Washington, which fails to allow the brilliant British-Ukrainian Armageddon-Come-and-Get-Us plan to go ahead, as the Telegraph has just bemoaned. How convenient: We’d be (insanely) brave, really, if only we didn’t have to be so obedient, too. Yet, at least as far as stentorian rhetoric is concerned, the UK’s government will certainly not be outdone. The problem with all the big talk, though, is that it can easily veer off into declarations so unusually hyperbolic and absurd that they backfire. Think of this current British mood as the very opposite of that fine understatement for which the island’s culture used to be famous.

An example of this kind of self-defeating bombast was recently delivered by Foreign Secretary David Lammy. Trying to reach an international audience, especially in a Global South that has long given up on the West, Lammy launched into a rant – there really is no other word – about Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin. The whole thing was rather cringe, as if trying to outdo his infamous German colleague Annalena ‘360 Degrees of Anti-Diplomacy’ Baerbock in demeaning his own office. Lammy, for instance, apparently felt no shame denouncing Moscow’s “disinformation” – that, from one of the West’s worst deniers and enablers of Israel’s many crimes, including its Gaza genocide and devastation of Lebanon. Frankly Russia, at this point: just wear it with pride.

But the perhaps most stunningly grotesque moment occurred when Lammy sought to make opportunistic use of the horrific history of modern slavery. “As a black man,” he stated, “whose ancestors were taken in chains from Africa, at the barrel of a gun to be enslaved, whose ancestors rose up and fought in a great rebellion of the enslaved” he had a special knack for recognizing “imperialism.” By that he meant, of course, Russian imperialism. Since then, be assured, there has been much head scratching, perhaps especially in that Global South that Lammy tried so desperately to impress with his rhetorical kamikaze attack. Was not the British – cough, cough – Empire (as in imperialism) one of the worst participants in the Atlantic slave trade that produced 10 to 12 million Black victims?

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“In 2022, the most recent year for which full data is available, 14 universities received at least — and brace yourself for this — $100 million in Pentagon funding..”

• The Pentagon Goes to School (Hartung)

The divestment campaigns launched last spring by students protesting Israel’s mass slaughter in Gaza brought the issue of the militarization of American higher education back into the spotlight. Of course, financial ties between the Pentagon and American universities are nothing new. As Stuart Leslie has pointed out in his seminal book on the topic, The Cold War and American Science, “In the decade following World War II, the Department of Defense (DOD) became the biggest patron of American science.” Admittedly, as civilian institutions like the National Institutes of Health grew larger, the Pentagon’s share of federal research and development did decline, but it still remained a source of billions of dollars in funding for university research. And now, Pentagon-funded research is once again on the rise, driven by the DOD’s recent focus on developing new technologies like weapons driven by artificial intelligence (AI).

Combine that with an intensifying drive to recruit engineering graduates and the forging of partnerships between professors and weapons firms and you have a situation in which many talented technical types could spend their entire careers serving the needs of the warfare state. The only way to head off such a Brave New World would be greater public pushback against the military conquest (so to speak) of America’s research and security agendas, in part through resistance by scientists and engineers whose skills are so essential to building the next generation of high-tech weaponry. Yes, the Pentagon’s funding of universities is indeed rising once again and it goes well beyond the usual suspects like MIT or Johns Hopkins University. In 2022, the most recent year for which full data is available, 14 universities received at least — and brace yourself for this — $100 million in Pentagon funding, from Johns Hopkins’s astonishing $1.4 billion (no, that is not a typo!) to Colorado State’s impressive $100 million.

And here’s a surprise: two of the universities with the most extensive connections to our weaponry of the future are in Texas: the University of Texas at Austin (UT-Austin) and Texas A&M. In 2020, Texas Governor Greg Abbott and former Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy appeared onstage at a UT-Austin ceremony to commemorate the creation of a robotics lab there, part of a new partnership between the Army Futures Command and the school. “This is ground zero for us in our research for the weapons systems we’re going to develop for decades to come,” said McCarthy. Not to be outdone, Texas A&M is quietly becoming the Pentagon’s base for research on hypersonics — weapons expected to travel five times the speed of sound. Equipped with a kilometer-long tunnel for testing hypersonic missiles, that school’s University Consortium for Applied Hypersonics is explicitly dedicated to outpacing America’s global rivals in the development of that next generation military technology.

Texas A&M is also part of the team that runs the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the (in)famous New Mexico facility where the first nuclear weapons were developed and tested as part of the Manhattan Project under the direction of Robert Oppenheimer. Other major players include Carnegie Mellon University, a center for Army research on the applications of AI, and Stanford University, which serves as a feeder to California’s Silicon Valley firms of all types. That school also runs the Technology Transfer for Defense (TT4D) Program aimed at transitioning academic technologies from the lab to the marketplace and exploring the potential military applications of emerging technology products. In addition, the Pentagon is working aggressively to bring new universities into the fold. In January 2023, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced the creation of a defense-funded research center at Howard University, the first of its kind at a historically black college.

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Power struggle.

• Zelensky Ready To Fire Spy Chief – Media (RT)

Ukrainian military intelligence chief Kirill Budanov could soon be forced to resign, and his successor is likely to have already been chosen, the New Voice (NV) news site reported on Sunday, citing a law enforcement agency source. Rumors of Budanov’s possible dismissal began to circulate shortly after Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky sacked half of the cabinet in early September. The purge included then Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba and the Deputy Prime Minister for European Integration Olga Stefanishina. It has also been also reported that there have been “serious tensions” between Budanov, the head of the Main Directorate of Intelligence (HUR), and Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andrey Yermak – described by The Times as the de facto ruler of Ukraine – which could be a factor in his potential removal.

Commenting on the rumors that Budanov will be fired, the NV’s source said that this “option exists.” However, the source denied reports that the intelligence chief would follow Ukraine’s former top general, Valery Zaluzhny, by being appointed as an ambassador abroad. According to the source, the head of the Foreign Intelligence Service, Oleg Ivashchenko, is likely to succeed Budanov. There have been no official statements from the HUR so far. Budanov was appointed as military intelligence chief in 2020, and previously served as deputy director of the Department of Foreign Intelligence. While it is typical of Zelensky to conduct purges after battlefield setbacks, some view the recent mass firing of ministers as an attempt by Yermak to concentrate power.

A member of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on National Security, Sergey Rakhmanin, told the NV last week that the talks about Budanov’s possible dismissal were “precisely a sign” that his relationship with Yermak had deteriorated. “As a rule, as soon as rumors start to appear that someone might leave their position, confirmation soon follows that, for one reason or another, either the person has quarreled with the head of the office or their relationship has worsened,” he added.

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“..unlike in the Classical World, Trump seems to have no aristocracy behind him, following in his train. Will this work? How will it turn out?”

