Aug 012023
 


Claude Monet San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk 1908

 

‘Nothing Is Enough’ For Ukraine – Zelensky (RT)
Mexico Refuses Ukraine Peace Talks Without Russia (RT)
Russia Is Making Its Biggest Geopolitical Shift In 300 Years (Trenin)
Syria: A Tale Of Plunder And Resurrection (Pepe Escobar)
Gonzalo Lira Resurfaces, Talks Torture (RT)
Ukraine War Is A Long-term Danger (Maté-Mearsheimer)
Devon Archer Shows ‘Real Quid Pro Quo’ In Ukraine Was Joe Biden – Comer (JTN)
The Biden Presidency Is Unsustainable (Victor David Hanson)
Will Hunter Biden and Devon Archer ‘Get Last Laugh’? s(Sp.)
Blobulation (Kunstler)
“There Must Be a Reckoning” (Trump Op-Ed)

 

 

 

 

Twitter Files

 

 

 

 

 

 

That comes very close to saying you might as well stop helping us.

‘Nothing Is Enough’ For Ukraine – Zelensky (RT)

The assistance that has been provided by the US and its allies to Ukraine is not enough, President Vladimir Zelensky told Brazil’s Globo News broadcaster in an interview last week. As long as Kiev’s conflict with Moscow carries on, no amount of help will be sufficient, he added. “As long as the war continues, nothing can be enough,” Zelensky told Globo, as reported by Russia’s RIA Novosti. According to Zelensky, Ukraine does not only need weapons. It also needs assistance in what he called an “information war” and more humanitarian aid. He called on Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva to supply Ukraine with demining equipment to clear the farm lands he said had been “mined” by Russian forces and later re-taken by Ukrainian troops.

He also suggested Lula could help Kiev by organizing a meeting between Zelensky and Latin American leaders in which they could “talk.” Zelensky admitted he would never ask Lula for weapons because he knew the Brazilian president would “not provide it” to Kiev. The US and its allies have sent Ukraine over $100 billion worth of weapons, ammunition, and equipment since hostilities with Russia escalated in February 2022, while insisting they are not actually a party to the conflict. The total amount of Western aid to Kiev added up to €165 billion ($185.6 billion) by early summer 2023, according to data from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW). Some of Kiev’s Western backers shouldered additional costs due to the need to accommodate refugees coming from Ukraine, the IfW reported.

Poland, which spent 0.6% of its GDP on bilateral aid to Ukraine, had to spend another 2.2% on Ukrainian refugees, according to the data. The accumulated costs of helping Ukraine exceeded 2% of GDP in Latvia and Estonia as well. Last week, the Pentagon announced another security assistance package for Ukraine worth $400 million, including air defense and anti-tank missiles. Kiev’s constant need for more aid from the West has led to some tension between Ukraine and its Western backers. Ahead of the July NATO summit in Vilnius, Zelensky lashed out at the US-led military bloc on social media, blasting its “indecisiveness” on Kiev’s membership bid and calling it a “weakness.”

British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace then told journalists on the sidelines of the summit that allies “want to see gratitude” from Ukraine for the military assistance that has been provided. He also recalled how he told the Ukrainian officials during his visit to Kiev last year that Western nations “are not Amazon.”

Read more …

“Discussions are expected to be based on the ten-point “peace formula” proposed by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, which in practice amounts to Russia’s unconditional surrender.”

Mexico Refuses Ukraine Peace Talks Without Russia (RT)

Discussing peace in Ukraine makes sense only with the participation of both Kiev and Moscow, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Monday. Because that is not the case with the upcoming talks in Saudi Arabia, he added, his country does not intend to participate. “If both Ukraine and Russia agree to seek options to achieve peace in this conflict, we will participate, if the parties in conflict agree and convene for that purpose,” the president, known as AMLO, said at his regular press conference. “We do not want the war between Russia and Ukraine to continue,” AMLO added. “It is very irrational, people suffer a lot, people are dying, and the only benefits go to the war industry, the makers of weapons.”

