Soros Archives - The Automatic Earth

🚨 Robert F. Kennedy Jr on Impact of the U.S. Dollar Losing Its Global Dominance

"The loss of that global currency is going to cost us a minimum of $750B/year…We're letting it all happen because we're addicted to war."@RobertKennedyJr @ComicDaveSmith pic.twitter.com/PKSvcWTWKV

— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) May 20, 2023

“We’ve taken the whole city – every building – so that nobody could say that we didn’t capture some small part of it..”

In the last few months, they went slow, to minimize casualties.

• Key Donbass City Captured – Wagner Chief (RT)

The key Donbass city of Artyomovsk, known as Bakhmut in Ukraine, has been fully liberated by the Russian forces, Evgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Wagner private military company has announced. “Today at noon, Bakhmut was fully captured,” Prigozhin said in a video address published on Saturday. The last part of an area of high-rise buildings where the Ukrainians were holed up is now under the control of Russian forces, he stated. The Wagner Group will remain in Artyomovsk until Thursday, Prigozhin said, adding that during this period, fortifications will be created across the city. Control will then be passed on to the Russian Defense Ministry, and Wagner Group servicemen will go on leave to rest and regroup following months of intense fighting. According to Prigozhin, the PMC’s operation in the city, which he called ‘the Bakhmut meat-grinder’, had gone on for 224 days.

“We’ve taken the whole city – every building – so that nobody could say that we didn’t capture some small part of it,” he said. Kiev has denied Prigozhin’s claims that Artyomovsk has been captured. Ukrainian military spokesman Sergey Cherevaty told Reuters: “This is not true. Our units are fighting in Bakhmut.” The Wagner chief also personally addressed Ukraine’s president, Vladimir Zelensky, saying, “without sarcasm” that the Ukrainian troops “fought bravely, fought well”defending Artyomovsk. “Today, when you see [US President Joe] Biden, kiss him on the top of his head and tell him that I said ‘hi,’” he said. Earlier on Saturday, Zelensky arrived at the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan, where he is expected to hold talks with Biden.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1659923608683126784

https://twitter.com/i/status/1659942493771759616

“The losses there for the Ukrainians amounted to 300 to 500 men per day over that last 5 months. That sums up to a total of 60,000 casualties.”

• Bakhmut Has Fallen – Artyomovsk Has Been Liberated (MoA)

The so far largest battle of the 21st century ended today. Bakhmut has fallen. Artyomovsk (the Russian/Soviet name of the city) has been liberated. This was announced today by the titular leader of the Wagner forces, Yevgeny Prigozhin, in a video posted on Telegram. Why the Ukrainian leadership had decided to hold onto the city even months after the situation there was already in its disfavor is beyond me. The fight was decided by the numerical superiority of Russian artillery fire and the Ukraine had never a chance to top that. The losses there for the Ukrainians amounted to 300 to 500 men per day over that last 5 months. That sums up to a total of 60,000 casualties. Ten days ago Ukrainian units, including the fascist Azov brigade, rolled up the Russian flanks north and south of Bakhmut to allow the Ukrainian troops in the city to flee west.

That attack alone, only one or 2 kilometer deep, cost them some 1,600+ men and some 50+ armored vehicles. On the Russian side the fighting in the city was largely done by Wagner troops. But they were never able to do it on their own. Russian military intelligence, artillery and logistics all played an important role in the fight. The city has been destroyed but it will continued to exist as it is an important logistical hub with several rail and road connections running through it. Mariupol, which fell/was liberated a year ago, is already being rebuild. In a month or two, when the frontline has moved away from Artyomovsk, rebuilding will start there too. For a moment now the front line in Ukraine seems all around relative quit. It is not clear to me when or where a new operational move will start.

I’ve consistently used Bakhmut. Maybe it’s time to change that?

• Putin Congratulates Wagner Assault Teams With Liberation Of Artyomovsk (TASS)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has congratulated assault teams of the Wagner private military company and Russian troops with the liberation of the city of Artyomovsk, the Kremlin’s press office said in a statement on Sunday. “Vladimir Putin congratulates Wagner assault teams as well as all Russian troops, who rendered the required assistance and shielded the flanks, with the completion of the operation to liberate Artyomovsk,” the statement reads. “Everyone, who distinguished himself in the battle, will be recommended for the state decorations,” the statement added. The Russian Defense Ministry announced earlier in the day that the city of Artyomovsk (called Bakhmut in Ukraine) has been completely liberated in the course of the special military operation in Ukraine.

“In the Artyomovsk tactical direction, the assault teams of the Wagner private military company with the support of artillery and aviation of the southern battlegroup have completed the liberation of the city of Artyomovsk,” the ministry stated. Artyomovsk is located in the north of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and it served as a major transportation hub for the Ukrainian army’s supplies in Donbass. Fierce fighting to liberate the city started on August 1, 2022. The battle for this city is one of the largest battles during the liberation of Donbass since 2014. Some 72,000 people lived in Artyomovsk before the battle started.

“It is tragedy,” Zelenskiy said. “There is nothing on this place.”

• Zelenskyy Appears To Confirm Loss Of Bakhmut (Az.)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appeared to confirm the loss of the city of Bakhmut to Russia on Sunday, when asked if it remained in Kyiv’s control, Report informs via Reuters. “I think no,” he said ahead of a meeting with US President Joe Biden in Japan. “For today, Bakhmut is only in our hearts.” Russia claimed on Saturday to have fully captured the smashed eastern Ukrainian city, which if true would mark an end to the longest and bloodiest battle of the 15-month war. “It is tragedy,” Zelenskiy said. “There is nothing on this place.” The assault on the largely levelled city was led by troops from the Wagner Group of mercenaries, whose leader Yevgeny Prigozhin said earlier in the day that his troops had finally pushed the Ukrainians out of the last built-up area inside the city.

“The Ukrainian Defense Ministry denied that the city had fallen and insisted that the fighting is still ongoing..”

• Ukraine To Recapture Artyomovsk – Zelensky’s Top Aide (RT)

Ukraine will recapture the key Donbass city of Artyomovsk, also known as Bakhmut, President Vladimir Zelensky’s senior adviser Mikhail Podoliak said on Saturday night. His remarks came after Wagner private military company boss Evgen Prigozhin announced that his fighters had taken complete control of the city. The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed in the early hours of Sunday that Wagner had executed the operation with the help from regular troops. Podoliak, however, insisted that the Russians were exhausted by the fighting. “What will Russia do next, even if it captures two more [city] blocks? With what forces will they proceed, and where, and why?” Podoliak said in an interview on Ukrainian TV. “As for us, we cannot stop somewhere in the middle. Bakhmut will be liberated, just like any other Ukrainian territory,” the adviser said.

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry denied that the city had fallen and insisted that the fighting is still ongoing. Podoliak claimed that Prigozhin sought to divert attention from Zelensky’s overseas tour with stops in several European countries, Saudi Arabia, and Japan. The Ukrainian leader attended the Arab League summit in Jeddah on Friday and the G7 meeting in Hiroshima the next day. The news of the fall of Artyomovsk also comes as Ukraine is gearing up for its much-touted counteroffensive. Officials in Kiev repeatedly stressed that its timing and success would depend on weapons deliveries from the West. Zelensky promised last month that Ukrainian soldiers would not leave Artyomovsk because the retreat would “give Russian troops and Wagner a chance to capture more of our land.” The city itself has been largely destroyed by months in intense warfare.

”..when the systems were deployed as early as April 2023 there was widespread speculation that military contractors from Western countries were responsible for manning and maintaining them..”

• Russian Hypersonic Strikes Likely Caused Mercenary Casualties (MWM)

On May 16 as part of a broad spectrum of attacks on targets in the Ukrainian capital Kiev Russian Air Force MiG-31K strike fighters launched Kh-47M2 Kinzhal ballistic missiles to target Ukraine’s Patriot air defence systems. Recently delivered from Germany and the United States, Patriots are considered by far the most costly and high end weapons systems in Ukrainian service, and are very widely deployed both by seven NATO members and by key overseas strategic partners such as Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and Israel. The strikes on the Patriots followed warnings form Russian officials, as well as from several analysts in the West, that any systems delivered to Ukraine would very quickly be targeted and destroyed after becoming operational. The reputational loss the Patriot was expected to suffer was thus reportedly a major factor leading Washington to hesitate to approve transfers of the assets.

While a radar system and five missile batteries from the Patriot system were reported to have been destroyed in the MiG-31K strike, reportedly after firing 32 surface to air missiles as part of unsuccessful attempts to intercept the Kinzhal missiles, little remains known regarding casualties among the system’s crew or the nature of the personnel which were manning it when it was struck. Washington’s decision to deliver Patriot systems announced in December was largely motivated by an urgent need to strengthen the defences of major Ukrainian cities. Not only were cities such as Kiev considered at serious risk of needing to be abandoned due to the rapid destruction of infrastructure in Russian strikes, but Ukraine’s existing air defence network reliant on massive arsenals inherited from the Soviet era had also been very seriously depleted limiting their ability to defend either cities or frontline forces.

Nevertheless the Patriot as a highly complex weapons system was considered far too advanced for Ukrainian personnel to be able to train to operate in time for the assets to have an impact on the war, meaning when the systems were deployed as early as April 2023 there was widespread speculation that military contractors from Western countries were responsible for manning and maintaining them. Western personnel on the ground have played a very large role in the Russian-Ukrainian War, from British Royal Marines deployed to the frontlines and massive ‘stealth networks’ of CIA and other personnel performing roles such as organising logistics, to contractors usually formerly members of Western militaries who have deployed in an unofficial capacity often in full frontline units.

The presence of Western contractors already trained in operating a range of Western weapons systems has according to multiple reports played a key role in Ukraine’s seemingly seamless integration of new military hardware from its supporters in Europe and the United States, where non-Soviet equipment was previously used only in very limited roles before February 2022. Regarding the need for contractors to operate Patriot systems in Ukraine, the U.S. Congressional Research Service (CRS) advisory body was among many sources to issue reports that Ukrainian personnel would be unable to operate Patriot missile systems before 2024 at the earliest. “There is a lot of learning to do before Ukraine will have a functioning Patriot system on the ground,” it emphasised, highlighting taking local repair crews as an example that this would take approximately 53 weeks. With Ukrainian personnel thus unlikely to have been manning the Patriot systems deployed in April and attacked in May, less than five months after the decision was taken to supply the systems, it is likely that contractors from NATO member states with experience operating the Patriots were the ones targeted. The scale of the destruction caused by the strikes means casualties among these personnel are likely, although they are unlikely to be disclosed at least until many years after the war’s conclusion.

“..Western countries are “sticking to the escalation scenario,” which is “fraught with colossal risks.”

• Germany Pours Cold Water On Fighter Jets For Ukraine (RT)

Ukraine should not expect F-16 fighter jet deliveries from the West in the near future, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Sunday, while expressing support for a plan to train pilots to fly the advanced jets. Speaking on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japan, Scholz stated that “what is connected with the training of pilots is a long-term project,” adding that the US has not yet decided what will happen at the end of the program. “The project has a message for Russia: Russia cannot count on winning if it bets on a long war,” he said. Scholz stated, however, that there is no chance Germany will take part in F-16 deliveries to Ukraine. “First of all, everyone knows that we don’t even have such aircraft.”

The chancellor noted that Berlin is providing Kiev with what is “immediately important now,” including tanks, ammunition, and air defense equipment, adding that Germany “will support Ukraine for as long as it is necessary, financially, humanitarianly and also with arms.” “We have mobilized our resources,” he said. “We can continue to do this for a long time.” The comments come after US President Joe Biden told G7 leaders on Friday that Washington will support a joint training program for Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16s, which would take place in Europe.

This week, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that he and his Dutch counterpart, Mark Rutte, agreed to establish an ‘international coalition’ to “provide Ukraine with combat air capabilities, supporting with everything from training to procuring F-16 jets,” with a number of European countries supporting the move. On Friday, several US media outlets reported that Washington will not block its allies from sending F-16s to Ukraine, which Kiev has been requesting for months. Commenting on the potential plans to send modern fighter jets to Ukraine, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Aleksandr Grushko said that Western countries are “sticking to the escalation scenario,” which is “fraught with colossal risks.” “In any case, all our plans will take this into consideration, and we have all the necessary means to achieve our goals” regarding the military campaign in Ukraine, Grushko added.

F16

Russia Threatens To Shoot Down US Fighter Jets

Russia has issued a warning that it will shoot down US F-16 fighter jets if they enter Ukrainian airspace.

The Russian Ministry of Defense conveyed the message, stating that any unauthorized incursion into Ukrainian airspace by… pic.twitter.com/RWezOqaHlV

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) May 21, 2023

Key line: “..which would be a major blow to the F-16’s reputation..”

• F-16s May Suffer Considerable Losses If Deployed To Ukraine – Magazine (TASS)

The US-manufactured F-16 fighter jets may suffer significant losses in Ukraine, as a result of Russian strikes on their airfields or air combat, which would be a major blow to the reputation of that jet, the US’ Military Watch Magazine reported on Saturday. “A likely key reason for the discrepancy in the American and European positions is that the United States still has a very large stake in the F-16 program, not only as the fighter will continue to form the backbone of the U.S. Air Force for decades, but also because it continues to offer modernized variants of the class for export at times for hundreds of millions of dollars per airframe,” the article said.

“Thus should F-16s be deployed to Ukraine, the United States would be bearing the primary risk. Not only is there a possibility that the fighter or its technologies could fall into Russian hands, as other Western equipment has in considerable quantities, but there is also a much greater chance that the fighters could suffer significant losses both to strikes on their airfields and in air to air combat which would be a major blow to the F-16’s reputation,” the article reads. On Friday, NBC reported that the US and its allies had plans to provide F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine, and that Washington’s allies may help Ukraine procure the planes. US President Joe Biden told G7 leaders in Hiroshima that Washington supports international efforts to train Ukrainian pilots on modern fighter jets, including F-16s. Zelensky said that he looking forward to bringing this issue up at the G7 summit. On Saturday, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said commenting on F-16 potential supplies to Kiev that Western countries continued down the path of escalation in the Ukraine conflict and Russia would keep this in mind in its plans.

Like Poland was squeaky clean.. Anyone seen Shoah?

• Poland Wants Zelensky To Apologize For WW2 Ukrainian Nazi Massacre (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky should assume more responsibility for his nation when it comes to the Volyn massacre, a mass murder committed by Ukrainian nationalists against ethnic Poles during WWII, a spokesman for the Polish Foreign Ministry, Lukasz Jasina, has said. In an interview with Poland’s Onet online news media outlet on Friday, the official was asked if Zelensky should apologize for the massacre. “The Ukrainian side did not do this but president Zelensky should take more responsibility [for] Ukraine,”Jasina said. The issue has such an importance for Warsaw that it must be dealt with at the highest level, he added. The dark legacy of the Volyn massacre still haunts the bilateral relations between the two neighbors and “blocks many joint initiatives,” the ministry’s spokesman said.

In 2016, the Polish parliament recognized the Volyn Massacres as genocide at the hands of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). “You can’t change that fact. You can’t turn back time and there will never be a good time to talk about it…” Jasina said. According to the official, saying “I’m sorry and please forgive me” always works very well in Polish-Ukrainian relations “but there is still not enough of it.” The Volyn massacre was part of an ethnic cleansing campaign waged by UPA nationalist militants against the local Polish population in the regions of Western Ukraine and eastern Poland also known as Volhynia and Galicia between 1943 and 1944, during the Nazi occupation. According to various estimates, from 40,000 to 60,000 Poles were killed in total. The UPA was a paramilitary wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) known for its radical anti-Semitic ideology.

The UPA assisted Nazi Germany’s troops in the extermination of Jews on the territory of Ukraine on multiple occasions, in addition to the tens of thousands of Poles it killed in western Ukraine. Glorification of Ukrainian nationalists by Kiev, including the OUN leader, Stepan Bandera, has long been a contentious issue in relations between Ukraine and Poland as well as Israel. In 2018, Polish President Andrzej Duda signed a bill that banned the promotion of the ideology associated with Stepan Bandera. Israel also repeatedly urged Kiev to refrain from glorifying “war criminals.” Kiev still apparently fails to understand just how important this issue is for the Poles, Jasina said, adding that “this is… not the most important thing for Ukrainians” and their “understanding is still too weak.” The people in Poland, however, “clearly said this is more important than some behind-the-scenes diplomatic negotiations,”he added.

Kiev blasted Warsaw over what it called bossing Ukraine around. “Any attempt to impose on the Ukrainian president or Ukraine [and tell us] what we must [do] about our common past is unacceptable and unfortunate,” Ukraine’s ambassador to Warsaw, Vasily Zvarych said on Twitter on Saturday. He also said that Ukraine “remembers history” and called for what he called “balance and respect in statements.” Bandera has been officially hailed as a national hero in Ukraine since 2010. Ukrainian nationalists have regularly marked his birthday on January 1 with torchlit marches and massive demonstrations. Warsaw has repeatedly protested such actions. In January, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki vowed to raise the issue of Bandera with Kiev at the first opportunity.

Note: both Paul Craig Roberts and Martin Armstrong see the US going to war before the elections. In order to win the elections. I’ve been toying with the idea for a long time, and I would add the option to use the war to have no elections at all.

• The United States Has Been Destroyed by Its Ruling Elites (PCR)

The Special Counsel’s vindication of Donald Trump and denunciation of the FBI for conducting a politically motivated investigation devoid of any evidence should collapse the equally fraudulent Biden regime investigation of Trump on fake documents charges and the New York state prosecution of Trump on alleged expense misreporting charges. It has been clear for a long time that the list of fake charges against Trump, supported by the media, are propaganda to prevent Trump again running for President and to teach all future potential presidential candidates that they will be destroyed if they attempt to represent the people instead of the unelected ruling oligarchy.

However, the Democrat Party and the presstitutes that service them have no respect whatsoever for truth. Facts simply do not matter to them. This is true also of American Universities, law associations, medical associations, the CIA, FBI, NSA, the State Department, the regulatory agencies such as NIH, CDC, FDA, the large corporations, and many establishment Republican members of the House and Senate who serve the economic interests that pay them, not truth. It is also the case with a high percentage of Democrat voters who have been conditioned by propaganda to hate Trump. To Democrats what matters is not facts, but getting Trump. Truth is not permitted to prevent the destruction of Trump.

Consequently, the US is moving toward a fatal split in the society from which recovery is impossible. Trump represents ordinary Americans who prefer peace to the neoconservatives’ wars, who want their jobs back that the greed-driven capitalist global corporations sent to China and Asia, who want their children properly educated instead of indoctrinated with sexual perversion, Satanism, and told that they are racists. In contrast, the Democrats are increasingly Woke–people who believe that truth is an oppressive tool of white supremacy, that Christian morality is tyrannical and discriminatory against pedophiles and other sexual perverts, and that, as “President” Biden himself has said, white people are the greatest threat to America.

Now that official investigations by the House Republicans have brought the utter corruption of Biden and his son to light, the Democrats, the dangerous and corrupt military/security complex, and the complicit whore American media, are desperate. They all stand as being exposed. So, rather than apologize for their mistreatment of Trump and his supporters–1,000 of whom the Democrats have illegally imprisoned–they will likely strike out while they still control the Executive Branch, the US Senate, the CIA, FBI, NSA, and federal agencies such as the IRS that have been armed and militarized. Alternatively, the corrupt and threatened Democrats might cause war between the US and Russia, or Iran, or China in the hopes that a war will unify even Trump supporters, especially the super-patriots among them, around the “President” against “foreign enemies.”

Armstrong

Martin Armstrong Believes the Neocons Will Start a War to Help Biden Get Re-Elected in 2024

"The neocons think if they start a war before the 2024 election that no President has ever lost an election during the war…I would not put it past them to pull out the standard playbook… pic.twitter.com/ZaPH6ODIJK

— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) May 21, 2023

“The international community does not and will not accept the G7-dominated Western rules..”

• China Questions ‘Credibility’ Of G7 Members (RT)

The international community will not fall in line with the pro-Western rules pushed by the G7 and not allow the US-led group to dominate world affairs, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Saturday. “China will never accept the so-called rules imposed by the few. The international community does not and will not accept the G7-dominated Western rules that seek to divide the world based on ideologies and values,” the statement read. The Foreign Ministry went on to accuse the group of acting on behalf of “America-first” policies and attempting to impose its will on others. “That simply shows how little international credibility means to the G7,” the ministry said. “Gone are the days when a handful of Western countries can just willfully meddle in other countries’ internal affairs and manipulate global affairs.” The Group of Seven is an informal club consisting of the US, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan. The G7 annual meetings are typically also attended by officials representing the EU.

In a joint communique adopted at the summit in Hiroshima, Japan on Saturday, the G7 listed multiple allegations aimed at Beijing, including technology theft, “economic coercion,” and human rights abuses at home. The group said that it strongly opposes “any unilateral attempts to change the status quo by force” around Taiwan and in the South China Sea. Beijing responded by saying that “affairs related to Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Tibet are purely China’s internal affairs.” China accused the G7 of endangering peace in the region by providing “support for ‘Taiwan independence’ forces.” Although G7 members refrain from formally establishing diplomatic ties with Taiwan, the US has sold weapons to Taipei and promised to defend it from a potential attack from the mainland. US politicians have also met with officials from Taiwan, prompting harsh criticism from Beijing, which opposes any form of diplomatic contacts with the Taipei authorities.

“..criticism of Soros – who finances the most hostile organizations to the Jewish people and the state of Israel is anything but anti-Semitism, quite the opposite!”

• US and Israeli Envoys Clash Over Soros (RT)

The US and Israeli anti-Semitism envoys have taken opposing positions on whether supporters or critics of Jewish financier George Soros is anti-Semitic. The argument kicked off when Twitter CEO Elon Musk compared Soros to a cartoon supervillain. In a tweet on Monday, Musk said that Soros reminds him of “Magneto,” a mutant-supremacist scientist from Marvel’s ‘X-Men’ universe. When a commenter pointed out that Magneto was depicted – like Soros – as a Holocaust survivor and that both have “good intentions,” Musk doubled down. “You assume they are good intentions,” he wrote. “They are not. He wants to erode the very fabric of civilization. Soros hates humanity.” Musk was quickly accused of anti-Semitism, with Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt declaring that by comparing the billionaire “to a Jewish supervillain,” Musk would “embolden extremists.”

The Israeli government disagreed. “The Israeli government and the vast majority of Israeli citizens see Elon Musk as an amazing entrepreneur and a role model,” Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli tweeted on Thursday, adding that “criticism of Soros – who finances the most hostile organizations to the Jewish people and the state of Israel is anything but anti-Semitism, quite the opposite!” Soros has donated more than $32 billion to liberal political causes through his Open Society Foundations NGO, and was the largest donor in last year’s midterm elections in the US, gifting $128 million to Democratic Party candidates and organizations. Soros funds a number of Palestinian activist groups that accuse the Israeli state of war crimes, and several international organizations that promote boycotts of Israeli goods and sanctions against its leaders. In the US, the Biden administration sided with its leading donor against Chikli’s criticism.

“Irrespective of how one feels about George Soros’s politics or policies, it is entirely disingenuous to deny that many ad hominem attacks on him rely on classic antisemitic tropes and rhetoric,” US Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism Deborah Lipstadt tweeted on Friday. “In bygone eras, the antisemites invoked the Rothschild family to advance their conspiracies about Jews. Today they use Soros to do so,” she declared. Neither Soros nor his Open Society Foundations have responded to Musk’s comments. Asked on Tuesday whether he was worried his controversial tweets would drive advertisers away from Twitter, Musk told CNBC News “I don’t care. I’ll say what I want to say, and if the consequences are losing money, so be it.”

“It is highly unlikely that society would accept the degradation in global standard of living..”

• Exxon Crushes Progressive “Net Zero” Dreams (ZH)

In a world of suffocating snowflakery, ESG hypocrisy and, well… Tranheuser Busch, a corporation telling the truth without fear of reprisals from the Open Society-funded virtue signaling cabal is rarer than an mRNA-injected, genetically engineered hen’s teeth. And yet that’s what the company hated by every progressive, Exxon Mobil, did this week when it became the first corporation to denounce the insidious and laughable claims that “net zero” is even a remote possibility by 2050. The US supermajor pushed back against investors pressing the company to report on the risks to its business from restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions and potential environmental disasters when in a reply to proxy advisor Glass Lewis, Exxon said the prospect of the world achieving net-zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 is remote and should not be further evaluated in its financial statements.

A shareholder proposal seeking a report on the cost of having to abandon projects faces a shareholder vote on May 31. Glass Lewis backed the initiative, concluding Exxon could face material financial risks from the net-zero scenario. Exxon disagreed, and said the world is not on a path to achieve net-zero emissions in 2050 as limiting energy production to levels below consumption demand would lead to a spike in energy prices, as observed in Europe following oil sanctions against Russia over Ukraine. Exxon, is of course, correct however that won’t stop the green fanatics from beating the drum that somehow the world can transition to “green” energy (at a cost of some $150 trillion mind you) in the next 27 years without an energy cataclysm.

At the heart of the issue is the 2050 net-zero emissions (NZE) scenario of the International Energy Agency (IEA) which envisions a path to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius. For the NZE scenario to be met, the IEA had hilariously said new oil exploration would have to have stopped in 2021 and nations would have to switch to renewable energy from fossil fuels (good luck with that). Exxon is among the companies heavily investing in new exploration to generate oil and gas for decades to come, and in retrospect, one can thank their deity of choice for Exxon’s decision to do so as opposed to sending the world back into the dark ages, an outcome which so many from the World Economic Forum seems to aspire to. “It is clear that the IEA NZE does not, by the scenario authors’ own assessment, meet the level of likelihood required to be considered in our financial statements,” Exxon said in a response filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday. “It is highly unlikely that society would accept the degradation in global standard of living required to permanently achieve a scenario like the IEA NZE,” Exxon said in dismissing the proposal.

So free them all.

• FBI Improperly Used Surveillance Program to Spy on Jan. 6 Suspects – Court (ET)

The FBI abused its surveillance powers while spying on suspects in the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol and Black Lives Matter protesters, a federal court said in a newly unsealed ruling. FBI agents violated standards the agency developed for the Section 702 program, which enables spying on Americans and others, more than 278,000 times, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court said in the 2022 ruling, which was made public for the first time on May 19. Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act enables agencies like the FBI to collect information like emails without warrants from foreigners, even if they’re in the United States, and bars intentionally targeting Americans.

The FBI developed its own standard for Section 702 searches, stating that queries “must be reasonably likely to retrieve foreign intelligence information, as defined by FISA, or evidence of a crime, unless otherwise specifically excepted.” But FBI agents have been violating the standard, the court has found, with the newest ruling disclosing hundreds of thousands of abusive searches in addition to those already known. The abusive searches include multiple improper queries targeting suspected or confirmed Jan. 6 suspects. In one instance, an analyst searched for information on 13 people suspected of being involved in the Capitol breach. The analyst “said she ran the queries to determine whether these individuals had foreign ties,” but the Department of Justice’s National Security Division (NSD) “concluded the queries were not reasonably likely to retrieve foreign intelligence information or evidence of crime,” the newly unsealed ruling states.

In another case, widespread searches that in total consisted of more than 23,000 separate queries looked for information on presumed Americans to see whether the people were “being used by a group” involved in the breach. “The queries were run against unminimized Section 702 information to find evidence of possible foreign influence, although the analyst conducting the queries had no indications of foreign influence related to the query terms used,” the court said. “NSD assessed there was no specific factual basis to believe the queries were reasonably likely to retrieve foreign intelligence information or evidence of crime from Section 702 information.”

“Cleese last year complained that “cancel culture” had had a “disastrous effect” on comedy and had even caused the “death of creativity..”

• Monty Python Pressured To Drop Gender Transition Skit (RT)

Beloved British comedy troupe Monty Python was pressured to do away with a skit from their classic film ‘Life of Brian’ that jokes about a man wanting to become a woman and have babies, co-founder John Cleese told an audience at his one-man show last week. “We love the script, but you can’t do that stuff about Loretta nowadays,” performers conducting a read-through of the Biblical parody last year supposedly told Cleese, claiming the skit – in which the character Stan insists on being called ‘Loretta’ and declares “it’s every man’s right to have babies if he wants them” – would offend modern audiences. “So here you have something there’s never been a complaint about in 40 years, that I’ve heard of, and now all of a sudden we can’t do it because it’ll offend people,” Cleese lamented. “What is one supposed to make of that?”

In the skit, Stan’s comrades in the People’s Front of Judea are split on whether to support ‘Loretta’s’ new identity, and the self-declared woman accuses his detractor of “oppressing” him. “I’m not oppressing you, Stan, you haven’t got a womb! Where’s the fetus gonna gestate? You gonna keep it in a box?” his friend asks. The lone female of the group, Judith, suggests a compromise. “Suppose you agree that he can’t actually have babies – not having a womb, which is nobody’s fault, not even the Romans’ – but that he can have the right to have babies.” Stan’s friend Reg likes that idea, declaring it’s “symbolic of our struggle against oppression” – while the naysayer mutters it’s merely “symbolic of [Stan’s] struggle against reality.” The film version of ‘Life of Brian’ was previously banned in some countries for its supposedly blasphemous subject matter, being a profoundly irreverent satire on the Biblical stories chronicling the life and times of the Christian messiah Jesus Christ.

The 2024 stage show adaptation, set to open next year in London, will reportedly excise the film’s crucifixion scene, in which the characters sing the incongruously catchy and upbeat tune ‘Always Look on the Bright Side of Life’ while the messiah character Brian is being executed. Eric Idle, another founding member of Monty Python, clarified in a tweet on Friday that he was not involved in the stage show version after British Comedy Guide referred to “Cleese and Idle” having made changes to the original script. Cleese last year complained that “cancel culture” had had a “disastrous effect” on comedy and had even caused the “death of creativity,” explaining that “if you’re worried about offending people and constantly thinking of that, you are not going to be very creative.”

Monty Python called this in 1979!…. “From now on I want you to call me Loretta!” pic.twitter.com/T0tr9cnlYa

— cynthia hilliard (@pickemupjo) May 12, 2023

The Mauna Kea silversword, Argyroxiphium, or the Flower of Patience. It opens every 7 years and it lasts only for 7 days.

This is a newfound species of tardigrade, one of about 1,300 known types of water bears. It was discovered in moss growing on dead tree trunks in Germany’s Black Forest. SEM image, magnified 2,400 times.

Duckling

Duckling living his best life.. 😊 pic.twitter.com/jA33X3Ysh4

— Buitengebieden (@buitengebieden) May 20, 2023

The Philippine eagle is considered the largest of the extant eagles in the world in terms of length and wing surface. Being a critically endangered species, killing a Philippine eagle is punishable under Philippine law up to 12 years in prison [read more: https://buff.ly/2lKrawh]

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Lula’s Grand Strategy

Apr 012023

April 1, 2023 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 4:51 pm Finance Tagged with: BRICS, India, LGBT, Lula, Rousseff, Russia, Soros 25 Responses »

Georgia O’Keeffe Red poppy 1927

Andrew Korybko:

Background Briefing

Brazil and Chinese reached an agreement earlier this week to de-dollarize their trade, which will accelerate financial multipolarity processes amidst the global systemic transition. The timing was curious, however, since Brazil’s Agriculture Minister Carlos Favaro told the media last weekend that “All government actions are postponed” due to Lula canceling his planned trip after falling ill. Even though he rescheduled it for 11-14 April, the parties decided to sign it last week instead of waiting till then.

Furthermore, this took place on the same week that the US hosted its second “Summit for Democracy”, which Lula didn’t attend via video as planned on the pretext of his recent illness. Nevertheless, he sent a lengthy statement that allied media misreported as pro-Russian, the description of which is discredited by verifiable facts from official sources here as well as the text itself that was later published in full here. Russia isn’t mentioned therein at all, and it actually reads like a love letter to the US Democrats.

Lula’s Ideological Alignment With The US’ Liberal-Globalists

Lula is ideologically aligned with those liberal–globalists, which intrepid readers can learn more about by perusing the collection of articles shared at the end of this analysis here. It’s therefore unsurprising that his letter implied that the Brazilian opposition are “extremists”, condemned the “disinformation” that he hints is driving the latter as a pretext for potentially imposing more censorship in the coming future as part of his US-backed power consolidation campaign, and praised “LGBTQIA+” people.

These agendas that he pushed in his statement to the “Summit for Democracy” also align with the causes that are aggressively propagated across the world by Color Revolution financier George Soros, who enthusiastically endorsed Lula in his speech at the Munich Security Conference in mid-February. The last one regarding LGBTQIA+ people in particular directly contradicts Russia’s official support for traditional moral values as promulgated in its new foreign policy concept that can be read here.