• Will The Suffocating Cage of Leviathan Be Avoided? (Alastair Crooke)

As the ousted ‘Emperor’, Biden made his ‘final walk’ from the dias at the UN; he was not the Emperor of yore, brimming with the bravura that the U.S. is back, and ‘I’m running the world’. For as the Middle East explodes, and the Ukrainian bubble deflates, the White House continues to urge restraint on all parties to dial back the violence. But no one is listening. With his era stumbling to an inglorious close, Biden may have loved the idea of pulling the levers of coercive soft-power influence, only subsequently to discover that the wires connecting those levers to the real-world railway ‘points’ were gone. Influence had flown; imperial coercion increasingly was met with disdain. Diplomacy had failed across the board. So what does today’s surge in turmoil, war in the Middle East, and Ukraine collapsing, signal for the future – as seen from the long arc of history (and following the lead of Mike Vlahos and John Batchelor’s Ancient world analogy)?

A stumbling ‘Emperor’ has been overthrown. There is no real crown prince; only an ‘adopted daughter’. It is deliberate. The Power-oligarchy (the ‘Senate’, if we follow the Ancient analogy), seems indifferent to the lacuna. It is intent to rule, as the Washington Post reports – outing the Oligarchic thinking: rule via a consensus of ‘democracy-supporting’ institutions as a kind of ‘permanent secretariat’ (a notion that has been kicking around since the 2016 election ‘loss’.) Yet nonetheless, there is an imperial succession issue. Every Empire needs an Emperor, beyond an Aristocracy/Senate, because the factious powerful in society need to have some pillar to which they can resort for settling their internecine feuds. Every ‘Empire’ needs too, a common substantive culture to make strong decisions of general interest.

In the European past there were two: Catholicism and the Enlightenment. They clashed. And both now have been marginalized for the benefit of libertarian arbitrariness, intended to free the individual from all constraints of communal norms. Post-modern culture makes people “mad because individual freedom no longer accepts objective truth”. The virtual world kills the sense of the real – to replace it with imagined reality. The art of governing becomes that of administering an imposed pretence; one which people can clearly observe about them is not real, yet they are obliged to pretend that ‘narrative’ is the objective real. This tension leads to existential insecurity and exploding reports of people in poor mental health.

Yet by contrast, in most places, David Brooks writes, “people are formed within morally cohesive communities. They derive a sense of belonging and solidarity from shared moral values. Their lives have meaning and purpose because they see themselves living in a universal moral order with permanent standards of right and wrong, within family structures that have stood the test of time, with shared understandings of, say, male and female”. Fiona Hill, formerly of a member of the U.S. National Security Council, propounds the counter-view: that since U.S. interests, described mostly as ‘threats’ which are long term, “the structures to address those threats must also be long-term, too”. (She illustrates the point by quoting ‘the long-term threat from Russia’). Hill is saying ‘the Aristocracy’ will rule long-term, via institutionalised, ‘inter-agency’ world order prescription.

This then, is the Aristocracy’s solution to the Imperial succession lacuna: Leviathan. “Leviathan – whose promise and project is straight forward – cancel all powers except one, which will be universal and absolute”. The implicit aim is to ‘Trump-proof’ policy prescriptions. This implicit objective however, underlines its flaw. There will be no participation. People will not participate; nor do they feel that they participate – because they don’t. The mood amongst the World Order back-room strategists is that selecting political candidates by voting has become ‘a bug’ and is no longer a feature. Voters do not know, let alone grasp, the import of the deep-seated policy structures on which U.S. hegemony is built. Participation is a glitch. It is at such a point in history that a ‘Big Man’ often emerges into the arena; one who challenges the emperor. The ‘Big Man’ is perceived to speak for the people, whose participation in political life has been dulled out, and who are angry. The Big Man always tells this betrayal story well.

The ‘Big Man’ is happening today, mainly because the traditional practice of swapping out of one ruling entity (party) for the other, to produce a look-alike (Uniparty) leader, has ruptured. It was engineered as if a card trick, with the spectator (the voter) always ‘happening’ to choose the ‘right card’ – the very card that the magician always intended would be chosen. Magic! And all the cards selected inevitably turn-out to be from the same suite! This card trick became obvious in recent months. Everyone could see its mechanics. Trump is not the ‘right card’, in the view of the U.S. power-élites; the Joker should have been pulled from the pack. What is unusual about today’s emergence of the ‘Big Man’, however, is that unlike in the Classical World, Trump seems to have no aristocracy behind him, following in his train. Will this work? How will it turn out?

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Not heard from for 6 years.

• The End of the Skripals (Helmer)

And so it has also come to pass — more uniquely than ever before in English legal history, more than even Dickens can have imagined — that a retired English judge named Anthony Hughes – titled Lord Hughes of Ombersley — has put on public display his personal combination of all three — Bumble, Bumbledom, and the law as an ass. Hughes did this in a five-page ruling he issued on September 23. Hughes is directing the secret inquiry into two events on the British Government’s road to war against Russia in the Ukraine — the alleged Russian Novichok poisoning of Dawn Sturgess of June 2018, following the alleged Russian Novichok attack on Sergei and Yulia Skripal of March 2018. Sturgess died; the Skripals survived. The book tells the full story.

Hughes has ruled the Skripals will not and must not be called to give evidence, neither in open court, nor by remote videolink, nor in tape-recorded voice, nor even in the written transcript of what English police claim the Skripals said under questioning in 2018. The two survivors of the only Russian Novichok poisoning ever alleged to have occurred outside Russia will not now be subjected to cross-examination or to any form of forensic questioning that is the requirement of the English criminal law, nor to their physical appearance in court that is their fundamental right under the English legal doctrine of habeas corpus. “I have concluded that neither Sergei nor Yulia Skripal will be called to give oral evidence,” Hughes has announced. “I have no doubt that the public exposure which would follow these witnesses being called would be intrusive and uncomfortable and would risk disrupting both their daily personal and family lives and those of people connected to them in many different ways…

“The overwhelming risk, which quite alters the position in the present case, is of physical attack on one or both of the Skripals. There is every reason to be satisfied that an attack similar to that which appears to have taken place in 2018 remains a real risk, either at the hands of persons with the same interest as the 2018 attackers, or via others interested in supporting the same supposed aim, if either Sergei or Yulia can be identified and their current whereabouts discovered.” Hughes has come to judgement here — days before he commences what he calls open proceedings — on what the entire process of his inquiry has yet to substantiate in evidence and to decide. Hughes has ruled that the Russian state, through its agents, attacked and attempted to kill the Skripals, and aim to do so again if Hughes lets the Skripals appear before him in any form at all.

Verifiable evidence of what the Skripals themselves believe – if they are alive — is to be substantiated only by their police guards. It is this police and MI6 record – compiled in the absence of lawyers representing the Skripals — which Hughes has now ruled to accept in violation of all the British rules of the admissibility of evidence.

“Having considered the representations of those responsible for their present security,” Hughes has judged, “I am more than satisfied that it would simply not be possible to maintain proper security if either of them were to be called to give evidence. That would be so whether they gave evidence from an open witness box, or by means of some electronic link from a remote room. In either case their present integrated security arrangements could not be maintained consistently with the necessity of being brought to a suitable location which is itself secure and which has an electronic link which is immune to interception. Moreover, if they were to be seen, or their voices heard, there could be no proper control of the likelihood that people who may have dealings with them (however casual or innocent) would recognise them and that that recognition would become more widely known, whether through social or other media or otherwise.”

