Dec 032023
 


Laura Gilpin The Rio Grande 1947

 

Israel Reopens the Gaza Slaughterhouse (Chris Hedges)
Israel Planning for Gaza War To Last Over a Year (Antiwar)
Hamas Official Hints At Another Attack On Israel, Bigger Than Oct. 7 (JTN)
Israel Bans Trucks With Aid From Entering Gaza (TASS)
Ukraine Another Historic US War Failure (SCF)
West to Drop Bombshell on Ukraine and Destroy Zelensky – Whistleblower (Sp.)
Soros Jr. Secures Reported Chemical Waste Agreement With Ukraine (Sp.)
Who Will Pay for Zelensky’s Defense Line? West Seems Uninterested (Sp.)
MP Slams Kiev’s Soaring Demands Amid Growing Crisis in Germany (Sp.)
How Saudis Overcame “Reputational Damage” (Bhadrakumar)
Russia Leads Way for Global South by Providing Grain for Africa (Sp.)
Exports Of Russian Grain To EU Surge (RT)
Democrats Try To Strip Candidates From The Ballot (Turley)
The Principal of Optimism (Dean)

 

 

 

 

Tucker Trump

 

 

 

 

Putin wants peace

 

 

 

 

Milei

 

 

GFY

 

 

 

 

RFK Jr

 

 

@FischerKing64 – Re Trump’s Manhattan real estate trial. A single judge ruled as a matter of law that Trump committed fraud, when anyone in the financial industry would tell you the theory (overvaluing assets) is nonsensical b/c it’s all part of a negotiation and banks are sophisticated financial actors. There was no fraud here, and no one lost any money. Think about this and forget Trump. A single judge – who will likely be overturned on appeal – can upend a person’s life, even destroy it, with a stroke of a pen and face no consequences ever. It’s important who becomes a trial judge. And if you look at what’s coming out of the law schools – it’s not encouraging. They’re ignorant and highly ideological. This is going to get a lot worse before it gets better – if it gets better.

 

 

“Once you become consciously aware of just how powerful your thoughts are, you will realize everything in your life is exactly how you allow it to be.” ~Melanie Moushigian Koulouris

 

 

 

 

“Gaza is to become a wasteland, a dead zone that will be incapable of sustaining life..”

“The world will watch passively, muttering useless bromides about more surgical strikes, while Israel spins its roulette wheel of death.”

Israel Reopens the Gaza Slaughterhouse (Chris Hedges)

The skies over Gaza are filled — after a seven-day truce — with projectiles of death. Warplanes. Attack helicopters. Drones. Artillery shells. Tank shells. Mortars. Bombs. Missiles. Gaza is a cacophony of explosions and forlorn screams and cries for help beneath collapsed buildings. Fear, once again, is coiling itself around every heart in the Gazan concentration camp. By Friday evening, 184 Palestinians — including three journalists and two doctors — had been killed by Israeli air strikes in the north, south and central Gaza, and at least 589 injured, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza. Most of them are women and children. Israel will not be deterred. It plans to finish the job, to obliterate what is left in the north of Gaza and decimate what remains in the south, to render Gaza uninhabitable, to see its 2.3 million people driven out in a massive campaign of ethnic cleansing via starvation, terror, slaughter and infectious diseases.

The aid convoys, which brought in token amounts of food and medicine — the first batch was shrouds and coronavirus tests according to the director of al-Najjar hospital — have been halted. No one, least of all President Joe Biden, plans to intervene to stop the genocide. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Israel this week, and while calling for Israel to protect civilians, refused to set conditions that would disrupt the $3.8 billion Israel receives in annual military assistance or the $14.3 billion supplemental aid package. The world will watch passively, muttering useless bromides about more surgical strikes, while Israel spins its roulette wheel of death. By the time Israel is done, the 1948 Nakba, where Palestinians were massacred in dozens of villages and 750,000 were ethnically cleansed by Zionist militias, will look like a quaint relic of a more civilized era. Nothing is off limits. Hospitals. Mosques. Churches. Homes. Apartment blocks. Refugee camps. Schools. Universities. Media offices. Banks. Sewer systems. Telecommunications infrastructure. Water treatment plants. Libraries. Wheat mills. Bakeries. Markets. Entire neighborhoods.


Slaughterhouse – by Mr. Fish

Israel’s intent is to destroy Gaza’s infrastructure and daily kill or wound hundreds of Palestinians. Gaza is to become a wasteland, a dead zone that will be incapable of sustaining life. Israel began to bomb Khan Younis on Friday after dropping leaflets warning civilians to evacuate further south to Rafah, located on the border crossing with Egypt. Hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians had sought refuge in Khan Younis. Once Palestinians are pushed to Rafah, there is only one place left to flee — Egypt. The Israeli Ministry of Intelligence, in a leaked report, calls for the forcible transfer of Gaza’s population to Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. A detailed plan to intentionally displace the Palestinians in Gaza and push them into Egypt has been embedded in Israeli doctrine for five decades. Already, 1.8 million Palestinians in Gaza have been driven from their homes. Once Palestinians cross the border into Egypt — which the Egyptian government and Arab leaders are seeking to prevent despite pressure from the U.S. — Palestinians will never return.

This is not a war against Hamas. It is a war against Palestinians. Israeli strikes are generated at a dizzying rate, many of them from a system called “Habsora” — The Gospel — which is built on artificial intelligence that selects 100 targets a day. The AI-system is described by seven current and former Israeli intelligence officials in an article by Yuval Abraham on the Israeli sites +972 Magazine and Local Call, as facilitating a “mass assassination factory.” Israel, once it locates what it assumes to be a Hamas operative from a cell phone, for example, bombs and shells a wide area around the target, killing and wounding tens, and at times hundreds of Palestinians, the article states. “According to intelligence sources,” the story reads, “Habsora generates, among other things, automatic recommendations for attacking private residences where people suspected of being Hamas or Islamic Jihad operatives live. Israel then carries out large-scale assassination operations through the heavy shelling of these residential homes.”

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“No one, not even the US, can talk to them about this..”

“..crucial to Netanyahu keeping his far-right war cabinet together..”

Israel Planning for Gaza War To Last Over a Year (Antiwar)

The Financial Times reported speaking with sources who said that Israel plans to wage war on Gaza for over a year. In a little less than two months, Israel has killed at least 15,000 people, damaged 100,000 buildings, displaced 1.7 million Palestinians, and destroyed most of Gaza’s medical facilities. On Friday, FT reported sources said Israel was preparing for a multi-phase conflict in Gaza that will last at least a year. “This will be a very long war…We’re currently not near halfway to achieving our objectives,” said one person familiar with the Israeli war plans. According to the sources, Israel’s goals include “killing the three top Hamas leaders — Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif, and Marwan Issa — while securing a decisive military victory against the group’s 24 battalions and underground tunnel network and destroying its governing capability in Gaza.”