In the eighth paragraph, Russia warns that “A wide-spread form of interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states has become the imposition of destructive neoliberal ideological attitudes that run counter to traditional spiritual and moral values.” This passage justifies its official goal of defending traditional moral values that’s mentioned a dozen times, explains why Russia banned LGBT+ propaganda, and adds context to President Putin’s conclusion that the liberal elite promote pedophilia.

Managing US Perceptions Of Brazil’s Financial Multipolarity Policy

The socio-cultural dimension of Lula’s worldview is therefore opposed to Russia’s, which he presumably regards as “bigoted” and “fascist” just like his liberal-leftist supporters generally do. Nevertheless, these two BRICS countries still share the common goal of financial multipolarity, thus explaining his decision to de-dollarize Brazilian-Chinese trade. Returning to that development, its timing suggests that Lula wanted this to happen comparatively more quietly than him announcing it while standing with his counterpart.

Since it was already agreed upon, his challenge was therefore to manage US perceptions since he didn’t want to risk offending his fellow “social justice warriors” there like AOC and Bernie Sanders, both of whom he met during his trip to DC in February. Lula also wanted to avoid offending his new buddy Biden too after those two agreed to comprehensively strengthen their countries’ strategic partnership in their joint statement, which can be read at the official White House website here and was analyzed here.

To that end, his latest illness was politically convenient in the sense that it allowed him to postpone his planned trip so that it didn’t coincide with the US’ second “Summit for Democracy” and subsequently authorize the de-dollarization deal’s signing in his absence to comparatively less attention. As was explained above, he wanted to do his best to manage US perceptions about this development that advances Brazil’s goal of financial multipolarity at the dollar’s indisputable expense.

The Scenario Of Russian-Brazilian Ideological Competition In Africa

For as much as his media allies and social media sycophants claim otherwise, it’s nevertheless factually false to describe Lula as opposed to the US as proven by his previously cited statement to the last week’s summit participants as well as his joint one with Biden in February that was hyperlinked above too. Despite his promotion of financial multipolarity at the dollar’s indisputable expense, he’s solidly aligned with the US’ ruling liberal-globalists, especially in the domestic political and socio-cultural sense.

The two referenced statements prove that Lula shares Biden’s liberal-globalist mission of delegitimizing their respective opposition as “extremists”, preparing for imposing more censorship on that aforementioned pretext, and propagating LGBT+ causes in full cooperation with each other. The last-mentioned part directly contradicts one of the key precepts contained in Russia’s new foreign policy concept regarding the defense of traditional moral values and thus constitutes a hybrid threat.

Be that as it may, Brazil as a state isn’t a threat to Russia, but its potential propagation of LGBT+ causes in collusion with the US in third countries where Moscow also has interests such as those traditionally conservative ones in Africa like Uganda could constitute an unfriendly asymmetrical challenge. Russia and Brazil might therefore find one another competing for hearts and minds there, with the first defending restrictions on LGBT+ propaganda and the second agitating locals against them.

Brazil’s Envisaged Balancing Act Between China & The US

As regards China, however, Brazil isn’t expected to clash or compete with it in any form since Lula actually envisages his country balancing between it and the US. On the one hand, China is Brazil’s top economic partner and an ally in advancing their shared goal of financial multipolarity. On the other hand, the US is Brazil’s top security partner and is nowadays also a source of inspiration for its liberal-globalists who model themselves off of its ruling Democrat Party, thus explaining his balancing act.

It was earlier touched upon in passing in this analysis here, which interpreted Foreign Minister Vieira’s praise of China in an interview as implying “the possibility of Brazil attempting to balance between the Golden Billion’s US leader with whom Lula has politically aligned himself against Russia and the Sino-Russo Entente’s Chinese economic engine”. Regardless of how successful this approach proves to be, observers should note that Russia isn’t expected to play any prominent role in Lula’s grand strategy.

Trade will likely continue to grow since it’s mutually beneficial, but political ties could soon worsen in the event that Lula extradites a suspected spy to the US to face charges instead of deporting him back to Russia, which readers can learn more about here. Foreign Minister Lavrov’s potential trip to Brazil this month will likely focus on that issue while also exploring the possibility of further expanding their economic ties, particularly in the energy sector like that country’s Ambassador to Russia suggested.

Debunking The “Big Lie” Of The Brazilian Left

Lula’s appointment of former President Rousseff to lead BRICS’ New Development Bank (NDB) should therefore be interpreted in the context of advancing Brazil’s financial multipolarity goals instead of having anything to do with Russia like his media allies and social media sycophants are spinning it as. The ”Big Lie” of the Brazilian left and their supporters abroad is that Lula is pro-Russian even though the facts prove that he’s politically aligned with the US against it in that country’s proxy war with NATO.

They’ll spin anything that he does to lie that he’s secretly allied with Russia against the US despite the facts cited in this analysis from official sources comprehensively debunking that literal conspiracy theory. This “politically inconvenient” fact can never be openly acknowledged even in the scenario that he extradites that suspected spy to the US to face charges instead of deporting him back to Russia since those propagandists fear that it’ll expose the truth about Lula’s US-aligned liberal-globalist worldview.

In their minds, the false perception of Lula as a “multipolar revolutionary opposed to US hegemony” must be maintained at all costs lest the aforesaid truth about his worldview prompts a political revolt among the Workers’ Party’s base that results in him being pressured to recalibrate his grand strategy. This explains why they’re so actively pushing the latest disinformation narrative falsely alleging that his de-dollarization deal with the US supposedly means that he’s opposed to it and aligned with Russia.

The Future Of Russian-Brazilian Relations

In reality, Russia is only considered by Lula to be a commodities partner and a country to cooperate with in pursuit of their shared financial multipolarity goals. He’s fiercely opposed to its official defense of traditional moral values and especially the military moves that it was forced to make in defense of its national security red lines in Ukraine after NATO clandestinely crossed them there. Lula won’t ever say so openly, but he in all likelihood thinks that Russia is “bigoted”, “fascist”, and “imperialist”.

Even so, he’ll still cooperate with it on issues of shared interest as explained, but neither can rely on one another beyond that like Russia can depend on fellow BRICS partner India, which Lula probably also thinks is led by “bigots” and “fascists” in accordance with his liberal-globalist worldview. Artificial limits are imposed on their partnership due to the Brazilian leader’s radical ideology, which all honest observers must acknowledge if they aspire to accurately analyze his grand strategy going forward.

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Debt Rattle March 19 2023

Mar 192023

March 19, 2023 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:33 am Finance Tagged with: arrest, BlackRock, Credit Suisse, Hillary, Mariupol, Putin, Soros, Trump, UBS, woke army 38 Responses »

Henri Rousseau The Flamingoes 1907

• Donald Trump Says He Will Be Arrested Tuesday (NYP)

• Arrest Would Deliver Trump 2024 Election In ‘Landslide’ – Elon Musk (RT)

• Get Ready For Manhattan DA’s Made-for-TV Trump Prosecution (Turley)

• George Soros A Major Force Behind Trump’s Prosecution and Imminent Arrest (TP)

• Hillary Clinton Quietly Settled Campaign Finance Violation Last Year (PM)

• Obama, Hillary Settled Nearly $500,000 In Campaign Finance Fines (DCE)

• Watchdog Group Launches Investigation Into Biden’s ‘Woke Army’ (ET)

• Putin Makes Surprise Visit To Donbass, Mariupol (RT)

• Ukrainian Troops Use 19th-Century Arms To Defend Bakhmut – The Telegraph (RT)

• Russia Responds To Denmark’s Nord Stream Probe Refusal (RT)

• The Perfect Solution to the Banking Crisis Is to Make a Truly Safe Bank (Mish)

• Nearly 200 US banks At Risk Of Repeating SVB Collapse – Study (RT)

• UBS Seeks $6 Billion Government Backstop In Credit Suisse Takeover (ZH)

• Britons Facing ‘Disastrous Decade’ – Report (RT)

• Massie Asks A Reasonable Question (Denninger)

OTAN

Why is Western media ignoring the anti-NATO protests happening today in Paris, France?

« Sortons vite de l'OTAN! »

Thousands of people chanting "Let's get out of NATO quickly!" pic.twitter.com/j2WleN6O3w

— sarah (@sahouraxo) March 18, 2023

If we wanted to get screwed by the goverment we would have elected Brad Pitt

Big guy

Our Government has lost it’s fucking mind. These are the two who should be handcuffed👇🏻

pic.twitter.com/epoFI9uDfN

— Juanita Broaddrick (@atensnut) March 18, 2023

DNA RNA

🚩 Genomics Expert Kevin McKernan Sequenced the COVID Vaccines & the Contents Are Alarming

“Yes the vaccine mRNA we can see there, but 10-30% of the nucleic acids in there are DNA from the expression vector they used to make the RNA. That shouldn’t be present.”@AprilMossTV… pic.twitter.com/rKfgQIn12I

— Chief Nerd (@TheChiefNerd) March 18, 2023

RFK

It's a Red Line: The Explosion of Chronic Disease Began When the Vaccine Schedule Changed – @RobertKennedyJr

"There's 420 diseases listed as side effects of vaccines on the manufacturer's inserts to the 72 vaccine doses now given to our children, and every one of these diseases… pic.twitter.com/ZdM3OaTFZs

— The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) March 18, 2023

Dowd

Edward Dowd – worrisome pic.twitter.com/KKD9YRw3gU

— Jung (@betterworld_24) March 18, 2023

The US appears at serious risk of becoming ungovernable: “protest, take our nation back!”. But they can’t beat Trump any other way.

• Donald Trump Says He Will Be Arrested Tuesday (NYP)

Former President Donald Trump said he expects to be arrested Tuesday in Manhattan — and urged his followers to protest his looming indictment. “THE FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE & FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK. PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!,” he thundered in an all caps missive to his followers on Truth Social Saturday morning. He slammed Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office as “CORRUPT & HIGHLY POLITICAL” in his post. Trump again insisted he had committed no crime, and reminded his followers that Bragg’s campaign had been heavily financed by liberal billionaire George Soros.

Bragg’s looming charges are said to focus on Trump’s payments of hush money to Stormy Daniels, an adult star who claimed she had an affair with Trump in 2016 and received $130,000 in hush money payments from the billionaire to keep her quiet during his 2016 presidential campaign. Trump has denied the alleged infidelity. An attorney for Daniels said Wednesday his client had met with Manhattan prosecutors, and that she was prepared to testify in any trial as a witness. Michael Cohen, Trump’s former attorney and fixer, pleaded guilty in 2018 to federal campaign finance law violations stemming from the payment and was sentenced to three years in prison.

“2024 is the final battle. If you put me back in the White House, the reign of the corrupt Washington establishment will be over.”

Are you paying attention yet?

pic.twitter.com/9m5kayOYsC

— MAGA War Room (@MAGAIncWarRoom) March 18, 2023

“The predicted indictment of the former president [..] would be the first of its kind in US history..”

• Arrest Would Deliver Trump 2024 Election In ‘Landslide’ – Elon Musk (RT)

If former US President Donald Trump is arrested next week, he will win the 2024 election in a “landslide victory,” Twitter owner Elon Musk tweeted on Saturday in response to a Fox News clip discussing the possibility of the former president being “handcuffed” and processed through the New York City court system. “If this happens, Trump will be re-elected in a landslide victory,” Musk said in the tweet, a reply to a similar – though less emphatic – prediction from Canadian lawyer @thevivafrei. The opinion that this scenario might propel the former reality TV star back into the White House is not an uncommon one, and appears to be shared by Trump himself. He alerted his followers to his impending arrest on Truth Social on Saturday, urging them to “protest, take our nation back!”

His post highlights that the Manhattan District Attorney’s office is discussing security for such an eventuality, perhaps suggesting that the authorities may be wary of the response of Trump’s followers. The predicted indictment of the former president on what are expected to be campaign finance violation charges would be the first of its kind in US history. Even former President Richard Nixon was not prosecuted after he resigned from office following the Watergate scandal. Trump’s lawyer has accused prosecutor Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, of having “weaponized” the legal system, leveraging a misdemeanor charge that federal prosecutors did not deem worthy of prosecution into a felony. If he is found guilty before November 2024, it could potentially keep him from the White House.

When the FBI staged a nighttime raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Florida estate last summer, the New York Times expressed concern that the agency’s heavy-handed tactics would galvanize the former president’s base, with the resulting electoral turmoil not only allowing Republicans to seize control of Congress, but handing Trump the 2024 nomination on a silver platter. While Republicans did take back the House of Representatives, the midterms fell short of the partisan rout expected by many on the right, with the Senate remaining in Democratic hands. Although incumbent President Joe Biden’s approval rating hovers near record lows, even among those in his own party, most polls pitting him against Trump have Biden leading by a handful of points. An arrest could easily push Trump over the top, according to Musk and many others.

Elon Hunter

.@elonmusk comments on the two-tier justice system that ignores the 459 documented crimes found in Hunter Biden's laptop.

•140 business crimes
•191 sex crimes
•128 drug crimeshttps://t.co/tF4Qbq8JjH pic.twitter.com/lnZras7yqj

— kanekoa.substack.com (@KanekoaTheGreat) March 18, 2023

“..high on ratings, but short on the law..”

• Get Ready For Manhattan DA’s Made-for-TV Trump Prosecution (Turley)

“The moment that we are waiting for, we made it to the finale together” — those familiar words from “America’s Got Talent” — could well be the opening line for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg next week, when he is expected to unveil an indictment of former President Trump. With Trump’s reported announcement that he expects to be arrested on Tuesday, it would be a fitting curtain raiser for a case that has developed more like a television production than a criminal prosecution. Indeed, this indictment was repeatedly rejected only to be brought back by popular demand. Trump faces serious legal threats in the ongoing Mar-a-Lago investigation. But the New York case would be easily dismissed outside of a jurisdiction like New York, where Bragg can count on highly motivated judges and jurors.

Although it may be politically popular, the case is legally pathetic. Bragg is struggling to twist state laws to effectively prosecute a federal case long ago rejected by the Justice Department against Trump over his payment of “hush money” to former stripper Stormy Daniels. In 2018 (yes, that is how long this theory has been around), I wrote how difficult such a federal case would be under existing election laws. Now, six years later, the same theory may be shoehorned into a state claim. It is extremely difficult to show that paying money to cover up an embarrassing affair was done for election purposes as opposed to an array of obvious other reasons, from protecting a celebrity’s reputation to preserving a marriage. That was demonstrated by the failed federal prosecution of former presidential candidate John Edwards on a much stronger charge of using campaign funds to cover up an affair.

In this case, Trump reportedly paid Daniels $130,000 in the fall of 2016 to cut off or at least reduce any public scandal. The Southern District of New York’s U.S. Attorney’s office had no love lost for Trump, pursuing him and his associates in myriad investigations, but it ultimately rejected a prosecution based on the election law violations. It was not alone: The Federal Election Commission (FEC) chair also expressed doubts about the theory. Prosecutors working under Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus Vance Jr., also reportedly rejected the viability of using a New York law to effectively charge a federal offense.

“..Bragg upgraded the charges from a misdemeanor class, which stands in sharp contrast to the prosecutor’s history of reducing charges in the majority of his cases..”

• George Soros A Major Force Behind Trump’s Prosecution and Imminent Arrest (TP)

President Donald Trump reacted to the news of his imminent arrest in New York by pointing out that the Manhattan District Attorney’s office’s “leader is funded by George Soros.” Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg, whom Donald Trump is referring to in his post, was elected in November 2021 with indirect backing from left-wing billionaire George Soros, who gave $1 million to the Color of Change PAC, which spent it to elect Bragg. The Color of Change PAC is a radical activist group that describes itself as “the nation’s largest online racial justice organization.” [..] Now, Bragg has an opportunity to become infamous in U.S. history for charging former President Donald Trump. The Soros connection was brought up by popular tweeter Catturd, who provoked a response from Twitter owner Elon Musk.

Bragg is allegedly preparing to indict the GOP presidential candidate “for alleged hush money payments Trump made as a presidential candidate in 2016” to pornstar Stormy Daniels, as Fox News reported. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has come to the defense of Donald Trump amid reports of a potential indictment by the Manhattan D.A. “Here we go again — an outrageous abuse of power by a radical DA who lets violent criminals walk as he pursues political vengeance against President Trump,” McCarthy said on Twitter. The House Speaker said, “I’m directing relevant committees to immediately investigate if federal funds are being used to subvert our democracy by interfering in elections with politically motivated prosecutions.” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is expected to bring felony charges against Trump next week related to payments made in 2016 to settle rumors of an extramarital affair. Bragg upgraded the charges from a misdemeanor class, which stands in sharp contrast to the prosecutor’s history of reducing charges in the majority of his cases.

Since taking office last year, DA Bragg has downgraded approximately 52 percent of all cases brought before his office. Many of these cases involved reducing felony charges to misdemeanors. Under Bragg’s predecessor, less than 40 percent of cases were downgraded. The expected Trump arrests would come after a failed Russia collusion investigation, two dead-end impeachments, a Special Counsel investigation into Trump’s “classified documents” that appears to be neutered by Biden’s worse classified documents scandal, and a January 6 investigation that has led to no substantive evidence that Donald Trump called for an “insurrection.” This is apparently the ‘hail Mary’ play the corrupt Democratic Party is calling for to keep Donald Trump out of the White House.

“..Clinton was given a $113,000 fine, Trump is looking at the possibility of handcuffs, for the same charges..”

• Hillary Clinton Quietly Settled Campaign Finance Violation Last Year (PM)

In 2022, Hillary Clinton was fined by the Federal Election Commission after an investigation showed that she and the DNC “misreported payments made to a law firm during the 2016 campaign to obscure the spending,” the AP reported last year. The lawfirm was Perkins Coie, which hired research firm Fusion GPS, which then fabricated evidence, compiled in the Steele Dossier, which was later used by Congress to impeach Donald Trump. The Clinton campaign classed these expenses paid to Perkins Coie for opposition research as “legal services,” and for that misrepresentation, Clinton was made to pay a fine of $113,000. Donald Trump is facing potential felony indictment over recording payments made to his attorney, which were then paid out to porn-star Stormy Daniels in alleged hush money, as legal fees.

Clinton was given a $113,000 fine, Trump is looking at the possibility of handcuffs, for the same charges—mischaracterizing payments to lawyers as legal fees when those lawyers were passing on the money for another purpose. Only Trump sought to keep quiet a relationship he did not want made public, while Clinton and her campaign paid for the creation of false information that was then used in an attempt to unseat the president from the White House. New York City DA Alvin Bragg, who invited Trump to testify before a grand jury, which is an indication of a forthcoming indictment, is elevating the misdemeanor charge of false reporting to a felony by seeking to prove that Trump intended to commit a second crime, likely election fraud. Clinton paid for the creation of a false dossier with the intent to spread that literal disinformation to the public and thereby influence the electorate against Trump. For this, she was issued a fine.

“By intentionally obscuring their payments through Perkins Coie and failing to publicly disclose the true purpose of those payments,” the campaign and DNC “were able to avoid publicly reporting on their statutorily required FEC disclosure forms the fact that they were paying Fusion GPS to perform opposition research on Trump with the intent of influencing the outcome of the 2016 presidential election,” the initial complaint said, per the AP. Clinton and the DNC said the payments were legal fees, but settled for the fines anyway. Clinton paid a civil penalty fine of $8,000, while the DNC paid the remaining $105,000. Depsite lenghty attempts by the FBI to corroborate the reports, the Steele Dossier “has been largely discredited since its publication, with core aspects of the material exposed as unsupported and unproven rumors.”

”..In 2013, Obama’s 2008 campaign was fined one of the largest fines in presidential campaign history with a $375,000 fine..”

• Obama, Hillary Settled Nearly $500,000 In Campaign Finance Fines (DCE)

Both former President Barack Obama and two-time failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton were fined a collective total of $488,000 for campaign finance violations and didn’t face indictment or arrest unlike 45th President and leading 2024 presidential candidate Donald Trump. In 2013, Obama’s 2008 campaign was fined one of the largest fines in presidential campaign history with a $375,000 fine from the Federal Election Commission (FEC) for campaign reporting violations. In 2022, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) settled an FEC investigation into whether they violated campaign finance laws by paying a $113,000 Steele dossier fine.

Despite adult film “star” Stormy Daniels being ordered to pay Trump $300,000 for losing a defamation case against him, Far-left Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg (D) is attempting to bring charges against Trump over a $130,000 payment made by his former lawyer and now convicted liar, Michael Cohen, to Daniels. This will likely backfire for the far-left Manhattan DA and result in skyrocketing fundraising and poll numbers for Trump. In August, when the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) conducted a raid on Mar-A-Lago, his home in Palm Beach, Florida, contributions to Trump’s political action committee skyrocketed over one million dollars in two days.

[..] As Trump continues to crush all potential Republican and Democrat challengers in polls for the 2024 presidential election, it’s no coincidence the Department of Justice (DOJ), far-left courts, the radical left, and more are and have targeted President Trump for the past six years and have only exonerated him time after time.

“Executive Order Further Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through The Federal Government.”

• Watchdog Group Launches Investigation Into Biden’s ‘Woke Army’ (ET)

The Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA) is launching an investigation into a recent executive order the group called an “unprecedented scheme” they believe violates the democratic process. In a press release, FGA said they are “sounding the alarm” on the “‘woke army’ being assembled inside the federal government,” through Executive Order 14091 (EO), titled “Executive Order Further Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through The Federal Government.” FGA announced that their investigation will include filing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests targeting the 23 agencies addressed in the Equity EO, including the Departments of State, Justice, Defense, Labor, Transportation, Social Security, Education, and Health and Human Services.

The group will share the information they gather with Congress, the states, and the American people, according to their press release. FGA asserted that the plan (pdf) was developed by a left-wing activist group, and said it was “designed to circumvent the normal, democratic process and instead force their ideology onto Americans.” Tarren Bragdon, FGA President and CEO said of the executive order, “These equity teams are a Trojan horse planted in the heart of every federal agency to fundamentally change decision-making across the bureaucracy. Their goal is to continuously and permanently embed Left-wing ideology into every agency action.

“We cannot allow this new ‘woke army’ to force un-American philosophy into all corners of our federal government. They will degrade our nation’s capabilities and effectiveness, while undermining our liberty and security.” “We’ve seen the economic devastation over the first two years of the Biden presidency. If radical ideology is ingrained into every policy and regulatory decision at all agencies, the impact on the American people and economy will be widespread, devastating, and impossible to reverse,” Bragdon added. Bragdon referenced part of Section 2 of the order, which outlines the requirement that agency heads across the administration ensure they place an “Agency Equity Team” within their agencies to “coordinate the implementation of equity initiatives,” in order to deliver “equitable outcomes” to the American people.

And Crimea.

• Putin Makes Surprise Visit To Donbass, Mariupol (RT)

Following his surprise visit to Crimea on Saturday, President Vladimir Putin made an unannounced “working trip” to Mariupol, an Azov Sea port city which was liberated by Russian forces last spring amid the military operation in Ukraine, and joined Russia as part of the Donetsk People’s Republic following a referendum in September. Putin arrived in Mariupol by helicopter, accompanied by Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin, multiple news agencies including TASS and RIA Novosti reported on Sunday morning, citing the Kremlin’s press service. The president visited several districts of the city to inspect the progress of restoration efforts, including the construction of “new residential districts, social and educational facilities, housing and communal services infrastructure, medical institutions.” He also toured the “coastline in the area of the yacht club, theater,” as well as other “memorable places” in the city.

Putin also got behind the wheels of a car and drove through the streets of Mariupol to inspect the facilities, while taking time to speak with residents. On Saturday, Putin was in Crimea to mark the ninth anniversary of the peninsula’s reunification with Russia. Mariupol was liberated by Russian forces last spring amid the military operation in Ukraine. It has become one of the symbols of Russia’s military campaign, and victory in this city has arguably been the main triumph so far. In September, the Donetsk People’s Republic, which includes Mariupol, along with the Lugansk People’s Republic, as well as Zaporozhye and Kherson Regions, officially joined the Russian Federation after holding referendums. Crimea overwhelmingly voted to join Russia in a referendum after the Western-backed coup in Kiev in 2014.

“Maxims were used by British colonial forces in Africa and by Imperial Russian forces in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905..”

• Ukrainian Troops Use 19th-Century Arms To Defend Bakhmut – The Telegraph (RT)

Ukrainian forces defending the Donbass town of Artyomovsk, also known as Bakhmut, are relying on Victorian-era Maxim guns, the Telegraph reported on Friday. Despite receiving tens of billions of dollars worth of US and NATO aid, Kiev is reportedly struggling with shortages of arms and ammunition. “I have seen Maxim machine guns in stationary positions many times,” a Ukrainian soldier told the British newspaper. “Despite their age, it is a rather formidable weapon. The main thing is not to forget to add some water.” Invented by Hiram Stevens Maxim in 1884, the Maxim gun was the first fully automatic machine gun in the world. Firing a still-respectable 600 rounds per minute, the gun relies on a heavy water jacket around its barrel to prevent overheating. Sitting on iron wheels and weighing around 30 kilos before adding water or ammunition belts, it takes a crew of four people to operate.

Maxims were used by British colonial forces in Africa and by Imperial Russian forces in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. It was already considered obsolete by the First World War, with British forces using the lighter Vickers machine gun in its stead. Sitting in Ukrainian armories since the country was a part of the Russian Empire, Maxims have been used on the frontline in Donbass since last year. While Ukrainian troops told the Telegraph that the Maxim is “a fairly effective weapon in capable hands,”some of Kiev’s servicemen have complained that they haven’t received newer gear. “The Russians have artillery, armored vehicles, and their forces are five to six times greater than ours,” a sergeant near Severodonetsk told Radio France Internationale last July.

“We only had machine guns and RPGs from 1986. A Degtyarov machine gun from 1943. And the Maxim machine gun from 1933.” The US alone has sent Ukraine more than $37 billion worth of weapons and ammunition since Russia’s military operation began last February. With Western stockpiles dwindling, however, American advisers are instructing Ukrainian forces to conserve their ammoif they hope to mount a counteroffensive this spring. Western military officials have also advised Zelensky against hanging on to Artyomovsk, which is nearly encircled by Russian forces at present. Kiev keeps casualty figures under wraps, but US officials believe that “upwards of 100,000 Ukrainian forces” have died since last February, with “many of these losses” taking place in the city, according to a Politico report earlier this week.

Although US officials have written off Artyomovsk as strategically insignificant, it is a vital logistics hub for the Ukrainian military. Control of the town would clear a path for Russian forces to push on towards Kramatorsk and Slavyansk, which sit along the last in a series of fortified lines built by Ukraine since the onset of its conflict with the Donetsk People’s Republic in 2014.

“..Zakharova described Denmark’s refusal as a “fraud” and a “total scam.”

• Russia Responds To Denmark’s Nord Stream Probe Refusal (RT)

Denmark has never been interested in finding the real culprits behind the explosions that destroyed Russia’s Nord Stream pipelines last September, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has claimed. She noted that Copenhagen had dragged its feet on granting permission for the second leg of the gas conduit and is refusing to cooperate with Moscow now that it has been sabotaged. In a statement released on Saturday, Zakharova suggested that Copenhagen’s long-standing aversion to the Nord Stream project is due to American influence. “Copenhagen, which so ferociously defends US interests in Europe, was in the first place not interested in conducting an investigation that could shed light on” those behind the sabotage, the Russian official wrote.

She pointed out that Denmark has yet to respond in a meaningful way to any of the numerous requests Russian authorities have made about the investigation into the blasts, including one by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin last year. Zakharova also reminded Danish officials that Moscow is the owner of the destroyed gas pipelines. According to the statement, “despite Denmark’s refusal [to participate] in a joint investigation into the sabotage,” Russia will continue to insist on being “given answers to the questions posed earlier.” Zakharova went on to warn that Moscow would not let Copenhagen “sweep the issue under the rug,” adding that only an open international probe that includes Russia would be able to establish the facts and present them in an objective manner.

Appearing on Russia’s Russia 1 TV channel on Thursday, Zakharova described Denmark’s refusal as a “fraud” and a “total scam.” Earlier that day, Danish Foreign Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen ruled out the possibility of Moscow participating in the probe, explaining to journalists that “Denmark, Sweden and Germany all have rule of law and one can have confidence in our investigations.” Russia has accused the three countries of obstruction and asked the UN to initiate an impartial international investigation. The Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines were built under the Baltic Sea to deliver Russian natural gas to Germany and onward to Western Europe. Both conduits were ruptured and made inoperable by explosions near the Danish island of Bornholm in September 2022.

“We would have a full reserve system, unfortunately one that is not backed by gold, but it would be a huge step in the right direction.”

• The Perfect Solution to the Banking Crisis Is to Make a Truly Safe Bank (Mish)

How many times do we have to go down the duration mismatch road with fractional reserve lending and nearly $9 trillion of Fed QE to prove the current banking doesn’t work? Once again, systemic risk morphed into economic stress, bank failures, and then a bailout of the banking system, not just Silicon Valley Bank. If you think only depositors got bailed out, you are mistaken. The Fed put a system backstop on $600 billion in bond losses. And although bank executives will lose their jobs, they cashed out tens of millions of dollars in stock options along the way. Specifically, we need a bank that puts 100% of its assets in overnight treasuries and makes zero loans. The bank would not need any loan officers or many operational personnel for obvious reasons.

There would be no need for FDIC guarantees because there would be zero risk of a run and zero risk of losses. We can still keep the FDIC term in place, but realistically it would not be needed. In essence, we would create a 100% reserve bank. Such a bank might pay one percentage point less than the Fed ‘s overnight rate for safekeeping. If the overnight rate fell below 1 percent, the bank would charge a fee for safekeeping. The bank could also do term deposits at a slight discount to corresponding treasury yields. Depositors would be required to hold assets to term. To prevent runs on existing banks right, we would let every bank participate in this offering. Customers would have a chance to place their deposits into safekeeping accounts at existing banks.

To make loans, I propose banks would have to attract investment money instead of lending money into existence. They would do so by offering higher than market interest rates on term deposits, but those deposits would not be guaranteed. As an added benefit, this setup would end fractional reserve lending. We would have a full reserve system, unfortunately one that is not backed by gold, but it would be a huge step in the right direction. The immediate economic reaction would likely be contractionary, but that seems to be what the Fed wants now anyway to rein in inflation. Alternatively, perhaps we could phase these ideas in over a 10-year period to mitigate risk.

“..these calculations suggest that recent declines in bank asset values very significantly increased the fragility of the US banking system to uninsured depositor runs..”

• Nearly 200 US banks At Risk Of Repeating SVB Collapse – Study (RT)

Nearly 200 American banks face similar risks to those that led to the implosion and bankruptcy of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), according to a paper posted this week to the Social Science Research Network. SVB, a major US lender focused on the tech and startup sectors, was shut down by regulators last week after massive deposit outflows. In the study, four economists from prominent US universities estimated how much market value the assets held by US banks have lost due to recent interest rate hikes. “From March 07, 2022, to March 6, 2023, the federal funds rate rose sharply from 0.08% to 4.57%, and this increase was accompanied by quantitative tightening. As a result, long-dated assets similar to those held on bank balance sheets experienced significant value declines during the same period,” they wrote.

Although higher interest rates can benefit banks by allowing them to lend at a higher rate, many US banks have parked a significant portion of their excess cash in US Treasuries. This was done when interest rates were at near-zero levels. The value of these bonds has now greatly decreased due to the rate hikes – investors can now simply purchase newly issued bonds that offer a higher interest rate. The decline in the banks’ portfolios is unrealized, meaning the value of the securities has declined but the loss is still only ‘on paper’. The problem arises when customers request their deposits back and banks are forced to sell their securities – at a significant loss – in order to pay depositors back. In extreme cases, this can lead to a bank becoming insolvent, or as happened with Silicon Valley Bank, the loss of confidence can trigger a bank run.

The report’s authors looked into how the amount of US lenders’ funding that comes from uninsured deposits: the greater the share, the more susceptible a bank is to a run. For instance, at SVB, where 92.5% of deposits were uninsured, the deposit outflow caused the bank to collapse in a span of only two days. The authors of the study calculated that 186 American banks do not have enough assets to pay all customers if even half of uninsured depositors decide to withdraw their money. “Our calculations suggest these banks are certainly at a potential risk of a run, absent other government intervention or recapitalization… Overall, these calculations suggest that recent declines in bank asset values very significantly increased the fragility of the US banking system to uninsured depositor runs,” the economists concluded, noting that the number of banks at risk could be “significantly” larger if “uninsured deposit withdrawals cause even small fire sales.”

SVB’s failure sent ripples across the entire US banking industry and caused the closure of another lender, Signature Bank. Many other financial institutions have seen their stocks plunge, with the six largest Wall Street banks losing around $165 billion in market capitalization, or some 13% of their combined value. Earlier this week, the ratings agency Moody’s downgraded its outlook for the US banking system from ‘stable’ to ‘negative’, citing the “rapidly deteriorating operating environment.”