As Bumble said, “if the law says that, the law is a ass.”

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“..the Superfluous man is characterised also by a distinguishing spiritual condition: lack of a purpose in life in the form of a higher ideal.”

• Pavel Durov, The Superfluous Man (Karganovic)

Telegram owner Pavel Durov’s detention in Paris over a month ago provoked a flurry of attention and animated comments. But soon thereafter the case strangely vanished from the radar screen. The high profile affair, which initially stirred enormous public interest on account of its privacy and freedom of expression ramifications, suddenly went cold after the French authorities published a lengthy list of grave criminal charges against Durov and released him provisionally on a 5-million- euro bail. In Paris, where Durov presumably was staying whilst waiting for the resolution of his case, not even the paparazzi exhibited much interest in catching up with him.

The unusual silence was finally broken the other day with an announcement confirming what the savvier observers had suspected all along. Behind the scene intense negotiations between the Telegram owner and the prosecutors were taking place and a deal had finally been reached. It has now been disclosed that contrary to Durov’s initial assurances that he would never betray the trust of his platform users or renege on his commitment to freedom of expression, he has in fact conceded to the authorities key demand and will share data about his users with one or more of the interested governments.

This is an extraordinary but not wholly unexpected reversal. Since Telegram has nearly a billion users world-wide, it will have a significant impact on privacy in communications. But it is not strange at all if it is understood not as an individual aberration but as the modernised expression of the Russian literary archetype, the Superfluous man. What are the main characteristics of this archetype and how do they line up with what Pavel Durov has revealed about himself? How does it interface with the segment of Russian society that Durov epitomises, which consists predominantly of ambitious young people who look to an imaginary concept of “the West” as the model to emulate, and which emerged after the demise of the Soviet Union?

Literary critics define the Superfluous man as a talented and capable individual who does not care much for social norms and marches to the beat of his own drum. That is Pavel Durov to a T. Besides a disregard for the values of his society, the Superfluous man may also be afflicted with such traits as cynicism and existential boredom. Perhaps, but we do not know Durov personally well enough to say whether that is the case. The Superfluous man is typically indifferent or unsympathetic to the concerns of the society that surrounds him, he may even scoff at them, and he will often use the resources at his disposal to act in furtherance of his own comfort and security. He can be highly intelligent and capable, even engaging, but at bottom he is self-absorbed and narcissistic and shows little interest in being charitable or using his position for the sake of some greater good. Here we see glimpses of Durov once again. The most altruistic act he is known to have done was to anonymously share his semen with about a hundred women in the expectation that this will result in the conception of genetically superior little geniuses like himself.

Beyond the particular traits that may define him, the Superfluous man is characterised also by a distinguishing spiritual condition: lack of a purpose in life in the form of a higher ideal.

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“Let’s bet that at the next dinner in town, Mr Macron won’t snub him again…”

• The Case Of Pavel Durov Ends On A French Letter With A Loophole (Helmer)

A plea bargain for the Russian Telegram owner Pavel Durov has been arranged in Paris with President Emmanuel Macron by their common friend, Xavier Niel, a French internet billionaire with a history of his own internet sex business, including paedophilia, which also ended in a plea bargain with all charges dropped. Durov issued his announcement of changes in Telegram’s terms of internet service and user privacy on September 23. “We’ve made it clear that the IP addresses and phone numbers of those who violate our rules can be disclosed to relevant authorities in response to valid legal requests. These measures should discourage criminals. Telegram Search is meant for finding friends and discovering news, not for promoting illegal goods.” Durov claimed that Telegram’s search feature “has been abused by people who violated our terms of service to sell illegal goods.

Over the past few weeks [his staff had used artificial intelligence to ensure that] all the problematic content we identified in Search is no longer accessible. We won’t let bad actors jeopardise the integrity of our platform for almost a billion users.” Four days later on September 27 in an interview on a television channel owned by one of Niel’s business partners, he claimed the credit for supporting Durov after Durov had telephoned him for help. Niel had come to the rescue, he explained, because Durov was his “copain”. “First of all, for me he didn’t cross the line because he wasn’t convicted. What I know is that, once you have been in prison for having had legal problems, everyone disappears. Everyone disappears in this setting. Me, when I have a buddy [copain — chum, mate, pal, friend] who is in difficulty and who makes a phone call to me and well, here I am, here I am.”

Niel has not disclosed the extent of the behind-the-scenes discussions held with Macron, who has revealed his own special interest in the case after it was initiated, not by the French internet regulators or prosecutors, but by the foreign intelligence agency, Direction générale de la Sécurité extérieure (DGSE). [..] In his regular Antipresse publication, Slobodan Despot writes: Between buddies. A slimy epilogue to the Parisian adventures of the Chevalier du Rove (see Antipresse 457 and Antipresse 458). The founder of Telegram has finally given in after being held in police custody. His platform will now provide information such as the IP address and telephone number of users suspected of criminal activity, if required by the courts. As we recall, he had refused the same service to his home country, but it is true that Russia did not have the idea of grilling him in prison.

On the evening of his arrest, Pavel Durov had given priority to one person: Xavier Niel. The French oligarch has confessed to having come to the aid of his ‘buddy in trouble’. He may well have taught him how to climb above all those pesky prosecutors. Look at his own platform, Free, which may have hosted half the paedophile files on the net for years, with impunity. To do this, of course, it helps to become buddies with the President of the Republic. That’s what the Chevalier du Rove tried to do the other Saturday [August 24], before being arrested. Let’s bet that at the next dinner in town, Mr Macron won’t snub him again…

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Climate scam

 

 

Seal
https://twitter.com/i/status/1840515735551930387

 

 

Ball
https://twitter.com/i/status/1840700694115803260

 

 

Statue
https://twitter.com/i/status/1840563055094104181

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle June 23 2024

Jun 232024
 
 June 23, 2024  Posted by at 9:14 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  49 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Weeping woman 1883

 

• Biden May Decline Nomination If He Does Poorly in June 27 Debate – Hersh (Sp.)
• A New Multipolar Security System Based On ‘Pax Rossiya’ (SCF)
• Is Washington Trying To Dump The Ukraine War Into The EU’s Lap? (Jay)
• The Only Way to End Confrontation Between Russia and the West (Lukyanov)
• The Ukrainian Border War Folly (David Stockman)
• Tens of Thousands of Ukrainians Hiding From Draft Officers – NYT (TASS)
• Belgium Warns Against Seizing Russian Money (RT)
• White Christians Being Replaced In Europe – Orban (RT)
• Sunak Accuses Farage Of Appeasing Putin (BBC)
• Wikipedia’s Political Bias Spreading To AI (RT)
• The Supreme Court Swatted Down Hunter Biden’s Hail Mary Pass (Turley)
• Common Sense And Memes Are Viruses To The New World Order (Lynn)
• Bibi Is Needy (DeMartino)
• UK Invents Phantom Skripals To Refuse To Testify In Novichok Inquiry (Helmer)

 

 

 

 

Cuomo Maher
https://twitter.com/i/status/1804499826546983385

 

 

Comer
https://twitter.com/i/status/1804207426297561197

 

 

Tucker J6

Jan 6
https://twitter.com/i/status/1804376332077535479

 

 

Judge Judy

 

 

Tesla

 

 

 

 

 

 

“..Biden is going to need to match the intensity he demonstrated at his State of the Union address in March if he wants to stay in the race, Hersh said..”