Israel does not appear close to achieving these goals. US sources have said that Israel’s military operations in Gaza have failed to impact high or even mid-level Hamas members. On Sunday, the Guardian reported that Israeli officials estimated that 1,000 – 2,000 Hamas members had been killed. However, FT spoke with an Israeli military source who gave an estimate of 5,000 dead Hamas members. It is unclear why there is such a large discrepancy in the numbers, as both were given during the week-long pause in fighting. In either case, the Israeli military operations have killed more children, at least 6,000, than members of Hamas. The massive civilian toll has led to mounting world opinion against Israeli military operations.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken attended a meeting of the Israeli war cabinet on Thursday and warned that Tel Aviv will lose more international support as the conflict continues. Gen. Herzi Halevi, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) chief of staff, said military operations in Gaza will take “more than a few additional weeks,” suggesting Tel Aviv did not plan to follow Washington’s advice. Still, America’s top diplomat said Washington was still firmly committed to arming Tel Aviv. The first phase of the war, an intense bombing campaign and ground invasion, is expected to last well into 2024. One source said the first phase of the war is about 40% complete. “Gaza City isn’t finished yet, nor fully conquered. It’s probably 40% done,” the person explained. “For the north as a whole, it will probably require another two weeks to a month.”

The second phase will be an operation with fewer military operations aimed at stabilizing Gaza. While the sources told FT that the second phase is projected to continue until late 2024, Israeli officials say they cannot predict a firm endpoint to the conflict. The Biden administration has pushed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to allow the Palestinian Authority to control Gaza after Hamas is defeated. However, one source told FT that Tel Aviv will not listen to Washington, even as the US provides Israel with billions of dollars in weapons. “No one, not even the US, can talk to them about this,” said one of the sources familiar with the matter. That person emphasized that this point was crucial to Netanyahu keeping his far-right war cabinet together.

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“I can promise that a war of liberation is coming, not just another October 7..”

Hamas Official Hints At Another Attack On Israel, Bigger Than Oct. 7 (JTN)

A top Hamas official hinted during an interview with Lebanese media that another attack against Israel is in the works, likely bigger than Oct. 7. Osama Hamdan, a senior representative of Hamas in Lebanon, said during an interview earlier this week that a “war of liberation” was coming. The interview was transcribed by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), according to The Daily Wire. “You said that if the Israelis would make new arrests, after all the prisoners are released from [Israeli] prisons, you would carry out another operation,” the interviewer said during the interview, according to the outlet. “So can you promise another October 7?”

“I can promise that a war of liberation is coming, not just another October 7,” Hamdan answered. The interviewer asked if this attack would happen soon in the future, to which Hamdan answered, “I do not think it is far off.” Hamdan also referred to the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel as “acts of resistance.” Israel declared war on Hamas after the terrorist organization orchestrated an attack on them, killing about 1,200 Israelis and taking hundreds more hostage, including women and children.

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“..exacerbates the suffering of citizens and aggravates the challenges faced by humanitarian organizations..”

Israel Bans Trucks With Aid From Entering Gaza (TASS)

Israel has banned trucks with humanitarian aid from entering the Gaza Strip from Egypt, the WAFA news agency reported, citing the Palestine Red Crescent Society. “Israel has informed that it banned humanitarian aid trucks from entering the Gaza Strip through the Rafah crossing until further notice,” the PSCS said. Israel has ordered that the Palestinian side of the crossing be cleared of trucks as soon as possible. According to the PSCS, the Israeli decision “exacerbates the suffering of citizens and aggravates the challenges faced by humanitarian organizations that are trying to alleviate the anguish of residents and displaced persons in light of the ongoing Israeli aggression in the Gaza Strip.” On December 1, the Israel Defense Forces accused Hamas of violating a truce and announced that it was resuming hostilities in the Gaza Strip.

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“..a la Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and More..”

Ukraine Another Historic US War Failure (SCF)

The U.S.-led NATO alliance held its first NATO-Ukraine Council meeting this week in Brussels. As usual, the cliched promises of supporting the Kiev regime to the end were trotted out by all and sundry. In truth, these NATO events for Ukraine, and more generally, are becoming yawn fests. The whole sordid charade is only postponing the reality that the proxy war in Ukraine against Russia is a debacle for the Western powers. This is not something to gloat over. It is a tragedy and an abomination. Up to 400,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed, as well as tens of thousands of Russian military personnel. Total casualty figures are no doubt in the millions. In addition, millions of civilians have been displaced as refugees in Russia and throughout Europe. Hundreds of billions of dollars and euros have been raided from Western taxpayers to fund this bloody fiasco.

Not only that but international tensions have been heightened between nuclear powers at a perilous pitch not seen since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 at the depth of the Cold War.Washington needs to come to its senses and negotiate a peaceful settlement on Moscow’s terms. It’s as simple and as blunt as that. This is what could have been achieved before the conflict erupted in February 2022 when Moscow was offering a negotiable security treaty. The West rejected those terms out of hand back then. Now it will have to accept. Primarily, the conditions are that there will be no further NATO enlargement around Russia’s borders and in particular there will be no inclusion of Ukraine in the American-led bellicose military bloc.

Attending the NATO summit this week was U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken along with Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and the foreign ministers of the other 30 NATO member states. Kuleba declared with delusional disconnect: “We are pretty much becoming a de facto NATO army.” He may be somewhat correct that Ukraine has been used as a proxy force for NATO, but it is a spent and decimated one. Blinken seemed to be concerned with papering over cracks appearing in various media reports indicating that the U.S. is surreptitiously telling the Kiev regime to cut its losses and make a sort of peace deal with Russia. Blinken’s bravado rhetoric is akin to empty U.S. promises previously made to Afghanistan and countless other proxy regimes over the decades before Washington ignominiously pulls the plug and does a runner.

Inviting Ukraine to a NATO council summit is all theatre and window-dressing to give the public impression that the alliance is offering the former Soviet Republic something substantive. In reality, it all amounts to throwing a bare bone. This is analogous to overinflated promises made by European Union leaders like European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen who repeatedly talk up the prospects of Ukraine joining the bloc in the future. The chances of that happening for a broken, rampantly corrupt, failed state like Ukraine are inconceivable. Again, empty, cynical promises. All the NATO and EU talk is public relations bluster to conceal the brutal reality that the United States and its Western allies have created a monumental morass of misery for Ukraine by pursuing their nefarious geopolitical games to confront Russia. The rest of Europe and indeed the whole world has paid a terrible price for these imperial games.