BlackRock denies being involved.

• UBS Seeks $6 Billion Government Backstop In Credit Suisse Takeover (ZH)

As negotiations drag on late on Saturday night local time, Bloomberg reports that liabilities at the Credit Suisse investment bank are proving to be a key sticking point in the takeover talks (“UBS is worried about the balance sheet risk associated with the investment bank, which has suffered a string of losses and scandals in recent years”), with Reuters adding that UBS is asking the Swiss government to cover about $6 billion in costs if it were to buy Credit Suisse. The $6 billion in guarantees “would cover the cost of winding down parts of Credit Suisse and potential litigation charges.” There are other snags: one sources cautioned that the talks to resolve the crisis of confidence in Credit Suisse are encountering significant obstacles, and 10,000 jobs may have to be cut if the two banks combine.

Meanwhile, with UBS facing pressure from the Swiss authorities to carry out a takeover of its local rival as soon as possible to get the crisis under control, the FT reported that Switzerland is preparing to use emergency measures to fast-track the deal, the Financial Times reported, citing two people familiar with the situation. The banking sector’s fundamentals are stronger and the global systemic linkages are weaker than during the 2008 global financial crisis, Goldman analyst Lotfi Karoui wrote in a late Friday note to clients. That limits the risk of a “potential vicious circle of counterparty credit losses,” Karoui said. “However, a more forceful policy response is likely needed to bring some stability,” Karoui said. The bank said the lack of clarity on Credit Suisse’s future will pressure the broader European banking sector.

A senior official at China’s central bank said on Saturday that high interest rates in the major developed economies could continue to cause problems for the financial system. Elsewhere, there were multiple reports of interest for Credit Suisse from other rivals. Bloomberg reported that Deutsche Bank was looking at the possibility of buying some of its assets, while U.S. financial giant BlackRock denied a report that it was participating in a rival bid for the bank.

” We ask them to pay higher taxes, while cutting public services..”

• Britons Facing ‘Disastrous Decade’ – Report (RT)

Real wages in the UK will not return to their 2008 level until 2026 despite an easing of inflation, the Resolution Foundation, an independent think tank, reported this week in its analysis of the new budget. According to the report, the country is on track for a “disastrous decade” of stagnant incomes and high taxes, with cuts to public services. The publication highlighted that real wages fell at an annual rate of 3.9% in January, noting that the bigger picture for wages is “one of long-term pay stagnation.” The decrease in household disposable incomes this year and next are the worst in a century, the think tank stressed. “Britain’s economy remains stuck in a deep funk – with people supported into work but getting poorer, and paying more tax but seeing public services cut,”it wrote.

The UK is forecast to have gone through “the biggest energy and inflation shock since the 1970s, while avoiding a recession, with unemployment peaking at just 4.4%,” Resolution Foundation added. According to the study, taxes as a share of GDP are expected to hit 37.7% by the end of the forecast period, representing a 70-year-high and a 4.7% increase since 2019-2020.

The freeze on income tax thresholds since 2022-23 means that typical households will be worse off by £1,110 ($1,337) by 2027-28 when the freeze ends, it noted. Torsten Bell, chief executive of the Resolution Foundation, stated that “Jeremy Hunt’s first budget was a much bigger affair than many expected, combining improvements to the dire economic and fiscal outlook with a significant policy package aimed at boosting longer-term growth in general, and the size of the workforce in particular. “But stepping back, the UK’s underlying challenges remain largely unchanged. We are investing too little and growing too slowly. Our citizens’ living standards are stagnant. We ask them to pay higher taxes, while cutting public services,” he concluded.

GMOs and vaccines.

• Massie Asks A Reasonable Question (Denninger)

Pertaining to GMOs and what we’ve learned about genetically engineering viruses. Should the results of the genetically engineered virus give us concern about genetically modifying seeds/food? The clear answer is yes, for the following reasons: Everyone involved lied about the SARS-CoV2 origins. Ecohealth got caught lying quite early on when DRASTIC was exposed; DARPA turned down their requested program to engineer and test modified coronaviruses in Chinese caves, and among the slams in that refusal was the fact that the population of the nation in question were effectively not being asked for their consent. That Ecohealth arrogated to itself the right to test a genetically-modified organism on someone else’s soil without the informed consent of the people residing there was sufficient grounds to destroy the organization and jail every single person involved. DARPA has no authority to do that, but our DOJ does and didn’t.

The deception did not stop there; Fauci claimed that NIH wasn’t actually funding said research when it was, and we now know he was lying. He didn’t go to jail for that either, did he? That the virus was clearly engineered was known very early on because it contained a patented sequence and, in addition, had another sequence in it that never occurs in nature. The latter is routinely used by virus labs for this exact reason; if you put a virus through some process (e.g. through a cell line) and that sequence comes out the other end you know what you did worked because it can’t occur naturally. That this was present in SARS-CoV2 was known within weeks of its alleged “arrival” in the US. Everyone involved lied about when Covid was first “out” in the population. This was known too.

When it first arrived in Washington State and NY, along with the outbreak in Italy, we knew that the strain in NY was not the same as the one on the west coast; it was instead essentially the same as that in Italy. We also knew at that point from the mutational rate it had to be in the wild no later than roughly the end of September of 2019. I posted on this at the time and we later proved this was correct because analysis of blood donated during the first week of December of 2019 detected antibodies specific to SARS-CoV2 which, at the time (there were no jabs of course) could have only occurred if the person who donated the blood had become previously infected and survived There were plenty of additional lies but those are enough. GMOs are typically engineered so as to provide resistance to herbicides.

Round-up ready seeds, for example, are GMO’d so the plants are not killed by glyphosate where a non-GMO plant is. This allows glyphosate (“RoundUp”) to be used as a pre-emergent and post-emergent weed killer in fields without destroying the crop, and that in turn increases crop yields. However this also means that the seeds then are patented and, because a farmer cannot completely control exactly where everything he puts on a crop ends up it effectively forces all the other farmers around him to buy the same Round-up resistant seeds or risk their crop’s damage or destruction from drift of the spray. I will note that 15 USC Chapter 1 states that it is a criminal felony to attempt to restrain trade or engage in a monopoly practice where market power is implicated.

Effectively forcing the next farmer over to buy your GMO seeds lest his crop be damaged or destroyed when the spraying occurs is pretty-much the description of such felonious conduct, yet it goes on every single day and not one person has gone to prison for it. That right there is enough reason for me to be “concerned”, but what adds to that concern is that there have been repeated claims that these herbicides in particular are “safe.” Are they? We don’t know. The EPA says “no” to cancer risks in particular but on the other hand there are many lawsuits over exposure to it and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and Bayer/Monsanto has entered into an $11 billion dollar settlement. Clearly they were concerned they might lose; nobody tosses that sort of money around otherwise.

Jon Stewart Summers

Danger! Workers are doing too well! Call the Fed to shut that down! A conversation with former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. Watch the full interview in our latest episode, now streaming on @appletvplus. pic.twitter.com/B6GtO0QLnw

— The Problem With Jon Stewart (@TheProblem) March 17, 2023

This silver statue featuring Goddess of Beauty, Yang’asha, worshipped by the Miao people in SW China’s Guizhou, is 88 meters high. Yang’asha is the symbol of fighting for true love in Miao culture.

This silver statue featuring Goddess of Beauty, Yang'asha, worshipped by the Miao people in SW China's Guizhou, is 88 meters high. Yang'asha is the symbol of fighting for true love in Miao culture.

[source: https://t.co/C1YEt79tNW]pic.twitter.com/ENg8blE6Pl

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) March 18, 2023

This fifty-foot sculpture was unveiled recently in South Dakota. It’s called ‘Dignity’ and was done by artist Dale Lamphere to honor the women of the Sioux Nation.

Genius cat
https://twitter.com/i/status/1637044120031211521

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India Takes A Leading Role In De-Dollarization

Mar 112023

March 11, 2023 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 1:15 pm Finance Tagged with: De-Dollarization, diversify, India, New Cold War, oil, Russia, sanctions, Soros, trifurcation 4 Responses »

Henri Matisse Young Woman at the Window, Sunset 1921

Andrew Korybko:

Reuters reported on Wednesday that “India’s Oil Deals With Russia Dent Decades-Old Dollar Dominance”, which informed their audience that the growing trend of those two using national or third-party currencies like the UAE’s is something significant for everyone to pay attention to. To that outlet’s credit, it also reminded readers that IMF Deputy Managing Director Gita Gopinath foresaw in the month after Russia’s special operation began that the West’s sanctions “could erode the dollar’s dominance”.

Lo and behold, that’s precisely what happened, with India of all countries accelerating de-dollarization through its non-dollar-denominated energy deals with Russia. About them, Russia has since become India’s largest supplier over the past year and now provides a whopping 35% of that country’s needs, which is also the world’s third-largest oil importer and fifth-largest economy. Their new energy ties, and particularly the growing de-dollarization dimension of their deals, are thus globally important.

None of what was just described is driven by any anti-American animus on India’s part since everything is purely motivated by the pursuit of that country’s objective national interests. Delhi had no choice but to gradually diversify away from dollar-denominated energy deals with Moscow due to Washington’s illegal sanctions. Its multipolar leadership wasn’t going to let the world’s most populous country slip into an economic crisis just to please the US by eschewing the import of discounted oil from Russia.

By defying American pressure upon it to unilaterally concede on those aforementioned objective national interests, India’s economy ended up growing at twice the pace of China’s, which contributed to catapulting that country to the forefront of the global systemic transition to multipolarity. Amidst the impending trifurcation of International Relations, India is now poised to de facto lead the Global South in helping fellow developing countries balance between the Golden Billion and the Sino-Russo Entente.

Had India complied with the US’ illegal sanctions, then the New York Times wouldn’t have recently admitted that those restrictions failed just like the West’s efforts to “isolate” Russia did as well. It was largely due to that South Asian Great Power’s truly independent grand strategy that this latest phase of the New Cold War didn’t decisively end in the Golden Billion’s victory over Russia and the restoration of unipolarity, which would have been detrimental to India and every other developing country’s interests.

India therefore changed the course of history by remaining committed to the pursuit of its objective national interests, which to remind everyone, aren’t driven by any desire to harm the interests of third parties like the US. Its leading role in de-dollarization via its increasing number of non-dollar-denominated energy deals with Russia is also reshaping the global financial system by reducing that currency’s prior dominance and thus leading to a more multipolar state of affairs for everyone.

Even the US itself seems to have finally accepted that it can’t reverse this trend, which is evidenced by former Indian Ambassador to Russia Kanwal Sibal recently telling TASS that “Lately, the discourse from Washington has changed and India is no longer being asked to stop buying oil from Russia. In a recent visit to India, the US Treasury Secretary actually said that India can buy discounted oil from Russia as much as it wants so long as western tankers and insurance companies are not used.”

Nevertheless, radical liberal–globalist ideologues like Color Revolution mastermind George Soros are still desperately clinging to the dream of restoring the US’ rapidly declining unipolar hegemony, hence why he de facto declared Hybrid War against India during the Munich Security Conference last month. It remains unclear whether he and his network have enough support in the Western Establishment to advance that regime change agenda, but his threat is still worrisome and should be taken seriously.

Reuters’ latest report about India’s role in accelerating de-dollarization might fuel interest among likeminded “Western Exceptionalists” in supporting his de facto Hybrid War against that country so observers should closely monitor related developments in order to assess whether this happens. In any case, those who sincerely support multipolarity should loudly applaud India for its indispensable role in comprehensively facilitating this process, especially its financial dimension as described in this analysis.

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Debt Rattle February 18 2023

Feb 182023

February 18, 2023 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:01 am Finance Tagged with: Donbass, East Palestine, FEMA, J6, peace petition, Pelosi, Shaman, Soros, Staley, Sy Hersh, Trump, Ursula 47 Responses »

Pablo Picasso The dream 1951

• Seymour Hersh’s Trinity of Truth (Scott Ritter)

• Seymour Hersh Believes Betting On Ukraine’s Victory ‘Suicidal’ (TASS)

• ‘Ukraine Would Have Wiped Out Donbass Last Year If Not For Russia’ (TASS)

• Food For Thought (Gonzalo Lira)

• NATO Involvement In Ukrainian Conflict Is Maximal – Zakharova (TASS)

• Ukraine ‘Peace Petition’ Backed By Nearly Half A Million Germans (RT)

• No Sense In Signing Any Agreements With Zelensky – Medvedev (TASS)

• Moscow Warns EU Over Seized Assets (RT)

• Oh Lightning, I Command Thee To Smite My Foe! (Kunstler)

• George Soros Is Defending The Unipolar World Order, Not Freedom (Blankenship)

• EU Parliament Blocks Scrutiny of Von der Leyen Over Pfizer Contract (Pol.eu)

• Nancy Pelosi’s Daughter Caught on Tape Refuting J6 Narrative (GP)

• Too Slow And Too Secret? Pace of Staley Investigation Undermines Trust (G.)

• Trump Announces Upcoming Visit to East Palestine, FEMA Reverses Course {(CTH)

Galloway Ritter

Scott Ritter: #NATO's "mouths are writing cheques their bodies can't cash." pic.twitter.com/E7hQJvuPy8

— tim anderson (@timand2037) February 17, 2023

Putin 2019

#Putin on #Zelensky in 2019. Is Putin right? Is Zelensky a statesman or an actor playing the role #NATO demands of him? pic.twitter.com/kTjnkrU5XJ

— tim anderson (@timand2037) February 18, 2023

No more boosters in the UK.

And Idaho is putting it a bit stronger even.

Maersheimer

Mearsheimer: the expansion of #NATO was always an existential threat for #Russia. But the USA kept pushing and pushing. pic.twitter.com/A5OludpYPG

— tim anderson (@timand2037) February 17, 2023

“..Sy Hersh, through his reporting, has exposed truths which have the potential of bringing down a presidency, destroying NATO, and proving Russia right in the eyes of the world..”

• Seymour Hersh’s Trinity of Truth (Scott Ritter)

I’ve read nearly everything Sy Hersh has written, and am able to put his considerable journalistic output in its proper historical perspective. It is therefore that I feel very comfortable in concluding that, in terms of its potential for bringing about tectonic geopolitical change, Sy’s Nord Stream reporting is his most important work ever. The GOAT has produced what I call the Trinity of Truth. Truth One: The President of the United States, Joe Biden, by conspiring with members of his national security team to deliberately bypass constitutionally-mandated reporting requirements to Congress regarding acts of war undertaken by the United States, has committed an impeachable offense unmatched by any other president in the history of the United States.

Truth Two: The blow-back that will occur inside Germany to the revelations put forward by Seymour Hersh that the United States carried out an economic Pearl Harbor by destroying energy infrastructure critical to the well-being of the German nation has the potential of breaking up the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU), upending more than eighty years of post-war European security and stability, and resulting in the diminishment of the United States on the world stage as it becomes isolated from long-time European allies that served as the foundation of the global acceptance of the so-called “rules based international order” that has served as the means by which the United States exerted global hegemony.

Truth Three: The decision to attack the Nord Stream pipeline puts a lie to the US contention that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was an unprovoked act of aggression, instead underscoring the harsh truth that the United States had a strategic plan which hinged on provoking a conflict with Russia in Ukraine to provide the geopolitical cover for ending Europe’s reliance upon cheap Russian natural gas by demonstrating that every time Russia sought a negotiated end to the crisis, whether before the invasion through implementation of the Minsk Accords, or after in the Istanbul round of talks scheduled for April 1, the United States sabotaged the effort, keeping the conflict alive long enough to implement its major objective—the destruction of Nord Stream. In short, Sy Hersh, through his reporting, has exposed truths which have the potential of bringing down a presidency, destroying NATO, and proving Russia right in the eyes of the world.

“..It’s impossible to believe how just dumb this leadership was. <…> And then they stick to the war..”

• Seymour Hersh Believes Betting On Ukraine’s Victory ‘Suicidal’ (TASS)

The US administration’s hopes for Ukraine’s victory in the conflict with Russia are ‘suicidal,’ US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh said in an interview with the Consortium News portal. “It was suicidal to think you can win that war, that Ukraine can win that war. There’s just too much corruption. That was a very, very bad decision. We should have been pushing for peace, we should have made an agreement,” said Hersh, who earlier published his findings about explosions targeting Russia’s Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 pipelines. “It’s just silly not to right away assure the Russian government that we were not interested in making Ukraine a member of NATO. NATO didn’t want Ukraine anyway because of the corruption. There were just so many bad mistakes made. It’s impossible to believe how just dumb this leadership was. <…> And then they stick to the war,” he said.

On February 8, Hersh wrote in an article, citing sources, that US Navy divers had planted explosive devices under the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines under the cover of the BALTOPS exercise in June 2022 and Norwegians activated the bombs three months later. According to the journalist, the decision to conduct the operation was made by US President Joe Biden personally, following nine months of discussions with White House security specialists. White House National Security Council Spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a comment to TASS that Hersh’s account was utterly false and complete fiction.

“700-800 rounds of ammunition per day flew into the republic.”

• ‘Ukraine Would Have Wiped Out Donbass Last Year If Not For Russia’ (TASS)

Ukraine would have levelled the Donbass republics a year ago if Russia had not intervened in time by recognizing the Lugansk and the Donetsk People’s Republics and launching its special military operation, Former LPR ambassador to Moscow Rodion Miroshnik said on Friday. “Exactly one year ago, the Ukrainian regime began artillery preparations before attacking Donbass! A 150,000-soldier group, armed and trained by NATO, was preparing to sweep away the Donbass. And if it were not for Russia’s decision to start a special military operation, we would have simply been levelled,” he wrote on his Telegram channel on the anniversary of the beginning of the escalation of the situation in the Donbass, “And neither the UN nor the OSCE would have noticed it.”

Miroshnik recalled that from February 17 to 24, when the Russian Federation began its special military operation, the Ukrainian armed forces fired 551 shells on the LPR territory. At that time, he recalled, “700-800 rounds of ammunition per day flew into the republic.” There were attempts to break through the defense, as well as casualties among civilians. Also on Friday, Miroshnik drew attention to the fact that a year ago, neither the guarantors (of the Minsk agreements) – France and Germany – nor the UN General Assembly had forced Kiev to fulfill its obligations. At that time, the republics understood that the clock was ticking as the Ukrainian military could wipe out the DPR and the LPR cities, so the emergency evacuation began. “But the world prefers not to see this and starts counting from February 24,” he pointed out.

Twitter thread.

“They see the West as a paper tiger, run by fools and degenerates.”

• Food For Thought (Gonzalo Lira)

I’ve been talking to a number of acquaintances in Russia. These are well-educated professionals who speak English fluently, many of whom have lived/worked in the US/Europe. Some are highly critical of Putin, and many were very much opposed to the SMO. Some observations. They are universally shocked at the racist Russophobia, from Europe especially. “I thought they were our friends/partners!” is a common complaint. They don’t understand why Europe destroyed its own economy with the sanctions. (There’s quite a bit of schadenfreude over that. They don’t understand why the Germans are not reacting to the Nord Stream terrorist attack. They see it as self-evident that the Americans did it—an act of war by one of Germany’s closest ally.

They have zero trust in the Europeans—because of the Russophobia and revelations. Hollande and Merkel have publicly bragged about how the Minsk agreements were entered into to buy time to arm Kiev. This has had a huge impact on them. So they won’t accept any negotiations or ceasefire. They all think Russia would be played for fools again by the West. Even the “doves” believe that the conflict can only end in total victory, i.e. complete military occupation of Ukraine. They don’t look forward to this—but they believe it is the only solution to guarantee Russian safety. They all view this conflict as a Russia vs. NATO war. And they all believe this war will last for years. There is a palpable sense of determination and *relief* that they too—like their grandfathers before—are involved in an existential war for the survival of their nation.

They one and all despise the Russians who fled to Europe, Israel and Georgia. They view them as fair-weather friends at best—traitors at worst. They all made it clear that they would not be welcomed back at the end of this conflict. Even the “doves” respect Putin, and they laugh at the idea of “regime change in Russia”. The principal criticism of Putin is that he’s been too gentle, too patient. Many (not all) would prefer a scorched earth, total war campaign, specifically targeting the Kiev leadership. All in all, they are satisfied with their leadership. Lavrov was universally praised, Peskov the one least respected. Shoigu, Gerasimov and Surovikin were all endorsed, though they all took some criticism, mostly because they think the war is going too slowly. Interestingly, I sensed a gnawing anxiety over Russia’s economy, which seems to be going so well—as if it’s too good to be true.

The 2015 sanctions nearly broke their economy—but now, with even worse sanctions, none are experiencing a loss of standard of living. They seem to have lost their respect, admiration—and fear—of the West. Certainly their trust. They all believe that “human rights”, “democracy”, etc. are empty platitudes the West uses to get its way. They see the West as a paper tiger, run by fools and degenerates. This is inevitably a very biased selection of opinions: Highly educated, well traveled, Western-oriented, fairly well-to-do people aged 27–60. So imagine how much more conservative Russian working class people’s opinions would be. Food for thought.

“Now they directly control the leadership of the Kiev regime, they are all connected.”

• NATO Involvement In Ukrainian Conflict Is Maximal – Zakharova (TASS)

The involvement of NATO countries in the conflict in Ukraine is maximal, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at a briefing on Friday. “NATO countries are playing innocent, trying to prove that they are not a party to the conflict [in Ukraine] <…>. The involvement [of NATO countries] is maximal, [they’ve been carrying out] provocative activity for many years. Now they directly control the leadership of the Kiev regime, they are all connected.” According to Zakharova, Moscow also drew attention to media reports that Ukraine might organize joint licensed production of shells and other weapons with the UK and create similar military enterprises with other NATO countries. “It is obvious that big Western capital is behind the pumping of the Ukrainian armed forces, the formation of combat operations,” the diplomat noted.

“If the fighting goes on like this, Ukraine will soon be a depopulated, destroyed country..”

• Ukraine ‘Peace Petition’ Backed By Nearly Half A Million Germans (RT)

Almost 500,000 Germans have supported a petition urging Chancellor Olaf Scholz to spearhead efforts for peace negotiations in Ukraine. The appeal is authored by journalist Alice Schwarzer and Sahra Wagenknecht, a prominent member of Germany’s Left Party (Die Linke), and implores officials in Berlin not to provide Kiev with more weapons. The document, which was published last Friday and has since gathered an increasing number of supporters, claims that the conflict in Ukraine has already cost the lives of more than 200,000 military personnel and 50,000 civilians. “If the fighting goes on like this, Ukraine will soon be a depopulated, destroyed country,” the authors warn. Wagenknecht and Schwarzer also argue that “a lot of people in Europe fear an expansion of the war.”

The petition asserts that Ukrainians need solidarity from Germany, but questions whether Berlin’s current policies truly reflect the support they require. “What is now, one year on, the actual goal of this war?” the authors ask, citing German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock’s recent comment about Europe being at war with Russia. The petition expresses skepticism over whether Scholz’s government will keep its word and not provide Ukraine with fighter jets. According to Wagenknecht and Schwarzer, the German chancellor has already crossed multiple “red lines” in recent months. The pair also warn that Russian President Vladimir Putin could unleash a “maximum counterstrike,” should Ukraine retake Crimea – which is among the goals set by senior officials in Kiev.

“Are we then inexorably sliding down a chute leading to a world war and nuclear war?” the petition asks, adding that numerous major conflicts have begun this way, and that another could end up being the last for mankind. The petition stresses that “to negotiate doesn’t mean to capitulate,” but rather to “make compromises on both sides.” The authors claim that half of the German population wants immediate peace talks, and suggest that the government should heed their calls. “We demand that the federal chancellor stop the escalation of weapons deliveries,” the document states, urging officials in Berlin to focus on peace efforts and form an international alliance to this end.

The petition had received 496,008 signatures at the time of writing. Moscow has repeatedly signaled it is open to talks with Kiev, provided that Ukrainian leaders accept Russia’s conditions and recognize what the Kremlin calls the “reality on the ground.” In early October 2022, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky ruled out negotiations with his Russian counterpart. Kiev is insisting on a military victory over Russia, and refuses to make any territorial concessions to its neighbor.

“..He is not supposed to hold any talks. He is supposed to sign what he is told to sign..”

• No Sense In Signing Any Agreements With Zelensky – Medvedev (TASS)

Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev said on Friday that he sees no point in signing any agreements with Kiev, since it is highly likely that Ukraine’s next leader will annul them. Medvedev drew attention to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s statements that he was not inclined to hold any talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. “It’s not news, but there is a nuance he opted not to mention yesterday although he is quite aware of it. He is not supposed to hold any talks. He is supposed to sign what he is told to sign. Although, frankly speaking, this document will not be worth its weight in paper. You can remember the Minsk agreements that were signed by his predecessor,” Medvedev wrote on his Telegram channel.

The west keeps thinking they will be rebuilding Ukraine.

• Moscow Warns EU Over Seized Assets (RT)

Any Western attempts to transfer seized Russian assets to Ukraine would be “barbarism,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has claimed. If necessary, Moscow is ready to impose a tit-for-tat response, she added. Speaking at a press briefing on Friday, Zakharova noted that EU nations had invested heavily in Russia, meaning a significant amount of European-owned assets remains in the country. Their value is larger than that of the Russian assets seized by foreign nations, the spokeswoman argued. Zakharova insisted that Russia wants to operate within the law and would give the US and its allies “every last chance” to reconsider any plans to confiscate Russian property. However, she added that Moscow was fully prepared to defend its interests, including through the use of “equal compensatory measures.”

The remarks referred to a new EU working group, established to explore ways to make Russia fund the future reconstruction of Ukraine. “This must be done in accordance with EU and international law, and there is currently no direct model for this,” Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said, commenting on the new group. Stockholm currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU Council. Western nations have frozen hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of Russian sovereign reserves, as well the assets of Russians whom they consider close to the government. Moscow has branded the measures an act of robbery. Zakharova stressed that property rights should not be subject to the whims and geopolitical needs of a handful of nations, adding that US foreign policy was often prone to wild swings.

She claimed that a case in point is Venezuela, where Washington previously referred to Juan Guaido as the legitimate leader who has the right to manage the nation’s wealth. “Now Western delegations visit [Nicolas] Maduro, whom we always considered the legitimate president, as if nothing happened,” Zakharova said. “So everything they say now about Russia, their accusations, threats, and blackmail… can flip-flop in a moment. Mark my words.” The spokeswoman warned that the international community should oppose the push for the expropriation of Russian property, if not for its own sake. Countries could otherwise find themselves on the receiving end of the “ostensibly impartial” West-controlled financial system, Zakharova cautioned.

“..Russia has every intention of pacifying the joint at all costs..”

• Oh Lightning, I Command Thee To Smite My Foe! (Kunstler)

In the meantime, America is rapidly disintegrating on the home front. Is it attempted suicide or murder? It’s a little hard to tell. Things are blowing up from sea to shining sea — food processing facilities, giant chicken barns, regional electric grids, oil refineries. The latest, of course, is a chemical spill from the Norfolk-Southern train wreck in East Palestine, Ohio, set ablaze by a conclave of government officials purportedly to keep the toxic liquids from seeping into the Ohio River watershed and beyond. Of course, in the dithering prior to lighting it up, enough vinyl chloride leached into streams feeding the big river to kill countless fish. And then torching the remaining chemical pools sent up a mushroom cloud of dioxin and other poisons that killed wildlife, pets, and chickens in the vicinity before the evil miasma wafted eastward on the wind to the densely-populated Atlantic coast.

One has to wonder whether an army of saboteurs is on the loose across the land. Considering the border with Mexico is wide open, why wouldn’t America’s adversaries send whole wrecking crews over here to mess with our infrastructure? There’s no question that people from all over the planet have been sneaking across the Rio Grande. Surely some of them are on a mission. America is filled with “soft” targets, things unguarded and indefensible — not least, tens of thousands of miles of railroad track. Of all the reasons to be unnerved by “Joe Biden’s” open border policy, this one is the least discussed, even in the alt-media. But it seems like a no-brainer for nefarious interests who might want to bamboozle and disable us.

The sad truth of this moment in history is that the USA has too much going sideways with our own business at home now to be dabbling in any foreign misadventures — and we couldn’t have picked a worse place than Ukraine to do it. The sheer logistics are implausible. The geography is lethally unfavorable. The place has been inarguably within Russia’s sphere of influence for centuries and Russia has every intention of pacifying the joint at all costs. Peace talks are apparently out of the question for our leaders. Something’s got to give, and that something is probably Western Civ’s financial system. It’s primed to blow anyway, and when it does, we’ll have other things to think about.

Soros picks DeSantis.

• George Soros Is Defending The Unipolar World Order, Not Freedom (Blankenship)

Contrary to the causes Soros claims to champion, his vision is more likely to usher in a third World War – not prevent one. There’s no credible evidence of a Russian regime-change operation in Moldova. China’s global position has little to do with Russia’s success or failure in Ukraine — the two are partners, but not a unified entity, or even allies; their societies and economies are distinct. What Soros was really rambling against wasn’t corruption or anti-democratic behavior — but the emerging multipolar world order, of which India and Türkiye are, to various degrees, becoming a part. I will not waste my time defending the likes of Modi or Erdogan, as their records are, in my opinion, indefensible. But it’s not their autocratic leanings that Soros hates about them — it’s their flickers of independence.

He may, in this respect, ultimately come to be disappointed by Brazil’s turn to democracy, as it will lead to more development in multipolarism and visibility in multilateral institutions. I also believe he seriously underestimates the US Republican Party’s sheer lack of principles and its willingness to tap into even the most wretched sources of untamed hatred for political support. Despite what the aging “philanthropist” desires, the era of unipolar liberal hegemony is over. The world is entering a new era of multilateralism and anti-hegemony. Soros’ speech before the Munich Security Conference may, in this way, be a symbol. A symbol of how the old way of doing things dies with the ramblings of an old man while the emerging multipolar world order is born in the thunderous cry of billions of youth across the Global South.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1626539057684660225

It’s a closed circuit. The opposite of democratic. They only need the chiefs. The rest have no say.

• EU Parliament Blocks Scrutiny of Von der Leyen Over Pfizer Contract (Pol.eu)

The top ranks of the European Parliament have slammed the door shut to a public cross-examination of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen over her personal role in negotiating a multibillion euro vaccine deal with Pfizer. Last month, lawmakers in the Parliament’s special committee on COVID-19 proposed to invite von der Leyen to answer questions on the EU’s largest vaccine contract, signed at the height of the pandemic. It was in the run-up to this contract that she is reported to have exchanged text messages with Pfizer’s Chief Executive Albert Bourla. However, at a closed-door meeting Thursday of the Conference of Presidents (CoP) — which includes the heads of all the political groups and the Parliament’s president — leaders refused the request to hold a public grilling.

Instead they decided to ask von der Leyen to answer questions in private at some point in the future, watering down the invitation to almost nothing. “It was agreed that CoP will be able to raise … [the Parliament’s COVID-19 committee’s] concerns in their next regular meeting with the president of the Commission,” said an EU official with knowledge of the confidential discussions. The European People’s Party MEP in the room, Siegfried Muresan, dismissed the suggestion that the group was protecting von der Leyen — also affiliated with the EPP — as a “conclusion in search of an argument.” “The broad consensus was that we’re in dialogue with her [and] that should continue in the formats that have worked so far and that we have established,” he told POLITICO.

“Nancy Pelosi has contributed to destroying countless lives with her “insurrection” narrative and sham committee – And here is her daughter on camera saying it’s all a crock.”

• Nancy Pelosi’s Daughter Caught on Tape Refuting J6 Narrative (GP)

In the video below, Nancy Pelosi’s daughter, Alexandra Pelosi, is meeting with a January 6 defendant she wanted desperately to be in her sham documentary. It is a meeting with this same J6 defendant and his attorney. Alexandra Pelosi asked the defendant numerous times to participate. He politely declined. The Gateway Pundit reached out to the January 6 defendant in this video to confirm the details in the recording. Alexandra Pelosi agreed to be recorded by the defendant. In this video, Alexandra Pelosi is on camera saying many very shocking things. She mocks the idea that January 6th was an insurrection and admits that DC is too biased to hold fair trials and that many J6ers would be found not guilty if their cases were handled anywhere else in the country, and much more.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1626678002602893335

This video has not yet been made public. This is an exclusive video for The Gateway Pundit audience. From our source: “I did a lot of due diligence making sure that the defendant who shot this video had permission to do so. I spoke with his attorney who provided me documentation that Alexandra agreed to be filmed if they met. I wanted to bring this to you before anybody else if you’re interested in featuring it. Nancy Pelosi has contributed to destroying countless lives with her “insurrection” narrative and sham committee – And here is her daughter on camera saying it’s all a crock.” Here are some of the key moments in the video where Alexandra makes some particularly audacious comments.