High-ranking officials from some 30 countries will meet in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia on August 5-6, to discuss peace in Ukraine, according to the Wall Street Journal. Russia was not invited, however.The Journal described the Jeddah event as a follow-up to a similar meeting held in June in Copenhagen, where Kiev and its Western backers attempted to persuade countries that had so far chosen to remain neutral to support Ukraine. Discussions are expected to be based on the ten-point “peace formula” proposed by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, which in practice amounts to Russia’s unconditional surrender.

Russia has laughed off Zelensky’s “formula” as unrealistic and delusional. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said that Moscow intends to negotiate with the US, which he described as pulling Zelensky’s strings. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said that any attempts to contribute to a peaceful settlement “are worthy of a positive assessment,” and that it “remains to be seen” what happens in Saudi Arabia, however. Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters on Monday that talks in Saudi Arabia “will not be useless” if they “help the West understand that Zelensky’s plan has no prospects.”

Read more …

Africa. On top of BRICS.

Russia Is Making Its Biggest Geopolitical Shift In 300 Years (Trenin)

Last week’s Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg was a landmark event in Moscow’s foreign policy concept and practice. Not so much because it brought scores of African leaders and senior officials to the country. The first summit, four years ago in Sochi, featured even more African heads of state. Also, it is not solely because its agenda expanded beyond economics and included a humanitarian dimension: this is important, but this isn’t all. Essentially, the meeting, with the bureaucratic preparation and the wide public coverage it has received within Russia, testifies to a sea change in Moscow’s worldview and international positioning toward the world’s rising non-Western majority, as laid down in the recently adopted Foreign Policy Concept. St. Petersburg was founded by Peter the Great in the early 18th century as a ‘window to Europe,’ and last week, it served the same purpose for Africa.

Eurocentrism, of course, is still deeply embedded in the Russian elite’s thinking and aspirations. Nevertheless, the failure of Russia’s long travails of Western integration in the wake of the demise of the Soviet Union has now exploded into the proxy war against the United States and NATO in Ukraine. This has produced a historic shift in Moscow’s policies, comparable to the time of Peter the Great in its significance, though in a wholly different direction. For the foreseeable future, the universe of Russia’s foreign policy will remain divided in two large parts: the house of foes including Europe, North America, and the rest of the Anglosphere, and the house of friends elsewhere. The dividing line between the two is a country’s position in relation to the sanctions regime against Russia.

Africa, in this regard, is largely on the right side of that divide. 49 nations out of the continent’s 54 were represented in St. Petersburg. True, only 17 of them participated at the top level. No longer a curious and skeptical observer, as during the Sochi summit four years ago, the West this time made a determined effort, advising, cajoling or threatening African leaders against going to Russia and dealing directly with President Putin. As a matter of fact, Western pressure scored some points (the number of top leaders in St. Petersburg was about half of what it was in Sochi), but failed to undercut the event. What was lost in the status of representation was compensated in intensity of interaction. The amount of time Vladimir Putin personally invested in the event – that actually lasted three days rather than two – was impressive and noteable.

The need to counter Western accusations of Russia’s responsibility for the spike in food prices following Moscow’s withdrawal from the Black Sea grain deal (while conveniently ignoring the fact that promises to Moscow to end the Western blockage of Russia’s agricultural exports were never kept) made the Kremlin go beyond the usual verbal rebuttal. At the summit, Putin not only promised to deliver grain free of charge to five of Africa’s poorest nations, but announced plans to expand commercial shipping and to build logistics by sea and air linking Russia to Africa, create a hub in Africa for Russian trade, and expand Russia’s share of African food imports. As for dealing with Western propaganda, Moscow envisages a major expansion of the Russian media presence on the continent. The idea is that Russians and Africans need to have the means of learning about each other directly, rather than through non-neutral intermediaries in London, Paris, or New York.

Traoré
https://twitter.com/i/status/1685741711786479617

Read more …

“..more than 80 percent of Syria’s daily oil production was stolen and smuggled by the Americans and its proxy “democratic” forces – only in the first half of 2022.”