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“..trust in the Ukrainian president (32 percent) is less than half that of Commander-in-Chief of Ukrainian Armed Forces General Valery Zaluzhny (70 percent) and 13 percent less than that of Ukraine’s spy boss Kyrylo Budanov (45 percent)..”

West to Drop Bombshell on Ukraine and Destroy Zelensky – Whistleblower (Sp.)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is still in denial that he has outlived his usefulness to the West, former Ukrainian diplomat and whistleblower Andrii Telizhenko told Sputnik’s Backstory podcast. Volodymyr Zelensky’s approval rating is in free fall in Ukraine. According to the Economist, the latest polls indicated that trust in the Ukrainian president (32 percent) is less than half that of Commander-in-Chief of Ukrainian Armed Forces General Valery Zaluzhny (70 percent) and 13 percent less than that of Ukraine’s spy boss Kyrylo Budanov (45 percent). “Today we see the legitimacy of the president, who had 70 percent support of Ukrainians because they wanted peace, is dropping dramatically even though the propaganda machine is still working,” ex-Ukrainian diplomat and whistleblower Andrii Telizhenko told Sputnik.

“And he’s not budging for any elections. He’s a dictator. He put himself there. He said it’s going to come for one term. And he said now he seems going to be there for a second term, even though there is martial law but there is no military status or any official war recognition in Ukraine. So you can imagine that the law itself is martial, but there’s no official war recognized by the Ukrainian government or the parliament of Ukraine officially to stop any election.” “So what he’s doing is against any democracy would do as the West is betraying Ukraine today. And the latest news is that today the Ukrainian parliament, the factions in the Ukrainian parliament were pushed by the government of Ukraine, Zelensky’s regime, just to sign a treaty, saying that they do not support any elections until the war or the martial law is over and six months after that… elections in Ukraine will be happening.”

Back in August Zelensky hinted that holding elections, initially scheduled for March 2024, would be possible – despite martial law – if the West provides funds and assistance. However, as his row with the Ukrainian top brass reached its peak, Zelensky ruled out elections despite top Western policy-makers urging him to carry out the democratic procedure to uphold his legitimacy. Speaking on Backstory podcast last month, international affairs and security expert Mark Sleboda suggested that the West is seeking to get rid of Zelensky — with elections appearing the most convenient way to do so, given the Ukrainian incumbent’s low approval rating. But Zelensky remains in a “bubble” of self-delusion, according to Telizhenko.

“[Zelensky] doesn’t believe that he’s going to be dropped by Washington,” Telizhenko said. “I think he is still in the bubble controlled by his teammates and the regime, by [Head of Office of President of Ukraine Andrii] Yermak and other officials who are keeping him in a bubble and saying: ‘Oh, you are still welcome in the West. Yes, they may have cooled off a bit, but we are still coordinating with Washington’. But I think that the West is going to drop this bombshell on Ukraine and destroy Zelensky.”

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“..an agreement with Ukrainian authorities to allocate 400 square kilometers of land for the disposal of hazardous waste..”

“..the land in question is located in the Ternopol, Khmelnitsky, and Chernovitsky regions – fertile black soil farming areas in the western part of Ukraine…”

Soros Jr. Secures Reported Chemical Waste Agreement With Ukraine (Sp.)

The deal will purportedly see Dow Chemical, DuPont, BASF, Evonik Industries, Vitol and Sanofi burying hazardous waste in the European country free of charge. Alexander Soros, the son of controversial American financier George Soros, has reached an agreement with Ukrainian authorities to allocate 400 square kilometers of land for the disposal of hazardous waste, according to an investigation by French journalist Jules Vincent. Materials published by Vincent on the X (formerly Twitter) indicate he was approached by an anonymous source from Kiev’s Ministry of Agriculture. The source revealed that the agreement was reached during a meeting on November 7 between Soros Jr. and the head of Volodymyr Zelensky’s office, Andriy Yermak.

Under the terms of the agreement, Ukraine will transfer land to American companies for the burial of hazardous waste from chemical, pharmaceutical and oil companies for an indefinite period of time and free of charge. The companies include Dow Chemical, DuPont, BASF, Evonik Industries, Vitol and Sanofi.Vincent published a document signed by the parties with a statement to that effect. It states that Soros “intends to ensure reliable communication between Zelensky’s office and the representatives of the said companies.” According to the source, the land in question is located in the Ternopol, Khmelnitsky, and Chernovitsky regions – fertile black soil farming areas in the western part of Ukraine.

“The Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food of Ukraine has been asked to coordinate the allocation of dozens of land plots with a total area of 400 square kilometers,” the journalist quoted the source as saying. He calls this decision “fatal.” “This will not only render these lands unsuitable for wheat production, but will also cause irreparable damage to the ecosystems of these regions,” the ministry official wrote, stressing the need to draw the attention of Western public to this “outrageous deal.”

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“..we should never forget that any undertaking of the Kiev regime is mired in corruption.”

Who Will Pay for Zelensky’s Defense Line? West Seems Uninterested (Sp.)

President Volodymyr Zelensky told the US press that Ukraine has entered a new phase of the conflict in winter. The spresident wants to build defensive structures from Donbass to Western Ukraine. Will Kiev succeed?
Volodymyr Zelensky admitted in an interview with AP that Kiev failed to achieve desired results during the summer counteroffensive. “There is not enough power to achieve the desired results faster. But this does not mean that we should give up, that we have to surrender,” Zelensky claimed. Now the Ukrainian leader is seeking to build a new fortified defense line stretching from Donbass to Western Ukraine. “I held a meeting where we discussed the construction of fortifications on the main defensive lines. These are the Avdeevka, Maryino, Kupyansk-Liman directions, as well as the frontier regions bordering Russia and Belarus,” Zelensky wrote on his Telegram account.

Russian military expert Ivan Konovalov believes that despite Zelensky putting on a brave face his latest initiative serves as an acknowledgment that Kiev is in no-win situation. “This is an acknowledgement that the Kiev regime is losing [at this stage]: they are changing tactics from offensive to defensive,” Konovalov said. “Of course, Zelensky is unable to admit this officially. However, the very statement about the creation of fortified areas and structures in cities, that is, layering [of defenses], is precisely an admission that no one believes that the Ukrainian front will hold. It’s an admission that the moment is approaching when it will really collapse. And therefore, [Zelensky] is creating approximately the same what [Adolf] Hitler did in accordance with his city defense plan. Everyone remembers how it all ended, what situation Nazi Germany had faced. Obviously, for the Kiev Nazis it will end in much the same way.”