Key moments:
2:43: Pelosi: “The Shaman did noth(ing)… What did the Shaman do? He stood there.”
4:24: “After the Democrats lose the house, then they get rid of the committee, people may lose I think interest… no one is going to care after the democrats are out of power. And you take Biden out of office- then who cares!?”
4:50: “DC is a lot of people who work for the government. I don’t think they’re sympathetic. If you got it moved (changed trial jurisdiction from DC) you’d totally get off” (laughs while saying this)
6:50: “If there was an insurrection… you were supposed to have a plan!” “It was the sorriest insurrection in history”
8:11: “You’re going to be able to laugh about this one day”
14:53: Pelosi talks about her friendship with Gavin McInnes and laughs at the notion that Proud Boys are white supremacists.

Daughter Pelosi

Nancy Pelosi's Own Daughter Doesn't Even Believe There Wasn't An Insurrection On January 6

So much for inheriting all that insider trading money pic.twitter.com/8IENMBq0SU

— Red Voice Media (@redvoicenews) February 17, 2023

Why does the Guardian cover this all of a sudden?

• Too Slow And Too Secret? Pace of Staley Investigation Undermines Trust (G.)

Three years after it began, the findings of a City watchdog investigation into whether the former Barclays chief executive Jes Staley gave a full account of his relationship with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to the bank’s board are still pending. There is a risk that justice delayed may prove justice denied for the British public. Our system relies on the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and other regulators to uphold the integrity and honesty of those who manage our money. The issue came to the fore again this week after the publication of allegations made in a court case brought by the US Virgin Islands, where Epstein had a home, against Staley’s former employer, JPMorgan Chase bank.

It is alleged by Virgin Islands prosecutors that Staley held discussions with Epstein in which they referred to women by the names of Disney princesses, that Epstein procured women for Staley, and that Epstein emailed his friend photos of young women in seductive poses. Staley is not a party to the lawsuit and denies the allegations. JP Morgan declined to comment on the latest allegations. It previously called for the lawsuit to be dismissed, claiming it did not participate in or benefit from sex trafficking by its former client. As allegations about Staley’s ties to Epstein have mounted, so too has the pressure on the Barclays board to justify why they backed him to stay on as chief executive in 2020. The implications of this case are broad, says Simon Learmount, professor in corporate governance at Cambridge Judge Business School:

“This is a really, really important case, not just because of what it may reveal about the Staley-Epstein relationship, but the questions it raises about the Barclays board and boards in general.” Establishing who knew what, and when, and how they responded, is the task that faces the FCA. Its probe not only looked at Staley’s disclosures to the Barclays board, but those the board subsequently made to the FCA. The preliminary findings – which have still not been made public and are subject to legal challenge – therefore speak not only to Staley’s integrity but also the board’s. That includes Nigel Higgins, who received Staley’s disclosures and who is still chair of Barclays. Yet despite the clear public interest in good governance at the top of a British bank of systemic importance, the public may never know the final conclusions of the FCA inquiry. If its preliminary findings are successfully challenged, they will not be disclosed.

[..]Epstein’s luxurious celebrity lifestyle and royal friendships, his death in prison after a previous conviction for soliciting sex from a minor, have all served to keep his name in the headlines. As Epstein’s one-time banker at Wall Street investment bank JPMorgan Chase, Staley has been the focus of attention too. The pair exchanged thousands of messages, many of which were handed over to the UK authorities by US counterparts. A spokesperson for Staley admitted, following an investigation by the Wall Street Journal, that he had made multiple trips to Epstein’s private island, Little St James, in 2020. It was in February that year that the Barclays board decided, following an internal investigation commissioned from the law firm Clifford Chance, which reviewed the emails, that it would stand full square behind Staley. The banker, who had arrived from the US in 2015 with a £10m pay package, had their “full confidence”.

They’ll blame Trump for the whole thing.

• Trump Announces Upcoming Visit to East Palestine, FEMA Reverses Course {(CTH)

The announcement by President Trump with his intent to visit East Palestine next Wednesday, followed moments later by a reversal announcement from FEMA stating they will now offer support to East Palestine, do not seem coincidental. The Biden administration, including the EPA, FEMA and Transporation Secretary, was likely very worried about the optics of getting blasted by President Trump very visibly next week for their lack of urgency and concern. Moments after Trump announces his visit, FEMA reverses their prior denial of aid. lol

Ohio train tracks
https://twitter.com/i/status/1625998479393783809

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Just hours after saying he “[did] not expect” members of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to be in East Palestine, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine now confirms the government entity will, in fact, be sending a crew to assist with the aftermath of the train derailment in the village. In a joint statement released Friday night, DeWine and FEMA Regional Administrator Thomas C. Sivak said the agency would deploy a Regional Incident Management Assistance Team (IMAT) to Columbiana County starting Saturday, along with a senior response official. The workers will “support ongoing operations, including incident coordination and ongoing assessments of potential long-term recovery needs.”

[…] DeWine had previously requested federal help, and today the Department of Health and Human Services announced toxicologists from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would be journeying to East Palestine to assist with public health testing. However, the governor’s request for FEMA assistance was initially denied, with the agency apparently telling his office the current situation “[did] not quality for assistance.”

Treehopper
https://twitter.com/i/status/1626574980644499465

“The incredible Gomesa Jiaho Queen orchid. It’s a hybrid originated by Jia Ho Orchids in 2018, being a cross breed of Gom. Mulattas’ Dancing and Gom. varicosa”

Black sea nettle

The black sea nettle is a jellyfish found in the waters of the Pacific Ocean. It can be quite massive, with a bell diameter potentially up to 1 meter (3 ft) and oral arms extending to 5 or 6 meters (16 or 20 ft).

[Mike Bear: https://t.co/H9qIKtcDgx]pic.twitter.com/9eWxk1CV9n

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) February 17, 2023

Frogfish

The hairy frogfish has a rounded, extensible body, and its soft skin is covered with irregularly-arranged dermal spinules resembling hairs. Its pectoral & pelvic fins, allow the frogfish to "walk" on the sea bottom

[read more: https://t.co/xL8r1nbh1w]pic.twitter.com/FaJVOrEimV

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) February 17, 2023

Lions
https://twitter.com/i/status/1626569203753926656

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Debt Rattle February 15 2023

Feb 152023

February 15, 2023 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:50 am Finance Tagged with: Bakhmut, dioxin, NATO, Nordstream, nuclear safety, Ohio river, Serbia, Snow White, Soros, UFO, unjected 67 Responses »

Edward Hopper Dawn before Gettysburg 1934

• Palestine, Ohio Train Wreck: It’s The Dioxin (Coppolino)

• Russia Wants UN Probe Into Nord Stream Blasts (RT)

• Kiev Readying ‘Great Event’ To Accuse Russia Of Violating Nuclear Safety (TASS)

• US Wants to Help Ukraine Retake More Territory Before Negotiating (Antiwar)

• US Ambitions Mean Destruction Of Ukraine, Huge Loss Of Life – Zakharova (TASS)

• Ban On Access To Bakhmut Prelude To Ukrainian Troop Withdrawal? (TASS)

• Stoltenberg Denies NATO Involvement In Conflict With Russia (TASS)

• Russia Gives High Marks To Serbia’s Balanced Foreign Policy (TASS)

• Snow White and the Wicked Queen (Batiushka)

• The Bloody Sore On Humanity’s Conscience (Saker)

• Nord Stream Terror Attack: The Plot Thickens (Escobar)

• NATO Eyes Fighting Two Wars – Bloomberg (RT)

• Snowden Calls UFO Craze A Distraction (RT)

• How George Soros’ Propaganda Machine Has Corrupted The Media (Livshitz)

• ‘World’s First’ Unvaccinated Dating Service Launches in Hawaii (ET)

Ohio river
https://twitter.com/i/status/1625327940392067072

Is this why the White House is absent?

Tucker Ohio

HEY @JOEBIDEN: GET OFF YOUR ASS AND DO SOMETHING TO HELP THE PEOPLE OF EAST PALESTINE. pic.twitter.com/PhhaIoJTo4

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) February 15, 2023

East Palestine, Ohio residents describe effects of train derailment on their bodies and environment
Source: Fox Newshttps://t.co/3UTllXxrMI pic.twitter.com/Y97cNCpIkC

— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2023) February 15, 2023

It happened on February 3rd. 12 days ago. Without Twitter, would we even ever have known?

I’m not sure what is the most dangerous chemical involved. But the intentional “flaring off” of the whole thing feels crazy.

Will anybody ever live there again?

• Palestine, Ohio Train Wreck: It’s The Dioxin (Coppolino)

Most coverage of the train wreck in Palestine, Ohio is missing one word: dioxin. There were reportedly 14 tanker cars full of vinyl chloride, a precursor to polyvinyl chloride — that is, vinyl. Burning vinyl is the most serious source of dioxin in the environment — whether from trash incinerators, house fires or chemical spills. This mess of 14 tanker cars (really, many more, but 14 had vinyl chloride) was then set on fire by the government, apparently to make it easier to clear the railroad tracks. This was the worst possible decision. It has turned many, many miles into no-man’s land. Note that dioxin goes by several other names, including TCDD and is sometimes abbreviated 2,3,7,8. Dibenzofurans, or furans for short, are identical in their toxicity but spoken about less often.

This is not a local issue. This massive plume will spread far and wide, and is being blown by the prevailing winds across Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York State, toward the population centers of the northeastern U.S. And via land and water, the toxins can spread in many directions, via water, soil movement and air (since the prevailing winds are only an average). And the contamination is so serious that even soil tracking will spread significant amounts. What few people remember is how the town of Times Beach, Missouri was evacuated, purchased by the federal government, leveled and had its zip code removed, from far, far less dioxin contamination. It’s now a state park, though I’m not sure who would want to have a picnic there.

[..] Neil Donahue, a professor of chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University in nearby Pittsburgh, said he worries that the burning could have formed dioxins, which are created from burning chlorinated carbon materials. “Vinyl chloride is bad, dioxins are worse as carcinogens and that comes from burning,” Donahue said. Dioxins are a group of persistent environmental pollutants that last in the ground and body for years and have been one of the major environmental problems and controversies in the United States. Dr. Lynn Goldman, dean of George Washington University’s School of Public Health, agrees this is a possible risk, but is more concerned about uncombusted vinyl chloride vapors that could be lurking in the immediate vicinity. “Until there has been a thorough assessment, the soot as well as any other materials should in my opinion be treated as contaminated by vinyl chloride and/or dioxins or other contaminants until proven otherwise,” she said.

East Palestine, Ohio.
Just like the billions of masks polluting the oceans, this environmental disaster is largely being ignored by government and media. It appears that ‘health and safety’ or ‘saving the planet’ only becomes relevant when they say so.pic.twitter.com/g1Qz4JpYnG

— James Melville (@JamesMelville) February 14, 2023

https://twitter.com/i/status/1625303244267220992

https://twitter.com/i/status/1625553361641537536

“..Stoltenberg announced the formation of a new “coordination cell” to work on securing undersea infrastructure..”

• Russia Wants UN Probe Into Nord Stream Blasts (RT)

The Russian parliament’s committee for international relations has approved a motion to ask the UN Security Council for an investigation into last September’s explosions on the Baltic Sea pipelines, for which they blame the US. The motion was introduced on Tuesday and is expected to be approved by the State Duma later this week. The proposal describes the blasts as “an act of international terrorism” and a “monstrous sabotage,” calling on the UN to hold accountable both those who gave the order and those who carried it out. The criminal act has threatened the security of all Eurasia, TASS reported, quoting the text of the document. US President Joe Biden’s administration “gave the illegal order and bears full responsibility for the multi-billion-dollar damage to the infrastructure of Russia, Germany, France and the Netherlands,” according to the document.

It describes the pipeline sabotage as inflicting long-term damage to the security, economy and environment of the entire region. The lawmakers are referring to last week’s expose by American investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, who described how the pipelines were damaged in a joint operation between the US and Norway. US actions require “a thorough international investigation, punishment of those responsible and compensation for the damage caused.” The committee has requested putting their proposal on the agenda of Thursday’s session of the State Duma, where it may be up for a vote. A series of explosions heavily damaged both Nord Stream pipelines, which were built under the Baltic Sea to deliver Russian natural gas to Germany and the rest of the EU.

The blasts happened near the Danish island of Bornholm, in an area where the US Navy and its NATO allies conducted BALTOPS 22 exercises several months prior. Last week, Hersh described how American divers planted the explosives under the cover of the naval exercise, saying they were later activated by a Norwegian patrol airplane. When Hersh asked the US government for comment, it denounced the story as “fiction” and “false.” It has received little to no media attention in the West since. On Monday, NATO’s secretary-general – and former Norwegian prime minister – Jens Stoltenberg announced the formation of a new “coordination cell” to work on securing undersea infrastructure.

No surprise. They call for a special session, just in time for Russia to be accused.

• Kiev Readying ‘Great Event’ To Accuse Russia Of Violating Nuclear Safety (TASS)

Kiev, backed by the US, is preparing a provocation (“a great event”) ahead of the 11th special session of the UN General Assembly to accuse Russia of violating nuclear safety during the special military operation in Ukraine, the Joint Coordination Headquarters for Humanitarian Response said in a statement on Tuesday. “The Kiev regime, supported by the US and European countries, is wrapping up preparations of a major media provocation (“a great event”) to accuse the Russian Federation, ahead of the start of work of the eleventh extraordinary special session of the UN General Assembly on February 22, of allegedly ‘gross violation’ of commitments of the Nuclear Safety Convention during the special military operation,” the statement said.

It also said representatives of the Kiev regime planned to provide some “substantial evidence” to the world community, which will purport to prove that “as a result of actions by Russian servicemen at the Chernobyl NPP and in the exclusion zone in February-April 2022, a radioactive contamination of significant territories of Ukraine took place.” The purpose of the provocation is mainly to create a negative background by forcing countries that didn’t support sanctions against the Russian Federation to vote for the Kiev “peace formula” at the upcoming 11th special session of the UN General Assembly. In addition, Kiev is hoping for further initiatives for the illegal confiscation of Russian assets abroad to “support Ukraine” and the creation of an “international tribunal”.

The special session of the UN General Assembly on Ukraine will begin its work on February 22. According to Paulina Kubiak, a spokesperson for the President of the General Assembly, the request to hold the session came from some Western countries on February 10.

Crime(a).

• US Wants to Help Ukraine Retake More Territory Before Negotiating (Antiwar)

The Washington Post reported on Monday that Biden administration officials say they want to help Ukraine retake as much territory as it can from Russia over the next few months before they sit down at the negotiation table with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The report, which cited unnamed Biden administration officials, said that some “optimists” think Ukraine can stop Russian advances in the east, regain territory in the south, and negotiate a deal by the end of the year. But there are “skeptics” who recognize that Russia has been reinforcing its positions with hundreds of thousands of troops. Russia has been making more gains around the eastern Donetsk city of Bakhmut, where Ukrainian forces have been taking heavy casualties.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Russia has started its long-awaited offensive, but it’s not clear if Russia has launched a major push or the momentum is just on its side in Bakhmut, where Russian and Ukrainian forces have been locked in battle for months. Ukraine’s Western backers, including those in the Biden administration, think Kyiv has been sinking too many resources in the battle of Bakhmut and want them to focus elsewhere. The Post report said that American military analysts and planners think it’s unrealistic for Ukraine to continue defending Bakhmut and launch a spring counteroffensive in another area. The report said that the Biden administration conveyed to Ukraine that it might not be able to receive the massive amount of assistance Washington has provided indefinitely.

“We will continue to try to impress upon them that we can’t do anything and everything forever,” an administration official said. The message to Ukraine is that they face a pivotal moment in the war, and the recent weapons packages and ones that will soon be announced will give them their best chance to turn the tide. The US has recently pledged a series of massive arms packages to Ukraine that include longer-range missiles, Abrams tanks, and Bradley fighting vehicles, although some of the equipment could take years to deliver. The report cited conservative Republicans who have said they want to stop providing aid and the fact that it’s not clear how long Europe can support the war as reasons why the assistance might not continue at these levels. This message comes despite constant pledges from the US and its allies that they will support Ukraine for “as long as it takes.”

“‘As long as it takes’ pertains to the amount of conflict. It doesn’t pertain to the amount of assistance,” the administration official said. There are other signs that the US is thinking about an end game for the war, including recent comments from Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL), the head of the House Armed Services Committee. Rogers suggested the US and NATO should pressure Ukraine on what victory will look like, which he said should help “drive Putin and Zelensky to the table to end this thing this summer.” Ukrainian officials have maintained their goal is to drive Russia out of all the territory it controls, including Crimea. But officials in the US don’t think taking Crimea is a realistic goal. Any deal that Russia and Ukraine reach in the future would likely involve Kyiv ceding more territory than it would have if an agreement was reached earlier in the war or if the Minsk agreements were implemented before the Russian invasion. The Minsk agreements were drawn up to end the Donbas war and would have involved Kyiv ceding autonomy to separatists in the east, but the region would have remained part of Ukraine.

“..American neoliberals destroyed Ukraine and are exterminating Ukrainian people..”

• US Ambitions Mean Destruction Of Ukraine, Huge Loss Of Life – Zakharova (TASS)

American ambitions have led to enormous fatalities and the annihilation of Ukraine, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Tuesday. “The so-called ‘West’s war against Russia until the last Ukrainian.’ American neoliberals destroyed Ukraine and are exterminating Ukrainian people. American hegemonic ambitions lead to colossal victims,” she wrote on her Telegram channel commenting on a statement by one of the White House officials that the US is pushing Kiev to more active combat.

“..the Ukrainian military cannot secure even areas in the city that had been considered relatively safe before..”

• Ban On Access To Bakhmut Prelude To Ukrainian Troop Withdrawal? (TASS)

The ban on civilian and volunteer access to Artyomovsk (known as Bakhmut in Ukraine) imposed by Kiev on Monday could be a prelude to a Ukrainian withdrawal from the city, the New York Times reported. According to the newspaper, the decision to ban civilians from entering the city may suggest that the Ukrainian military cannot secure even areas in the city that had been considered relatively safe before, such as districts on the western bank of the Bakhmutka River. The New York Times quoted the Russian Defense Ministry as saying that the village of Krasnaya Gora, lying north of Artyomovsk, had been taken by Russian troops.

Ukraine’s Klymenko Time news outlet reported on Sunday, citing a Ukrainian commander who goes under the nickname of Madyar, that the military would close access to Artyomovsk for all civilians, including volunteers, starting on Monday. Only those having a special permit will be able to enter the city, the news outlet added. According to it, the ban is needed to guarantee security to civilians.

And neither is the arms industry.

• Stoltenberg Denies NATO Involvement In Conflict With Russia (TASS)

NATO does not consider itself a party to the conflict with Russia but will keep supplying more advanced and heavier weaponry to Ukraine, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said upon his arrival at a meeting of the bloc’s defense ministers on Tuesday. “Neither NATO nor NATO allies are party to the conflict. What we do as NATO allies and NATO, is to provide support to Ukraine. Ukraine is defending itself. Ukraine has the right to defend itself. And of course, we have the right to help Ukraine uphold the right for self-defense. So NATO and NATO allies are not party to the conflict, but we support Ukraine in the right of self-defense,” the NATO chief said, replying to a corresponding question. The type of weapons supplied to Ukraine “has evolved as the war has evolved,” Stoltenberg said.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1625406892087320581

“In the beginning there was enormous focus on javelins, on anti-tank, light anti-tank weapons, and then we saw the urgent need for artillery and allies started to step up the delivery of advanced modern artillery. Then air defense has been a main focus and now heavy weaponry…,” he said. As Stoltenberg said, “actually since 2014, NATO has implemented the biggest reinforcements of collective defense in a generation, because the war didn’t start in February last year. It started in 2014.” Tanks, infantry fighting vehicles and munitions are now a NATO priority in weaponry deliveries to Ukraine, Stoltenberg said. “So the issue of aircraft is not the most urgent issue now. But it is an ongoing discussion. We have ongoing consultations among allies on the type of systems allies should deliver to Ukraine,” he said. “The urgent need now is to deliver what has always been promised” and this “will be a top issue at the meetings today here at NATO,” Stoltenberg said.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1625404892348137474

Serbia, Hungary. Expect regime change.

• Russia Gives High Marks To Serbia’s Balanced Foreign Policy (TASS)

Russia highly appreciates Belgrade’s balanced foreign policy under complex international circumstances, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a telegram to his Serbian counterpart Aleksandar Vucic sent on the occasion of Serbia’s Statehood Day. According to the Serbian leader’s press service, the telegram was presented to Vucic by Russian Ambassador to Belgrade Alexander Botsan-Kharchenko on Tuesday. “Please accept sincere greetings on the occasion of your country’s national holiday, Statehood Day. Serbia is Russia’s important and reliable partner. We greatly cherish the balanced foreign policy course conducted by Belgrade under the current complex international circumstances.

“We support your efforts directed at defending the country’s territorial integrity and resolving the Kosovo issue. I am confident that the further development of the Russian-Serbian strategic partnership fully corresponds to the interests of our fraternal peoples,” the telegram said. “I sincerely wish you good health and success as well as well-being and prosperity to all Serbian citizens,” the Russian leader said. Statehood Day is marked in Serbia on February 15 and 16 commemorating the First Serbian Uprising (1804-1813) which launched the country’s fight for independence from the Ottoman Empire. Serbia’s first constitution was approved on February 15, 1835.

Nice parabel.

• Snow White and the Wicked Queen (Batiushka)

Now it came to pass that a Prince who was travelling in the mountains with his soldiers happened onto the Kings’ House, where he sought shelter for the night. He saw the coffin with Snow White in it and read what was written on it with golden letters. Then he said to the Three Kings: ‘Let me buy the coffin from you. I will give you anything you want for it’. But the Kings answered: ‘We will not sell it for all the gold in the world’. Then he said, ‘Then give it to me, for I cannot live without being able to see Snow White. I will honour her and respect her as my most cherished one’. When he said this, the good Kings felt sorry for him and gave him the coffin. The Prince had his soldiers carry it away on their shoulders. But then one of them stumbled over a stone and that freed the piece of poisoned apple which had lodged in Snow White’s throat.

At once she coughed it up, opened her eyes, lifted the lid from her coffin, sat up and was alive again. ‘Good heavens, where am I?’ she cried out. The Prince said joyfully: ‘You are with me’. He told her what had happened, and then said: ‘I love you more than anything in the world. Come with me to my castle and we shall be King and Queen’. Snow White fell in love with him and went with him. When they got to the castle, the people were very happy and they invited the whole world to their wedding feast.Now the Wicked Queen in the West was also invited to the wedding feast and when she had arrayed herself in her most beautiful garments, she stood before her mirror and said: ‘Mirror, mirror, on the wall, Who’s the strongest of them all?’ The mirror answered: ‘You, my Queen, are not strong at all, it is true. And the young Queen is much, much stronger than you’.

The Wicked Queen was furious. Not knowing that the young Queen was Snow White, she went to the wedding to try and kill her. But as soon as she saw her, she realised that she was Snow White. And at once the vain heart of the Wicked Queen filled with the deepest dread and she died in a rage of narcissism. So, at last freed from her wickedness, the Kingdom of the West began to make friends with the Three Kings of the North, South and East. Having forgotten the Wicked Queen completely, he became the Fourth King. The whole Family was together again at last. And soon after that the Four Kings took wives and were very happy. As for the King and Queen Snow White, every year on the anniversary of their freedom from wickedness, they would hold a huge ball to which they invited the Four Kings from the Four Kingdoms of the world and all their families. And there they would all make merry and the music and the feasting and the singing and the dancing and the laughing would last until dawn. And so they lived happily ever after.

“..the Woke ideology is following Dubya’s “you are either with us or with the terrorists“, but on steroids..”

• The Bloody Sore On Humanity’s Conscience (Saker)

Each society, each country has at least two foundational bases: an official ideology and a number of foundational myths (and these myths can be very close to the historical truth or not). In the case of the West (roughly Zone A), the official ideology is “western liberal democracy” (itself based on a lionization of capitalism and “free market values”). However, once we look “under the hood”, so to speak, we see that since its birth in the Middle-Ages the foundational myth of the West has been exceptionalism and its inevitable by-product, imperialism. And it does not matter one bit what verbiage this myth has been wrapped it. It can be the demented claims of universal authority the Papacy, or the so-called “universal values” (aka human rights) of Freemasonry, the racial superiority of the Nazis or globalist agenda of the transnational financiers.

The past two decades or so have, however, seen a very interesting phenomenon: the wholesale abandonment of any “pious” ideology other than the minimal lip-service needed to show a (totally non-existing) loyalty to any values. That is, however, not to say that no ideology currently exists. It does, very much so, but it is one *openly* based on hatred of the “other”. I am talking, of course, of the Woke ideology which is so powerfully expressed by the actions of the “Biden” Administration. The Woke ideology is not different from its predecessors by its underlying hatred of the “other” (all the previous western ideologies were also based on that hatred of the “other”), but by its unapologetic proclamation of this hatred. You could say that the Woke ideology is following Dubya’s “you are either with us or with the terrorists“, but on steroids.

And like all western ideologies, the Woke ideology demands that you not only accept a lie (many lies, in fact), but that you also loudly proclaim it. And, of course, the bigger the lie, the more vociferously it is proclaimed urbi et orbi.Again, this is hardly anything new but, as Hegelian dialectics affirms, quantity can have a quality of its own. We clearly see this today in the post-Christian society all of Zone A lives in: not only are falsehoods proclaimed as “secular dogma”, but the very notion of “truth” has lost any meaning. To repeat, while in the past the rulers of the West did proclaim and even impose ideologies based on lies, today these same rulers have basically retired the very *concept* of “truth” in any other meaning than “in agreement with the official party line/narrative”.

“..the terror attack planning preceded, by months, not only the SMO..”

It had nothing to do with the SMO. Or Ukraine. It was about Germany. Who are now silent.

• Nord Stream Terror Attack: The Plot Thickens (Escobar)

The Special Military Operation (SMO) was launched on February 24, almost a year ago. The Nord Stream 1 and 2 blow up happened on September 26. Hersh assures there were “more than nine months of highly secret back and forth debate inside Washington’s national security community about how to ‘sabotage the pipelines’”. So that confirms that the terror attack planning preceded, by months, not only the SMO but, crucially, the letters sent by Moscow to Washington on December 2022, requesting a serious discussion on “indivisibility of security” involving NATO, Russia and the post-Soviet space. The request was met by a dismissive American non-response response.

While he was writing the story of a terror response to a serious geopolitical issue, it does raise eyebrows that a first-rate pro like Hersh does not even bother to examine the complex geopolitical background. In a nutshell: the ultimate Mackinderian anathema for the U.S. ruling classes – and that’s bipartisan – is a Germany-Russia alliance, extended to China: that would mean the U.S. expelled from Eurasia, and that conditions everything any American government thinks and does in terms of NATO and Russia. Hersh should also have noticed that the timing of the preparation to “sabotage the pipelines” completely blows apart the official United States government narrative, according to which this a collective West effort to help Ukraine against “unprovoked Russian aggression”.

The narrative leaves no doubt that Hersh’s source – if not the journalist himself – supports what is considered a lawful U.S. policy: to fight Russia’s “threat to Western dominance [in Europe].” So what seems a U.S. Navy covert op, according to the narrative, may have been misguided not because of serious geopolitical reasons; but because the attack planning intentionally evaded U.S. law “requiring Congress to be informed”. That’s an extremely parochial interpretation of international relations. Or, to be blunt: that’s an apology of Exceptionalism. And that brings us to what may be the Rosebud in this Orson Welles-worthy saga. Hersh refers to a “secure room on the top floor of the Old Executive Office Building …that was also the home of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board”. This was supposedly the place where the terror attack planning was being discussed.

“NATO defense ministers will also discuss in Brussels a boost in military spending by member states..”

• NATO Eyes Fighting Two Wars – Bloomberg (RT)

NATO is set to adopt a guidance that lays out plans for a scenario in which member states find themselves fighting on the home front and beyond the borders of the alliance at the same time, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. This comes as the US increasingly shifts its priorities to confronting China. The classified document is to be discussed and signed off on by NATO defense ministers during a two-day summit in Brussels that starts on Tuesday, the news outlet reported. Members will be asked to prepare national plans for future military engagements. The guidance will map out ways for NATO to engage in a “high-intensity so-called Article 5 conflict” – defending a NATO nation attacked by a foreign party under the treaty’s mutual defense provision – and “an out-of-area, non-Article 5 event.” The contents of the guideline were revealed to Bloomberg by “people familiar with the matter.”

While NATO bills itself as a defensive alliance, it has an extensive record of engaging in hostilities on foreign soil, including in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and against Libya in 2011. Critics regard the bloc as a tool of US foreign policy that is aligned with Washington’s goals and in rivalry with China and Russia. “The Americans get what they were aiming for,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov remarked in an interview earlier this month, discussing NATO’s increasing reach. “There are military blocs being created against China and Russia in the Asian Pacific region, like AUKUS. There is a drive to drag new members into them.” The ability to fight a two-theater war was at the core of US military planning during the Cold War.

Think tanks and US officials pushed the strategic objective of having a military force strong enough for two simultaneous ground conflicts, arguing for higher Pentagon budgets and against spending cuts. According to Bloomberg’s sources, NATO defense ministers will also discuss in Brussels a boost in military spending by member states. Countries that fail to meet the target of 2% of GDP would be pressured to accept this level as a mandatory floor rather than merely as a recommendation. Such a change may be adopted during a summit of NATO leaders in Vilnius in July, the outlet said. The structure of spending would be pushed towards increased procurement of weapons by European allies, according to the article, since the US “may decide to move some of its assets” from the continent closer to China.

You don’t say…

• Snowden Calls UFO Craze A Distraction (RT)

The media frenzy over “spy balloons” and unidentified flying objects over North America is sadly not about first contact with extraterrestrials, but an engineered panic for political misdirection, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden argued on Monday. “It’s not aliens. I wish it were aliens. But it’s not aliens. It’s just the ol’ engineered panic, an attractive nuisance ensuring [national security] reporters get assigned to investigate balloon bullshit rather than budgets or bombings” such as the Nord Stream, Snowden tweeted. Award-winning investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a story last week describing how the US and Norway blew up the pipelines transporting Russian natural gas to Germany last September. The US government denounced it as false.

Over the next several days, the US military began shooting down “objects” in the sky over North America. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on Monday that the US government still doesn’t know who owns the three “objects” brought down over the weekend. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said there was “no indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity,” however. Kirby had announced the downing of a “high-altitude object” off the coast of Alaska on Friday. US fighter jets brought down an “unidentified, unmanned object” over Yukon in northwest Canada on Saturday. The third “object” was shot down on Sunday afternoon over Lake Huron, as it approached Michigan. “While authorities don’t yet know what the objects are, they are not a threat,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters on Monday.

“They do not present a military threat to anyone on the ground. They do however present a risk to civil aviation and potentially an intelligence collection threat. And we’ll get to the bottom of it,” he added. Austin also said the three “objects” were different from the Chinese “spy balloon” the US shot down over South Carolina last week. The aerostat, which Beijing described as a weather balloon blown off-course by the winds, had passed over most of the continental US before it was destroyed by a F-22 fighter jet. The Pentagon’s reluctance to describe the “objects” or show any debris that may have been recovered has fueled speculation about their possible extraterrestrial origin. Space magnate Elon Musk joked about “friends of mine” stopping by.

Meanwhile, opposition lawmakers have expressed frustration at the lack of official explanations by the White House. Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, who sits on the Homeland Security Committee, demanded the Pentagon and the president “tell us what they know – and what they don’t – immediately.” “What in the world is going on?” wondered fellow Kentuckian and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on the Senate floor. “The administration has still not been able to divulge any meaningful information about what was shot down,” he said, asking if the radar sensitivity may have been turned up after the Chinese balloon incident.

”..Newsbusters lists Project Syndicate as the biggest propaganda platform funded by the Hungarian..”

• How George Soros’ Propaganda Machine Has Corrupted The Media (Livshitz)

A new report from the US-based Newsbusters has exposed a vast web of media and activist organizations, funded with millions of dollars, annually, by the billionaire George Soros. The outlet bills itself as “an online rapid-response vehicle for documenting, exposing, and neutralizing liberal bias in the media.” The extensive global influence of the Hungarian tycoon is well-known, and Soros himself has admitted it on countless occasions – including boasts about his efforts in Ukraine. Soros openly declared his role in promoting the 2014 US-orchestrated Maidan coup in Kiev, stating at the time: “I set up a foundation in Ukraine before Ukraine became independent of Russia [sic]. The foundation has been functioning ever since. And it played an important part in events now.”