• Biden May Decline Nomination If He Does Poorly in June 27 Debate – Hersh (Sp.)

Democrats are discussing plans to have President Joe Biden decline the Democratic presidential nomination if he has a bad showing at the upcoming presidential debate on June 27, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported on Friday, citing a longtime friend of the US president. Hersh reported that there is a serious concern among the Democratic Party leadership and major Democratic donors about Biden’s ability to defeat former President Donald Trump in the November election. “One extreme possibility in the case of a very bad showing Thursday night, I have been told, is to obtain agreement from Biden and his family advisers for the president to come to the Democratic convention in Chicago in August and accept the accolades of a first-round delegate victory; then he would decline the nomination and throw the nominating process open to all,” Hersh said.

California Governor Gavin Newsom and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker could be favorites to replace Biden, Hersh said. Next week, Biden is going to need to match the intensity he demonstrated at his State of the Union address in March if he wants to stay in the race, Hersh said. An aggregation of national polls by RealClearPolitics shows that Trump holds a half-a-point lead over Biden and leads him in all seven swing US states.

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“The U.S. and its Western partners – a global minority – have come to be seen by most people of the world as rogue states that have trashed international law..”

• A New Multipolar Security System Based On ‘Pax Rossiya’ (SCF)

For several years now, Russia, China and other members of the expanding BRICS alliance have been formulating progressive trade and financial relations of the emerging multipolar world order. That order is based on mutual respect and partnership grounded in international law and the UN Charter. The BRICS concept is rightly the zeitgeist of our time. It is rallying more nations to its fold especially those of the so-called Global South which for decades have been subjected to the unilateralism of Western hegemony. The trouble is that for a new world order based on equality and fairness to succeed in practice, it needs to be secure from arbitrary military aggression and imperialist tyranny. In other words, a new security architecture is required to underpin the development of a multipolar world. Russian President Vladimir Putin has been advocating for a new indivisible international security system. This week saw the plan for a new security arrangement put into action.

The Russian leader embarked on state visits to North Korea and Vietnam during which he signed new strategic partnership and defense accords. Ahead of his trip to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Putin outlined the integrated vision thus: “We are also ready for close cooperation to make international relations more democratic and stable… To do this, we will develop alternative mechanisms of trade and mutual settlements that are not controlled by the West, and jointly resist illegitimate unilateral restrictions. And at the same time – to build an architecture of equal and indivisible security in Eurasia.” The concept of indivisible security is by no means limited to Eurasia. Russia has signaled the same principles apply to Latin America, Africa and indeed every other corner of the world. During Putin’s meetings with Chairman Kim Jong Un of the DPRK and President Lo Tam of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, the strategic partnerships agreed were not merely about military defense and security.

They involved comprehensive partnerships for the development of trade, transport, technology, education, science and medicine. Nevertheless, it was clear that the commitment to strategic partnership was underpinned by new mutual defense accords. This was most explicit in the treaty signed with the DPRK which furnished “mutual assistance in the event of aggression against one of the parties”. This is a game-changer. It totally upends the geopolitical calculations of the United States and its NATO partners who have been unilaterally expanding military force and provocations in Eurasia and elsewhere. U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration has ramped up aggression in the Asia-Pacific against China and North Korea with impunity. Under his watch, the US has increasingly moved nuclear forces into the region to intimidate not only Beijing and Pyongyang but also Moscow. The Biden administration has been assiduous in forming hostile military formations in the region with its NATO partners, including Australia, New Zealand, Japan and South Korea.

Year after year, the United States has built up weapon systems in Taiwan to provoke China and on the Korean Peninsula to threaten North Korea. This unilateral aggression and “might is right” arrogance underpin the notion of Pax Americana that prevailed for decades after the Second World War. That notion was always a cruel euphemism for American imperialist violence to impose its economic and political interests. The Korean and Vietnam Wars in which millions of civilians were annihilated were the real-world grim translations of Pax Americana and its fraudulent “rules-based order”. Geopolitical perceptions have dramatically changed in a few short years. The U.S. and its Western partners – a global minority – have come to be seen by most people of the world as rogue states that have trashed international law through illegal wars and unilateral bullying with economic sanctions. The U.S. dollar and Washington’s relentless debt spending are seen as instruments of imperialist looting.

The BRICS multipolar world order is a welcome alternative to the mayhem of the Western-dominated system. The principles of fairness and cooperation are laudable and necessary to implement. But such principles must be reinforced with military defense and security for all. This is far from the one-sided “defense and security” of the United States and its NATO partners, which in reality is an Orwellian cover for aggression. The defense commitments given by Russia to the DPRK this week can be seen as long overdue. One may wonder how the U.S. and its allies got away with threatening the people of North Korea for so long and denying Pyongyang the sovereign right to self-defense. Admittedly, Russia did previously support UN sanctions on North Korea over its missile program. That’s over.

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“America wants to hand over the responsibility of Ukraine to the Europeans and shed responsibility for the mess that it has created..”

• Is Washington Trying To Dump The Ukraine War Into The EU’s Lap? (Jay)

With just a mere matter of weeks now before the U.S. presidential election some experts are wondering if Joe Biden is preparing, at the last minute, to wriggle free of the Ukrainian curse and tell voters that in the next term, if he were to be President, Ukraine funding will be reduced dramatically. This would, after all, be a cunning move to outfox Trump who has told reporters on numerous occasions that he would end the war once in office simply through cutting U.S. financial support.Either scenario places EU countries – and the EU itself in Brussels – in a quandary as their worst nightmare is coming true: America wants to hand over the responsibility of Ukraine to the Europeans and shed responsibility for the mess that it has created. One could even argue that relations now between the U.S. and EU countries are on a collision course given one recent offer Washington made to the EU in the form of a loan which the EU would guarantee but U.S. companies would benefit from.

As Hungary prepares to take the helm of the EU’s six month rotating presidency on July 1st, western elites are fretting over whether this time Budapest will veto outright the sanctions which are in place, which need to be signed off every six months. America in particular wants a quick fix solution but is indicating that it wants to hand over all the risk to Europe. It argues that those who hold Russian assets should be the ones to offer the guarantees against default – through interest on Russian cash held by them – and that U.S. Congress anyway is unlikely to sign off another batch of military aid, even in the form of a loan, at such short notice. Following a massive body blow from European elections, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will tell President Joe Biden they reject the American proposal for Europe to act as sole guarantors for the loan, according to conversations with six senior diplomats and officials.