Meanwhile, some Russian military observers have calculated how much Zelensky’s defense line would cost. The total length of the defense line would be at least 2,800 km (1,700 miles), according to their estimates. It would take at least eight to nine months to build such a line, let alone a multi-layered defensive system, and cost at least $10 billion, they say. According to Konovalov, Zelensky’s plan is just “mission impossible”. “It can’t be done,” the expert said. “And therefore, we need to remember that this is just a declaration, on the one hand. On the other hand, we should never forget that any undertaking of the Kiev regime is mired in corruption.”

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“Ukraine increasingly resembles a bottomless pit..”

“.. the sum will rise to 60 billion euros..” That’s just Germany!

MP Slams Kiev’s Soaring Demands Amid Growing Crisis in Germany (Sp.)

Sarah Wagenknecht, a member of the Bundestag, expressed her dissatisfaction with the staggering 24 billion euro “gift” to Ukraine. “Ukraine increasingly resembles a bottomless pit. According to the German government’s own figures, it has directly transferred 24 billion euros in tax revenues to Ukraine during the conflict. This includes funds for weapons and contributions to the Ukrainian state budget,” she stated. At the same time, Wagenknecht noted that the United States and some European countries are beginning to withhold aid to Ukraine. In addition, she stressed that the EU has provided financial aid to Ukraine totaling 85 billion euros, almost a quarter of which has been financed by German taxpayers. “This means that Germany has sent an additional 20 billion euros to Ukraine via the EU,” the politician added.

Wagenknecht believes that the total amount of aid will reach 44 billion euros, and with the additional 14 billion euros allocated to help Ukrainian refugees, the sum will rise to 60 billion euros. She emphasized that this is happening in a country where there is an ongoing debate about the affordability of allocating 2 billion euros to help impoverished children. Western media often report that the US and the EU are growing weary of the Ukrainian crisis and that support for Volodymyr Zelensky is waning. According to NBC, US and European officials are already discussing the possible consequences of peaceful negotiations with Russia, including what the former Soviet republic might have to give up to reach some sort of agreement.

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“..Saudis had no alternative, given the profoundly troubling geopolitical reality that Khashoggi was being groomed by the Deep State..”

How Saudis Overcame “Reputational Damage” (Bhadrakumar)

European Union’s super bureaucrat Ursula von der Leyen chose April Fools’ Day last year to threaten China that it would suffer “reputational damage” in the world community for backing Russia’s Ukraine war. Being a civilisational state, China let pass that arrogant, presumptuous, egotistic remark. The concept reeks of neo-colonial mentality. Saudi Arabia’s tryst with reputational damage has been of a different kind. The Kingdom has had spectacular success in overcoming the reputational damage related to the killing of the ex-CIA asset Jamal Khashoggi. It makes a worthy case study for India, which also is haunted by the spectre of reputational damage for allegedly committing trans-border crimes. From an Indian perspective, there are seven “takeaways” from the Saudi experience.

First, Saudi Arabia stood its ground; second, it sought no help from third parties to reach out to the power brokers in DC; third, it seized the initiative to set in motion an investigative mechanism of its own which came up with cognitive reasoning in a very short period of time; four, it followed up by sentencing the Saudi perpetrators of Khashoggi’s murder to imprisonment; five, it didn’t allow the “reputational damage” to impede normal life; six, it turned a new page so that “a new normal” became possible, which is resilient and geared for the long haul that is strengthening the Kingdom’s strategic autonomy; and, seven, in the final analysis, the “decoupling” from the US helped the Saudis to shake off the reputational damage. Needless to say, the last point is the crux of the matter. Saudi Arabia’s assertion of strategic autonomy has taken myriad forms that caught the Biden Administration by surprise. This was not how Saudi Arabia was expected to behave under pressure with its ponderous decision-making process, the statecraft moving at a glacial pace, its comprador class among the elites only too eager to capitulate and the ruling elite’s unipolar predicament and so on.

But the “new normal” also dictated that Saudi Arabia did not get into an acrimonious brawl with the Biden Administration but instead subjected the latter to benign neglect of a kind that was most hurtful for the US’ interests and regional influence and bruised its vanities of being the only game in town in the Middle East. In reality, Saudis had no alternative, given the profoundly troubling geopolitical reality that Khashoggi was being groomed by the Deep State in the US for a higher political destiny than that of a mere dissident — and that was something Riyadh couldn’t have tolerated, as the stability of the regime was being threatened from America, which was ironically the Kingdom’s provider of security and a strategic ally of several decades.

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“Earlier US officials had warned African countries not to engage with Russia. Clearly, these countries are in no mood to listen.”

Russia Leads Way for Global South by Providing Grain for Africa (Sp.)

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced during the Russia-Africa Summit in July that Russia would dispatch free grain as humanitarian aid to six African nations identified by the World Food Program. This act underscores Russia’s extensive track record of co-operation and assistance to Africa, diverging sharply from centuries of Western imperialism directed at the Global South. Recent reports from the Somali national news agency confirmed the arrival of a vessel laden with humanitarian grain from Russia at the capital Mogadishu. Mohammed Saqib, Secretary-General of the India-China Economic and Cultural Council, highlighted the initiative’s multifaceted significance. He described it not merely as a grand gesture but as a substantial commitment to addressing international challenges — a noble cause undertaken by Russia.

The official emphasized that Russia’s response was particularly commendable considering the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Africa, compounded by challenges stemming from the conflict with Ukraine. He praised Russia’s outreach to the needy, describing it as a demonstration of international responsibility addressing the urgent needs of people in dire circumstances. “Russia’s response to humanitarian crisis in Africa in addressing the urgent need of people, while going through crises itself especially with the conflict in Ukraine, shows a sort of endless international responsibility,” Saqib noted. In the evolving landscape of renewed competition for influence among African nations, the focus appears to be shifting from traditional Cold War geopolitics to tangible material support.

And despite the impediments Western nations have placed on Russian ships in their ports, Moscow has reaffirmed its commitment to providing essential grain to the most vulnerable African nations, said Dr. Anuradha Chenoy, a retired professor at the Center for Russian and Central Asian Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University. “Russia had promised that their grain deliveries to the most needy nations of Africa would continue despite the blockades. In keeping with this Russia has launched free deliveries to African countries and the first of these shipments has landed in Somalia,” Chenoy said. “Earlier US officials had warned African countries not to engage with Russia. Clearly, these countries are in no mood to listen. They see Russia as a time-tested partner. This gesture proves this trend will continue.”