Syria: A Tale Of Plunder And Resurrection (Pepe Escobar)

[..] Russia remains excessively diplomatic on the issue. Mikhail Bogdanov, Putin’s special representative for the Middle East and Africa, recently told al-Arabiya, “Washington uses the pretext of combating terrorism to be present east of the Euphrates in economically important areas, where crude oil and strategic natural reserves are abundant.” He highlighted US troops deployed at al-Tanf in southern Syria and American “support” for the SDF in northern Syria. Yet that’s not exactly a ground-breaking reveal that would light a fire under the Americans. According to Damascus, Syria’s energy sector as a whole was robbed by an astonishing $107 billion between 2011 and 2022 by a toxic mix of US occupation, “coalition” bombing, and theft or looting by terrorist and separatist gangs.

There are no less than a dozen US military bases in Syria – some bigger than the proverbial lily pads (less than 10 acres, valued at less than $10 million), all of them de facto illegal and certainly not recognized by Damascus. The fact that 90 percent of Syria’s oil and gas is concentrated east of the Euphrates in areas controlled by the US and its Kurdish proxies makes Empire’s job much easier. The de facto occupation hits not only energy-rich areas but also some of Syria’s most fertile agricultural lands. The net result has been to turn Syria into a net importer of energy and food. Iranian tankers routinely face Israeli sabotage as they ship much-needed oil to Syria’s eastern Mediterranean coast.

Complaining does not register a whit with the Hegemon. Earlier this year, the Chinese foreign ministry urged the Empire of Plunder to give Syrians and the “international community” a full account of the oil theft. This was in connection to a convoy of 53 tankers transporting stolen Syrian oil to US military bases in Iraqi Kurdistan in early 2023. At the time, Damascus had already revealed that more than 80 percent of Syria’s daily oil production was stolen and smuggled by the Americans and its proxy “democratic” forces – only in the first half of 2022.

Syria’s permanent representative to the UN, Ambassador Bassam Sabbagh, has repeatedly denounced how the Empire of Plunder’s “theft of resources, oil, gas, and wheat” has plunged millions of Syrians into a state of insecurity, reducing a large part of its population to the status of displaced persons, refugees and victims of food insecurity.The prospects for Syrian reconstruction are slim without expelling the western marauders. That will have to happen via detailed, concerted cooperation between Russian forces, the Syrian Arab Army, and the IRGC’s Quds Force units. By itself, Damascus can’t pull it off. The Iranians constantly attack the Americans, via their militias, but results are marginal. To force the Empire out, there’s no other way apart from making the human cost of stealing Syrian oil unbearable. That’s the only message the US understands.

Read more …

Good luck in Hungary my man.

Gonzalo Lira Resurfaces, Talks Torture (RT)

Chilean-American blogger Gonzalo Lira, arrested by the Ukrainian intelligence in May on charges of pro-Russian sympathies, reappeared online on Monday and told a sordid tale of beatings and extortion while awaiting a show trial. “I was tortured in two of the four cells I was in—by the other prisoners,” Lira posted in a 25-tweet thread on Monday evening, noting that all the torture in the pre-trial detention center (SIZO) was outsourced to the inmates. “I got a cracked rib in my first cell, but it wasn’t too bad. The worst stretch was in my fourth cell. From 1pm on June 21 until 7pm the next day—30 hours” two inmates tortured him and at one point “used a toothpick to scratch the whites of my left eye, while asking me if I could still read if I had just one,” Lira wrote.

One of the torturers was allegedly reprimanded for bruising the 55-year-old blogger’s chest, because the instructions were to leave no marks. Lira posted photographs of the documents laying out the charges against him, suggesting that he was being imprisoned over social media posts and YouTube videos. He said the one video in particular that got the authorities’ attention was “Ukraine: A Primer,” his explanation of the background of the current conflict with Russia, which blamed Kiev for provoking it. According to Lira, he was beaten and tortured because the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) figured it could extort him for all his savings – amounting to some $100,000 when factoring in the confiscated computers and phones.

Told he would be found guilty and sentenced to 5-8 years in a labor camp at his upcoming trial, Lira decided to flee Ukraine and seek asylum in Hungary. “I’m posting this thread just as I’m getting to the border checkpoint,”he tweeted. “If you don’t hear from me in the next 12 hours—whelp! I’m on my way to a labor camp! Wish me luck.” He credited the Chilean embassy for any care he received in jail, noting that the US embassy “called me three times, but gave me nothing but ‘support’—empty bromides.” He also suggested that the US would extradite him back to Ukraine, because Acting Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland “hates my guts, or so I’m told.”