The offer was structured in such a way that EU countries would pay the interest, accept the risk and allow most of what was a 50bn dollar loan to benefit U.S. companies. Remarkable sting for the EU governments when it shows that the relationship between them and the Biden administration just sinks lower and lower each week. Of course, there is a great deal of anger from the EU side as many EU leaders feel as though the U.S. has cleaned up quite nicely from the whole business of war which has profited the U.S. on so many levels but has drained EU economies, explaining why Poland recently held a pole which claimed that a majority of those asked wanted funding for the Ukraine war to end. Europe has really been left holding the baby over the Ukraine war and the palpable resentment against the U.S. is certainly growing. The deal the U.S. pushed of course was never going to be a runner but more likely a new European Commission in September will borrow a new 50bn euro tranche from its seven year 1.2 trillion euro budget for Ukraine.

Even in this scenario, the EU is scraping the barrel and reaching new lows in throwing cash into the fire just as an ephemeral last-ditch effort to stay warm. But both the U.S. and EU realise that time is running out for whoever wants to pour more money into the black hole of Ukraine. Time is running out because while Ukraine desperately needs the money, there’s no certainty that a Donald Trump presidency would back any loan initiatives. A final agreement will now be delayed until at least in autumn with just a matter of few weeks before November 5 election. Relations between the U.S. and EU have never been so tipped in Washington’s favour. And that’s before Trump even gets into the White House.

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Talk.

• The Only Way to End Confrontation Between Russia and the West (Lukyanov)

The concept adopted at the end of the Cold War stated that NATO ensured European security, and a bigger NATO meant a more secure continent. As a first step towards this, everyone (including Moscow) agreed that a reunited Germany would remain a member of the bloc instead of receiving neutral status, as some had suggested earlier. Further, it was implied that each country had the right to choose whether or not to join any alliances. Theoretically, that is what sovereignty implies. But in practice, the geopolitical balance of power had always imposed restrictions that forced alliances to consider the reaction of non-member countries. However, the triumphalism that reigned in the West following the Cold War significantly reduced the willingness to take such reactions into account. In other words, NATO felt like it could do anything and no reply would follow.

The situation could have changed dramatically if Russia had considered the possibility of joining NATO, and if the bloc itself had considered such a scenario. Then the principle of the indivisibility of security, proclaimed in the 1990 Charter of Paris for a New Europe, would have been respected within the framework of the bloc. However, it was impossible for Russia to join NATO, since, even at its weakest, Russia remained one of the world’s largest military powers and possessed the largest nuclear arsenal. The hypothetical accession of such a state to NATO would mean the emergence of a second force within the club that would be on a par with the US, and therefore, would not obey it on the same level as other allies. This would change the very essence of the organization, and alter its principles of Atlanticism (simply because of Russia’s geographical location). No one was prepared for this. The qualitative transformation of NATO was never on the agenda.

As a result, NATO’s expansion, which in a sense became automated, pushed Russia further and further to the east. Moscow’s attempts to regulate this process – first through participation in joint institutions (such as the NATO-Russia Council of 2002, which was an expansion of the NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997) and then through growing opposition (starting with Putin’s Munich Speech in 2007) – did not bring the desired results. In addition to the inertia of the West’s initial approach (which implied that the bloc’s very existence is security in itself), the West believed that Moscow didn’t have the right to set conditions and must only follow the rules set by the stronger and more successful Western community. This is how the EU eventually got involved in the current Ukraine war. Could relations between NATO and Russia have developed in a different way? The West believes that the persistence of Russia, which continued to consider NATO a threat to its security, led to the current military crisis. And, in fact, this became a self-fulfilling prophecy. But even assuming that this was true, the speed and ease with which NATO returned to a strong confrontation with Russia shows that it had been prepared for this.

Russia’s memorandum of December 2021 and the 2022 military operation in Ukraine were designed to put an end to the idea of NATO’s uncontested expansion as the only means of ensuring European security. Two-and-a-half years later, we see that the scale of the conflict has exceeded all initial expectations. Judging by Moscow’s statements, the confrontation may only come to an end when the principles on which European security is based are fundamentally reconsidered. This is not a territorial conflict, but a conflict which may only end when NATO abandons its main goal and function. So far, there is no compromise on the horizon. The Western side is not willing to agree that the results of the Cold War must be reconsidered, and the Russian side is not ready to retreat without this assurance. Thirty years after the signing of the Partnership for Peace program, there’s still no partnership or peace between Russia and NATO. And neither is there a clear understanding of why the two sides were unable to achieve it.

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Not one country. Never was.

• The Ukrainian Border War Folly (David Stockman)

once the iron-hand of totalitarian rule ended in 1991, the deep and historically rooted conflict between Ukrainian nationalism, language and politics of the central and western regions of the country and the Russian language and historical religious and political affinities of the Donbas and south came rushing to the surface. So-called democracy barely survived these contests until February 2014 when one of Washington’s “color revolutions” finally “succeeded”. That is to say, the Washington fomented and financed nationalist-led coupe d état ended the fragile post-communist equilibrium.

That’s the true meaning of the Maidan coup. It ended the tenuous cohesion that kept the artificial state of Ukraine intact for barely two decades after the Soviet demise. So save for Washington’s destructive intervention, the partition of a communist-confected state that had never been built to last would have eventually materialized. The evidence that the Maidan coup was the coup ‘d grace for the makeshift Ukrainian state is apparent in the maps below. These maps below tell you all you need to know about why this is a civil war, not an invasion of one neighbor by another. The first map is from the 2004 presidential election, which was won by the Ukrainian nationalist candidate, Yushchenko. The latter predominated in the orange areas of the map, over the pro-Russian Yanukovych, who swept the blue regions in the east and south.

2004 Ukraine Election Results—National Divorce In The Making

The second map is from the 2010 election, showing the same stark regional split, but this time the pro-Russian candidate, Yanukovych, won. In the map below, the dark blue parts to the far east (Donbas) indicate an 80% or better vote for Viktor Yanukovych in the 2010 election. By contrast, the dark red areas in the west voted 80% or more for the Ukrainian nationalist, Yulie Tymoshenko. That is to say, the skew in the Ukrainian electorate was so extreme as to make America’s current red state/blue state divide seem hardly noteworthy by comparison. As it happened, the sum of the pro-Yanukovych skews from the east and south (Donbas and Crimea) added up to 12.48 million votes and 48.95% of the total, while the sum of the extreme red skews in the center and west (the lands of old eastern Galicia and Poland) amounted to 11.59 million votes and 45.47% of the total.

Stated differently, it is hard to imagine an electorate more sharply divided on a regional/ethnic/language basis. Yet it was one which still produced a sufficient victory margin (3.6 percentage points) for Yanukovych – so as to be reluctantly accepted by all parties. That became especially clear when Tymoshenko, who was the incumbent prime minister, withdrew her election challenge a few weeks after the run-off in February 2010. At that point, of course, Russia had no beef with the Kiev government at all because essentially Yanukovych’s “Regions Party” was based on the pro-Russian parts (blue areas) of the Ukrainian electorate. But when Washington essentially put the anti-Russian regions in charge of Ukraine’s government by orchestrating, funding and immediately recognizing the Maidan coup, everything changed on a dime. That was especially the case when the new, illegal government enshrined in its constitution a requirement to join NATO at the earliest possible opportunity.