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“..roughly ten times what had been bought from Russia during the same period last year…”

Exports Of Russian Grain To EU Surge (RT)

The EU has significantly increased imports of Russian grain despite the bloc’s sanctions against the country, RIA Novosti reported on Saturday, citing statistics agency Eurostat. According to the report, in September the EU increased imports of Russian grain by 22% month-on-month to 180,000 tons, roughly ten times what had been bought from Russia during the same period last year. This was the highest figure since the start of the Ukraine conflict and subsequent Western sanctions war on Russia. The surge in imports allowed Russia to retake its place among the top-five grain suppliers to the 27-nation bloc for the first time in six months, coming in fourth. Ukraine remained the largest grain supplier to the EU in the reporting period with 1.2 million tons, down by a quarter year-on-year.

Brazil came in second with 1.1 million tons, followed by Türkiye with 204,000 tons. Canada closed out the top-five, with 139,000 tons. Meanwhile, Eurostat statistics also showed that the EU has upped imports of Russian fertilizers in recent months. According to the data, in the period July to September, the sanctioned country’s share in extra-EU imports of the product bounced back to 27%, the same share it had in the third quarter of 2021, prior to the Ukraine conflict.While neither Russian grain or its fertilizers have been directly sanctioned by the West, their export has been hindered in recent months by financial, shipping and insurance restrictions placed on Moscow. Russia has repeatedly called for these restrictions to be lifted.

The EU has so far imposed 11 rounds of Ukraine-related sanctions on Russia since early 2022, limiting the country’s access to its technologies and markets. The bloc’s overall purchases from Russia have fallen nearly fivefold since the imposition of restrictions, with Russia’s share of extra-EU imports dropping from 9.5% in February 2022 to 2% in September 2023. Meanwhile, Russia has been successfully redirecting much of its trade to Asia, primarily to India and China.

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..Strip Candidates From The Ballot In The Name Of Democracy..

Jonathan Turley: The Hill is out with my article on Democratic efforts to block voting options in the primary and general elections. In Florida, you can vote for anyone as long as it is Biden. In other states, you may be able to vote for anyone so long as it is not Trump.

Democrats Try To Strip Candidates From The Ballot (Turley)

Across news sites, Democrats are warning of the imminent death of democracy. Hillary Clinton has warned that a Trump victory would be the end of democracy. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow is warning of “executions.” Even actors like Robert DeNiro are predicting that this may be our very last democratic election. Yet these harbingers of tyranny are increasingly pursuing the very course that will make their predictions come true. The Democratic Party is actively seeking to deny voters choices in this election, supposedly to save democracy. Henry Ford once promised customers any color so long as it is black. Democrats are adopting the same approach to the election: You can have any candidate on the ballot, as long as it’s Joe Biden.

This week, the Executive Committee of the Florida Democratic Democracy told voters that they would not be allowed to vote against Biden. Even though he has opponents in the primary, the party leadership has ordered that only Biden will appear on the primary ballot. And if you want to register your discontent with Biden with a write-in vote, forget about it. Under Florida law, if the party approves only one name, there will be no primary ballots at all. The party just called the election for Biden before a single vote has been cast. This is not unprecedented. It happened with Barack Obama in 2012 and, on the Republican side, with George W. Bush in 2004. It was wrong then, and it is wrong now. As Democratic presidential candidate Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) noted, “Americans would expect the absence of democracy in Tehran, not Tallahassee. Our mission as Democrats is to defeat authoritarians, not become them.”

In Iran, the mullahs routinely bar opposition candidates from ballots as “Guardians” of the ballots. There is good reason for the Biden White House to want the election called before it is held. A CNN poll found that two out of three Democrats believe that the party should nominate someone else. A Wall Street Journal poll that found 73 percent of voters say Biden is “too old to run for president.” The party leadership is solving that problem by depriving Democratic voters of a choice. In other states, Democratic politicians and lawyers are pursuing a different strategy: “You can have any candidate, as long as it isn’t Trump.” They are seeking to bar Trump from ballots under a novel theory about the 14th Amendment. In states from Colorado to Michigan, Democratic operatives are arguing that Trump must be taken off the ballots because he gave “aid and comfort” to an “insurrection or rebellion.”

Other Democrats have called for more than 120 other Republicans to be stripped from the ballots under the same claim tied to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.[..] In a recent filing supporting this effort, figures as prominent as media lawyer Floyd Abrams and Berkeley Dean Erwin Chemerinsky have told the Colorado Supreme Court that preventing voters from being able to cast their votes for Trump is just a way of “fostering democracy.” So long as courts believe that a candidate’s speech is “capable of triggering disqualification,” that speech is unprotected in their view. [..] despite 74 million voters supporting Trump in the last election, these Democrats are insisting that voters should not be allowed to vote for him, in the name of democracy. In fairness to Democratic partisans like Clinton and Maddow, they could well be right. The 2024 election could well prove the end to democracy — if these efforts succeeded in purging ballots of opposing candidates. It is all part of an electoral variation on the Vietnam War claim that it is sometimes necessary to destroy a village in order to save it.

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X thread

The Principal of Optimism (Dean)

In the Elon Musk biography, Isaacson tells of a poker game where Musk went all-in every time until he won. It’s an analogy for how Musk – in Peter Thiel’s words – “understands something about risk that everybody else doesn’t”, and how he’s able to create companies that seemed impossible to everyone else. I think the thing that Musk understands about risk that everybody else doesn’t is what David Deutsch calls The Principal of Optimism. P.O.O: Anything which is not prohibited by the laws of physics is possible given sufficient knowledge. Musk has often referred to the laws of physics being the only constraint, like here:

Why is this interesting? Personally, I think the Principal of Optimism is one of the most significant discoveries in Philosophy made this century. Anytime you face a difficult problem, you can ask: “Do the laws of physics say solving this problem is impossible?” If the answer is no, then you know that there’s only one thing in between you and the solution: knowledge. And thanks to Karl Popper in the 20th century, we know the only way to create knowledge is through trial and error. Conjecture and refutation. Guess and check, and guess again. You see this philosophy in action at SpaceX. They got through 3 or 4 rockets before landing their first Falcon in 2015. Trial and error.

And we all watched recently as they launched and blew up the biggest rocket to ever leave the Earth, yet calling it a “success” for simply detaching Starship from the booster. Guess and check, and guess again. And so in this way, even the most seemingly outlandish problems like landing (or catching) rockets falling from space become tractable issues to be solved by a small dedicated team. While all the greatest entrepreneurs are singular individuals, on a deeper level, they all share a common trait: they don’t take anyone’s word for it. The only constraint they impose on themselves is that imposed on them by the laws of physics. They’re all guided by the same principal.
The Principal of Optimism.