In a lengthy interview with the New York Times in October of 2019, Soros explained: “The arc of history doesn’t follow its own course [and] needs to be bent,” and he was “engaged in trying to bend it in the right direction.” The Newsbuster report identifies the hundreds of media, humanitarian, and social justice organizations that Soros funds annually and asserts that his donations allow him to “wield massive power over information in international politics,” and “mold public opinion on practically every continent and in many languages.” Who gets the money? Newsbusters lists Project Syndicate as the biggest propaganda platform funded by the Hungarian. It styles itself as “the world’s opinion page” and has a “global audience” that includes “prominent politicians, policymakers, scholars, business leaders, and civic activists from six continents” and “over 140 heads of state.”

From 2016 – 2020, he funneled at least $1.5 million to the outlet. It actively promoted abortion, criticism of Israel and pushed for global climate lockdowns during this period. The Poynter Institute is also at the top of this list, which Newsbusters condemns as “a global Soros-backed Ministry of Truth.” It received $492,000 during the same period. This money was used to finance Poynter’s International Fact-Checking Network, which brings together 100 so-called “fact-checkers”. The network includes the controversial PolitiFact, and actively works with major social media platforms to boost their operations, while censoring alternative voices and opinions. Newsbusters argues that these initiatives in reality serve only to restrict opinions on issues like abortion, transgenderism, and COVID-19. The reports also points out that there is significant academic research to suggest fact-checking does not stop the spread of false information online, raising questions about why so many organizations and wealthy individuals pump huge amounts of money into such entities in the first place.

Unjected. How much for blood transfusions? Donor organs?

• ‘World’s First’ Unvaccinated Dating Service Launches in Hawaii (ET)

Nowadays, online dating seems less a game of hit or miss than medical truth or dare, given the deal-breaker question, “Are you vaccinated?” Businesswomen Shelby Thomson and Heather Pyle of Maui, Hawaii, found the online dating game a frustrating experience for the un-jabbed at the height of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout in 2021. Faced with discrimination and censorship, many unvaccinated people lost jobs and relationships because they chose to remain unvaccinated. The un-jabbed “didn’t have the option to say they were unvaccinated” to potential online dating partners, Thomson said. “They were only allowed to be vaccinated. And you had to have this badge in your [online] profile.” Too often, the unvaccinated would hear on dating sites, “Swipe left”—move on.

In May 2021, the two business partners, moms, and best friends launched “Unjected,” a dating app for the unvaccinated, on the Google and Apple stores. “We started seeing people wanting to find partners,” Thomson said of their unvaccinated friends. However, soon after the app’s launch, Thomson and Pyle started receiving hate emails, then negative publicity in the media. Apple decided to remove “Unjected” from the app store, claiming it provided medical disinformation. “We tailored everything and played this chess game until it [met] Apple standards,” Thomson recalled. But it still wasn’t enough. “It took us until July 31 to get banned.”

When Google threatened to follow suit, Thomson and Pyle pulled the plug on both media giants, and Unjected.com went live using the web domain host GoDaddy in August 2021. “We decided—OK—the big-tech world is not our friend. They don’t want us to exist in this realm. They’ll always go out of their way to ensure we’re censored or taken down.” Thomson said “Unjected” is more than a dating service for the unvaccinated. It’s also a blood bank database and a fertility bank for the unvaccinated. The dating service alone boasts 110,000 subscriptions in 85 countries and 3,000 to 5,000 new clientele every month, Thomson said.

SB99 in TN is a must-pass bill, requiring labeling on all meat that contains mRNA vaccines. Idaho S.1018 is similiar.

Assange

Can we please come together for just a moment to share this important story?

“If Assange loses, we all lose.”

Starring: @mehdirhasan @rogerwaters @tuckercarlson @maddow @kennedynation @judgenap @chrislhayes pic.twitter.com/oUopugzNZO

— Matt Orfalea (@0rf) February 14, 2023

Chickens

Animals are dying within days and people are next.

The worst environmental catastrophe in recent U.S. history and the ‘green’ crowd is quiet. Why?pic.twitter.com/7SNjT09wlE

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) February 14, 2023

Rob Roos
https://twitter.com/i/status/1625513008054128641

Man and woman

“Man and Woman” is an 8 metre tall sculpture by Tamara Kvesitadze. Located in Batumi, Georgia,

Every night they merge for a short embrace, before separating, representing the story of lovers separated by war pic.twitter.com/NYCXx0RuxW

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) February 14, 2023

Blue ringed octopus
https://twitter.com/i/status/1625563331036606464

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Debt Rattle January 21 2023

Jan 212023

January 21, 2023 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:45 am Finance Tagged with: Abrams, Bakhmut, Biden, Big Serge, escalation, Hitler, jet fuel, leopard, Napoleon, Soros, tanks, Viagra 58 Responses »

Edward Hopper Night in the park 1921

• Russo-Ukrainian War: The World Blood Pump (Big Serge)

• Russia ‘Fights To The End’ – Borrell (RT)

• Germany Says ‘Nein’ On Tanks At Allies’ Big Ramstein Meeting (ZH)

• Poland Could Send Leopard Tanks To Ukraine Without German Approval (G.)

• Pentagon Wants Kiev’s Backers To ‘Dig Deeper’ (RT)

• Elon Musk Warns Against ‘Relentless Escalation’ In Ukraine (RT)

• Top EU Official Comments On Sanctions ‘Debate’ With Kiev (RT)

• Moscow Outlines What West Can Do To Resolve Ukraine Crisis (RT)

• UK Finds Loophole To Buy Russian Oil – Media (RT)

• A Page Turns (Jim Kunstler)

• World Economic Fuck’em (QTR)

• Investigation Pulls Back Veil On Soros’ ‘Indoctrination’ Efforts (RT)

• I Have No Regrets: Biden Breaks Long Silence With Shattering Admission (Turley)

• Men Live Longer (Happier?) Lives Taking Viagra; New Study Finds (ZH)

• Medical Board Takes Action Against Misinformation Doc (MPT)

Tucker Biden is done

CNN turns on Biden
https://twitter.com/i/status/1616149123052208131

Dowd 23%
https://twitter.com/i/status/1616505902185517059

BARDA
https://twitter.com/i/status/1616609901156892673

Lavrov UN Charter
https://twitter.com/i/status/1616412193196474371

From yesterday: “United States advises Ukraine to withdraw its forces from Artemovsk (Bakhmut),” Agence France-Presse reports, citing a senior American official.

• Russo-Ukrainian War: The World Blood Pump (Big Serge)

At the present moment, the Ukrainians are not encircled, but the continued creep of Russian positions ever closer to the remaining highways is easily discernable. At the present moment, Russian forces have positions within two miles of all the remaining highways. Even more importantly, Russia now controls the high ground to both the north and south of Bakhmut (the city itself sits in a depression surrounded by hills) giving Russia fire control over much of the battle space. I am currently anticipating that Russia will clear the Bakhmut-Siversk defensive line by late March. Meanwhile, the denuding of Ukrainian forces on other axes raises the prospect of decisive Russian offensives elsewhere.

At the moment, the front roughly consists of four main axes (the plural of axis, not the bladed implement), with substantial agglomerations of Ukrainian troops. These consist, from north to south, of the Zaporozhia, Donetsk, Bakhmut, and Svatove Axis (see map below). The effort to reinforce the Bakhmut sector has noticeably diluted Ukranian strength on these other axes. On the Zaporozhia front, for example, there are potentially as few as five Ukrainian brigades on the line at the moment. At the moment, the majority of Russian combat power is uncommitted, and both western and Ukrainian sources are (belatedly) becoming increasingly alarmed about the prospect for a Russian offensive in the comin weeks. Currently, the entire Ukrainian position in the east is vulnerable because it is, in effect, an enormous salient, vulnerable to attack from three directions.

Two operational depth objectives in particular have the potential to shatter Ukrainian logistics and sustainment. These are, respectively, Izyum in the north and Pavlograd in the South. A Russian thrust down the west bank of the Oskil river towards Izyum would simultaneously threaten to cut off and destroy the Ukrainian grouping on the Svatove axis (S on the map) and sever the vital M03 highway from Kharkov. Reaching Pavlograd, on the other hand, would completely isolate the Ukrainian forces around Donetsk and sever much of Ukraine’s transit across the Dneiper.

The bird’s eye view of this conflict reveals a fascinating meta-structure to the war. In the above section, I argue for a view of the front structured around Russia progressively breaking through sequential Ukrainian defensive belts. I think that a similar sort of progressive narrative structure applies to the force generation aspect of this war, with Russia destroying a sequence of Ukrainian armies. Let me be a bit more concrete. While the Ukrainian military exists at least partially as a continuous institution, its combat power has been destroyed and rebuilt multiple times at this point through western assistance. Multiple phases – life cycles, if you will – can be identified:

In the opening months of the war, the extant Ukrainian army was mostly wiped out. The Russians destroyed much of Ukraine’s indigenous supplies of heavy weaponry and shattered many cadres at the core of Ukraine’s professional army. In the wake of this initial shattering, Ukrainian combat strength was shored up by transferring virtually all of the Soviet vintage weaponry in the stockpiles of former Warsaw Pact countries. This transferred Soviet vehicles and ammunition, compatible with existing Ukrainian capabilities, from countries like Poland and the Czech Republic, and was mostly complete by the end of spring, 2022. In early June, for example, western sources were admitting that Soviet stockpiles were drained.

With Warsaw Pact stockpiles exhausted, NATO began replacing destroyed Ukrainian capabilities with western equivalents in a process that began during the summer. Of particular note were howitzers like the American M777 and the French Caesar. Russia has essentially fought multiple iterations of the Ukrainian Army – destroying the pre-war force in the opening months, then fighting units that were refilled from Warsaw Pact stockpiles, and is now degrading a force which is largely reliant on western systems. This led to General Zaluzhny’s now-famous interview with the economist in which he asked for many hundreds of Main Battle Tanks, Infantry Fighting Vehicles, and artillery pieces. In effect, he asked for yet another army, as the Russians seem to keep destroying the ones he has.

“It would be absurd to think that Russia has lost the war or that its military is incompetent..”

Ergo: Double down on Hitler and Napoleon’s errors.

• Russia ‘Fights To The End’ – Borrell (RT)

EU foreign policy commissioner Josep Borrell said on Friday that the West must keep sending weapons to Kiev, warning those who think Russia has lost or is doing poorly that Moscow has a history of winning long wars. “Russia is a great country, a great nation that is used to fighting to the end, almost losing and then recovering,” Borrell said in a speech in Madrid, bringing up the 1812 invasion by Napoleon Bonaparte’s French empire and the 1941 invasion by Adolf Hitler’s Germany as historical examples of this. “It would be absurd to think that Russia has lost the war or that its military is incompetent,” Borrell added. He claimed that so far Moscow “has been losing the war but it still has enormous strength and capacity to continue [fighting].” Because of this, he said, “now is the time to continue arming Ukraine with the necessary material and military means to wage the kind of war it has to wage.”

He described this as “not only a defensive war but one that allows it to take the initiative and break fronts and prevent Russia from launching a new, very powerful and bloody offensive in a few months.” Borrell’s invocation of Napoleon and Hitler was unusual, as Moscow has repeatedly compared the current efforts by the collective West with the two invasions, known as the Patriotic War and the Great Patriotic War, respectively. Napoleon led a multinational army recruited from all across French-dominated Europe and reached Moscow, but failed to compel Russia’s surrender. The war ended with Russian cavalry on the streets of Paris two years later. Hitler’s effort, also aided by numerous continental allies and vassals, fell just short of Moscow. The Axis armies were savaged at Stalingrad and turned back at Kursk, with Russian soldiers taking Berlin in 1945.

According to Russian estimates, the US and its allies funneled almost $100 billion worth of weapons, ammunition and supplies to the Ukrainian military in 2022. Despite this unprecedented effort, Borrell on Friday continued to insist the West was not a party to the conflict, and that the EU did everything it could to avoid it. Former leaders of Germany and France, however, publicly admitted that the European-mediated Minsk agreements had been a ploy to buy Ukraine time to prepare for war. The EU’s high commissioner for foreign affairs spoke at Madrid’s Teatro Real, where he was presented with the New Economy Forum 2022 Award. One of the presenters was Javier Solana, Borrell’s predecessor at the EU post and NATO’s secretary general in 1999, when the US-led bloc launched an unprovoked war against Yugoslavia.

“..we have to be careful because we have a duty to look carefully and intensively at what might be the consequences for anybody in that conflict.”

• Germany Says ‘Nein’ On Tanks At Allies’ Big Ramstein Meeting (ZH)

Is that a definitive nein on tanks? New German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius in fresh statements has confirmed that defense leaders gathered for a much anticipated meeting in Ramstein failed to achieve consensus on tanks for Ukraine. US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was present for the meeting which reportedly involved top military officials from some 50 nations, most of them NATO, who met to coordinate the path forward in arming Ukraine. There’s been intense, uneasy back-and-forth this week between Berlin and Washington on the question of supplying Western-manufactured heavy tanks to Kiev, namely the Leopard as well as M1 Abrams. Hawks among the alliance have seen Berlin as essentially standing in the way.

“Today, we can all not yet say when a decision will be made about Leopard and what this decision will look like,” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said at the end of the Ramstein Air Base meeting. Amid accusations that Germany is waffling and thus weakening Western allies’ resolve, Pistorius continued, “We are not really hesitating we are just very carefully balancing all the pros and contra [cons] — we are not talking just about delivering anything to anybody, this is a new kind of measure we would choose, so we have to be careful because we have a duty to look carefully and intensively at what might be the consequences for anybody in that conflict.” While there was agreement to boost military aid to Ukraine among the allies gathered for the meeting, CNBC underscores that “Germany wavered on further EU tank deliveries despite mounting calls from Kyiv and fellow allies.”

The German defense minister continued, according to the remarks translated by CNBC: “I must say there is very clearly no unanimous opinion. The impression that has occasionally been made that there is a closed coalition and Germany stands in the way of this is wrong. There are many allies who say we share the opinion that I explained here today again, there are good reasons for the delivery and there are good reasons against it.” Going into the meeting it was widely reported days ago that Berlin has told European allies that it will authorize Leopard tanks only if Washington first leads the way with supply its own Abrams tanks. But the Biden administration has shut the door on these heavy, advanced tanks for the time being.

Abrams tanks: “..three gallons to the mile with jet fuel..”

And then you have to supply that fuel. To battle theaters. And Abrams are prone to breaking down. Get real.

• Poland Could Send Leopard Tanks To Ukraine Without German Approval (G.)

The Polish prime minister has said his country would be willing to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine without securing Germany’s approval if Berlin does not agree to their re-export at Friday’s meeting of western defence ministers at Ramstein airbase. Mateusz Morawiecki said in a radio interview on Thursday that “consent was of secondary importance” when it came to German-made tanks, because the key issue was to get military aid to Ukraine urgently. “We will either obtain this consent quickly, or we will do it ourselves,” Morawiecki added, heaping further pressure on Berlin to allow German made Leopard 2s to be sent to Ukraine in preparation for a spring offensive.

His comments came as the US Defense Department formally announced new military assistance for Ukraine valued at up to $2.5bn, including armoured vehicles and support for Ukraine’s air defence. The aid includes 59 Bradley fighting vehicles and 90 Stryker armoured personnel carriers, but not Abrams tanks. Poland, along with Finland, has said it wants to give 14 Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, which would normally require German approval, but it is one of a number of countries trying to force the pace at a time when Berlin is still negotiating. Arvydas Anusauskas, Lithuania’s defence minister, said others could follow suit at the Ramstein meeting on Friday. “Some of the countries will definitely send Leopard tanks to Ukraine, that is for sure,” he said.

Lloyd Austin, the US defence secretary, met his newly appointed German counterpart, Boris Pistorius, in Berlin on Thursday, but neither mentioned the Leopard standoff in brief commentsbefore their meeting. Previously, German officials signalled Berlin was willing to break the logjam if the US would also agree to send over some of its own Abrams tanks to Ukraine. But the US said on Wednesday it did not want to do that, because the Abrams, which has a jet turbine engine, is fuel inefficient and so requires complex logistics support. Colin Kahl, the US undersecretary of defence for policy, said: “The Abrams tank is a very complicated piece of equipment. It’s expensive, it’s hard to train on, it has a jet engine – I think it’s about three gallons to the mile with jet fuel. It is not the easiest system to maintain.”

Maybe they can empty our bank accounts?!

• Pentagon Wants Kiev’s Backers To ‘Dig Deeper’ (RT)

Nations providing weapons to Ukraine need to double down on their effort because the country is facing a make-or-break moment, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said on Friday ahead of a key meeting of military donors in Germany. “We need to keep up our momentum and our resolve, and we need to dig even deeper,” the Pentagon chief said in his opening remarks before a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group at the US Ramstein air base. He described this as “a decisive moment for Ukraine and a decisive decade for the world.” Austin touted the latest military assistance package announced by the Pentagon this week as an example of Washington’s leadership. The $2.5 billion commitment boosted total US military aid to Ukraine since hostilities with Russia broke out last February to over $26.7 billion, the US official noted.

He praised a number of NATO partners, including Poland, Canada, Germany, France, for their lethal aid to Kiev and urged further arming of the Ukrainian forces. “The Ukrainian people are watching us. The Kremlin is watching us. And history is watching us,” Austin declared. Ukrainian Defense Minister Aleksey Reznikov will ask donors at the Ramstein meeting for more anti-aircraft systems, offensive weapons, including tanks, and “systematic ammo supplies,” his department said in a tweet. Whether or not Kiev will be given Western-made tanks has been a point of contention among NATO members. Poland and several other nations have said they were willing to provide German-made Leopard 2 main battle tanks from their fleets, pending Berlin’s consent. The German government has reportedly conditioned its permission on the US leading by example.

The Pentagon declined to include M1 Abrams tanks in its latest package to Ukraine, citing “sustainment issues.” The tank requires jet fuel to operate and is difficult to maintain, so it “just doesn’t make sense to provide that to the Ukrainians at this moment,” Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told journalists on Thursday. Moscow has accused the US and its allies of prolonging the conflict in Ukraine by forcing Kiev to eschew the pursuit of peace and also pumping it with weapons. It has pledged to achieve its security goals in the conflict regardless of how much support its adversary receives.

“I am super pro Ukraine, but relentless escalation is very risky for Ukraine and the world.”

• Elon Musk Warns Against ‘Relentless Escalation’ In Ukraine (RT)

Billionaire Elon Musk urged caution on Friday following reports that the US is changing its stance on whether it should assist Ukraine in attacking Russia’s Crimean Peninsula. Earlier this week, the New York Times reported, citing sources, that Washington is starting to concede that Kiev needs to have the ability to strike deep into Russian territory, even if this entails the risk of escalation. US officials are said to be “discussing with their Ukrainian counterparts the use of American-supplied weapons, from HIMARS rocket systems to Bradley fighting vehicles, to possibly target … Crimea.” The peninsula overwhelmingly voted to join Russia in 2014 following the Maidan coup in Kiev. Musk responded to a Twitter user who posted a link to the Times article by saying: “I am super pro Ukraine, but relentless escalation is very risky for Ukraine and the world.”

This is not the first time the tycoon has weighed in on the Ukraine conflict. In October, Musk came up with a peace plan to end the hostilities between Moscow and Kiev. According to his proposal, Russia should “redo elections of annexed regions under UN supervision,” with Moscow withdrawing from these areas if this is what the people want. He was referring to the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions, which overwhelmingly voted to join Russia last year. However, the Twitter CEO also suggested that Crimea should remain part of Russia, sparking outrage in Kiev. Ukraine’s former ambassador to Berlin, Andrey Melnik, told him to “f**k off.” Later, Musk noted that Russia views Crimea as an integral part of its territory, and attempts to seize it by a foreign power could trigger a nuclear war. “If Russia is faced with the choice of losing Crimea or using battlefield nukes, they will choose the latter,” he wrote at the time.

“Negotiations regarding further sanctions on Russia with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky are becoming increasingly complicated with each new round..”

• Top EU Official Comments On Sanctions ‘Debate’ With Kiev (RT)

Negotiations regarding further sanctions on Russia with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky are becoming increasingly complicated with each new round, European Council President Charles Michel said during a trip to Kiev on Thursday. The statement came after Zelensky urged the EU to impose even tighter restrictions on Moscow. “Each debate on sanctions is much more difficult than the previous one,” Michel told reporters, as quoted by Bloomberg. “We have good debates with President Zelensky, and I will brief my colleagues on what are the Ukrainian proposals and we will consult. I’m confident we will be able to strengthen the pressure on the Kremlin.” Michel added that the EU will adopt a tenth sanctions package on Moscow. “We have to see which additional sectors can be targeted in the future,” he said.

The EU imposed sweeping restrictions on Russia after Moscow launched its military operation in Ukraine in late February. Zelensky called on Brussels on Thursday to target Russia’s nuclear industry, including “all entities involved in the Russian missile program.” He also asked for a full ban on Russian energy exports. The bloc’s efforts to completely relinquish Russian oil and gas have been met with resistance from countries such as Hungary, whose economy is heavily dependent on Russian energy. Budapest has managed to gain several carve-outs that allow it to continue receiving supplies from Moscow. “Russian [energy] accounts for 85% of Hungary’s gas consumption and 65% of oil demand. This cannot be changed overnight,” Tamas Menczer, the state secretary for foreign affairs, explained last week.

The Hungarian government shared survey results this month indicating that “97% of Hungarians reject sanctions that cause serious damage.” It added that “the message is clear: the Brussels sanctions policy must be reviewed.” The Kremlin stated last month that the Russian economy has adapted to the sanctions and that it is impossible to deny that the restrictions are hurting the EU countries as well. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused the West on Wednesday of trying to use sanctions to incite “a revolution” in Russia and assert “the dominance of the US by all means.”

“Germany, France and Ukraine were playing a swindle game with the Minsk agreements. Now is payback time..”

• Moscow Outlines What West Can Do To Resolve Ukraine Crisis (RT)

US-Russia relations are at their lowest point ever amid the crisis in Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday. As the conflict deteriorates, the only way to reverse it is for Western nations to acknowledge their mistakes and change their policies, he added. Despite initial hopes that under President Joe Biden the US would engage Russia diplomatically, the last two years “have been very bad for our bilateral relations,” the official told journalists. They are now “probably at their lowest point, historically” he added, and “there is no hope for improvement anytime soon.” The Ukraine hostilities – the focus of the confrontation between Russia and Western nations – are in “an upward spiral” according to Peskov.

“We can see a growing indirect, and sometimes direct involvement of NATO nations in this conflict,” he stated. The nations that back Kiev are acting under “a delusion that Ukraine has any chance to win on the battlefield,” he explained. Asked how the vicious circle could be broken, Peskov suggested that the US and its allies had to mentally turn the clock back to the end of 2021, “when Russia was suggesting a discussion of its concerns at the negotiations table” only to be dismissed. Western repentance for its “cynicism” was also in order, he added. “Germany, France and Ukraine were playing a swindle game with the Minsk agreements. Now is payback time,” he said, referring to the roadmap for Ukraine reconciliation, which the three nations signed with Russia in 2015.

Angela Merkel, Francois Hollande and Pyotr Poroshenko, the leaders at the time of Germany, France and Ukraine respectively, have since stated that the deal they negotiated with Russia was meant to give Kiev time to rebuild its military. Moscow considers these admissions to be evidence that the negotiations were conducted in bad faith and that the Ukrainian government and its backers had always intended for the Minsk agreements to fail and for the Donbass standoff to be resolved by military means. Russia claimed that its military campaign in Ukraine launched last February preempted an offensive planned by Kiev with NATO’s help. Ukraine, Germany, and France “lied to the people of Donbass, as they had a terrible fate planned for them, which Russia prevented,” Peskov explained.

I see the name Singapore pop up in these schemes, not just India.

• UK Finds Loophole To Buy Russian Oil – Media (RT)

British consumers are indirectly buying Russian oil and petroleum products despite a Western embargo on crude exports from the sanctioned country, OilPrice reported on Monday, suggesting that the bulk of it may come from India. A ban on Russian seaborne oil exports, along with a price cap of $60 per barrel, was introduced by the EU, G7 nations and Australia on December 5. Another embargo banning almost all imports of Russian oil products kicks in on February 5. The UK, which has been among the most vocal advocates of abandoning Russian energy imports, has claimed to be one of the most successful countries in achieving this target. London committed to phasing out Russian oil by the end of 2022, slashing down imports to £2 million ($2.45 million) in October.

However, diesel accounted for 18% of its total demand last year, according to OilPrice, and a number of UK consumers may have replaced direct Russian imports with supplies from Russian-fed refineries. The outlet suggests that the UK has been using India as a “back door,” given a sharp increase in the country’s imports of Russian oil, which hit a record high of 1.2 million barrels per day in December. Prior to last year, India’s imports of Russian crude were insignificant, due to high freight costs. However, the volumes that New Delhi is now buying and re-exporting suggest that some of the refined crude from the sanctions-hit country may ultimately be pumped in UK filling stations.

High diesel prices in Europe and steep discounts on Russian crude offer “a window of opportunity” for Indian refiners, the outlet said. According to tracking data from Kpler, in 2022 the Jamnagar refinery on India’s west coast boosted, by a factor of four, its imports of oil and fuel oil from Russia compared to 2021. Meanwhile, the UK has purchased a total of 10 million barrels of diesel and other refined products from Jamnagar since the beginning of 2022.

“..We do understand how “Joe Biden” won the 2020 election: via massive fraud engineered by fraud-master Marc Elias, king of the Lawfare trolls..”

• A Page Turns (Jim Kunstler)

I’ll never understand — and neither will you — how “Joe Biden” got propelled out of ignominious defeat in the earliest presidential primaries, to sweep the field on Super Tuesday, March 3, 2020. Around the same time, all his rivals magically dropped out of the race for the nomination. Some kind of message must have gone out from Deep State Central. Who wanted this licentious old grifter in White House? Well, probably his old boss, Barack Obama, and just about everyone in officialdom connected to the shenanigans in Ukraine dating back to 2014, and then the RussiaGate illegalities that ensued from it, especially former CIA boss John Brennan and his cronies. Under Mr. Obama, the whole US government had become something like a rotten log infested with sowbugs of grift, deceit, and malfeasance. Installing the dotty old bird in the White House would give Mr. Obama a stealth third term. Mostly, it would prevent the dreaded Golden Golem of populism, Donald Trump, from bringing any harm to that cabal and its, ahem, interests.

We do understand how “Joe Biden” won the 2020 election: via massive fraud engineered by fraud-master Marc Elias, king of the Lawfare trolls, who fine-tuned the mail-in ballot operation during the likewise engineered Covid-19 public health ruse. That wicked election business, of course, is just another grave matter requiring the utmost protection to prevent any inquiry from ever gaining traction. And yet all of it, the monumental government crime spree of recent years is all unraveling before our eyes — even before Jim Jordan or anyone else has even said boo from a House committee chair.

It’s all falling apart — along with America’s economy, our institutions, and our culture. The Biden family’s cover stories are collapsing, the government’s censorship and propaganda machine has thrown a rod, the Covid-19 story looks day-by-day like organized mass murder, election fraud issues still stalk the land despite every effort to squash them — and the grim reality coalesces that Russia is going to clean up the mess we made in Ukraine, and, in the aftermath, probably produce a shit-ton of evidence of American corruption and villainy there.

“Joe Biden,” the phantom president, has entered the air-lock, waiting to be jettisoned into the deep space of ignominy, chocolate mint chip ice cream cone in hand. Kamala Harris watches the action offstage in a fugue of anxiety and depression. She does not want to become president — and, guess what, nobody really wants her to be, either. She won’t even have to be induced to step aside. Her hysteria will be so great that not even the hypnotists of the Intel Community will be able to calm her down. She’ll run shrieking from it back to California. The levers of control finally fail. By a caprice of history, and the genius of the founding fathers, Kevin McCarthy lands in the White House. A page turns. The coup is finally over. That’s my fantasy du jour.

“..authoritarian catnip to the dingleberries that assemble at the World Economic Forum every year..”

• World Economic Fuck’em (QTR)

[..] the “Forum” is harboring incredible influence, mostly with “useful” bureaucratic idiots on the left who are happy to take their cues on how to napalm individual rights for betterment of advancing their agendas from anyone who will help, regardless of their motivation. That’s right: gone are the days of joking about The Great Reset, owning nothing and liking it and shifting to a diet of mealworms and crickets.I’ve arrived at a point past that – a point of being sickened by watching people that in no way, shape or form represent me or the people in my life, yammer on about what my future will or won’t look like and what things I stand for are “right” or “wrong”.

It’s right in the WEF’s mission statement: “The World Economic Forum is an independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas.” The truth is no matter how much each narcissistic and likely psychotic guest would love to speak on behalf of millions, or even billions of people, they simply don’t. I don’t expect these people to understand the consequences of painting with a broad brush, nor do I think they care about them. Take the Covid vaccines as an example. Isn’t the idea of jabbing every single person on Earth, regardless of age, health status and lifestyle (lest we forget whether or not they consent to it reckless? Of course it is. But it doesn’t matter – because someone wanted it to be done…and, with that, it was put into action.

Wild, right? This unilateral implementation of mandates during Covid, regardless of what the individual may want for themselves and their families, was authoritarian catnip to the dingleberries that assemble at the World Economic Forum every year. I’m certain it has enabled many participants to think: we did it with vaccines – we cut them off from travel, we put their jobs and their livelihoods on the line and we even arrested and jailed them – now we can do it with anything else. I don’t need to be in Davos this week to understand how little I have in common with the people of the World Economic Forum. I know this because I was recently in Washington DC during the International Monetary Fund’s most recent ~~circle jerk~~ world conference.

“Maria Zakharova: [..] Should it be proven that the leading US media outlets “received money for adjusting their coverage, all US democracy could be wrapped up in their Constitution and thrown out into the garbage heap of history..”

• Investigation Pulls Back Veil On Soros’ ‘Indoctrination’ Efforts (RT)

Billionaire George Soros has links to dozens of prominent media figures in the US and beyond via organizations he funded, a conservative US watchdog claims. In the last report of a three-part investigation, published on Tuesday, MRC Business examined the ties of the Budapest-born liberal mogul, coming to the conclusion that he “cemented himself as one of the most powerful influencers in global politics through his incredible influence in the media.” MRC Business said that it had uncovered at least “54 major figures in journalism and activist media who are connected to Soros-funded organizations.” The list includes CNN’s chief international anchor Christiane Amanpour, NBC News anchor Lester Holt, and Cesar Conde, the NBCUniversal News Group chairman, who oversees the outlets NBC News, MSNBC, and CNBC.

Many of the 54 individuals play prominent roles in institutions funded by Soros. For instance, Amanpour is a senior adviser at the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), which received $2.75 million from the mogul between 2018 and 2020, while Holt is listed as a board member in the same organization. Conde is a trustee at the Aspen Institute, which received over $1 million from the billionaire between 2016 and 2020. According to MRC, in total Soros has funneled over $32 billion into his organizations in a bid “to spread his radical ‘open society’ agenda on abortion, Marxist economics, anti-Americanism, defunding the police, environmental extremism and LGBT fanaticism.” These efforts have paid off, allowing him to “help indoctrinate millions with his views on a day-to-day basis”, the group claims.

MRC has previously claimed that Soros has financial ties to at least 253 media organizations globally, funding them through his non-profit groups and enabling him to reach viewers and listeners in virtually every corner of the world. Commenting on the report, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova noted on Thursday that such revelations could be compared to a “nuclear bombshell.” Should it be proven that the leading US media outlets “received money for adjusting their coverage, all US democracy could be wrapped up in their Constitution and thrown out into the garbage heap of history,” she said.

If his own party goes after him, this is probably how.

• I Have No Regrets: Biden Breaks Long Silence With Shattering Admission (Turley)

President Joe Biden has something that he wants the public to know. After the discovery of highly classified material in Biden’s former office, his garage and library, the President wanted to make one thing (and only one thing) perfectly clear: “I have no regrets.” It was a moment that rivaled his disastrous observation that, while classified material was found in his garage, it is a locked garage that also housed his beloved 1967 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray. While Biden’s “corvette standard” for storing classified documents was baffling, his declaration of “no regrets” is downright infuriating. It is also remarkably moronic with a special counsel in the field. Either the President believes that Special Counsel Robert K. Hur will paper over the entire affair or he is doing his best to force his hand with a criminal charge.

Biden was miffed to be even asked about the matter after stonewalling the press for days. He ventured out of his White House bunker to tour storm damage in California and used the victims as a virtual human shield: “You know what, quite frankly, bugs me is that we have a serious problem here we’re talking about. We’re talking about what’s going on. And the American people don’t quite understand why you don’t ask me questions about that.” The problem is that recent polls show that, while the President has no regrets, the public overwhelmingly does. Most citizens view his conduct as negligent. Roughly two-thirds believe that Congress should investigate the President, including a majority of Democrats. Sixty percent believe that he acted inappropriately with classified material.