In effect, Washington’s 2014 Maidan coup was the equivalent of Khrushchev’s emplacement of missiles in Cuba during 1962. Even had Putin been as erudite and civilized as JFK, rather than the ruffian he actually is, he would have had little choice except to insist that NATO missiles 30 minutes from Moscow cannot stand. In a word, there has been no unprovoked “invasion” by Moscow of the transitory artifact known as the Ukrainian state. The latter effectively began and ended with the Soviet Union.Moreover, with respect to the actual underlying reason for intervention in Ukraine—NATO’s proxy war against Russia– a simple question recurs: Besides restocking the NATO arsenals depleted by the demolition derby in what remains of Ukraine, what’s the reason for NATO’s war? Alas, the question answers itself. The War Capital of the World on the Potomac insists upon it, and its vassals in Europe like Ursula von der Leyen nod, jawohl!

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“..hundreds of thousands more Ukrainians to be called up into the army..”

• Tens of Thousands of Ukrainians Hiding From Draft Officers – NYT (TASS)

Tens of thousands of Ukrainian men have gone into hiding as they avoid conscription for fear of dying in the conflict involving “bloody trench warfare,” The New York Times reported on Friday. While it is not clear how many men are hiding from authorities, in big cities like Kiev and Lvov, social media groups alerting members to mobilization include tens of thousands of people, the newspaper wrote. Ukrainian men expressed fear of dying in the conflict, the NYT continued. According to the newspaper, Kiev has been sending troops without “sufficient training” to the front to replace combat losses.

Military analysts agree that a lack of adequate training makes it difficult for Kiev to hold its lines, the newspaper concluded. Ukraine announced a general mobilization in February 2022, which it has extended periodically ever since, with the country’s authorities doing their utmost to prevent men of conscription age from dodging the draft, including a ban on male residents of Ukraine from leaving the country. On May 18, a law tightening mobilization rules came into force in Ukraine, allowing hundreds of thousands more Ukrainians to be called up into the army.

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In a video I posted June 18, Jim Rickards says: “..Russia will retaliate by putting a lien on $40 trillion at the Euroclear custodian..” That’s not Russian money, but the total of what Euroclear processes. A recipe for absolute chaos.

• Belgium Warns Against Seizing Russian Money (RT)

Belgium does not support the seizure of Russian assets that have been frozen by the EU as part of Ukraine-related sanctions, the country’s Finance Minister Vincent Van Peteghem said on Friday, highlighting the mounting risks related to the move. The West froze nearly $300 billion in assets belonging to the Central Bank of Russia following the launch of Moscow’s military campaign against Ukraine in February 2022, a move denounced by Moscow as “theft.” Around $280 billion of this sum is held in the EU, primarily in the Belgium-based depositary and clearing house Euroclear. “First of all, for our country there are two elements that are important: we did not touch the assets themselves, as the ownership title change would yield consequences both on the legal side and financial side that are unknown,” Van Peteghem said during a press conference after the bloc’s ECOFIN meeting in Luxembourg.

“And second, of course, risk sharing, that I think is important in the rollout of the instruments and is a crucial element of all discussion,” the minister added. Earlier this month, the G7 nations announced that they had reached an agreement on using interest from frozen Russian assets to finance a $50 billion loan to help Kiev buy weapons and rebuild damaged infrastructure. At the time, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said that the confiscation of the assets was not on the table. In April, Van Peteghem stated that the bloc was close to reaching a political agreement on seizing the profits generated by Russia’s central bank reserves, stressing that the first tax collection could take place as early as July 1.

The idea of seizing the frozen Russian assets has been debated by EU lawmakers and the bloc’s allies for about two years. While the US and UK have called for the outright confiscation of the funds, multiple reports suggest that EU member states remain cautious regarding the move, citing the lack of a legal basis for such a measure as well as fears that Russia will take retaliatory steps. Some top officials have reportedly warned that the drastic move could undermine investors’ confidence in the EU’s financial system. The Kremlin has denounced the push to use its immobilized funds to provide support for Ukraine. Earlier this week, Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that Moscow has a “wide arsenal” of political and economic countermeasures it can use to respond to the potential confiscation of its sovereign assets.

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Sounds familiar.

• White Christians Being Replaced In Europe – Orban (RT)

A “militant” faction of pro-migration politicians is overseeing the “replacement” of white European Christians with Muslim immigrants, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has declared. “In Europe there is an exchange of populations, the number of white, Christian, traditional – let’s say European – people is decreasing, the number of migrants being imported and the number of people belonging to the Muslim community born here is radically increasing,” Orban told Kossuth Radio on Friday. German politician Manfred Weber, who leads the centrist European People’s Party (EPP) in the European Parliament, is the “beelzebub” responsible for this alleged scheme, Orban continued, adding that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is Weber’s “little servant girl” responsible for its implementation.

The EPP remained the largest faction in the European Parliament after last month’s elections. However, the decline of the Greens and a surge in support for right-wing parties has left the EPP with fewer allies with whom to pass legislation. Hours after he spoke to Kossuth Radio, Orban flew to Berlin to meet with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz ahead of Hungary assuming the EU Council’s rotating presidency next month. The Hungarian PM claimed that Germany has suffered greatly as a result of immigration, and “no longer looks like it did ten years ago.” “This Germany is no longer the Germany that our parents and grandparents held up to us as an example,” he said, adding that the country is now a “colorful, changed multicultural world” in which migrants are “no longer guests.”

Hungary’s stance on immigration has placed the country at odds with Brussels in recent years. Earlier this month, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ordered Budapest to pay €200 million ($216 million) for failing to comply with EU asylum law, and imposed a fine of €1 million per day until Hungary fully implements the legislation. According to the court, Budapest has limited migrants’ access to asylum procedures since 2020, making the process of filing applications “virtually impossible.” “It seems that illegal migrants are more important to the Brussels bureaucrats than their own European citizens,” Orban responded, vowing to “figure out a way, so [the ruling] hurts Brussels more than it hurts us.”

Orban was criticized in the German media for his comments on Friday, with Munich’s Merkur newspaper accusing him of spreading “conspiracy myths” about immigration. The idea of a so-called ‘Great Replacement’ is often written off by liberals as a racist conspiracy theory. However, the population share of white Europeans has been decreasing across the continent since the mid-20th century, and European leaders sometimes admit that they intend to use non-European immigration to replace the aging native workforce. Speaking in Athens earlier this year, European Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson stated that “legal migration should grow by more or less 1 million per year” to achieve this goal.

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“..the ever-eastward expansion of Nato and the European Union was giving this man a reason to his Russian people to say, ‘They’re coming for us again’ and to go to war”.

• Sunak Accuses Farage Of Appeasing Putin (BBC)

Nigel Farage’s claim the West provoked Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was “completely wrong and only plays into Putin’s hands,” Rishi Sunak has said. The prime minister accused the Reform UK leader of “appeasement” that was “dangerous for Britain’s security”. In a BBC Panorama interview, Mr Farage said that “of course” the war was President Vladimir Putin’s fault. But he added that the expansion of the EU and Nato gave Mr Putin a “reason” to tell the Russian people “they’re coming for us again”. His remarks have prompted criticism from across the political spectrum. Labour’s shadow defence secretary John Healey said they made the Reform UK leader “unfit for any political office in our country, let alone leading a serious party in Parliament.” Former Conservative defence secretary Ben Wallace described Mr Farage as “pub bore”, who did not understand the “real world” of politics.