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Meryl Nass

 

 

 

 

Dear men

 

 

No pyjama for the cat

 

 

Happy deer

 

 

4Circles

 

 

 

 

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Jul 242020
 


Vincent van Gogh Branches Of An Almond Tree In Blossom in Red 1890

 

Coronavirus Traveled Nearly 30 Feet At German Slaughterhouse (ZH)
US Clears Way For Drugmakers To Share COVID Antibody Capacity (R.)
Over 30 Million Americans About to Lose $600 in Unemployment Benefits (Mish)
More Than 1,000 People At Twitter Had Ability To Aid Hack Of Accounts (R.)
How the Child Care Crisis Will Distort the Economy for a Generation (Pol.)
Georgia’s Governor And Atlanta’s Mayor Ordered To Mediate Face Mask Fight (R.)
Pompeo Urges More Assertive Approach To ‘Frankenstein’ China (R.)
China’s Three Gorges Dam At The Brink (AC)
Congress Blocks Defunding the Pentagon: What We Could Do With The Money (MPN)
Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia Opens As A Mosque For Muslim Prayers (AP)
Disney Postpones ‘Mulan’ Indefinitely, Delays ‘Avatar’ And ‘Star Wars’ (R.)

 

 

No records, nothing terribly spectacular, but the numbers remain elevated. When you look at the daily new cases in the US since mid-June, that’s quite the graph.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Maté
https://twitter.com/aaronjmate/status/1286504352203644930

 

 

 

 

Slaughterhouses and care homes. What do they have in common?

Coronavirus Traveled Nearly 30 Feet At German Slaughterhouse (ZH)

COVID-19 particles traveled 26 feet across a German slaughterhouse where approximtely 1,500 workers contracted the virus, according to researchers who reconstructed the likely cause of the outbreak at the Toennies Groups slaughterhouse in Rheda-Wiedenbrueck. According to Bloomberg, a combination of cold, stale air allowed the virus to spread over such a long distance, raising concerns that the same might happen at meat plants worldwide. And while the virus is significantly less deadly than originally thought, it can lead to significant disruptions, as it takes between two weeks and several months to recover. Some patients still report symptoms, though how contagious they are is yet to be seen.

“Similar conditions at plants globally are a reason they’ve become virus epicenters, according to the report from groups including the Helmholtz Center for Infection Research. Meat plants from the U.S. to the U.K. and South America have seen the rapid spread of the virus, infecting thousands of employees who often work in close proximity on processing lines. Dozens of workers have died, and labor advocates have said that a lack of social distancing could continue to put people at risk. Outbreaks also forced American meat plants to close earlier this year, sparking some protein shortages”. -Bloomberg

The Tonnies outbreak is believed to have been caused in May by a single employee who infected the rest of their co-workers in the plant’s dismantling area, where temperatures hover around 50 degrees Fahrenheit. According to Adam Grundhoff, co-author of the study, chilly air circulated without frequent changes, combined with a strenuous work environment, helped move virus particles long distances. “It is very likely that these factors generally play a crucial role in the global outbreaks in meat or fish processing plants,” said Grundhoff, a research group leader at the Heinrich Pette Institute, Leibniz Institute for Experimental Virology. He added that distances of 1.5 to 3 meters (5 to 10 feet) is insufficient to prevent transmission.

“The Toennies plant — Germany’s largest pork abattoir — reopened last week after a month-long closure and plans to gradually ramp up output. The company, which posted a link to the research report on Twitter, also recently released a 25-point plan detailing measures it’s making to prevent further outbreaks. They include testing employees twice a week, hiring workers directly and overhauling ventilation. The report’s findings show that no factory worldwide was built for such a crisis, and the company has invested in air filters and other mechanisms to protect employees, a Toennies spokesman said by email. -Bloomberg The workers’ housing conditions were not found to play a significant role in the outbreaks.

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Keep the profit making out of it.

US Clears Way For Drugmakers To Share COVID Antibody Capacity (R.)

The U.S. Department of Justice on Thursday said it will not stand in the way of efforts by companies, including Eli Lilly and Co and Amgen Inc, to share information to help scale up capacity to manufacture antibody treatments for COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. In a letter to Lilly, Amgen, AbCellera Biologics, AstraZeneca Plc, Roche Holding’s Genentech unit and GlaxoSmithKline Plc, the DOJ said demand for monoclonal antibodies targeting COVID-19 is likely to exceed what one firm could produce on its own. The drugmakers are in various stages of developing experimental monoclonal antibodies – manufactured proteins designed to bind to a targeted cell, neutralize it and mark it for destruction by the immune system – for treatment, or even prevention, of COVID-19.


Monoclonal antibodies are among the most common type of biotech medicines, used for cancer, rheumatoid arthritis and many other conditions. The DOJ did not include Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc, which expects to have definitive trial results for its dual-antibody treatment by late summer or early fall. The Department of Health and Human Services in June awarded Regeneron a $450 million contract and the company has cleared the way for U.S. manufacturing of its antibody cocktail by moving production of its other products to a plant in Ireland. “Waiting until regulators approve specific treatments before scaling up manufacturing might delay access to these potentially life-saving medicines by many months,” the agency said in its letter.

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I don’t think they’ll let it happen. But only at the very last minute, or even a step beyond that. It’s not about people, it’s about power.

Over 30 Million Americans About to Lose $600 in Unemployment Benefits (Mish)

How Many Set to Lose $600 Checks? CNBC says More than 25 million Americans are set to lose the $600 unemployment boost next week. The Century Foundation says More than 25 Million Americans Are About to Lose an Essential $600-a-Week Unemployment Insurance Benefit. Forbes says “some 25 million unemployed workers are finishing the last week of the expanded federal unemployment benefits and will soon only receive state unemployment benefits, which average $378 per week.” To determine a better number, let’s review the Department of Labor Guidelines.

Programs which entitle an individual to receive FPUC. This program provides an additional $600 per week to individuals who are collecting regular UC (including Unemployment Compensation for Federal Employees (UCFE) and Unemployment Compensation for Ex-Servicemembers (UCX)), as well as the following unemployment compensation programs: • Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation (PEUC) • Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) • Extended Benefits (EB) • Short-Time Compensation (STC) • Trade Readjustment Allowances (TRA) • Disaster Unemployment Assistance (DUA) • Payments under the Self-Employment Assistance (SEA) program

[..] Republicans, especially Trump, do not want to extend the $600 benefit because many make more being unemployed than they did working. This is what the bickering is all about. The last full week in July ends Saturday July 25 for most state UI programs. And that is when the benefits expire, not July 31. Rubio proposes taking up the lapse in insurance “by the first week in August.” That would be too late.