Nevertheless, after days to hunkering down with this aides and polls, Biden decided to stick with total and absolute denial of regret or responsibility. It was not a surprise for many of us who have following Biden and his family through the years. I wrote at the start of this scandal that Biden’s ” silence is hardly surprising. Biden has always been better at expressing revulsion than responsibility. Time and again, he has literally rushed before cameras to denounce others, often without basis, for alleged crimes. He has not waited for investigations, let alone trials.” When it has come to his own alleged misconduct, Biden will deflect, deny, but rarely declare responsibility.”

The comments on Thursday were classic Biden. He first deflected by using the California victims. He then denied any real responsibility. Despite the appointment of a special counsel to investigate his conduct, he shrugged off the entire matter as something akin to finding a neighbor’s borrowed hammer from 2017 in his garage: “We found a handful of documents were filed in the wrong place. We immediately turned them over to the Archives and the Justice Department …I think you’re going to find there’s nothing there. I have no regrets. I’m following what the lawyers have told me they want me to do. It’s exactly what we’re doing. There’s no there there.”

Biden on hiding classified documents in his home, office, and garage for six years: “I have no regrets” pic.twitter.com/rBgDEgMOfv

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) January 19, 2023

Hey, it makes the blood flow!

• Men Live Longer (Happier?) Lives Taking Viagra; New Study Finds (ZH)

The second study in two years shows Viagra might reduce the risk of heart disease in men. Researchers from the University of Southern California (USC) found that men who took the little blue pill experienced a 39% reduction in heart disease. USC researchers gathered data from 70,000 men with an average age of 52 who were diagnosed with erectile dysfunction within the last decade. They believe Viagra increases blood flow and oxygen into the heart and throughout the body. Viagra users also were 17% less likely to suffer heart failure and had a 22% reduction in developing unstable angina. All of those conditions are fatal if untreated. Men who used the drug achieved longer life and decreased the risk of early death by 25%.

“Viagra was associated with lower incidence of [heart complications], cardiovascular death, and overall mortality risk compared to non-exposure,” the researchers wrote. The last study, published in the American College journal of Cardiology and titled “Association of Phosphodiesterase-5 Inhibitors Versus Alprostadil With Survival in Men With Coronary Artery Disease,” showed older men with cardiovascular disease who took the erectile dysfunction pill lived a healthier life. According to the American Heart Association, erectile dysfunction could be an early warning sign of heart disease in otherwise healthy men.

Straight from the Middle Ages.

• Medical Board Takes Action Against Misinformation Doc (MPT)

An Idaho pathologist who previously came under fireopens in a new tab or window for prescribing ivermectin to COVID-19 patients and spreading falsities about vaccines, is facing disciplinary actionopens in a new tab or window by the Medical Commission in Washington state, where he is also licensed to practice. Ryan Cole, MD, is said to have made “numerous false and misleading statements” during public presentations on the pandemic, COVID vaccines, the use of ivermectin to treat COVID, and the effectiveness of masks, according to a statement of chargesopens in a new tab or window issued by the Washington Medical Commission earlier this month. He also allegedly provided negligent care to a number of patients in the prevention or treatment of COVID.

“Due to their specialized knowledge and training, licensed physicians possess a high degree of public trust,” the commission wrote in the statement. “That public trust is essential to effective delivery of medical care. Knowingly false statements or those made in reckless disregard for the truth, such as the medical disinformation statements by respondent … erode the public’s trust in physicians and their medical treatment and advice, and thereby injure public health.” Specifically, at all times relevant to the case, Cole, an anatomical and clinical pathologist, ran an independent medical laboratory that he owns, provided direct care to patients via telemedicine through the website MyFreeDoctor.com, and spoke at public and private forums, as well as on news shows and podcasts, the statement noted.

According to the commission, since March 2021, Cole is said to have made false and misleading comments during his presentations, including, “Children survive [COVID-19] at a hundred percent,” and “A hundred percent of world [ivermectin] trials have shown benefit.” Other public statements Cole is said to have made include that the COVID vaccine is “an experimental biological gene therapy immune-modulatory injection,” in addition to “a fake vaccine … the clot shot, needle rape.”

Assange

As the US govt prepared its secret indictment of Julian Assange, Amy Goodman, @NaomiAKlein, @allannairn14 and Democracy Now sandbagged him, painting him as a possible secret Trump-Russia info weapon who was helping to bring fascism to America. pic.twitter.com/AnDScE8OZp

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) January 20, 2023

Burns

Sit back and enjoy GEORGE BURNS in 1976 telling his origin story and taking us back to the days of vaudevillian seals, comedy and skating acts.

Walter Matthau & Michael Parkinson are certainly sat there enjoying the hell out of him.

pic.twitter.com/tOFlSbUaY0

— Michael Warburton (@MichaelWarbur17) January 20, 2023

Percentage of new bonds that mature in one year.

Sugihara

An ambiguous object designed by Kokichi Sugihara, the inventor of this illusion and art form. A clever combination of reflection, perspective, and viewing angle produce this striking illusion

[source, read more: https://t.co/3S6k6181Q8]pic.twitter.com/zGyayloxLM

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) January 20, 2023

Condor
https://twitter.com/i/status/1616377887086739456

Dragonfly
https://twitter.com/i/status/1616388910162284546

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Debt Rattle January 4 2023

Jan 042023

January 4, 2023 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:51 am Finance Tagged with: coming war, Damar Hamlin, Elon Musk, Jordan Peterson, Lula, mask exemptions, Russiagate, Soros, Third Man, Twitter Files 61 Responses »

M.C. Escher Fluorescent sea 1933

• Soldiers’ Widows Group Calls On Putin To Order Major Mobilisation (R.)

• Putin: West ‘Lied About Peace’ While Planning for War (Celente)

• Making Sense Of NATO Strikes Against Russia (Saker)

• Japan Starts Official Investigation Into Millions of COVID Vaccine Deaths (NP)

• The Wellness Company Requests Damar Hamlin Vaccine Status be Revealed (TWC)

• California Bill To Punish Doctors For ‘False’ Covid-19 Information (ZH)

• German Doctor Jailed For Illegally Issuing Mask Exemptions (AP)

• College of Psychologists of Ontario attempt to Strip Jordan Peterson of his License

• Documents Reveal How ‘Russiagate’ Was Used For Twitter Censorship (RT)

• Elon Musk Calls for Investigation Into George Soros (TPN)

• Twitter Announces Decision On Political Ads (RT)

• The Film Scene that Foretold Our Current Moral Catastrophe (Leake)

• Lula Halts Privatization Of Brazil’s State Companies (RT)

• Switzerland Rejects Gender Ideology, Rules Sex Is Binary (Slay)

RFK jr
https://twitter.com/i/status/1610033806005657601

Tucker Carlson’s Recommendations For A Flailing Kevin McCarthy
-Release The January 6th Files
-Put @RepThomasMassie In Charge Of A New Frank Church Committee Designed To Discover What The FBI & Intel Agencies Have Been Doing To Control Domestic Politics

“Kevin McCarthy is NOT especially conservative. He’s ideologically agnostic.

His real constituency is the lobbying community in Washington, D.C.” –@TuckerCarlson pic.twitter.com/tlzlZ07kRY

— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) January 4, 2023

The man needs help.

McLuhan

In 1977, media prophet Marshall McLuhan discussed CIA and FBI surveillance, and then turned it into one of the most mind-bending riffs on identity in the digital age I've ever heard. pic.twitter.com/Uz5RbHkREO

— Benjamin Carlson (@bfcarlson) January 2, 2023

Musk Barra

@POTUS @UAW completely ignore the most American company. They’ve made it clear they only want union companies making EVs pic.twitter.com/aDbELTIAIY

— Tesla Owners Silicon Valley (@teslaownersSV) January 3, 2023

The Reuters headline continues “… For Ukraine War”. But the widows talk about “the coming war”.

“The coming war will require completely different resources: human, psychological, economic,” she told Reuters. “Protecting the Motherland is a duty.”

• Soldiers’ Widows Group Calls On Putin To Order Major Mobilisation (R.)

A little known patriotic group which supports the widows of Russian soldiers has called on President Vladimir Putin to order a large-scale mobilisation of millions of men and to close the borders to ensure victory in Ukraine. Putin, Russia’s 70-year-old paramount leader, is under intense pressure to deliver victory in Ukraine more than 10 months since he sent troops as part of an operation he says was intended to defend Russians in eastern Ukraine. “We ask our President, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, to allow the Russian Army to carry out a large-scale mobilisation,” the Soldiers’ Widows of Russia group said in a post on Telegram. “We ask our President, our Supreme Commander-in-Chief, to prohibit the departure of men of military age from Russia. And we have a full moral right to do this: our husbands died protecting these men, but who will protect us if they run away?”

After ordering what he cast as a “partial mobilisation” on Sept. 21, Russia’s first since World War Two, around 300,000 additional men were drafted, though several hundred thousand more Russian men fled abroad to avoid being called up. The Kremlin did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the appeal from the widows’ group. Putin said last month that there was no need for an additional mobilisation. A representative of the widows’ group told Reuters that all fit Russian men should be mobilised to defend the Motherland. “The coming war will require completely different resources: human, psychological, economic,” she told Reuters. “Protecting the Motherland is a duty.”

Putin has for months been casting the war as part of a much wider historical struggle between Russia and the West which the Kremlin chief says wants to carve up and destroy Russia. Western powers deny they aim to destroy Russia. In a grim New Year’s Eve message, Putin said that defending the Motherland was the sacred duty of all Russians and promised victory in Ukraine. Ukraine and the West say Putin has no justification for what they cast as an imperial-style war of occupation. The widows group began work about two months ago to assist the wives of soldiers killed in Ukraine and has contacts with the Kremlin administration, its representative said. “We are in constant contact with the presidential administration, and if necessary, we transmit requests to it in order to receive this or that support,” the representative said.

Invoking Soviet leader Josef Stalin, the group said that now was the time for tough measures to defend against the evil forces coalescing around Russia’s borders. “Today, all the world’s evil has united against Russia – the entire Western world has turned against us,” the group said. “It’s either us or them, there is no other choice.” Stalin in 1942 issued Order No. 227 which became known as the “Not a step back” order. It was an attempt to establish discipline within the Red Army though thousands of Soviet troops were shot by their own side for alleged cowardice. Stalin “did not think about ratings or dissatisfaction among dissidents: he thought only of victory,” the group said. “Now is not the time to be cowardly.”

“..the main reason for what happened [in the attack] was the turning on and mass use mobile phones by personnel – contrary to the ban – within the range of enemy weapons.”

• Putin: West ‘Lied About Peace’ While Planning for War (Celente)

Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, addressed the public during his annual New Year’s speech and warned them of a prolonged conflict in Ukraine and blamed the West for tricking the Kremlin that it was seeking peace in the region, while helping Kyiv prepare for war. “The West lied about peace while preparing for aggression. They are cynically using Ukraine and its people to weaken and divide Russia,” Putin said. Putin’s comment came weeks after former German Chancellor Angela Merkel slipped and said the Minsk agreements were an effective ruse to give Ukraine time to “get stronger” for its next conflict with Russia. She said Ukraine used the ceasefire after the two peace deals as a time to get stronger, “as you can see today.”

“The Ukraine of 2014/15 is not the Ukraine of today. As you saw in the battle for Debaltseve in early 2015, [Russian President Vladimir] Putin could easily have overrun them at the time. And I very much doubt that the NATO countries could have done as much then as they do now to help Ukraine,” she said. The ruse was well-known among the political elite in the region, even before Merkel’s comments. In 2015, Pyotr Poroshenko, the U.S.-backed stooge who became president of Ukraine after the 2014 US-backed coup, told an audience that the Minsk deal was a ruse to buy time for a military build-up. Maria Zakharova, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said Merkel’s comments “horrifyingly” reveal that the West uses “forgery as a method of action,” RT reported. She accused the West of employing “machinations, manipulation, and all kinds of distortions of truth, law, and rights imaginable.”

The Russian Defense Ministry announced on Wednesday that about 90 Russian troops were killed when a Ukrainian missile detonated at a building in the city of Makeyevka in Donetsk People’s Republic just after midnight on 1 January, RT.com, the Russian news outlet, reported. Lt. Gen. Sergey Sevryukov told reporters it is “already obvious that the main reason for what happened was the turning on and mass use mobile phones by personnel – contrary to the ban – within the range of enemy weapons.” The RT report said the missiles in the attack were launched by a U.S.-supplied HIMARS rocket system, which was destroyed in a retaliatory strike.

“I fully concur with those who, like Macgregor, have been announcing a major combined arms offensive this Spring, but it will happen when Putin decides it, not when NATO wants it.”

• Making Sense Of NATO Strikes Against Russia (Saker)

[..] we need to mention a deep cultural difference between the Russian society and the western one: most Russians have a much better understanding of war than the folks in the West. This is true for civilians all the way through the generals. There are many reasons for that, but just to name a few: • Many Russians have military training (basic or more advanced) • Almost every Russian has lost family members during WWII and, therefore, know how ugly war is. Russian culture, from books to movies, is chock full of war stories, and not of the Tom Clancy type, but the real thing. • Wars in Chechnia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, Georgia, Syria, Armenia and many more conflicts have “educated” the Russian society about the painful realities of war. Unlike the hallucinations of the (fake) “friends of Russia” in the West, the “Strelkovites” and other assorted “allislosters” in Russia have very little traction or credibility with the Russian general public.

Simply put – Russians trust Surovikin (and Putin!) much, much, more than these hysterical FUDers because they instinctively feel that what is needed is not anger, but focus. [..] NATO is trying really hard to force the Russians into a “NATO schedule” and out of their planned schedule. An added beneficial side-effect from such “for optics only” strikes is to give the morons in Congress a rationale to put even more money into the US MIC. As for forcing Russia to attack in suboptimal conditions, that won’t happen. Neither Putin, nor Shoigu, nor Gerasimov nor Surovikin are the types who will respond to hysterics with “for optics only” actions (just look at their faces, I mean it!). And this also goes for the entire General Staff. I fully concur with those who, like Macgregor, have been announcing a major combined arms offensive this Spring, but it will happen when Putin decides it, not when NATO wants it.

Right now, the Russian meat grinder is inflicting such losses on the Ukraine that it really makes no sense for the Russians to stop it. But, sooner or later, even this will eventually yield diminishing marginal returns and, by then, the Russian forces (there are three of them around the Ukraine) will be fully ready, trained, equipped and poised to attack. The big unknown (to us, the Russians probably already know) is what NATO will do when this offensive happens. You can be sure that the “best” minds (relatively speaking) in the US are working on the following task: how to trigger a continental war without directly and officially involving the United States? I don’t have an answer to this, your guess is as good as mine 🙂 Any suggestions? Andrei

But we do not?!

• Japan Starts Official Investigation Into Millions of COVID Vaccine Deaths (NP)

According to reports, Japanese researchers have been instructed to investgate the mechanisms by which experimental mRNA jabs could be causing deaths and severe adverse reactions. Hiroshima University School of Medicine Prof. Masataka Nagao highlighted how the bodies of vaccinated persons he performed autopsies on were abnormally warm, with upwards of 100 degree F body temperatures. “The first concern was that the body temperatures of the corpses were very high when the police performed the autopsy,” Nagao declared. “The body temperatures were unusually high, such as 33 or 34 degrees celsius (91-93ºF).” Infowars.com reports: In other bodies, Nagao says “temperatures were very high at the time of death. Their body temperatures were above the normal temperature, more like over 40 degrees celsius (104ºF).”

Graphing the data, Nagao’s research team found there were significant changes to the genetic makeup of vaccinated autopsied patients’ immune systems. The research has led Nagao to conclude the vaccine causes immune system abnormalities that prompt inflammation throughout the body, which is likely the cause of the high body temperatures at the time of autopsy. “Based on the data and the circumstances alone, it is not possible to conclude that the vaccine was the cause of the deaths,” Prof. Nagao said, adding, “However, it is impossible to say that the vaccine was not the cause. We can only say that it is doubtful, but we believe that vaccination was sufficiently related to the immune abnormalities.”

In another report, dermatology expert Prof. Shigetoshi Sano of the Kochi University School of Medicine discussed discovering spike proteins at the site of skin lesions and other skin problems on patients who were vaccinated. “The spike protein derived from the vaccine was found in the skin,” Sano explained, highlighting a slide showing a bright green region on a lesion made visible by a special dye. “Spike proteins are locally suppressing the immune system,” Sano told reporters. “As a result, the spike proteins facilitate in reactivation of the herpesvirus.” The process of the spike proteins degrading in the immune system prompts inflammation throughout the body that also leads to blood clots, Sano concluded. “The function of the spike proteins to produce adverse reactions is formation of blood clots,” Sano explained. “And even worse, spike proteins can also locally induce inflammation.”

He was boostervaxxed Dec 26.

• The Wellness Company Requests Damar Hamlin Vaccine Status be Revealed (TWC)

Last night, Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin suffered a cardiac arrest, during his game in Cincinnati. Hamlin required CPR to restore his heart beat and was rushed to UC Medical Center in Cincinnati where he is listed in critical condition. As a result of this shocking injury, the remainder of the Bills-Bengals game was suspended. This morning, much of the sports and medical world is wondering what exactly happened on the field to Damar Hamlin. While the mainstream media has been quick to write off any concern with Hamlin’s vaccination status as a “conspiracy theory,” leading medical experts believe that Hamlin’s vaccination status is certainly relevant and could have played a contributing or even primary factor in his cardiac arrest.

Dr. Peter McCullough, one of the world’s leading cardiologists, and the Chief Scientific Officer for The Wellness Company said, “I watched the play live both as a fan and a cardiologist and I saw blunt neck and chest trauma, a brief recovery after the tackle and then a classic cardiac arrest. I have communicated to one of the most experienced trainers in the world and we agree that it was a cardiac arrest in the setting of a big surge of adrenalin. If Damar Hamlin indeed took one of the COVID-19 vaccines, then subclinical vaccine-induced myocarditis must be considered in the differential diagnosis.” Dr. Paul Alexander, a Senior Advisor to The Wellness Company, and one of the leading scholars on COVID-19 and the vaccines, wrote in his substack that this, “form of on-field cardiac arrest with exertion, is consistently following COVID gene injection vaccine administration in similarly young athletes.

We await more information yet until I see otherwise, this was vaccine. Was this a rhythm disturbance due to silent myocarditis (that his heart was damaged and not functioning optimally prior to the shot) that the body shot made worse and caused the cardiac arrest? A 24-year old strong young fit athlete like this does not suffer cardiac arrest like this. This was not due to the hit, IMO and I base this on the landscape that has accumulated since February 2021. No matter how many times you look at this on tape. If he took COVID gene mRNA/DNA injection vaccine and near 100% he did (the NFL league mandated it), then this is likely a result of the COVID gene injection (cannot be ruled out and has some role).”

“.. the state’s Medical Board would categorize dispensing information – such as the effectiveness of Ivermectin, or the Covid-19 vaccine’s rapidly waning efficacy, as unprofessional conduct..”

• California Bill To Punish Doctors For ‘False’ Covid-19 Information (ZH)

A bill which allows the state of California to punish doctors over ‘false information about Covid-19 vaccinations and treatments’ went into effect on January 1st. Under the new law (AB 2098) which took effect Jan.1, the state’s Medical Board would categorize dispensing information – such as the effectiveness of Ivermectin, or the Covid-19 vaccine’s rapidly waning efficacy, as unprofessional conduct. The law was challenged in court by two California doctors, who said that it would restrict their free speech in violation of the first amendment, and that it was “vague” under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution. However on December 28th, Biden Nominee Judge Fred Slaughter refused to halt the law, ruling that the law trumps free speech claims, and that it falls “within the longstanding tradition of regulations on the practice of medical treatments.”

Another lawsuit, brought by Physicians for Informed Consent, was filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of California in early December. The plaintiffs, physician LeTrinh Hoang and Children’s Health Defense, are being represented by Rick Jaffe, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Mary Holland, and argues that the state of California has weaponized the vague phrase “misinformation,” and thereby has illegally targeted physicians who disagree with the government’s public stance on Covid-19.”Expert cardiologist and PIC member Sanjay Verma, M.D., has been tracking and cataloging CDC errors in real time. For the case, he has provided what he calls “a detailed declaration exposing the government’s scientific errors and the constitutional dangers of censoring dissent”:

“To demonstrate these points of vagueness and the general unsuitability of using ‘contemporary scientific consensus’ as a disciplinary criterion, I have prepared a detailed overview of public health response to the pandemic broken down into categories such as Masks and Vaccines (transmission, safety, efficacy of natural immunity). I have also included evidence of what [I testify] would be considered misinformation promulgated by the CDC as well as its withholding of information which led to the then ‘contemporary scientific consensus’ eventually being proven wrong.” -KRON4 “

“..two years and nine months in prison..”

• German Doctor Jailed For Illegally Issuing Mask Exemptions (AP)

A German doctor was sentenced late Monday to two years and nine months in prison for illegally issuing more than 4,000 people with exemptions from wearing masks during the coronavirus pandemic. A regional court in the southwestern town of Weinheim confirmed Tuesday that the doctor was convicted of “issuing incorrect health certificates” to people from across Germany, most of whom she had never met or examined. In addition to the prison sentence she was handed a three-year work ban and ordered to pay 28,000 euros ($29,550), the sum she had received for issuing the medical certificates. Her office assistant was fined 2,700 euros.

“The process is more reminiscent of a sale of certificates than a medical procedure,” the court said in a statement. It noted that she was not faulted for providing certificates to her existing patients. During the trial the defendant had argued that wearing masks was harmful to people’s health. The doctor’s lawyer intends to appeal the verdict, public broadcaster SWR reported. Dozens of supporters gathered outside the court in Weinheim, north of Heidelberg, to protest against the verdict and Germany’s pandemic restrictions. Germany ended requirements to wear masks in many indoor settings last year, though they are still compulsory on long-distance trains, in doctors’ practices, hospitals, nursing homes and on some regional public transport.

“..mandatory social media communication retraining..”

• College of Psychologists Attempt to Strip Jordan Peterson of his License (BJD)

Canadian psychologist and author Dr. Jordan Peterson could be stripped of his license to practice clinical psychology over his sharing of political posts on social media. The College of Psychologists of Ontario which regulates the profession in his home province has disciplined Peterson over the sharing of political posts on Twitter. Peterson says he got in hot water with the College because he retweeted posts about PM Justin Trudeau, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, Trudeau advisor, Gerald Butts, New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern and others. The College has ordered Peterson to undergo mandatory social media communication retraining to “modify his objectionable behavior.” It’s unclear what it is about the Tweets or the sharing of them that may violate the College’s Code of Ethics. Either way, Peterson says he will not comply.

“I have absolutely refused to do so,” said Peterson. The next step for the College is to demand he submit to an ‘in-person’ disciplinary hearing. If Peterson does not satisfy the College and commit to changing his behavior, it could strip him of his license to practice. “Canada has been given over to the commissars,” Peterson said, “something I never thought I’d see in my lifetime.” He says he’ll make the issue public in the days ahead. Some of the posts that may be drawing the ire of the College include one on December 24th in which Peterson tweeted out a link to Conrad Black’s column in the National Post: A moral imperative for Trudeau Liberals to resign. Then on December 27th, he tweeted, I learned to watch for people’s psychological age during my years doing intensive clinical work. @JustinTrudeau appears to me to be perpetually 14 yrs old.

Even the German socialists have figure this out. Are you watching, @JustinTrudeau — the man who claimed there was “no business case” for supplying our German allies, in the face of the Russian war, with LNG? Every year that our marionette PM stays in power is a “tough year” for Canadians @JustinTrudeau @theJagmeetSingh (and the latter props him up and complains about doing so constantly) Has Jordan Peterson become The government of Canada’s latest political target for holding the wrong opinion?

To clarify: it's been decided: I either submit to social media communication retraining or face a disciplinary hearing and possible suspension of my clinical license and the right to represent myself as a psychologist @elonmusk @CPOntario https://t.co/qmsje8flyN

— Dr Jordan B Peterson (@jordanbpeterson) January 3, 2023

The formatting is still not great. To read Taibbi’s latest you must scroll through endless Twitter threads or subscribe to his Substack. I don’t want to. Keep it easily accessible, Elon!

• Documents Reveal How ‘Russiagate’ Was Used For Twitter Censorship (RT)

Internal documents from Twitter made public on Tuesday show how the social media platform was pressured to follow the US intelligence community’s lead on censorship back in 2017. Key Democrats in the US Congress, a British university and two media outlets – Politico and BuzzFeed – played a major role in the process, which revolved around the ‘Russiagate’ conspiracy theory, according to research by Matt Taibbi. In a pattern established in just six weeks, from August to October 2017, Twitter went from being on nobody’s radar to agreeing to take orders from US spies as to whom to censor, Taibbi wrote on Substack. “Threats from Congress came first, then a rush of bad headlines (inspired by leaks from congressional committees), and finally a series of moderation demands coming from the outside,” he added.

In a 30-tweet thread, Taibbi showed emails and other internal documents he obtained, thanks to Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk. Democrats had accused Russia of helping Donald Trump defeat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 US presidential election. Their claim that Trump had ties with Moscow was a “dossier” fabricated by a British spy. From there, they insinuated that WikiLeaks publishing internal DNC documents and personal emails of Clinton’s campaign had something to do with Moscow, while “Russian bots and trolls” posted “misinformation” on social media that somehow undermined the elections. By August 2017, Facebook was purging accounts accused of being “linked to Russia.” Unconcerned, Twitter sent over a list of 22 “possible” Russian accounts to the Senate Intelligence Committee, only to be denounced by Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat.

By the end of September, Twitter VP for Public Policy Colin Crowell was warning that “Warner has political incentive to keep this issue at top of the news, maintain pressure on us and [the] rest of industry to keep producing material for them.” Crowell also noted the Democrats were “taking cues from Hillary Clinton,” and that only Warner and his House counterpart Congressman Adam Schiff were seeking any comments from social media companies. Meanwhile, as Taibbi put it, “a torrent of stories sourced to the [committee] poured into the news,” while several Senators – including Warner but also John McCain, an anti-Trump Arizona Republican – proposed bills that would have cracked down on social media.

A “Russia Task Force” set up by Twitter on October 2 found “no evidence of a coordinated approach” by October 13. The final report on October 23 found “32 suspicious accounts and only 17 of those are connected with Russia.” Of those, only two spent anything close to $10,000 on advertising – and one of them was RT. Policy Director Carlos Monje admits in an October 18 memo that “our ads policy and product changes are an effort to anticipate congressional oversight.” One of these changes was the October 26 ban on advertising by RT and Sputnik. A November 22 internal email accuses the Senate Intelligence Committee of leaking Twitter’s internal report to the media. A Politico story accusing Twitter of deleting files is followed by a BuzzFeed article alleging a German-language bot network with “signs of being connected to Russia.” The committee demands a report based on the story, which Twitter’s Yoel Roth dutifully writes up.

“You can see how the Russian cyber-threat was essentially conjured into being, with political and media pressure serving as the engine inflating something Twitter believed was negligible and uncoordinated to massive dimensions,” Taibbi wrote. All of this results in the internal instructions to ban anything “identified by the US intelligence community as a state-sponsored entity conducting cyber-operations.” It was the first step in the process that would eventually lead to the FBI and the Biden White House telling Twitter exactly whom to censor.

“George, please slide into my DMs!”

• Elon Musk Calls for Investigation Into George Soros (TPN)

Twitter CEO Elon Musk is calling for an investigation into billionaire George Soros for controlling information. George Soros has been a topic of discussion recently, as various liberal organizations have written a letter urging major American corporations such as Coca-Cola, Disney, and Kraft Foods to boycott Twitter. Interestingly, some of these same groups are financially supported by Soros himself. In light of this, Elon Musk tweeted about the need for a thorough investigation into these organizations. “Who funds these organizations that want to control your access to information? Let’s investigate …” Musk initially tweeted. He then followed up: “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.” “Interesting. I wonder if those funding these organizations are fully aware of what the organizations are doing,” Musk added.

The Twitter CEO also unleashed on the Open Society Foundations, an organization funded by Soros himself. “George, please slide into my DMs!” Musk has been exposing liberal elites left and right. Last week, the Twitter CEO exposed Dr. Anthony Fauci and his wife Christine Grady’s corrupt working relationship. The comments from Musk came in a series of tweets where he unleashed on Fauci for his questionable past relating to his so-called “gain-of-function” research. “Fauci bypassed the moratorium on gain-of-function research to fund dangerous projects like EcoHealth Alliance’s work in Wuhan,” said an account on Twitter. “He then worked internally to changed NIH’s definition of GoF to evade culpability. In 2022, he awarded more $ to Peter Daszak for more GoF research.”

““Gain-of-function” should be called “bioweapon” research, as the function referred is death! What was the name changed to this time?” Musk replied. ““Gain-of-function” in this context is just another way of saying “bioweapon”. Some good nuggets in article. Important to note that Fauci authored 2012 paper arguing for gain-of-function research! Obama wisely put this on pause, but Fauci restarted it,” Musk tweeted as he attached an article from Yahoo News. Musk continued, “Despite these glaring issues, Twitter nonetheless had an internal Slack channel unironically called “Fauci Fan Club””

“align our advertising policy with that of TV and other media outlets”

• Twitter Announces Decision On Political Ads (RT)

Twitter is set to relax its ban on political advertising, saying the policy change would take effect in the coming weeks. The announcement follows reports of an exodus of advertisers from the website after Musk’s multi-billion dollar takeover last year. The platform’s Twitter Safety account highlighted the decision on Tuesday, noting that it would soon “align our advertising policy with that of TV and other media outlets” regarding political material. “Today, we’re relaxing our ads policy for cause-based ads in the US. We also plan to expand the political advertising we permit in the coming weeks,” it said, adding “We believe cause-based advertising can facilitate public conversation around important topics.”

Twitter initially banned some forms of political ads back in 2019 – prior to Musk’s acquisition of the company last October – breaking ranks with other major sites such as Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. At the time, Twitter argued that political influence should not be purchased, but earned through sincere public interest. However, as the site’s new owner, Musk has pushed to scale back content restrictions, vowing to make Twitter a refuge for free speech while ushering in a range of policy changes.

The decision to resume political ads could be part of efforts to gin up new business, as Twitter has reportedly lost around half of its top 100 advertisers and a handful of smaller ones since Musk took over. It is unclear whether those companies will return, as a number of businesses said they would pause their ads temporarily, some citing concerns over the alleged growth in hate speech on the platform under Musk’s leadership. While the exact details of the upcoming rule change remain unclear, Twitter said it would “first ensure that our approach to reviewing and approving content protects people” before any alterations are made, adding that it would reveal more about the move in the coming weeks.

Crime writer John Leake works with Dr. Peter McCullough.

• The Film Scene that Foretold Our Current Moral Catastrophe (Leake)

It’s one of the most memorable scenes in all of cinematic history, and it’s the scene that inspired me to become a true crime author. In 2001 I lived in Vienna, around the corner from the Burgkino (Burg Cinema) which still played the 1949 film noir classic The Third Man on its big screen every weekend. I spent many a dreary winter Sunday afternoon watching the film. Based on the novella and screenplay by Graham Greene, The Third Man is a crime story about Harry Lime—an American running a medical charity in Vienna, who makes a killing selling penicillin on the bombed out, impoverished city’s black market. To increase his profits, he cuts the drug with other substances, thereby destroying its efficacy and causing the patients (including children) to die horribly from their infections.

In the film’s most iconic scene, the good guy (played by Joseph Cotton) meets his old friend Harry Lime (played by Orson Welles) on the Giant Ferris wheel in the Vienna Prater amusement park and tries to appeal to his conscience. At the wheel’s apex, the charismatic Harry opens the door, points down to people walking on the ground below, and says: Look down there. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax. … Nobody thinks in terms of human beings. Governments don’t, why should we? They talk about the people and the proletariat; I talk about the suckers and the mugs. It’s the same thing. They have their five-year plans, and so have I.

I sensed that Graham Greene might have based the story on something he’d witnessed or heard about. Doing some research, I learned that Harry Lime was probably based on the British spy Harold “Kim” Philby, with whom Greene worked in British intelligence during World War II. Greene, it seems, discovered that Philby was a Soviet double agent long before he was exposed as such in 1963. Instead of ratting out his friend, he kept it to himself and left the intelligence service in 1944. Several pieces of evidence suggest that when he wrote The Third Man a few years later, he based it on his conflicted friendship with Philby. John le Carré was also fascinated by Graham Greene and Kim Philby, and his thriller Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy—one of my all-time favorites—was inspired by the Philby story.