The SBU detained Lira on May 1, accusing him of “producing and distributing materials justifying the armed aggression” of Russia. A judge ordered him to stay in jail pending trial. The first time the SBU detained Lira, in April 2022, he was released without charges after a week, presumably due to public pressure.

Read more …

“I think that we believed that if a war broke out, we had trained up the Ukrainians and armed the Ukrainians up enough that they would hold their own on the battlefield..”

Ukraine War Is A Long-term Danger (Maté-Mearsheimer)

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: [..] The Secretary General of NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, made it very clear that Ukraine would not be admitted into NATO until it had prevailed in the conflict. In other words, Ukraine has to win the war before it can be brought into the alliance. Well, Ukraine is not going to win the war, and therefore, Ukraine is not going to be brought into the alliance. This war is going to go on for a long time. Even if you get a cold peace, it will linger right below the surface and there will be an ever-present danger that a hot war will break out. And in those circumstances, I find it hard to imagine the United States or any West European country agreeing to bring Ukraine into NATO.

And the simple reason is that if you bring Ukraine into NATO in the midst of a conflict, you are in effect committing NATO to defending with military force Ukraine on the battlefield. And that’s a situation we don’t want. We do not want NATO boots on the ground, or to be more specific, we don’t want American boots on the ground. So, it makes perfect sense for Stoltenberg to say that Ukraine has to win. In fact, Ukraine has to win a decisive victory over the Russians within the borders of Ukraine. That is not going to happen, in my opinion, and therefore, as you were saying, Ukraine is not going to become part of NATO.

AARON MATÉ: So, given that, I mean, do you think it’s fair to speculate that the US policy in Ukraine was even more cynical than it appeared? Because basically this war was largely fought because the US refused to agree to neutrality for Ukraine, saying that, ‘Well, we have an open door for NATO; we don’t take people’s membership off of the table.’ But yet, when given the opportunity, the US won’t commit to granting Ukraine a road map to joining NATO, which leads me to conclude that, possibly, what if the aim was never to actually admit Ukraine into NATO but just use the future pledge of NATO membership to de facto turn Ukraine into a NATO proxy, without the obligation, the part of the US and its allies, to actually defend it?

JOHN MEARSHEIMER: It’s possible that’s true. It’s hard to say without a lot more evidence. I have a slightly different view. I don’t think it was so much cynicism. I think it was stupidity. I think you can’t underestimate just how foolish the West is when it comes to the whole question of Ukraine—and all sorts of other issues as well. But I think that the West believed—and here we’re talking mainly about the United States—that if a war did break out between Ukraine and Russia, that the West plus Ukraine would prevail, that the Russians would be defeated. I believe we thought that was the case.

If you look at the run-up to the war in early 2022, what’s really striking to me is that it was quite clear that war was at least a serious possibility, yet the United States and the West more generally did virtually nothing to prevent the war. If anything, we egged the Russians on. And I find this hard to imagine. What was going on here? And I think that we believed that if a war broke out, we had trained up the Ukrainians and armed the Ukrainians up enough that they would hold their own on the battlefield. Number one. And number two, I think, we felt the magic weapon was sanctions, that we’d finished the Russians off with sanctions, and the Ukrainians would end up defeating the Russians, and they would then be in a position where we could admit them into NATO. That is what I think is going on. I don’t think it’s really a case of cynicism as you portray it. It may be. Again, this is an empirical question. We just need a heck of a lot more evidence to see whether your interpretation is correct or mine is. But my sense is, this is worse than a crime. This is a blunder, to put it in [French diplomat] Talleyrand’s famous rhetoric.

Read more …

Comer should have much more.