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Don’t use Twitter for anything confidential. Easy.

More Than 1,000 People At Twitter Had Ability To Aid Hack Of Accounts (R.)

More than a thousand Twitter employees and contractors as of earlier this year had access to internal tools that could change user account settings and hand control to others, two former employees said, making it hard to defend against the hacking that occurred last week. Twitter Inc and the FBI are investigating the breach that allowed hackers to repeatedly tweet from verified accounts of the likes of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates, Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk and former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg. Twitter said on Saturday that the perpetrators “manipulated a small number of employees and used their credentials” to log into tools and turn over access to 45 accounts.


On Wednesday, it said that the hackers could have read direct messages to and from 36 accounts but did not identify the affected users. The former employees familiar with Twitter security practices said that too many people could have done the same thing, more than 1,000 as of earlier in 2020, including some at contractors like Cognizant. “That sounds like there are too many people with access,” said Edward Amoroso, former chief security officer at AT&T. Responsibilities among the staff should have been split up, with access rights limited to those responsibilities and more than one person required to agree to make the most sensitive account changes. “In order to do cyber security right, you can’t forget the boring stuff.”

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Another matter, like the pandemic preparedness, that has festered for decades, waiting to see the light. Communities should be able to solve this, but not if you make it profit-based.

How the Child Care Crisis Will Distort the Economy for a Generation (Pol.)

Schools across the U.S. are closed because of the coronavirus, and unlikely to reopen safely anytime soon. Parents are exhausted from constant, round-the-clock care while trying to work from home; some have chosen to leave their jobs, or switch to part-time work, just to take care of their kids. And kids themselves are slipping behind academically. Now comes the bad news: We haven’t seen the worst of it yet. When the economist Betsey Stevenson looks at the pandemic-era economic crisis, she sees a long-simmering child care crisis that has suddenly surged to the foreground of people’s lives—and whose true scope we’ve barely begun to reckon with. Its potential to inflict lasting damage to the economy is enormous, and it’s getting short shrift in the recovery plans coming out of Washington.

“The work of recovering from it will not end just because we have a vaccine,” says Stevenson, a labor economist at the University of Michigan and former member of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. “We are making choices right now about where we will be as an economy in 20 years, in 30 years, based on what we do with these kids.” Among those most likely to be affected are working mothers, who shoulder an outsize share of child care responsibilities, and have suddenly had far more work dropped in their laps. Women already need to make difficult choices between work advancement and their family roles, which can bring down their incomes over time; Stevenson expects the crisis to make that conflict sharply worse: “The impact of the child care crisis on women’s outcomes is going to be felt over the next decade.”

The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that both parents work in two-thirds of families in which married parents have children — as do the majority of America’s 13.6 million single parents. For all of them, there are major long-term financial repercussions of dropping out of the labor market, even temporarily. “When you talk about upward mobility,” she says, “this puts families on just a completely different trajectory that’s not about losing two or three years of income; it’s about being on a lower earnings trajectory for the rest of your life.”

And for anyone hoping a vaccine will allow a quick, healthy reopening sometime next year, she says: Don’t count on it. “We are letting the whole child care system erode in such a way that it’s not going to be there for us when we are fully ready to go back. You’re seeing child care centers that can’t stay in business. They can’t figure out how to reopen. They can’t keep their employees on staff. They’re letting people go,” Stevenson says. “Once we are ready to have all the jobs come back and we’re really ready to recover, even though we’ll have opened the schools, opened the child care centers, the workers aren’t going to be there, the slots aren’t going to be there.”

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Apparently nobody is clear on what the law says, or what the plans are, who’s responsible for what.

Georgia’s Governor And Atlanta’s Mayor Ordered To Mediate Face Mask Fight (R.)

A Georgia judge on Thursday ordered the governor and Atlanta’s mayor to enter mediation over the governor’s lawsuit aimed at stopping the city from enforcing its requirement that people wear masks in public during the coronavirus pandemic. Fulton Superior Court Judge Jane Barwick ordered Governor Brian Kemp and Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms to attend mediation with another judge and try to resolve the dispute before an emergency hearing scheduled in the case for Tuesday. Earlier this month, Kemp, a Republican, barred local leaders from requiring people to wear masks. Even so, several Georgia cities, including Democratic-led Atlanta, Savannah and Athens, defied the governor’s order and kept local mandates in place in an effort to slow the spread of the virus.


Bottoms told reporters that she and Kemp spoke by phone on the matter. “We are both in agreement that masks saves lives,” she said. “Hopefully we can move past this.” The governor’s office filed a lawsuit on July 16 against Bottoms and the Atlanta city council, arguing that local officials lack the legal authority to override Kemp’s orders. “Kemp must be allowed, as the chief executive of this state, to manage a public health emergency without Mayor Bottoms issuing void and unenforceable orders which only serve to confuse the public,” the 16-page complaint read. More than 4 million people in the United States have been diagnosed with the virus, including more than 150,000 cases in Georgia with more than 3,000 fatalities in the state. Kemp has stood apart even from his Republican counterparts on the mask issue. More than half of all states have statewide mask mandates.

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There are no “freedom-loving nations of the world”. There are only power-lovong politicians. And they’re everywhere.

Pompeo Urges More Assertive Approach To ‘Frankenstein’ China (R.)

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took fresh aim at China on Thursday and said Washington and its allies must use “more creative and assertive ways” to press the Chinese Communist Party to change its ways, calling it the “mission of our time.” Speaking at the Nixon Library in President Richard Nixon’s birthplace in Yorba Linda, California, Pompeo said the former U.S. leader’s worry about what he had done by opening the world to China’s Communist Party in the 1970s had been prophetic. “President Nixon once said he feared he had created a ‘Frankenstein’ by opening the world to the CCP,” Pompeo said. “And here we are.” Nixon, who died in 1994 and was president from 1969-74, opened the way for the establishment of U.S. diplomatic relations with Communist China in 1979 through a series of contacts, including a visit to Beijing in 1972.

In a major speech delivered after Washington’s surprise order this week for China to close its Houston consulate, Pompeo called for an end to “blind engagement” with China and repeated frequently leveled U.S. charges about its unfair trade practices, human rights abuses and efforts to infiltrate American society. He said China’s military had became “stronger and more menacing” and the approach to Beijing should be “distrust and verify,” adapting President Ronald Reagan’s “trust but verify” mantra about the Soviet Union in the 1980s. “The truth is that our policies – and those of other free nations – resurrected China’s failing economy, only to see Beijing bite the international hands that were feeding it,” Pompeo said.