His novel The Constant Gardener was published in 2001, and I read it with great interest. The story wasn’t set in Cold War Europe, but in Kenya, where a British diplomat’s wife is brutally raped and murdered. Upon closer examination, the diplomat realizes that she was about to reveal a horrifying crime committed by a pharmaceutical company, which murdered her in order to prevent the exposure. The novel’s plot was reminiscent of a controversial drug trial performed by Pfizer in Kano, Nigeria in 1996 during a meningococcal outbreak. For the trial of its new antibiotic, trovafloxacin, Pfizer gave 100 children this new drug. The control group of 100 other children received the standard anti-meningitis treatment at the time—a drug called ceftriaxone. However, for the control group, Pfizer administered a substantially lower dose of ceftriaxone than the drug’s FDA-approved standard.

When the reduced dosing in the control group was discovered, it raised the suspicion that Pfizer did this in order to skew the trial in favor of its new drug. Five of the children who received trovafloxacin died, while six who received the reduced dose of ceftriaxone died. Other children apparently suffered grave injuries from the administration of the experimental antibiotic without their informed consent. The investigation and litigation that ensued was the stuff of a thriller, involving private investigators, bribery, blackmail attempts, and disappearing records. Thirteen years later, in 2009, Pfizer settled out of court with the plaintiffs. In his author’s note, le Carré claimed that nobody and no corporation in the novel was based on an actual person or corporation in the real world. But I can tell you this. As my journey through the pharmaceutical jungle progressed, I came to realize that, by comparison with the reality, my story was as tame as a holiday postcard.

Bolsonaro is in the US.

• Lula Halts Privatization Of Brazil’s State Companies (RT)

Brazil’s newly returned President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has scrapped plans to sell off eight state-run corporate giants, including the oil company Petroleo Brasileiro, known as Petrobras, Brazilian news website G1 reported on Monday. Lula, who was at the helm from 2003 through 2010, was sworn in as Brazil’s president on January 1. Imprisoned for graft in 2018, Lula’s convictions were overturned in 2019, allowing him to defeat Jair Bolsonaro in October’s election. The decision to remove state corporations from the list of state asset sales was one of the first official acts by the left-wing politician. Aside from Petrobras, the order includes Pre-Sal Petroleo, the state firm responsible for the supervision and sale of the government’s share of oil and gas from production-sharing contracts, along with the postal service Correios, and the Empresa Brasil de Comunicacaooperator, which manages the federal government’s broadcast network.

The Brazilian social welfare system’s IT services enterprise Dataprev, state-owned nuclear company Nuclep, IT services corporation Serpro, and the Agriculture Ministry’s National Supply Company are also off the privatization list. The returning president has called for “ensuring a rigorous analysis of the impacts of privatization on the public service or on the market,” adding that state banks and major oil companies such as Petrobras would play a “key role” in the new economic cycle. On Monday, the Sao Paulo stock index shed 3.24%, while Petrobras shares dropped around 6% as Lula’s inauguration speech sparked investor fears of interventionist government policies. The national currency – the real – saw its value slide by 1.5%. Lula’s predecessor, the populist far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro, led an administration mired in controversies ranging from corruption to environmental devastation. Lula’s own government was brought down by massive corruption in Petrobras, which led to the impeachment of his hand-picked successor in 2016.

How silly should I feel for not understanding the sudden push for 3, 4, 5, 26 genders?

• Switzerland Rejects Gender Ideology, Rules Sex Is Binary (Slay)

In a landmark move, Switzerland’s government has rejected gender ideology by ruling that sex is binary and people must be referred to as either male or female, with no exceptions. The Swiss government rejected a proposal to introduce a “third gender” or “no gender” option for official records. The nation ruled against the “gender identity” ideology that other European countries have succumbed to. Swiss residents will continue to be entered into the nation’s civil registry as male or female, with no other options. “The binary gender model is still strongly anchored in Swiss society,” the Swiss Federal Council said in response to two proposals from parliament, according to the Associated Press. “The social preconditions for the introduction of a third gender or for a general waiver of the gender entry in the civil registry currently are not there,” it added.

The Associated Press noted that the Federal Council had said that including alternative options for gender markers would require “numerous” changes to the Swiss Constitution and to laws both at the national and state (canton) levels. The process of revising the country’s Constitution is complicated. According to the Swiss Parliament, a partial or complete revision of the Constitution needs to be approved by both a majority of the voters and also a majority of the nation’s 26 cantons. Switzerland’s political system includes four parties whose views range from left to right and frequent referendums are held on a variety of issues. Switzerland’s neighboring countries, Germany and Austria, as well as other Western European countries such as Belgium and the Netherlands, have all modified their civil registries to include “third gender” or “no gender” options.

Max 2006
https://twitter.com/i/status/1610339471269978114

Over a decade ago the polymathic @maxkeiser decoded the financial market in a easy to understand manner. This same video can be used to help understand the recent issues with the crypto markets.

5 minutes worth your time.

Brilliantly consistent insights. pic.twitter.com/HhYxaOZqBb

— Brian Roemmele (@BrianRoemmele) January 3, 2023

SBF pandemic

White House spokesperson says meetings with SBF were focussed on pandemic prevention pic.twitter.com/uDcvMQMN1E

— db (@tier10k) January 3, 2023

Fanta

2 honeybees, Apis mellifera, have learnt to generate the necessary torque to undo a bottle top pic.twitter.com/WEycuwEmzP

— Science girl (@gunsnrosesgirl3) January 3, 2023

Bubble nets

Humpback whales create ‘bubble nets’ to snare their prey, sometimes with Fibonacci spiral patterns as showed in this clip by Richard Sidey. Researchers think the spiral patterns have advantages over circular ones

[full paper: https://t.co/sFocP898oq]pic.twitter.com/Qv0vThj3U9

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) January 3, 2023

Artificial reef

Artificial reefs proved to be an effective way to sustainably improve fisheries’ productivity. This is how one built in Little Abaco is full of white grunts, lobster, and more after 6 months

[learn more: https://t.co/7tbLm0HPma]pic.twitter.com/aFQqIdKjNI

— Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) January 3, 2023

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Debt Rattle Boxing Day 2022

Dec 262022

December 26, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 10:07 am Finance Tagged with: death knell, drones, Erdogan, GOP, NATO, negotiate, Putin, Serbia, Soros 61 Responses »

Saul Leiter Man in straw hat 1955

• Ukraine War Tolls Death Knell for NATO (Bhadrakuma)r

• Putin Says He’s Ready To Negotiate ‘With Everyone Involved’ Over Ukraine (Hill)

• Putin “Ready” To Negotiate, But West Wants To “Tear Apart” Russia (ZH)

• Only One Nation Benefits From Sanctions On Russia – Minister (RT)

• Erdogan Accuses West Of ‘Provocations’ Over Ukraine (RT)

• West Issues Ultimatum To Serbia – Media (RT)

• Ukraine Hits Airbase 300 Miles Deep into Russia (GR)

• GOP Senators Blast McConnell For ‘Arrogance,’ Voter Betrayal (JTN)

• Rand Paul Savages DC Elites With Epic “’Twas the Night Before Christmas” (DCE)

• Rep. James Comer Calls For Defunding the FBI (DCE)

• The Democrats are Now the War Party (Chris Hedges)

• Soros Behind Twitter Operation to Shut Down Hunter Biden Laptop Story (BN)

• In Post-Soviet Russia, New Years Remains A Bigger Holiday Than Christmas (RT)

What happened to us?
https://twitter.com/i/status/1607157558690676736

Musk

.@elonmusk on @theallinpod $TWTR

The company is no longer in the fast lane to bankruptcy.

At the same time releasing more features then ever before, while improving cost structure by a factor of 3 or 4.

MSM would hype up any other public CEO if they did this in six weeks. pic.twitter.com/3I90Rqh57g

— Rahul (@rhemrajani9) December 24, 2022

Elon Musk
"To be totally frank, almost every conspiracy theory that people had about Twitter turned out to be true." pic.twitter.com/zBDY3AcrRq

— Gretchen 🇺🇸 (@GretchenOO8) December 25, 2022

Stop now

BREAKING NEWS: U.S. Doctors warn the world to stop taking the Covid Vaccines, they are toxic, lethal, ineffective and must be stopped. They damage the brain, heart, liver, bone marrow, fetus, causing all sorts of harm in the body. CDC, FDA misinformation causing death and injury. pic.twitter.com/yNyO0xWtMK

— Truth Justice ™ (@SpartaJustice) December 24, 2022

Never leaves the human body

The entire world needs to understand they can no longer take these gene therapy injections. They are toxic, lethal and ineffective, they have completely failed, can only be viewed as harmful, and they need to be stopped immediately!

Full video here:https://t.co/kIPbymIrrD
👀 pic.twitter.com/GjtSahOYjt

— Coronavirus Plushie (@c_plushie) December 25, 2022

Control group
https://twitter.com/i/status/1606524791695237123

“..the nuclear triad. It is the main guarantee that our sovereignty and territorial integrity, strategic parity and the general balance of forces in the world are preserved..”

• Ukraine War Tolls Death Knell for NATO (Bhadrakuma)r

The defining moment in US President Joe Biden’s press conference at the White House last Wednesday, during President Zelensky’s visit, was his virtual admission that he is constrained in the proxy war in Ukraine, as European allies don’t want a war with Russia. To quote Biden, “Now, you say, ‘Why don’t we just give Ukraine everything there is to give?’ Well, for two reasons. One, there’s an entire Alliance that is critical to stay with Ukraine. And the idea that we would give Ukraine material that is fundamentally different than is already going there would have a prospect of breaking up NATO and breaking up the European Union and the rest of the world… I’ve spent several hundred hours face-to-face with our European allies and the heads of state of those countries, and making the case as to why it was overwhelmingly in their interest that they continue to support Ukraine… They understand it fully, but they’re not looking to go to war with Russia. They’re not looking for a third World War.”

Biden realised at that point that “I probably already said too much” and abruptly ended the press conference. He probably forgot that he was dwelling on the fragility of Western unity. The whole point is that the western commentariat largely forgets that Russia’s core agenda is not about territorial conquest — much as Ukraine is vital to Russian interests — but about NATO expansion. And that has not changed. Every now and then President Putin revisits the fundamental theme that the US consistently aimed to weaken and dismember Russia. As recently as last Wednesday, Putin invoked the Chechen war in the 1990s — “the use of international terrorists in the Caucasus, to finish off Russia and to split the Russian Federation… They [US] claimed to condemn al-Qaeda and other criminals, yet they considered using them on the territory of Russia as acceptable and provided all kinds of assistance to them, including material, information, political and any other support, notably military support, to encourage them to continue fighting against Russia.”

Putin has a phenomenal memory and would have been alluding to Biden’s careful choice of William Burns as his CIA chief. Burns was Moscow Embassy’s point person for Chechnya in the 1990s! Putin has now ordered a nation-wide campaign to root out the vast tentacles that the US intelligence planted on Russian soil for internal subversion. Carnegie, once headed by Burns, has since shut down its Moscow office, and the Russian staff fled to the West! The leitmotif of the expanded meeting of the Board of the Defence Ministry in Moscow on Wednesday, which Putin addressed, was the profound reality that Russia’s confrontation with the US is not going to end with Ukraine war. Putin exhorted the Russian top brass to “carefully analyse” the lessons of Ukraine and Syrian conflicts. Importantly, Putin said, “We will continue maintaining and improving the combat readiness of the nuclear triad. It is the main guarantee that our sovereignty and territorial integrity, strategic parity and the general balance of forces in the world are preserved. This year, the level of modern armaments in the strategic nuclear forces has already exceeded 91 percent. We continue rearming the regiments of our strategic missile forces with modern missile systems with Avangard hypersonic warheads.”

“..Zelensky has laid out a series of 10 conditions that must be met for peace to be achieved..”

That’s what you do when you’re losing.. You come with conditions.

• Putin Says He’s Ready To Negotiate ‘With Everyone Involved’ Over Ukraine (Hill)

Russian President Vladimir Putin said that he’s ready to negotiate “with everyone involved” in the war with Ukraine. Putin told a Russian news reporter in an interview that aired on Russian media on Sunday that the Kremlin is ready to negotiate but their enemy are the ones refusing to talk. The comments from the Russian leader follow intense Russian shelling on the Ukrainian city of Kherson on Christmas Eve that killed at least 10 people and injured more than 50 others. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky denounced Russia as “absolute evil” on Saturday following the deadly strikes, which he said were for “the sake of intimidation and pleasure.” Zelensky and President Biden discussed what a “just peace” would look like when Zelensky visited the United States on Wednesday for his first international trip since the war started in February.

Zelensky has laid out a series of 10 conditions that must be met for peace to be achieved, including total Russian withdrawal from Ukrainian territory. This would also include a Russian withdrawal from the Crimean Peninsula under the Ukrainian demands. [..] Putin has previously called on Ukraine and the international community to recognize Crimea as part of Russia, which they have been unwilling to do. Putin said in the interview that Russia is defending its national interests and its citizens in the 10-month conflict, The Associated Press reported. But he said Russia is prepared to negotiate “some acceptable outcomes” with all participants in the conflict. Putin called the conflict a war for the first time in a televised news conference on Thursday, saying it is Russia’s goal to end it. He previously only referred to it as a “special military operation.”

Putin direct

Putin: Russia has long sought to integrate with the West but was ultimately rejected. pic.twitter.com/X6JtEhZTrx

— Putin Direct (@PutinDirect) December 25, 2022

“..we are defending our national interests, the interests of our citizens, our people..”

• Putin “Ready” To Negotiate, But West Wants To “Tear Apart” Russia (ZH)

In a Sunday interview with Rossiya 1 state television, Russian President Vladimir Putin said his country is now ready to negotiate an end to the conflict in Ukraine. However, he once again pointed the finger at the West for making any dialogue toward an acceptable end to the fighting all but impossible. “We are ready to negotiate with everyone involved about acceptable solutions, but that is up to them – we are not the ones refusing to negotiate, they are,” Putin said. “I believe that we are acting in the right direction, we are defending our national interests, the interests of our citizens, our people. And we have no other choice but to protect our citizens,” he added. From Moscow’s point of view, a signal of Ukraine’s ‘seriousness’ about talks would likely hinge on Kiev’s willingness to compromise on territorial concessions, especially regarding the Donbas in the east.

Additionally the Ukrainians would likely have to acknowledge Russian control over the Crimea. However, President Zelensky on Wednesday in his speech before Congress pledged “absolute victory” and has of late been vehement in rejecting any talk of letting go of territory as a non-starter, especially as the months-long Ukrainian counteroffensive has met with some significant successes.Also in the interview Putin continued his theme of the US and NATO waging a proxy war using Ukraine as a pawn. He said in the Sunday comments that the West is attempting to “tear apart” Russia. “At the core of it all is the policy of our geopolitical opponents, aiming to tear apart Russia, the historical Russia,” Putin said. “They have always tried to ‘divide and conquer’… Our goal is something else – to unite the Russian people.”

“..were orchestrated to provide Europe with more expensive liquefied [natural] gas from America.”

• Only One Nation Benefits From Sanctions On Russia – Minister (RT)

The sanctions the West has slapped on Russia over the Ukraine conflict are taking a heavy toll on the European economy, while the United States is the only actor profiting from the restrictions, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said on Saturday. Speaking to Asharq News daily, the minister claimed that Western sanctions had helped the Americans to achieve what they wanted, saying “their supplies of oil and gas to the European market have increased.” Energy shipments from the US, however, have proved costly for Europeans, resulting in skyrocketing inflation and decreased competitive power for European businesses, Siluanov said. According to the minister, both Western sanctions and the blasts that ruptured the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines in late September “were orchestrated to provide Europe with more expensive liquefied [natural] gas from America.”

“America benefits, Europe loses,” he explained. Moscow has called the sabotage a terrorist attack, claiming that the US stood to benefit the most from the explosions. While Washington has denied any involvement, Secretary of State Antony Blinken described the incident as a “tremendous opportunity” for Europe to wean itself off of Russian energy. Siluanov went on to admit that sanctions have affected the Russian economy. “But they inflicted on the West no less, and perhaps even more pain,” he said, adding that the sanctions rhetoric has now become routine. The minister noted that the EU price cap on Russian oil “will certainly lead to price and market distortions,” reiterating Moscow’s position that it would not provide crude under contracts conforming to Western-mandated restrictions.

Russian oil companies are rerouting their oil shipments from the West in other directions, the minister said. “We will be looking for new markets, looking for new logistics. It is possible that this would be more expensive,” he stated. Earlier this month, the EU, the G7 countries and Australia introduced a price limit on Russian seaborne oil, set at $60 per barrel. The measure also prohibits Western companies from providing insurance and other services to shipments of Russian crude, unless the cargo is purchased at or below the indicated price. Following the move, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov warned that the restrictions would wreak havoc on global oil markets, while Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow was not planning to sell oil to nations supporting the price cap.

Erdogan plays his cards.

• Erdogan Accuses West Of ‘Provocations’ Over Ukraine (RT)

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has praised Türkiye’s role in securing a grain deal between Russia and Ukraine, claiming in a speech on Sunday that unlike Ankara, Western nations did not make any tangible diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict. “Unfortunately, the West has only made provocations and failed to make efforts to be a mediator in the Ukraine-Russia war,” Erdogan said at a youth event in Türkiye’s eastern Erzurum province on Sunday. Türkiye has thus “assumed this mediator role in 2022” and is set to continue its diplomatic efforts next year, building up on the success of the Black Sea corridor created as part of an Istanbul grain deal in July, Erdogan said.

The grain corridor was touted as a way to secure food supplies to the neediest nations as a matter of priority, but Erdogan confirmed Russia’s long-standing concerns, saying on Sunday that some 44 percent of the grain exported from Ukraine went to Europe instead. In the meantime Moscow voiced its readiness to supply African nations with “large volumes” of grain and fertilizers out of its own stocks for free. Ankara adopted a neutral position early in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, refusing to take part in the Western sanctions on Moscow, while continuing its military cooperation with Kiev – including selling a number of Bayraktar attack drones. A preliminary peace agreement was reportedly reached in Istanbul as early as March, but was later rejected by Ukraine under alleged pressure from the West.

The grain deal, touted as a rare victory for diplomacy, was signed in July by representatives of Russia, Ukraine, Türkiye and the UN, with a Joint Coordination Center set up in Istanbul to oversee the shipments. In late October, Russia briefly suspended its participation in the agreement, after accusing Kiev of launching a terrorist attack on the Crimea bridge, and drone strikes on ships involved in securing safe passage for agricultural cargo. Moscow ultimately returned to the accord after receiving unspecified “written security guarantees” from Kiev. Last month, Moscow allowed “a technical prolongation” of the deal, but Russian officials have repeatedly voiced concerns that the deal is not meeting its stated goals, and have also insisted that the provisions on lifting the restrictions on Russian agricultural exports were not being fulfilled. The Turkish president expressed hope that the issue of fertilizer exports and Moscow’s other concerns would be resolved through “more intense” negotiations next year.

Keep on poking…

• West Issues Ultimatum To Serbia – Media (RT)

Several Western countries have “sent an ultimatum” to Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, demanding that Serbs in the northern part of breakaway Kosovo end their stand-off with local authorities, news website Pink.rs reported on Sunday. The outlet claims that ambassadors of the Quint group, comprising the US, the UK, France, Germany and Italy, are calling for barricades in the region be removed within 24 hours. If Belgrade fails to ensure this, the Western powers will reportedly let Albin Kurti, Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian prime minister, attack local Serbs. Earlier, Kurti warned that the “removal of these barricades cannot exclude casualties.”

Tensions between Belgrade and Pristina flared up earlier this month when Serbs, who make up the majority in the northern part of province, put up barriers to protest against the arrest of a former police officer, accused of attacking a Kosovo law enforcement patrol. After this, Vucic asked NATO’s KFOR peacekeepers for permission to deploy up to 1,000 Serbian troops and police officers in Kosovo, as it is entitled to do under UN Security Council Resolution 1244, which put an end to the NATO bombing of the former Yugoslavia in 1999. However, these plans were resisted by the US, with Gabriel Escobar, the State Department’s special envoy for the region, saying Washington had given Kosovo “very firm security guarantees.”

On Sunday, KFOR said that shots had been fired near a NATO patrol in northern part of Kosovo, close to the roadblocks, adding that there were no casualties. It stopped short of assigning blame. However, Serbian media, citing eyewitnesses, claimed that the incident took place when Kosovo’s special forces attempted to clear barricades near a town of Zubin Potok. With no sign of tensions abating, Milan Mojsilovic, Chief of General Staff of the Serbian Armed Forces, told local media on Sunday that the situation is complex, and requires the presence of the Serbian military along the administrative line which divides Kosovo from the rest of Serbia. NATO took control of Kosovo in 1999, after bombing Serbia on behalf of ethnic Albanian separatists. The province’s provisional government declared independence in 2008, which Belgrade has refused to recognize.

They’re shot down but still kill.

• Ukraine Hits Airbase 300 Miles Deep into Russia (GR)

Ukraine attacked with a drone an airbase in Russia’s Saratov region which lies about 500km (310 miles) northeast of the border with Ukraine. Three Russian military personnel were killed at Engels bomber base Russian news agencies reported, citing the defense ministry. Russian state media agency Tass quotes the defense ministry as saying: “On December 26, at around 01:35 Moscow time (2235 GMT), a Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicle was shot down at low altitude while approaching the Engels military airfield in the Saratov region. “As a result of the fall of the wreckage of the drone, three Russian technical servicemen who were at the airfield were fatally injured.”

Russia accuses Ukraine of carrying out a similar attack on the airfield, home to strategic bombers, on 5 December. In that attack three servicemen were also killed by debris from a downed Ukrainian drone, Moscow said at the time. Two aircraft were lightly damaged. According to Reuters, the twin strikes dealt Russia a major reputational blow and raised questions about why its defenses failed, analysts said, as attention turned to the use of drones in the war between neighbors. Ukraine has never publicly claimed responsibility for attacks in Russia, but has said, however, that such incidents are “karma” for Russia’s invasion. As CNN reported recently Ukraine’s state-owned weapons manufacturer Ukroboronprom has indicated several times in the last few weeks that it is close to finishing work on a new long-range drone.

“..Unfortunately, our supporters aren’t going to buy it either.”

• GOP Senators Blast McConnell For ‘Arrogance,’ Voter Betrayal (JTN)

Conservative GOP senators blasted Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Sunday for shepherding with Democrats a $1.7 trillion year-end spending bill into law over the objections of House Republicans, saying it was an act of “arrogance” that betrayed promises to voters. “Our party leadership turned on Republican voters, turned on the Republican base, turned on most Republican senators,” Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, told “The Cats Roundtable” and host John Catsimitidas on WABC radio in New York. “It has happened before, but this is one too many times. For me, this is the final straw.” Lee called the omnibus spending bill signed into law Friday “the ugliest spending bill on record” and one that signaled “that voters don’t see much of a defining difference with Democrats.”

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., mocked those of his GOP colleagues who voted for the bill and celebrated its passage. “To declare that a victory, to say that’s a win, that’s like a football team that just lost the game 60 to 0, and they kick a field goal in the waning seconds and say the field goal is a big win,” Johnson told Catsimitidas. “No, we just got our you-know-whats handed to us.” Johnson said that McConnell’s maneuver not only betrayed conservative voters but also undercut House Republicans about to take over in January who had asked for a short-term spending plan. “Unfortunately, the arrogance of our leadership who said, ‘We know better than House members. We’re going to pass this.’ … I’m not buying it,” Johnson said. “Unfortunately, our supporters aren’t going to buy it either.”

Other senators took to Twitter to express their disdain for the spending law, warning it will worsen inflation next year. “I voted AGAINST the $1.7 TRILLION spending bill because I promised Florida families I’d fight every day to make Washington work for them,” Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., tweeted. “This reckless inflation bomb is a disaster for our economy and a slap in the face to Floridians struggling to make ends meet.”

“The Senators were nestled all snug in their beds, while visions of pork danced in their heads. No budget was found, just mischief and debt.”

• Rand Paul Savages DC Elites With Epic “’Twas the Night Before Christmas” (DCE)

This Wednesday, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) posted a parody of the classic Christmas poem “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” to this social media, this time directed at the Democrat’s omnibus spending bill — which costs America a whopping $1.7 trillion dollars. “Twas the week before Christmas, and through the Senate and House, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The earmarks were hung by the chimney with care, in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there,” Paul begins.= “The Senators were nestled all snug in their beds, while visions of pork danced in their heads. No budget was found, just mischief and debt. While the taxpayers hung their poor heads and wept. When out on the lawn arose such a clatter — Senators sprang from their oxygen. What was the matter?” Paul added. “Away to the window, they flew like a flash, tore open the shutter when they heard the word cash.”

Then Senator Paul decided to name names — and he was genuinely bipartisan here, scorching high spenders on both sides of the aisle! Note: This article may contain commentary reflecting the author’s opinion. This Wednesday, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) posted a parody of the classic Christmas poem “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” to this social media, this time directed at the Democrat’s omnibus spending bill — which costs America a whopping $1.7 trillion dollars. “Twas the week before Christmas, and through the Senate and House, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. The earmarks were hung by the chimney with care, in hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there,” Paul begins. “The Senators were nestled all snug in their beds, while visions of pork danced in their heads. No budget was found, just mischief and debt.

“While the taxpayers hung their poor heads and wept. When out on the lawn arose such a clatter — Senators sprang from their oxygen. What was the matter?” Paul added. “Away to the window, they flew like a flash, tore open the shutter when they heard the word cash.” Then Senator Paul decided to name names — and he was genuinely bipartisan here, scorching high spenders on both sides of the aisle! “With a little old driver so lively and quick, I knew in a moment it must be Saint Nick. More rapid than eagles. His coursers they came, and he whistled and shouted and called them by name: Now, McConnell! Now, Schumer! Now, Pelosi and Vixen! On Biden! On Stupid! On Dumber and Blitzen! To debt! To bankruptcy! To free money for all”

“We need to halt everything with the FBI, all funding, until they come forward and explain to Congress exactly what they were doing..”

• Rep. James Comer Calls For Defunding the FBI (DCE)

On Tuesday, Rep. James Comer, who is expected to be the incoming chair of the House Oversight Committee, spoke to Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo about the recent revelations from the “Twitter Files” about the FBI’s influence in the silencing of the Hunter Biden laptop story in October 2020. When asked about the latest releases of the Twitter files, which outlined the FBI’s cooperation with Twitter to counter “misinformation” and “disinformation” on the social media site, Comer emphasized that the initial discovery proves wrongdoing, but additional investigations will have to be conducted.“Well, it means a lot more evidence of wrongdoing,” he told Bartiromo. “You know, in the beginning, I thought that there were probably two or three rogue employees who were orchestrating this cover-up of the Hunter Biden laptop story. But now we know the FBI had a division of at least 80 agents.”

“We also know that the FBI paid Twitter over $3 million for their time, all the time they took over the past couple of years in telling them who to suppress, who to ban,” the congressman explained. “You know, it’s just things that the government has no role in. The FBI was never granted the authority to create any type of disinformation task force that policed the social media sites.” “Now, this we know with Twitter, we’ve heard similar stories from Zuckerberg,” the Kentuckian explained referencing Zuckerberg’s admittance that Facebook deemphasized stories at the request of the FBI. “Who knows what went on at YouTube and Google? This is an agency that’s out of control.”

“And the most frustrating thing for me right now, Maria, is the fact that in this omnibus bill, there’s increased funding for the FBI, plus a $1.75 billion headquarters facility for the FBI,” he explained in reference to the $1.7 trillion omnibus bill currently being considered in the Senate. “We need to halt everything with the FBI, all funding, until they come forward and explain to Congress exactly what they were doing, why they were doing it, and who gave them the authority to do it.”

“..No weapons system is too costly. No war, no matter how disastrous, goes unfunded. No military budget is too big..”

• The Democrats are Now the War Party (Chris Hedges)

The Democrats position themselves as the party of virtue, cloaking their support for the war industry in moral language stretching back to Korea and Vietnam, when President Ngo Dinh Diem was as lionized as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. All the wars they support and fund are “good” wars. All the enemies they fight, the latest being Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping, are incarnations of evil. The photo of a beaming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Kamala Harris holding up a signed Ukrainian battle flag behind Zelensky as he addressed Congress was another example of the Democratic Party’s abject subservience to the war machine.

The Democrats, especially with the presidency of Bill Clinton, became shills not only for corporate America but for the weapons manufacturers and the Pentagon. No weapons system is too costly. No war, no matter how disastrous, goes unfunded. No military budget is too big, including the $858 billion in military spending allocated for the current fiscal year, an increase of $45 billion above what the Biden administration requested. The historian Arnold Toynbee cited unchecked militarism as the fatal disease of empires, arguing that they ultimatley commit suicide.

There once was a wing of the Democratic Party that questioned and stood up to the war industry: Senators J. William Fulbright, George McGovern, Gene McCarthy, Mike Gravel, William Proxmire and House member Dennis Kucinich. But that opposition evaporated along with the antiwar movement. When 30 members of the party’s progressive caucus recently issued a call for Biden to negotiate with Putin, they were forced by the party leadership and a warmongering media to back down and rescind their letter. Not that any of them, with the exception of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, have voted against the billions of dollars in weaponry sent to Ukraine or the bloated military budget. Rashida Tlaib voted present.

The opposition to the perpetual funding of the war in Ukraine has come primarily from Republicans, 11 in the Senate and 57 in the House, several, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, unhinged conspiracy theorists. Only nine Republicans in the House joined the Democrats in supporting the $1.7 trillion spending bill needed to prevent the government from shutting down, which included approval of $847 billion for the military — the total is boosted to $858 billion when factoring in accounts that don’t fall under the Armed Services committees’ jurisdiction. In the Senate, 29 Republicans opposed the spending bill. The Democrats, including nearly all 100 members of the House Congressional Progressive Caucus, lined up dutifully for endless war.

DNC, FBI, FTX, Twitter, Soros. Nice.

• Soros Behind Twitter Operation to Shut Down Hunter Biden Laptop Story (BN)

First Draft News, a now-defunct nonprofit that left-wing billionaire George Soros’ Open Society Foundations funded, played a key role in Twitter’s preparation to shut down the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020, according to internal documents published by author Michael Shellenberger as part of Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files.” The Aspen Institute hosted a September 2020 training exercise for members of the media and social media leaders regarding the handling of hypothetical data leaks which were similar to the Hunter Biden laptop report that broke in October, according to Shellenberger. Claire Wardle, former executive director and co-founder of First Draft News, appeared to be an attendee of the exercise, according to an email published by Shellenberger.

The address that apparently belonged to Wardle was one of multiple recipients in an email to top national security reporters, Facebook’s head of security policy and others, according to Shellenberger. The Open Society Foundations, which left-wing megadonor Soros chairs, once funded First Draft News. The organization shut down in June. “Today we are announcing that First Draft is closing its doors to make way for the next chapter — its mission will continue at the newly launched Information Futures Lab, an initiative from Brown’s School of Public Health,” an announcement from Wardle reads.

The Aspen Institute training exercise, titled “The Burisma Leak,” involved a series of hypothetical leaks during October 2020 showing that Hunter Biden had made more money in his role at Burisma than previously disclosed and had communicated with his father about his work there, Shellenberger reported. The exercise was meant to shape how the media covered the eventual leak of the Hunter Biden laptop story and the way social media platforms carried it. The Aspen Institute, a left-leaning think tank funded by massive philanthropic organizations including the Rockefeller Foundation and Ford Foundation, runs the Commission on Information Disorder, an anti-disinformation project that’s drawn ire from conservatives for its alleged far-left partisanship. The commission has urged social media platforms to censor accounts it considers misinformation “superspreaders” through demonetization, the removal of what it considers inaccurate posts and penalties for offending users.

Pretty brilliant history lesson.

• In Post-Soviet Russia, New Years Remains A Bigger Holiday Than Christmas (RT)

Present-day Russia is almost the only major Christian country in the world where New Year festivities are more prominent than those of Christmas. While Westerners are unpacking gifts on December 24th, Russians are still immersed in an atmosphere of their upcoming holiday, which, when it comes around, is filled with age-old traditions and lasts almost two weeks. To understand why the New Year has become a special celebration in Russia and what sets it apart from other countries, we must first dive into the history of the holiday. It was only in 1700 that Russia joined the pan-European tradition of celebrating the New Year on January 1, following a decree by Emperor Peter the Great. Before that, Russians had celebrated New Year’s on March 1, when it was time to prepare for the new season of agricultural work.