Devon Archer Shows ‘Real Quid Pro Quo’ In Ukraine Was Joe Biden – Comer (JTN)

Devon Archer’s explosive testimony to Congress could further unravel a narrative about Ukraine corruption that was first cemented during the impeachment case against former President Trump in 2019, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer tells Just the News. Archer, Hunter Biden’s former business partner, reportedly revealed in the closed-door testimony Monday that Hunter Biden was being pressured back in December 2015 to do something about Viktor Shokin, the Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating Burisma. In the same month, Hunter’s father, Joe Biden, had helped get the Ukrainian prosecutor fired while Biden was serving as vice president. Archer also said Burisma would not have survived had it not been for the influence of the Biden family.

“It’s just unbelievable,” Comer said Monday, after Archer testified, on the “Just the News, No Noise” TV program. “We’ve brought forward, a few weeks ago, an FBI document that alleges that Joe Biden was involved in a bribery scheme for this very scenario,” he also said. “Now we know, despite Joe Biden saying he never had any knowledge of any of this, that he regularly spoke on the phone with the owners of these companies.” Comer also said: “When in American history has a vice president ever taken an active role, and demanded that a prosecutor be fired in a foreign country for simply investigating a business that was domiciled in that foreign country? Never. The evidence continues to mount that the real quid pro quo pertaining to Ukraine in Burisma was Joe Biden.”

Comer argued that Biden helped get the prosecutor fired because “he was closing in on his son.” “I think that was basically what we learned today and, you know, more and more people are going to come forward now,” he said. Biden said on the campaign trail during the 2020 election that he never discussed foreign business dealings with son Hunter. Archer testified that President Biden, the vice president in the Obama administration, was on the phone about 20 times with individuals that Hunter was doing business with at the time, according to a lawmaker in the room. Democrats in Congress in 2019 argued that Trump had no basis to ask Ukraine’s president to investigate Hunter Biden over his ties to Burisma and the firing of the prosecutor.

“President Trump, he was impeached over what the Bidens actually were doing,” said Trump spokeswoman Liz Harrington, while also appearing on “Just the News, No Noise.” “Just think of that: a perfect phone call and here we have 20 phone calls, at least, of Joe Biden being involved with, obviously, his son’s business dealings because Hunter, by his own admission, had no business being on the board of Burisma.”Harrington predicted that Trump would eventually be “completely vindicated.”

Read more …

Only reason Joe’s still in office is Kamala.

The Biden Presidency Is Unsustainable (Victor David Hanson)

Imagine if Gavin Newsom was currently Vice President amid the final meltdown of the Biden family consortium. Does anyone doubt that Biden would then either be forced to resign by Democratic politicos (for reasons in addition to his escalating dementia), or would be impeached and perhaps abdicate Nixon-style? The presence of the now predictable mediocrity of Kamala Harris and the impossibility, given her race and gender, of removing her, for now is about all that keeps a cognitively declining Biden still in office. The Left fears what she could do as president to the Democratic Party; conservatives are terrified of what she could do to the country.

Joe Biden’s bewilderment exempts his embarrassments from accountability in the way that Hunter Biden’s addictions excuse his past serial criminality. But the passes granted to both father and son would be now unsustainable with a viable Vice President in waiting. Indeed, the Harris problem explains some of current Democratic strategy. Backroom leaks and growing insider rumors of Biden dementia confirm the portrait of an often befuddled president whom the public by now knows all too well. The aimless House Democrats’ “how-dare-you-even-consider-an-impeachment inquiry” furor, coupled with their half-hearted efforts, along with the media, to refute the actual charges of corruption of the Biden family, suggest that he will not run for reelection—but also not be impeached much less convicted or removed under the 25th Amendment.

So the Harris dilemma explains a lot: finding a way to keep her out of current power until Biden somehow finishes his first term, and thus letting the Democratic 2024 primary candidates organically abort her presidential aspirations. There are a few problems, however, with this strategy. One, can Joe Biden finish his first term? That would require his staff to shorten his already truncated workday for the next 18 months to about 2-3 hours of work per day. He would have to be kept away from photo-ops with young (especially female) children, lest he turkey-gobbles the cheek of another victim to a worldwide audience. He can no longer read off a teleprompter without slurring his words, losing his place, or going off extemporaneously on to topics such as “Vladimir” Zelenskyy, the “Iraq” war in Ukraine, or relief over the curing of cancer.