“The freedom-loving nations of the world must induce China to change … in more creative and assertive ways, because Beijing’s actions threaten our people and our prosperity.” Recalling remarks he made after meeting British leaders in London this week, Pompeo said “maybe it’s time for a new grouping of like-minded nations, a new alliance of democracies,” while adding: “If the free world doesn’t change, Communist China will surely change us.” Pompeo said “securing our freedoms from the Chinese Communist Party is the mission of our time,” and America was perfectly positioned to lead it.

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“..the flood has already raised the water dammed behind the Three Gorges to 50 — fifty — feet higher than the maximum flood level.”

China’s Three Gorges Dam At The Brink (AC)

China’s massive Three Gorges Dam project on the upper Yangtze River is at risk. If that dam breaks, the resulting flooding would be a catastrophe of world-historical proportions. Hundreds of millions of people live along the lower Yangtze River. And the catastrophe wouldn’t simply be confined to China. The lower Yangtze is China’s commercial and industrial heartland — which means it is perhaps the world’s most important economic region. If it is swept away by a torrent, it could easily crater the already weak world economy. The Wall Street Journal‘s Jonathan Cheng [..] says that the flood has already raised the water dammed behind the Three Gorges to 50 — fifty — feet higher than the maximum flood level.


Rain is still falling this week in central China. I am told by a Chinese media follower that the government has just raised the emergency level in five affected provinces — Shanxi, Henan, Shandong, Anhui and Jiangsu — to the highest level below martial law, as part of last-ditch efforts to protect the Three Gorges Dam. The state is releasing water from tributary dams, flooding those provinces even worse than they already have been, because the alternative — a Three Gorges Dam collapse — is unthinkable. The WSJ’s Cheng said that China has had its worst economic year in four decades because of Covid, but if that dam goes, the damage to China’s economy will “dwarf” what Covid has done to it.

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Thank a war party of your preference.

Congress Blocks Defunding the Pentagon: What We Could Do With The Money (MPN)

The majority of House Democrats joined with the Republican colleagues yesterday in voting down progressive legislation that would have cut the Pentagon budget by 10 percent ($74 billion) and used the money to fund healthcare, housing, and education for the poorest Americans. The amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, sponsored by Barbara Lee (D–CA) and Mark Pocan (D–WI) was soundly defeated 93-324, with 139 Democrats joining all 185 voting Republicans in rejecting the idea. Despite the defeat, Pocan vowed to continue pushing an anti-war agenda. “We will keep fighting for pro-peace, pro-people budgets until it becomes a reality,” he said.


Democrats who voted against the military budget cuts received over three times the contributions from the defense industry as those who voted for the reduction. Earlier today, the Senate also voted down the proposal. The result will no doubt disappoint the majority of Americans as well. A poll conducted last week by Data for Progress found that 56 percent of the country supported the idea to defund the military and use the money to fight COVID-19 alleviate the growing housing crisis. Democrat-voters supported the plan by 69 to 19 percent, with Republicans also backing it, by 50 to 37 percent. The proposal is hardly a radical shift; the military’s budget has increased by around 20 percent under President Trump alone, reaching near-historic highs.

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Erdogan is not done by a long shot. The talk of the day in Greece is all about war. BILD in Germany says Merkel called Erdogan two days ago and narrowly prevented Greece firing on Turkish vessels in the Med.

Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia Opens As A Mosque For Muslim Prayers (AP)

Hundreds of Muslim faithfuls were making their way to Istanbul’s landmark Hagia Sophia on Friday to take part in the first prayers in 86 years at the structure that once was one of Christendom’s most significant cathedrals, then a mosque and museum before its reconversion into a Muslim place of worship. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is scheduled to attend the inaugural prayers inside the sixth-century monument along with around 500 dignitaries, as he fulfills what he has described as the “dream of our youth” anchored in Turkey’s Islamic movement. Thousands of men and women, including many who traveled from across Turkey, are set to perform prayers in segregated areas outside Hagia Sophia. Several camped near the structure overnight.

Orthodox church leaders in Greece and the United States, meanwhile, were scheduled to observe “a day of mourning” over the inaugural prayers. Brushing aside international criticism, Erdogan issued a decree restoring the iconic building as a mosque earlier this month, shortly after a Turkish high court ruled that the Hagia Sophia had been illegally made into a museum more than eight decades ago. The structure has since been renamed “The Grand Hagia Sophia Mosque.” The move sparked dismay in Greece, the United States and among Christian churches who had called on Erdogan to maintain it as a museum as a nod to Istanbul’s multi-religious heritage and the structure’s status as a symbol of Christian and Muslim unity. Pope Francis expressed his sadness.

Built by the Byzantine Emperor Justinian in 537, Hagia Sophia was turned into a mosque with the 1453 Ottoman conquest of Istanbul. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founding leader of the secular Turkish republic converted the structure into a museum in 1934. Although an annex to the Hagia Sophia, the Sultan’s pavilion, has been open to prayers since the 1990s, religious and nationalists group in Turkey have long yearned for the nearly 1,500-year-old edifice, which they regard as the legacy of Ottoman Sultan Mehmet the conquerer, to be reverted into a mosque.

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What happened to streaming?

Disney Postpones ‘Mulan’ Indefinitely, Delays ‘Avatar’ And ‘Star Wars’ (R.)

Walt Disney Co on Thursday postponed the debut of its movie “Mulan” indefinitely, dealing a new blow to theater operators that were counting on the live-action epic to help attract audiences during a pandemic. ViacomCBS Inc’s Paramount Pictures also said “Top Gun: Maverick”, the much-awaited sequel to the Tom Cruise-starring “Top Gun”, has been delayed to July 2, 2021 from December 23, 2020. “Mulan” was scheduled to reach theaters in March but its release has been postponed several times as many cinemas remain closed. The film had most recently been set to debut on Aug. 21 and theater operators had hoped it would help spark a late-summer rebound for movie-going.


Disney also said it had delayed the next film installments from two of its biggest franchises, “Avatar” and “Star Wars,” by one year as the novel coronavirus has disrupted production. The “Avatar” sequel is now set to debut in theaters in December 2022, and the next “Star Wars” movie in December 2023. “It’s become clear that nothing can be set in stone when it comes to how we release films during this global health crisis,” a Disney representative said. “Today that means pausing our release plans for ‘Mulan’ as we assess how we can most effectively bring this film to audiences around the world.” The “Mulan” delay follows Warner Bros decision to postpone the August release of Christopher Nolan thriller “Tenet.” The two films were seen as theaters’ best chance to salvage part of the lucrative summer season.

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