Speaking on an election campaign visit in London, Mr Sunak said: “What he (Mr Farage) said was completely wrong and only plays into Putin’s hands.”He added: “This is a man (Mr Putin) who deployed nerve agent on the streets of Britain, who is doing deals with countries like North Korea, and this kind of appeasement is dangerous for Britain’s security, the security of our allies that rely on us, and only emboldens Putin further.” In his Panorama interview, the former UKIP and Brexit Party leader was asked by Nick Robinson about his past comments on Mr Putin. “I said I disliked him as a person, but I admired him as a political operator because he’s managed to take control of running Russia,” he replied. He said it had been “obvious” to him for many years “that the ever-eastward expansion of Nato and the European Union was giving this man a reason to his Russian people to say, ‘They’re coming for us again’ and to go to war”.

Pressed further, he added: “We provoked this war. It’s, you know, of course it’s his fault – he’s used what we’ve done as an excuse.” After the interview aired on Friday, Mr Farage, a former member of the European Parliament, said on X that he was “one of the few figures that have been consistent and honest about the war with Russia”.Alongside the new statement, he reposted a speech in the European Parliament from 2014 in which he called for the West to “stop playing war games with Putin. “The Ukrainian presidency has told the BBC it will not be putting out an official statement on Mr Farage’s comments. But a source in the presidential office warned about the “virus of Putinism and the rise of war propaganda”, adding: “The task of civilized humanity is to fight this virus in the bud.”

Reform UK has been gaining ground on the Conservatives in the opinion polls since Mr Farage announced he was returning to front-line politics as the party’s leader shortly after the general election campaign got under way.
He has said his aim is for Reform to replace the Conservatives as the official opposition to Labour, which he says is certain to gain power on 4 July, although polling suggests the party may win only handful of seats at this election.

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“..its co-founder, Larry Sanger, saying last year that the website had become an instrument of “control” used by the US intelligence agencies to wage information warfare..”

• Wikipedia’s Political Bias Spreading To AI (RT)

Wikipedia’s tendency to negatively portray right-wing political figures is feeding into AI large language models (LLMs) that harvest data from the online encyclopedia, a US-based conservative think-tank has claimed. A report released on Thursday by the Manhattan Institute looked at evidence of political bias in English-language articles on Wikipedia, by correlating the names of Western leaders and prominent politicians with emotion-laden words. The study found “prevailing associations of negative emotions (e.g., anger and disgust) with right-leaning public figures; and positive emotions (e.g., joy) with left-leaning public figures,” suggesting “evidence of political bias embedded in Wikipedia articles.” “We find some of the aforementioned political associations embedded in Wikipedia articles popping up in OpenAI’s language models,” the report concluded.

The researchers noted that Wikipedia articles are likely a prominent part of OpenAI’s “secret corpus of data” used to train ChatGPT. The report acknowledges, however, that this pattern is not universal, and is more common in articles about US political figures, while there was no evidence of Wikipedia bias in entries on British politicians or US-based think tanks. For example, in references to recent US presidents, Donald Trump – now the Republican presidential frontrunner – was portrayed with the most negative sentiment, while Barack Obama was listed as having the most positive references. The report concluded that Wikipedia “is not living up to its stated neutral-point-of-view policy.”

The policy referred to, which Wikipedia describes as one of the pillars of the encyclopedia, stipulates that articles must exclude personal opinions and interpretations of the editor, be based on reliable sources, and explore multiple points of view when dealing with a controversial topic. Wikipedia has been repeatedly criticized for its supposedly biased takes on hot-button political issues, with its co-founder, Larry Sanger, saying last year that the website had become an instrument of “control” used by the US intelligence agencies to wage information warfare.

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“What is now left for Hunter are sentencing guidelines that strongly support jail time and a judge who has imposed such jail time in past cases..”

• The Supreme Court Swatted Down Hunter Biden’s Hail Mary Pass (Turley)

While the result in Washington was not as bad as the unanimous decision in Delaware, it may well have sealed his fate on appeal. U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika did not leave him much for appeal in overseeing a fair and textbook trial. The Biden legal team had been counting on Hail Mary passes since a Special Counsel was appointed. It almost worked. Special Counsel David Weiss seemed to work hard to avoid any felony charges against the president’s son. The Justice Department not only allowed the statute of limitations to run on major crimes, but sought to finalize an obscene plea agreement with no jail time for Hunter. In the hearing to accept the plea, Judge Noreika decided to ask a couple of cursory questions of the prosecutor, particularly about a sweeping immunity provision covering any and all crimes committed by Hunter.

The prosecutor admitted that he had never seen an agreement this generous for a defendant. The plea fell apart and the Biden team seemed unwilling to accept anything but a single throw victory. They told the prosecutor in court “just rip it up.” The Biden legal team then blundered in taking the case to trial with a jury nullification strategy. Some of us wrote that Hunter needed to plead guilty to avoid jail time. Instead, they hoped that a Delaware jury in Bidentown could never convict a Biden. They were wrong. That left the last pass to the Supreme Court, which just seemed to land in the stadium seats. In reality, it was never a strong throw. After all, Hunter was convicted for lying on gun forms, something that the Court was never likely to excuse.

What is now left for Hunter are sentencing guidelines that strongly support jail time and a judge who has imposed such jail time in past cases. The other group of people that may be even more upset with this ruling may be many in the media and Congress. Once again, the Court has shattered the false narrative that this is a hopelessly divided Court along ideological lines. This month the Court has continued to rule unanimously or nearly unanimously, including in cases like Rahimi in controversial constitutional claims. Instead, the Court rendered a reasonable, balanced accommodation for public safety under the Second Amendment. It is not clear who is more disappointed: Hunter or the Court critics.

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The New World Order can’t meme anymore than the left..

• Common Sense And Memes Are Viruses To The New World Order (Lynn)

Relativism, undeniably, trends in modernity. And Orwell was right: “The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.” Orwell, George, ”1984”: part 2, chapter 9. So whether by Marxism or any other form of secular utopianism: The goals are always out with the “old” and in with the “new”. Order out of chaos. Dissolve and coagulate. Also like Orwell’s “1984”: The world’s global societal power structure is stratified into concentric rings of power. The Inner Party functions to continuously preserve and enrich itself; as the Outer Party (i.e. those following orders) and the Proles are utilized and cannibalized when necessary.

The circles of power have become increasingly interconnected in modernity; and technology allows the Inner Party to launch policies that are enforced by the Outer Party and unto the Proles. This process is also called “history”. The Outer Party depends upon the Inner Party for survival and it always remains a difficult challenge to convince the Proles of something they can’t, or won’t, see. As a result, history unwinds in inevitable, cyclical waves. Yet, the Inner Party has survived for generations – even before the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913 and its unleashing of the modern Fractional Reserve Banking monster. Slavery is rooted in economics; and so the Inner Party uses debt to implement and expand its various wars. The rich get richer as the poor suffer, starve, and die. While driving the other day, I listened to an “expert” on AM radio discussing the vast increase of carbon in Earth’s atmosphere and the conclusion was this: “Climate Change is real!” The radio voice seemed very confident in its conclusions and, by implication, it was ready to do everything necessary to stop what it perceived as a genuine threat. Always the same dialectics, again and again.