He cannot hold half-hour press conferences given his incoherence and his angry prevarications. He still insists incredulously that he never discussed the Biden family business with Hunter, although we may soon see transcripts, recordings, and affidavits that he was in fact intimately involved in and profited from it. Hunter is toxic and capable of leaving behind incriminating evidence or engaging in surreal behavior anywhere and anytime. Why would a former crack cocaine addict be brought into the White House, after which a bag of cocaine was for the first time in presidential history found abandoned in the West Wing? (Partial answer: why and how would an addict leave an incriminating crackpipe in a rental car, simply abandon a laptop at a repair shop with evidence of his own felonious behavior on it, or allow his illegally registered handgun to turn up in a dumpster near a school)?

Read more …

“He has an opportunity to be a hero, like the two whistleblowers were, like the judge in Delaware was, who rejected the sweetheart plea deal from the Department of Justice to Hunter Biden..”

Will Hunter Biden and Devon Archer ‘Get Last Laugh’? (Sp.)

Devon Archer, a long time business partner of Hunter Biden, is expected to testify before Congress on July 31 about President Joe Biden’s apparent knowledge of his son’s dealings. On the eve of the hearing, the US mainstream press released a text exchange between Devon and Hunter dated November 15, 2018 concerning Archer’s conviction for his role in a conspiracy to defraud a Native American tribe. Having been convicted in June 2018 by a jury, Archer saw his conviction quickly thrown out by a federal judge in November 2018. “The judge threw out my conviction today,” Devon wrote to Hunter on November 15. “Thank f***ing god! First good news in way too long my friend. I am so happy for you. I know its (sic) been a living hell but put it behind you now and take great steps forward,” responded Hunter, referring to the DoJ as “motherf***ers”. “I swear to god we’ll have the last laugh,” Hunter added.

However, in 2020 the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York reinstated Devon’s conviction. He was sentenced to a year and a day in prison in February 2022. Per the US press, the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York on July 29 requested that the judge schedule a date for Archer to report to prison. On July 31, Devon is due to appear before the House Oversight Committee. Archer has a long record of cooperating with the Bidens. He and the younger Biden co-founded investment firm Rosemont Seneca Partners in 2009 and later established BHR Partners in 2013, a joint-venture between Rosemont Seneca Partners and Chinese investment firm Bohai Capital. Both had also worked on the board of directors of Ukrainian gas firm Burisma. The timing of their business success coincided with Joe Biden’s vice presidency.

Between 2009 and 2014, Archer visited Hunter’s father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, at least twice. Devon played golf with Biden and Hunter at least once in August 2014 in the Hamptons, just months after he and Hunter joined Burisma. All in all, Joe Biden is believed to have met at least 14 of Hunter’s business associates during his vice presidential tenure. It is expected that Devon would shed some light on Joe Biden’s apparent knowledge and even involvement in his son’s business dealings. The elder Biden has repeatedly denied being aware of his son’s financial and business activities. “I don’t want to put words in Devon Archer’s mouth, but I’ll say this: He has an opportunity to come tomorrow to the House Oversight Committee and tell the truth,” House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer told a US broadcaster on July 30.

“He has an opportunity to be a hero, like the two whistleblowers were, like the judge in Delaware was, who rejected the sweetheart plea deal from the Department of Justice to Hunter Biden. Devon Archer could be in that category of Americans that just come and tell the truth. That’s all we want.” As per sources of independent US media, Just the News, Devon would be neither a GOP “hero” nor “Biden protector,” but just a “fact witness” who would answer questions as precisely as he could. “And that makes the line of questioning and follow-ups key to the value of the interrogation,” award-winning investigative journalist John Solomon highlighted in his op-ed concerning the matter. Per the journalist, House Republicans may get “a bonus in the weeks ahead if they can acquire, via subpoena, a cache of documents the FBI gathered from Archer during his 2016 arrest that are currently sitting in a digital storage firm.”