However, despite the will of the emperor, Russia did not fully synchronize with the rest of Europe – the country at the time functioned according to the old Julian calendar, while most European countries had already switched to the Gregorian one. Therefore, the new year in Russia began 13 days later. This became a key aspect that influenced the modern traditions of New Year celebrations. Thanks to Peter the Great, the New Year moved closer to the main Christian holiday, Christmas. For the next two hundred years, New Year and Christmas celebrations in Russia were a lot like those in Western Europe. The difference was only in the religious form – Russia followed Christian Orthodox canons, while the likes of France and Germany followed Catholic and Protestant ones.

Everything changed with the October Revolution, the overthrow of the emperor, and the creation of the new state – the USSR. The Bolsheviks carried out several reforms in the first years after the revolution that directly affected how Russia celebrates the New Year today, in the 21st century. On January 26, 1918, the Council of People’s Commissars of Russia issued a decree on the transition to the Gregorian calendar. As a result, the country celebrated the start of the year 1919 simultaneously with Western Europe. In 1929, the celebration of Christmas was officially ‘canceled.’ Although by this time the New Year had become a completely independent secular holiday, Christmas was privately celebrated in many homes.

Even in 1924, shortly before Lenin’s death, a Christmas Tree celebration was held for children. But, after 1929, the most important Christian date was erased from the calendar and remained exclusively in the homes of religious people. At the same time, the Orthodox Church did not switch to the Gregorian calendar, and therefore Orthodox Christmas is still celebrated on January 7, not December 25.

Ferns

Brilliant bloopers from

BETWEEN TWO FERNS (2014)#ZachGalifianakis

pic.twitter.com/2SMVybFGCb

— Michael Warburton (@MichaelWarbur17) December 24, 2022

Peter Sellers

The tortured genius that was PETER SELLERS tells a Michael Caine story on The Late Late Show in 1970 – cue Caine & Co instantly and brilliantly brought to vocal life…

pic.twitter.com/Qw9xosBkSG

— Michael Warburton (@MichaelWarbur17) December 25, 2022

Croc

A croc floats by.pic.twitter.com/BWbezOSXSD

— Fascinating (@fasc1nate) December 24, 2022

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Debt Rattle December 7 2022

Dec 072022

December 7, 2022 Posted by Raúl Ilargi Meijer at 9:15 am Finance Tagged with: Anomaly 6, Elon Musk, Facebook, FBI, FTX, James Baker, Soros, Twitter, Ukraine, Wikipedia 61 Responses »

Rembrandt van Rijn Jeremiah lamenting the destruction of Jerusalem 1630

• Elon Musk Fires Twitter General Counsel James Baker (CTH)

• The EU’s Operation Against Musk (Matthieu Buge)

• Elon Musk Slams Wikipedia Over ‘Left-wing Bias’ (PM)

• Twitter’s “Partner Support Portal” for COVID-19 Related Censorship (AFL)

• Are Ukrainians Russians? (Saker)

• Ukraine Trying To Drag US Into War – ex-CIA Officer (RT)

• A Negotiated End to Fighting in Ukraine (Jeffrey Sachs)

• Mosscow Accuses Ukraine Of ‘Nuclear Terrorism’ (RT)

• Hungary Raises Alarm Over ‘Critical’ Situation With Fuel Supply (RT)

• World Will Still Need Russian Oil – Official (RT)

• Private Spying Firm Targets Global Population With Illegal Spyware (GZ)

• FTX Crypto Fraudsters Targeted Poor Black Neighborhoods (Shellenberger)

• Mask Mandate in Schools Based on Politics Not Evidence (DS)

• Soros Bankrolls 253 Groups to Influence Global Media (NB)

Comer

🚨 NEW 🚨

I am requesting former senior @Twitter employees Vijaya Gadde, Yoel Roth, & James Baker to appear before @GOPoversight in the 118th Congress.

These individuals were critical to Twitter's decision to censor legitimate facts ahead of an American election.@FoxNews pic.twitter.com/Y4psxrtWdk

— Rep. James Comer (@RepJamesComer) December 6, 2022

Bob Mankoff, New Yorker, 1981.

Ron Johnson

It wasn’t just Twitter that sabotaged the disclosure of Hunter Biden’s corruption.

It was Democrats in Congress. It was FBI leadership. It was members of the intelligence community.

There is a much larger story here than just the Twitter files. pic.twitter.com/aJqTqmIzFj

— Senator Ron Johnson (@SenRonJohnson) December 7, 2022

FBI agent Elvis Chan, at the San Francisco field office

Baker was scrubbing the Twitter Files before Taibbi and Bari Weiss ever saw them. That’s why the FBI is not mentioned in them.

“Twitter’s former top attorney James Baker was formerly an FBI attorney who passed on fake dirt from the Hillary campaign’s operatives in 2016, alleging a secret online portal from Russia’s Alfa Bank to Trump. Now attempted to shape the “Twitter Files.”

• Elon Musk Fires Twitter General Counsel James Baker (CTH)

Yesterday, we speculated publicly the first set of “Twitter Files” released was heavily pre-filtered by internal stakeholders connected to DHS who hold a vested interest in controlling any evidence of Twitter’s former political activity. Knowing there are multiple executives remaining within the company who previously aligned with the intents of government, specifically DHS officials, to control the platform, the prediction was not a stretch. Indeed, it just made common sense. Former FBI Chief Legal Counsel James Baker, a man of notoriously corrupt disposition, was one of those former government officials who started working for Twitter as general counsel. James Baker (pictured below left) working as a government mechanism for filtration of damaging information was not a leap. Again, just common sense.

Today, as an outcome of internal discoveries that indeed Jim Baker did prefilter internal documents in order to mitigate sunlight and exposure [outline here], Twitter CEO Elon Musk fired legal counsel James Baker. Mr Musk said through his Twitter account, “In light of concerns about Baker’s possible role in suppression of information important to the public dialogue, he was exited from Twitter today.” Mr. Musk followed up a question about James Baker being asked to explain himself by saying, “His explanation was …unconvincing.” Matt Taibbi provides the context: ” On Friday, the first installment of the Twitter files was published here. We expected to publish more over the weekend. Many wondered why there was a delay. We can now tell you part of the reason why. On Tuesday, Twitter Deputy General Counsel (and former FBI General Counsel) Jim Baker was fired. Among the reasons? Vetting the first batch of “Twitter Files” – without knowledge of new management.

The process for producing the “Twitter Files” involved delivery to two journalists (Bari Weiss and me) via a lawyer close to new management. However, after the initial batch, things became complicated. Over the weekend, while we both dealt with obstacles to new searches, it was @Bari Weiss who discovered that the person in charge of releasing the files was someone named Jim. When she called to ask “Jim’s” last name, the answer came back: “Jim Baker.” “My jaw hit the floor,” says Weiss. The first batch of files both reporters received was marked, “Spectra Baker Emails.” Baker is a controversial figure. He has been something of a Zelig of FBI controversies dating back to 2016, from the Steele Dossier to the Alfa-Server mess. He resigned in 2018 after an investigation into leaks to the press.

The news that Baker was reviewing the “Twitter files” surprised everyone involved, to say the least. New Twitter chief Elon Musk acted quickly to “exit” Baker Tuesday. Big Picture: The Twitter Files are a threat vector to a bigger story. The DHS, DOJ, FBI and ODNI U.S. government elements who operated with control over the social media platform did so as an outcome of the larger surveillance state. That surveillance state was deployed against Donald Trump in 2016 and everything as an outcome of that failed effort, and the ongoing coverup effort, is what surrounds the current DOJ effort to attack and remove the threat Donald Trump represents.

Fitton Musk

Biden has personally targeted @ElonMusk. pic.twitter.com/kySu1OLygD

— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) December 6, 2022

“Now, they have to limit freedom of speech in order to protect freedom of speech – a logic that can, understandably, leave many people speechless.”

• The EU’s Operation Against Musk (Matthieu Buge)

After Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter and the recent reactions of Brussels’ bureaucrats, it has become clear how far the EU is willing to go in order to preserve its own bubble of political agenda. Just as one needs a special dictionary in order to understand Kant’s work and his own understanding of certain terms and concepts, more and more, one needs a special dictionary to understand the language of the EU. And the first entry to look up is ‘F – Freedom’. Its synonym, ‘liberty’, is the first word in France’s motto. And with the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk and the wish of the billionaire to restore total freedom of speech on the platform, we have a new opportunity to try to decrypt it.

Commenting on the French-US partnership during his speech at the White House on December 1, French President Emmanuel Macron said, “Our two nations are sisters in their fight for freedom.” Words that are quite consistent with the EU’s suddenly emerging rhetoric concerning the freedom of the Chinese people facing the zero-Covid policy of the Chinese Communist Party, the freedom of the Uyghurs in the west of China, the freedom of Russians opposing the Kremlin, the freedom of Iranian women to be like Western women… We could go on forever with this list, because it is constantly changing, adapting itself to the context of geopolitics. As a concept, freedom of speech is really an illusion, as it is ruled, like everything else in the world, by balances of power. The EU proved this hard-to-admit fact to be true when it quickly banned RT and Sputnik after the beginning of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine.

And there is no doubt that this threadbare concept has been used in geopolitics for ages, establishing amusing if not pathetic double standards. But double standards are not really the issue here. What is at stake is pure logic. Thierry Breton, the commissioner for internal market of the EU, talked to Elon Musk in order to make Brussels’ point clear. And then said: “I welcome Elon Musk’s statements of intent to get Twitter 2.0 ready for the DSA [Digital Services Act]. I am pleased to hear that he has read it carefully and considers it as a sensible approach to implement on a worldwide basis. But let’s also be clear that there is still huge work ahead, as Twitter will have to implement transparent user policies, significantly reinforce content moderation, and protect freedom of speech, tackle disinformation with resolve, and limit targeted advertising.”

Breton should hand every citizen of EU member states some instructions, or a guidebook, to navigate the EU’s logic here. “To reinforce content moderation and protect freedom of speech” is like saying “Let’s have lunch together; you’re free to order whatever I tell you to eat.” These unelected bureaucrats threatened to ban Musk’s newly acquired company in the EU if he refused to comply with their rules, and the mainstream media has found a new way to wage war against those who don’t agree with all their narratives and restrictions: The use of the word ‘absolutist’. While Musk himself wears the label of ‘free speech absolutist’, pundits are using it as a way to pillory those they can’t dismiss as ‘conspiracy theorists’. In this context, ‘absolutist’ rhymes with ‘terrorist’, ‘extremist’, or whatever you can imagine could be a threat.

Famed Toronto Professor Jordan Peterson has repeatedly argued that free speech implies that one should be challenged and even offended, that it is a condition of dialectics and progress. This is pure common sense. No more in Europe. During the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic, in order to promote their quarantine politics, some European governments said it was necessary to “limit freedoms in order to protect freedom.” Now, they have to limit freedom of speech in order to protect freedom of speech – a logic that can, understandably, leave many people speechless.

Kash
https://twitter.com/i/status/1600344422314430464

“If only one version of the facts is allowed then that gives a huge incentive to wealthy and powerful people to seize control of things like Wikipedia in order to shore up their power. And they do that.”

• Elon Musk Slams Wikipedia Over ‘Left-wing Bias’ (PM)

Twitter owner Elon Musk said that Wikipedia has a “non-trivial left-wing bias” after the encyclopedia site marked the article for the “Twitter Files” for deletion. Editors for the site wrote that the article is a “nothing event about another nothing event.” “There’s not really anything here. Even as a stub it suffers from being unsourced in some places and poorly sourced in others, suggesting a lack of notability,” wrote an editor. “It also doesn’t have a clearly defined topic. Is this about an investigation, or is this about a Substack article?” They continue: “While the title suggests the former and the lede suggests the latter, the content of the article is actually about neither. There is no investigation, and the article lacks any notable information about what the self-published article had to offer.”

Musk noted in his tweet that Wikipedia requires the citation of biased “MSM sources” to “confirm” claims. This is not the first time that Wikipedia has apparently worked to protect the Biden regime. This past summer, Wikipedia changed the definition of “recession” on their site to fit the definition given by the Biden White House. Wikipedia then locked the page, preventing people from updating the website. The White House redefined the definition of “Recession” ahead of the summer economic report, which showed that the US had suffered from two consecutive quarters of declining GDP. This was the standard definition, but the White House declared that the definition should be tied more closely to unemployment numbers.

On the Wiki page that provides the definition of a “recession,” a message pops up when an attempt is made to edit the information, reading: “This page is protected to prevent vandalism.” Larry Sanger, the co-founder of Wikipedia, has been vocal in criticizing his creation, saying that it is run by left-leaning editors and that the site is no longer trustworthy. Sanger said that he believes the site is run by teams of Democratic-leaning editors, and that the site lost its neutral nature in 2009. He named topics such as Covid and Hunter Biden as examples of Wikipedia’s bias. “There are a lot of people who would be highly motivated to go in and make the article more politically neutral but they’re not allowed to,” Sanger said. He added, “If only one version of the facts is allowed then that gives a huge incentive to wealthy and powerful people to seize control of things like Wikipedia in order to shore up their power. And they do that.”

Notorious right wingers Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald

Notorious right wingers Matt Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald are trending on Twitter. pic.twitter.com/4bT9PmxWya

— Turncoat Don (@TurncoatD) December 5, 2022

Not just Twitter, all social media.

• Twitter’s “Partner Support Portal” for COVID-19 Related Censorship (AFL)

Today, America First Legal (AFL) released the fourth set of shocking documents obtained from litigation against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealing further concrete evidence of collusion between the CDC and social media companies to censor free speech and silence the public square under the government’s label of “misinformation.” This nearly 600-page release of documents contains new appalling information. Among these include the fact that Twitter ran a “Partner Support Portal” for government employees and other “stakeholders” to submit posts that it would remove or flag as “misinformation” on its platform. Documents obtained by AFL show Twitter enrolling one government employee, through their personal Twitter account, into this Portal. We know from other publicly related documents, that Facebook has copied this approach for election-related censorship.

This production also reveals that the U.S. government was actively working to “socially inoculate”–or brainwashing–the public against anything that threatened its narrative. It did so by using aligned Big Tech corporations to monitor and manipulate users for the purposes of censoring unapproved information and pushing government propaganda. For example, Facebook sent written materials to the CDC in which it bragged about censoring more than sixteen million “pieces of content” containing opinions or information the U.S. government wanted suppressed. Finally, the documents reveal the CDC was “collaborating with UNICEF, WHO and IFCN member and leading civil society organization Mafindo” to mitigate “disinformation.” Mafindo is a Facebook third-party fact-checking partner based in Indonesia that is funded by Google.

The Saker’s deep dive into a complex issue.

• Are Ukrainians Russians? (Saker)

Seems like a simple question, but in reality it is immensely complex. I will try to outline a few of the issues, assumptions and implications this question involves. Well, for starters, we might want to ask “what is a Ukrainian?” After all, no such nation or country can be found in history books. But we should not stop here, and we also need to ask “what is a Russian?”. Yes, there was a Russian nation and a Russian country recorded in history books, but does that really help us? French history books used to begin with the sentence “our ancestors the Gauls” which even kids on the French colonies had to learn. Some ridiculed the fact that sub-Saharan Africans or the children of Guadeloupe had to learn that and that was self-evidently ridiculous. But what about metropolis French, those who lived in France proper?

Where their ancestors really Gauls and, if so, how much continuity, if any, is there between Vercingetorix and Macron or the people from ancient Gallic tribes to the modern French? What we often overlook is that nationality is a very modern concept born out of the post 1789 ideology of nationalism. In the more distant past, people built their identity around 1) their place of birth/residence 2) their religion and 3) their ruler. Keeping all that in mind, let’s begin by asking the question “what is a Russian?”. But before we go there, I need to mention another pesky issue: the English word “Russian” can mean one of two things: a member of the Russian ethnic/cultural group, in which case the Russian term is roosskii or a citizen of the Russian Federation, in which case the Russian term would be rossiianin.

For the time being, let’s ignore the second meaning and focus on the ethnic/cultural roosski. To try to find a good definition, let’s being by spelling out what a Russian is not. This is not somebody who speaks Russian. There are plenty of folks out there who speak Russian and who are not Russian. This is not somebody born in Russia, because there are plenty of non-Russians born in Russia. How about somebody born from Russian parents? Here we run into a logical problem: if we define as Russian somebody born of Russian parents without defining what Russian means in the first place, this is a completely circular definition. Also, is Shoigu Russian? This father is an ethnic Tuvan. So 50% Russian max? How about Czar Nicholas II? His ancestry was mostly German and Danish. How about Lenin? He had only 1/4 “Russian” blood (whatever that means)

Philip Giraldi.

• Ukraine Trying To Drag US Into War – ex-CIA Officer (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky is looking for ways to get the US and NATO directly involved in the conflict, former CIA officer Philip Giraldi said, pointing to Monday’s drone attack on two airfields inside Russia as an example of such tactics. “This was a clear attempt by Zelensky, in my mind, to escalate the war,” Giraldi told Judge Andrew Napolitano on Monday evening’s episode of the ‘Judging Freedom’ podcast. “He tried to do that with the missile that was misdirected, possibly, and wound up in Poland and killed two people. He even pushed it and said NATO has to intervene now. This could be another attempt to, shall we say, promote an escalation on the part of the Russians that could possibly be construed as a danger to Poland, danger to troops in Poland, that sort of thing. This is the game that’s being played.”

The missile that struck the village of Przewodow last month was quickly identified as Ukrainian, but Zelensky continued to insist otherwise for several days, until both Warsaw and Washington expressed frustration. Napolitano had pointed out that the US currently has around 40,000 troops in Poland. Their presence creates a “high potential for accidents” and misunderstandings, said Giraldi, noting that Russia would know right away if they made a move to cross the border. On Monday morning, two drones attempted to strike the Dyagilevo airfield in Ryazan Region and Engels airfield in Saratov Region, more than 500 kilometers from the nearest Ukrainian-controlled territory. Three Russian servicemen were killed and several more injured, but the attack did not disrupt a strategic aviation strike against Ukrainian logistics later in the day, the defense ministry in Moscow said.

“The whole purpose of this is again political,” Giraldi told Napolitano about the attack. “It’s to escalate the process so that Russia – at least in the hopes of Zelensky and his advisers, many of whom are probably American – does something that is really stupid and provocative in return, and this will provoke the NATO-US reaction that Zelensky wants to see. I am convinced that this is what he’s playing at.” The big question, Giraldi added, is whether the US military and the White House knew of the attack in advance, “and if so, did they approve it?” The US insists it is not a party to the conflict in Ukraine, but President Joe Biden has said he would support Kiev with weapons and money for “as long as it takes” to defeat Russia on the battlefield.

Putin in 2008: “..If you push NATO enlargement, we retake Crimea.”

• A Negotiated End to Fighting in Ukraine (Jeffrey Sachs)

From the beginning — and from before the beginning, from 2021, when Putin made clear what the political issues at stake were — but I happen to know this goes back, in many ways, back to 1990, ’91. I was at that point an adviser to the economic team of President Gorbachev, and then, later, President Yeltsin, and Ukrainian President Kuchma, so I’ve watched this from the start. There have been a few very important political issues at stake. One is the NATO enlargement. I think it is really the dominant issue, but three others are extremely important. Of course, I should say, equally important is Ukraine’s sovereignty as a sovereign country and in need of security arrangements. But NATO as Ukraine’s security doesn’t work. It’s an explosive brew. So, one needs to find, as President Zelensky himself said earlier this year, before backing off from it, that there needed to be a non-NATO way to secure Ukraine.

And there can be. So, that’s another crucial issue, is Ukraine’s sovereignty and security in a non-NATO manner. The third issue that is very consequential is Crimea. Crimea, the peninsula, people can look on the map, the peninsula in the Black Sea, has been the home to Russia’s naval fleet in the Black Sea, and therefore completely consequential for Russia’s economic and foreign policy and military security since 1783. So, this is, from Russia’s point of view, an absolutely core issue. And incidentally, in 2008, when George W. Bush Jr. was very unwisely pushing NATO enlargement, President Putin said specifically to President Bush in Bucharest at the time of the NATO-Russia meeting, that “If you push NATO enlargement, we retake Crimea.” This was already explicit. And the point is that, for Russia, this is vital.

It’s up to US/NATO to halt this.

• Mosscow Accuses Ukraine Of ‘Nuclear Terrorism’ (RT)

Ukraine is resorting to dangerous tactics by deliberately targeting the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant on Russian territory, Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu has alleged. Earlier, Moscow said it would not accept any security arrangement that would involve handing the facility over to a third party. Addressing senior military officials on Tuesday, Shoigu accused the Ukrainian forces of firing 33 shells at the nuclear power plant over the past two weeks. The defense minister characterized these actions as nothing short of “nuclear terrorism.” According to Shoigu, Kiev is deliberately seeking to make a nuclear disaster at the site seem likely. “Our units are taking all [necessary] measures to ensure the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant’s safety,” Shoigu said.

Moscow has repeatedly made similar allegations against Kiev, with Ukrainian officials consistently denying they have targeted the power plant, and accusing Russia of the same. On Monday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told RIA Novosti media outlet that “there can be no talk of any Russian withdrawal or transfer of control over the plant to some third party.” She insisted that the facility is on Russian territory and is fully controlled by the country’s authorities. She went on to say that only Moscow “can ensure the physical and nuclear security” of the plant. Zakharova’s comment came after International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi said on Friday that any deal for the protection of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant would involve the withdrawal of Russian weaponry from the premises.

Grossi told Italian journalists that he expects such an agreement will be reached “by the end of the year,” adding that Moscow is “not against an agreement and the principle of plant protection.” The largest nuclear power facility in Europe, the Zaporozhye plant was taken over by Russian forces in early March, days after the Kremlin launched its military operation in Ukraine. This autumn, four formerly Ukrainian territories, the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions, were incorporated into Russia following referendums. In October, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree proclaiming Russian ownership over the plant.

Even though Hungary is already exempted from the price cap.

• Hungary Raises Alarm Over ‘Critical’ Situation With Fuel Supply (RT)

The fuel supply situation in Hungary is “critical,” with people queuing up at filling stations across the country due to a sharp surge in demand, the country’s oil and gas group MOL announced on Tuesday. In an email statement, Gyorgy Bacsa, the company’s managing director, said that “panic-buying has started causing shortages” and that the only solution was to create conditions for increased imports. On Monday, MOL reported a shortage of fuel inventories across its entire network of filling stations after many people began stockpiling over the weekend. The company said that a lack of fuel was caused primarily by insufficient imports and a halt of the country’s major refinery due to maintenance. MOL added that it was trying to deliver more products from its processing plant in Slovakia but had “reached the limits of its logistical capacities.”

Earlier, a non-governmental organization called the ‘Association of Independent Petrol Stations’ reported that MOL had not supplied gasoline or diesel fuel to some petrol stations for the third week straight due to supply problems. On Tuesday, Bacsa confirmed to radio Kossuth that “the total capacity of MOL is not enough to meet the needs of the Hungarian market,” adding that about 30% more fuel needs to be imported. The development comes as the EU has introduced a ban on Russian seaborne crude along with a $60 price cap. Hungary, which is heavily dependent on energy supplies from Russia, has been granted an exemption from the price cap scheme. The country is a vocal opponent of Western sanctions and has repeatedly criticized the EU initiative, saying it’s “high time” Brussels realized that measures such as this “hurt the European economy the most.”

“Global consumption, economic growth in the world must be provided with energy resources..”

• World Will Still Need Russian Oil – Official (RT)

Russian oil will still be in high demand despite the latest EU sanctions on the country’s exports, Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandr Novak said on Tuesday. His statement comes as the EU introduced a ban on Russian seaborne crude along with a $60 price cap. The latter measure has received support from G7 nations (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States) and Australia. According to Novak, this type of interference in market instruments will “certainly affect” the work of Russian companies and sales, but Moscow does not see “any tragedy” in this. “Global consumption, economic growth in the world must be provided with energy resources. There is not much oil in the world, and Russian oil has always been and will be in demand. Yes, supply chains will change,” Novak explained.

By imposing a price cap, Western countries will only trigger further energy inflation due to scarce supply, the minister said, adding that Russia views these types of non-market mechanisms as unacceptable. “This can only lead to a global decline in investment and a future shortage of relevant resources. This, in turn, will cause an even greater increase in prices, which we are seeing, including the gas markets, for example, where there was an artificial decision to limit long-term contracts,” Novak said. The official did not rule out a decline in Russian oil production amid the uncertainty following the sanctions, but said that it would not be big, adding that Russia “is doing everything to ensure that the situation is stable.”

The deputy PM noted that Russian oil and gas condensate production rose 2.2% from January to November in annual terms, to 488 million tons. Condensate output in Russia averaged 10.91 million barrels per day in the reported period, according to Reuters’ calculations.

Nothing personal. It’s just business.

• Private Spying Firm Targets Global Population With Illegal Spyware (GZ)

Leaked documents reviewed by The Grayzone reveal how a smartphone tracking technology tramples over fundamental data protection tenets and international law, while violating the privacy of citizens across the world without their knowledge or consent. The clandestine tool can transform anyone into a potential person of interest to Western intelligence agencies, and thus a target for recruitment, surveillance, harassment, or worse. It is likely most readers will be unfamiliar with Anomaly 6. Its spartan, single-page website is home to the company’s name, a generic email address, and general location – Fairfax, Virginia, not far from CIA headquarters – but nothing about its services, personnel, or otherwise. By carving through layers of “anonymized” data, this little-known company unearths reams of sensitive information about any individual it chooses anywhere on Earth.

Anomaly 6’s activities amount to a globe-spanning criminal dragnet, the reach of which could well extend further than even that of the CIA and NSA. As we shall see, its founders are extremely wary of media attention, not least because they fear the “legal basis” of their operations “is unlikely to stand-up to scrutiny” given past successful court actions against state spying agencies, such as GCHQ and the NSA. The company, which was founded by a pair of US military intelligence veterans, surreptitiously embeds software development kits, or SDKs, in hundreds of popular smartphone and IoT apps, allowing it to track a user’s movements and much more besides. This data is then analyzed and the results passed on to private sector and governmental clients.

One confirmed customer is US Special Operations Command Africa, which paid Anomaly 6 $589,500 in September 2020 for a “Commercial Telemetry Feed”. In April, The Intercept reported on a leaked Anomaly 6 pitch for new business, in which the company claimed to be able to simultaneously monitor roughly three billion smartphone devices in real-time. To demonstrate its invasive prowess, Anomaly 6 followed the movements of hundreds of Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency employees at once via their smartphones. The anonymous source of the leaked presentation “expressed grave concern” about the legality of the company disclosing “social posts, usernames, and locations of Americans” to US government agencies.

The Grayzone can reveal that it’s not just US citizens, but the world’s entire population, in the firing line of Anomaly 6’s unblinking eye. And the company is secretly selling its hyper-invasive wares to a number of foreign governments, militaries and security and intelligence services. One of the most unsettling Anomaly 6 files reviewed by The Grayzone is a case study, demonstrating the company’s ability to track the “movements of individuals in completely denied terrain.” The firm identified 100,000 separate smartphone users who traveled to North Korea over a 14-month period, among them US citizens, “to show the value of our data” for both counterintelligence and source development purposes.

“The whole strategy was overseen by Bankman-Fried’s father, Joseph Bankman, a Stanford Law professor.”

• FTX Crypto Fraudsters Targeted Poor Black Neighborhoods (Shellenberger)

In the spring of 2022, Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, made Chicago its U.S. headquarters, drawing the applause of the city’s mayor. “This is a mechanism and a tool to bring traditionally underrepresented and ignored populations into the world of crypto so they can take ownership and control of their own financial destiny,” said Mayor Lori Lightfoot at the ribbon-cutting ceremony at the opulent, 9,000 square foot FTX headquarters in May. “I think the sky is the limit.” The reason FTX.US chose Chicago was, in part, to use the city to pilot a cash giveaway program aimed at poor African American residents. FTX was essentially contributing to two ”guaranteed basic income” programs, one run by a nonprofit called Equity And Transformation (EAT), and the other by the city.

Ostensibly a charitable exercise, the program, which FTX also ran in Florida, expanded the market for FTX’s app, and appears to have been a crucial part of a public relations and lobbying effort aimed at winning the support of Democrats for FTX’s agenda to effectively regulate itself. Bankman-Fried was the second largest donor to both President Joe Biden in 2020 and to Democrats in 2022, after George Soros. There is abundant evidence that Bankamn-Fried’s donations bought influence. After Bankman-Fried testified in May to a Congressional committee chaired by Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), she blew him a kiss. The episode is a cautionary tale about how powerful financial interests use progressive social justice ideology to advance their business interests at the expense of the communities they claim to be helping.

“We, like most nonprofits, are shocked by this because they presented this ‘effective altruism’ model to everyone and seemed to push for racial equity,” said Richard Wallace, the co-founder and executive director of EAT, one of the cash-giveaway initiatives. The whole strategy was overseen by Bankman-Fried’s father, Joseph Bankman, a Stanford Law professor. I am the first to report that Bankman had been working for FTX from the very beginning. “From the start [of FTX], whenever I was useful, I lent a hand,” said Bankman.

Teacher’s unions.

• Mask Mandate in Schools Based on Politics Not Evidence (DS)

IIn October of 2022, however, after repeated FOI challenges by our team and after the DfE had claimed that its paper trail could not be disclosed because to do so would constrain future policymaking processes, DfE officials have now finally provided access to some of their paperwork. Despite heavy redactions across the documents revealed by the DfE, the picture that emerges, and seemingly now confirmed by Matt Hancock’s diaries, is both astounding and deeply concerning. The first notable revelation is that the first time an evaluation of the masks in class policy was provided to the Education Minister, at that time Nadhim Zahawi, appears to have been on December 30th 2021. That is seventeen months after schools had first been advised by his department to require children to wear masks in schools. There was no assessment of harms for masks in schools under Gavin Williamson.

The second notable revelation is that more than one third of the DfE’s evaluation document supporting its briefing to the Minister was given over to concerns about the risk of teaching unions encouraging their teachers to walk out of schools on the insidious grounds that schools had become dangerous places to work. Those concerns were given materially greater airtime in that December 2021 briefing document than the few paragraphs devoted to the risks of harm for schoolchildren. It is evident that the adversarial approach of teaching unions had a material influence on the DfE’s advice to the Minister. The evaluation document notes that mandating the wearing of masks in school “could help reduce the risk of some teachers invoking section 44 of the Employment Rights Act” (a statutory provision that allows employees, exceptionally, to decline to work in materially unsafe conditions), a provision the NEU and Unison had apparently flagged to their members in January 2021.

It also cited surveys recording that 71% of Unison members had reported in March 2021 that masks in class were thought to be “an important safety measure”, and 79% of respondents to a private schools survey around the same time had “noted benefits of wearing face coverings in the classroom”. The deeply troubling implication of this limited and largely redacted paper trail is that policymaking within the DfE was led not by a rational evaluation of scientific evidence or after a weighing-up of actual and potential risks and harms for children against known or perceived benefits. Rather, the motivation for the August 2020 policy appears to have been a direct response to union-led pressures, and perhaps also to incitements from some elements of the mainstream media, who seemed intent on shutting down schools in order to ‘protect’ teachers and other adults. Any harms to children appear to have been of subsidiary importance to making adults feel safe.

He’s 92 and proves addiction to power is absolute.

• Soros Bankrolls 253 Groups to Influence Global Media (NB)

Leftist billionaire George Soros used his charities to build ties with hundreds of media organizations around the world involved in news and activist media. The journalism and activist media groups Soros supports mold public opinion on practically every continent and in many languages. They also insulate him from inquiry because reporters see him as an ally, not a target for investigation. The 92-year-old philanthropist’s multimillion-dollar efforts promoting his bizarre “open society” agenda encompass some of the most radical leftist ideas on abortion, Marxist economics, anti-Americanism, defunding the police, environmental extremism and LGBT fanaticism.

His global media clout is massive. An extensive analysis by MRC Business discovered at least 253 news and activist media organizations across the world financed by Soros’ philanthropic organizations. These groups wield massive power over information in international politics. This report is the first in a three-part series that reveals the extent of the reach Soros wields over international media to influence the world population. Soros once told The New York Times that he was working to “bend” the arc of history “in the right direction.” He means it.

Lethal vaccination

German pathologists carry out autopsies on 35 people who #diedsuddenly at home.

In 25 cases they established:

"lethal vaccination associated Myocarditis" pic.twitter.com/s3qlfjxJhY

— DiedSuddenly (@DiedSuddenly_) December 6, 2022

Stossel “Science”

What’s called "science" today, is often just left-wing advocacy.

It’s why @scrowder was able to hoax a “science" conference.

He dressed like a woman, gave a presentation, and got rave reviews.

See what’s gone wrong for yourself in my new video. pic.twitter.com/m4bjNqmodZ

— John Stossel (@JohnStossel) December 5, 2022

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