Is America having seizures? Or postmortem convulsions? At this point in time, I am convinced it’s the latter. While in communication with a retired retarded professor, she expressed exasperation at those who still plan to vote for Trump. After all, he was convicted by a jury of his peers and is now a convicted felon. In response, and from memory, I typed out a meme I saw on the internet: “He lived over 70 years without a criminal record. But when he ran for president he was charged with over 90 crimes! How can you explain that?” Silence. But… oops! Did you notice what I did there? Did you see how the Inner Party’s phony dialectics had me defending the proud promoter of Operation Warp Speed®?

When it was revealed that U.S. Senate ratification was required for the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Pandemic “Treaty”, it was, instead, transitioned into an “agreement”. Except that strategy went down in flames, too, at the WHO’s 77th World Health Assembly. In response, Team Biden, China, and other unelected WHO totalitarians stealthily passed new International Health Regulations (IHR) behind closed doors. This was done on June 1, 2024 in Geneva, Switzerland. The Ethiopian Communist, and WHO Director, Tedros Ghebreyesus, violated the IHR’s Article 55.2 eligibility requirements and with less than the required quorum of member states voting. This power grab was completely illegal and unlawfully elevated the WHO “from a global advisory-only body to an international enforcer of its mandates.” So we all better get the word out, before it’s too late. Especially now that it’s another election year so flu season is almost here.

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“Turning on a practically endless faucet of cash for a friend and then being criticized because it wasn’t endless enough..”

• Bibi Is Needy (DeMartino)

On Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu released a video complaining about a short-lived pause of one weapon shipment from the United States. In the video, he directly criticized the administration of US President Joe Biden. “It is inconceivable that in the past few months, the administration has been withholding weapons and ammunitions to Israel,” The Israeli Prime Minister said, despite the United States being the largest provider of weapons to Israel and its most stalwart defender on the international stage. The White House canceled a meeting with high-ranking Israeli officials in response and attempted to assure the public that it had not stopped sending weapons to a country that has been accused of genocide by several nations. The decision to delay one shipment of weapons was in response to Israel’s decision to go forward with its Rafah invasion, despite pressure from the United States to hold off.

Biden has been dealing with protests over the US supplying weapons to Israel, but the pause on one shipment seemingly did nothing to slow Israel’s campaign. More than 6% of the Gaza population has been killed, seriously injured or remains missing. Turning on a practically endless faucet of cash for a friend and then being criticized because it wasn’t endless enough must be a familiar experience for Biden. Ukraine’s illegitimate President Volodymyr Zelensky complained earlier this year that aid from the US, which he had already received well over $110 billion worth, was arriving too slowly. But, considering who his family is, he is probably used to it. Last year, texts between Biden and his son Hunter were revealed that showed the younger Biden– despite earning millions allegedly on the back of his father’s name– complaining about being broke and asking his uncle James Biden for money.

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“The British have presented no evidence of Novichok on the Skripal home door handle; in the blood, skin, and urine testing of the Skripals in hospital; or in subsequent inquest and court proceedings..”

• UK Invents Phantom Skripals To Refuse To Testify In Novichok Inquiry (Helmer)

A new lawyer appeared in a London court on Friday claiming to represent Sergei and Yulia Skripal. Jack Holborn, a barrister specializing in what he calls human rights, told Lord Anthony Hughes, who is conducting a public inquiry into the alleged Novichok death of Dawn Sturgess in 2018, that the Skripals should not be called to give evidence or testify in the case. Holborn claimed the Skripals are fearful for their security. “No security measures are perfect”, he said. Holborn has not been in contact with the Skripals, however. He refuses to answer questions put to him on what visual contact or other communications he has had with either Sergei or Yulia Skripal. Instead, he was told what to say at the hearing by the law firm of Kingsley Napley which the British government is paying to show that the Skripals are participating in the Novichok case. The spokesman for Hughes and the inquiry was asked to explain Holborn’s presence in court for the first time on Friday. She was also asked what authority the Skripals had given Holborn to represent them.

The spokesman answered: “Kingsley Napley has been designated as the recognised legal representative of the Skripals under r[ule] 6 of the Inquiry Rules 2006. By rule 8, the recognised legal representative may appoint a team to assist them and Kingsley Napley have accordingly instructed counsel to appear on their clients’ behalf.”. In other words, there has been no contact between the lawyers who say they represent the Skripals, and the Skripals themselves. The judge and government are refusing to give evidence that Sergei Skripal is alive, and that Yulia Skripal is not in prison. The problem for the British Government is that if the Skripals are allowed to give live evidence at the Hughes inquiry, there is no telling what they may say to contradict or discredit the six-year official narrative of the Russian Novichok attack in England. The lawyer for the inquiry, Andrew O’Connor KC, told Hughes on Friday morning this was a “difficult question as to whether either or both of Sergei and Julia Skripal should give oral evidence.”

He also acknowledged there was the same problem in revealing what the Skripals have already said. “In the case of the Skripals, the transcripts of their police interviews have not yet been provided to CPs [Concerned Parties] but will be very shortly.” In fact, the Skripal transcripts will be so redacted, the officials and lawyers admitted in court, it is uncertain what the Skripals believe had happened to them, and why. Release of the redacted Skripal transcripts from March of 2018 risks being contradicted by fresh written statements to the Hughes inquiry from the Skripals, so that form of testimony is also being barred. Since March 4, 2018, when the Skripals slumped unconscious on a Salisbury town bench and were kept in hospital under police guard, three British prime ministers — Theresa May, Boris Johnson, and Rishi Sunak — have continued the story that three Russian military officers attacked the Skripals with a Novichok nerve agent they had brought by plane into England, and sprayed on to the door handle of Sergei Skripal’s home; that was several hours before he and his daughter showed symptoms and collapsed.

The British have presented no evidence of Novichok on the Skripal home door handle; in the blood, skin, and urine testing of the Skripals in hospital; or in subsequent inquest and court proceedings. The alleged Russian attack weapon – a perfume bottle atomiser – did not materialize for months until July 2018, when police claim to have found it on a kitchen bench in the home of another alleged victim, Dawn Sturgess, ten days – repeat ten days — after exhaustive police searches of the house had failed to find it. Sergei Skripal has not been seen in public since the day of the alleged Novichok attack, March 4, 2018. He has not been heard on the telephone by family members in Russia since June 26, 2019. Yulia Skripal was last seen in a government-directed interview at a US bomber base in England in May 2018; her last telephone call to Russia was heard on November 20, 2020. The Skripals have not been seen or heard from since.

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Off-switch
https://twitter.com/i/status/1804219814627471641

 

 

Aurus

 

 

Only men

 

 

Brahmaputra
https://twitter.com/i/status/1804372316085981370

 

 

Coral
https://twitter.com/i/status/1804467986520002771

 

 

 

 

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