The House GOP’s probe into the Bidens originated during the Trump presidency. In October 2020, the Republicans obtained the so-called “laptop from hell,” a hard disk with a copy of all materials and documents found on Hunter’s laptop abandoned in a Delaware repair shop and then handed over to the FBI. The damning documents raised questions about Joe Biden’s apparent awareness of his son’s business dealings. Some message exchanges even suggested that the then-vice president got hefty bonuses in various pay-to-play schemes. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has recently assumed that the congressional Republicans may kick off an impeachment inquiry into the elder Biden based on the emerging evidence.

Read more …

“Really? Him? This ghastly load of damaged goods?”

Blobulation (Kunstler)

So, Saturday night when the lights were supposedly off at the DOJ, and much of America was tuned out — getting new tattoos, arguing with the re-po man, watching the Orioles — the Blob told a lawyer from the Southern District of New York, one Damian Williams, to send a letter to Federal Judge Ronnie Abrams asking her to set a date for one Devon Archer to report to prison on a bond fraud conviction that Mr. Archer is appealing on the grounds of DOJ sentencing misconduct. Like, can you hurry that up, please? Devon Archer, you recall, was the college room-mate and later close business associate of R. Hunter Biden, First Son, who is in a bit of trouble for laundering money from foreign companies and governments through a score of shell companies that then made large payouts to Biden family members, including the so-called Big Guy currently living in the White House.

Mr. Archer, who has been in hiding (wonder why?) is scheduled to be deposed by the House Oversight Committee today. It is believed that he knows a thing or two about the Biden family business doings, enough, say, to corroborate the shit-ton of documentary evidence already in the Committee’s possession that lays out a pretty stark template of bribery with adumbrations of treason. Sounds serious, a little bit, especially since it’s become ever more obvious that the whole federal law enforcement apparatus has been aware of the Biden family’s activities since well before “Joe Biden” was selected to be elected president.

Of course, Mr. Archer’s testimony would only be the cherry on a well-baked cake. Chairman James Comer (R-KY) of the Oversight Committee says his investigators have rooted out new banking shenanigans on top of the over one hundred suspicious activity reports already in their files, despite obstruction and obfuscation from the Blob’s IRS and FBI arms. He seems determined to press forward and I daresay the Blob will find it very difficult to stop him. Speaker Kevin McCarthy declared last week that all this roguery was “rising to the level of an impeachment inquiry.” D’ya think? What I wonder is: would such an inquiry begin to unravel the secret of who has been running “Joe Biden” lo these many months of face-plants, preposterous utterances, morning “lids,” and other indications that the commander-in-chief of the USA is not much more than a media apparition? One might also ask: was this really the best that Blob could come up with? Really? Him? This ghastly load of damaged goods?

Read more …

The Real Victim of the Russiagate Hoax Wasn’t Me. It Was the American People

“There Must Be a Reckoning” (Trump Op-Ed)

“The report by Special Counsel John Durham makes clear beyond a shred of doubt that the Russia Hoax was the most atrocious weaponization of our government in American history. It was a crime like no other. Seven years ago, I ran for office taking on all the most corrupt forces and entrenched interests in our nation’s capital. My agenda was an existential threat to a Washington establishment that got rich and powerful bleeding America dry. I vowed to stop mass illegal immigration, terminate globalist trade deals, end the sellout of our country to Communist China, stand up to the permanent bureaucracy and the corporate media, and break the neocon addiction to endless foreign wars.

In response, an unelected cabal in the senior ranks of our government, in concert with their chosen candidate, Hillary Clinton, and their allies in the media, launched the de-facto coup attempt known as the Russia Hoax. Their goal was to prevent my election, and failing that, to throw me out of office or sabotage my presidency, undercut my agenda in Congress, block my domestic reforms, and interfere with my foreign policy. For nearly three years, they carried out a massive disinformation campaign and lawless persecution based on the monstrous lie that I was a traitor to my country. These Deep State plotters spied on my campaign. They forged false evidence to get illegal surveillance warrants and smear innocent people through leaks to the media.

They offered $1 million for a fictitious dossier written by a foreign spy to try to frame me with treason. They shattered countless lives. The Durham Report proves that the key figures involved knew from the start that the Russia Collusion conspiracy theory was a lie. The FBI launched their witch hunt without a scrap of legitimate evidence—and when they came upon exonerating information time after time, they covered it up and kept the hoax going forward. The sickness was driven from the very top. FBI Director James Comey constantly pressured agents for more surveillance and warrants, demanding to know over and over “Where is the FISA, where is the FISA?”

Barack Obama and Joe Biden were in on it, too. They were briefed in August 2016 on reports that Clinton planned to “vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian Security Services.” They knew the truth, yet they put our country through hell. As savage and cruel as the Russia Hoax was for me, my family, my staff, and so many innocent bystanders, the real victims were the American People. [..] There must be a reckoning. Accountability now lies in the hands of the voters. The Durham Report has made the stakes abundantly clear, and now the choice is ours: either the Deep State destroys America, or we destroy the Deep State.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Reef

 

 

Beach cows
https://twitter.com/i/status/1685855457955532800

 

 

Gecko

 

 

Gallenkus
https://twitter.com/i/status/1685775177559179265

 

 

Chongqing

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

May 022023
 


Mark Chagall Self portrait 1914

 

Russia Launches Large-Scale Attack On Ukraine’s Military Industry (RT)
Russia’s Attack On Pavlograd Deprives Ukraine Of Resources For Advance (TASS)
Why Tucker Carlson Had To Be Purged (Lew Rockwell)
The Murdochs’ Ukraine Connection (Semafor)
The Consequences Of The Conflict In Ukraine Will Be Felt For Decades (Lavrenin)
US Corporations Cash In On Ukraine’s Oil And Gas (Norton)
Russia, Iran, China Aim To Reboot Persian Gulf Security (Askary)
OPEC+ States To Further Cut Oil Production (RT)
Syria Joins The Trend, Ditches US Dollar For Yuan (CP)
Russia Ramps Up Fertilizer Supply To Asia And Africa (RT)
Econ 101, a Fable (Jim Kunstler)
The Enemy From Within (Chris Hedges)
The Coming War – Time to Speak Up (John Pilger)
The Most Powerful Demolition of Russiagate Yet (Patrick Lawrence)
Jack Dorsey Responds to Elon Musk’s Twitter Leadership (ET)
New Nanoparticle Sensors to Detect Early Cancer via Simple Paper Test (ET)
UK Artificial Intelligence Tool Can Accurately Identify Cancer (Az.)

 

 

 

 

Russia WW2
https://twitter.com/i/status/1652758877895634944

 

 

20 minutes of vaccine injuries

 

 

 

 

Law & Order

 

 

Ukr 2018

 

 

Banned by YouTube, like Bridgen was by the Tories

 

 

@KobeissiLetter
In Acquiring First Republic Bank, JP Morgan Has:
1. Bypassed laws against acquiring bank while controlling 10%+ of US deposits
2. Shared $13 billion in losses with the FDIC
3. Received a $50 billion loan from the FDIC
4. Effectively bought back its own deposits
5. Expects to profit $5 billion+ over the next 5 years
6. Added $18 billion in market cap this morning
This crisis has taught us that rules don’t matter in times of panic.

 

 

 

 

Will there still be a counteroffensive?

Russia Launches Large-Scale Attack On Ukraine’s Military Industry (RT)

The Russian military has launched a large-scale missile attack against Ukraine’s military industry, disrupting production of weaponry and munitions, the Defense Ministry said on Monday. “Tonight, the Russian Armed Forces of the Russian Federation launched a group missile attack with long-range precision weapons, air and sea based, on the military-industrial complex of Ukraine,” the ministry said during its daily media briefing, adding that “all assigned targets were hit.” While the Russian military did not specify which locations had been targeted exactly, Ukrainian media reported strikes in Kiev, Sumy and Dnepropetrovsk regions. The latter has apparently experienced the worst, with a massive explosion reported on the outskirts of the city of Pavlograd.

Unverified footage circulating online shows the aftermath of the strikes near the city. The attack apparently also caused a massive secondary explosion, followed by multiple lesser blasts. Available footage shows numerous columns of white smoke at the location, typically caused by the detonation of solid-fuel projectiles such as anti-aircraft missiles. The Pavlograd strike destroyed the stockpiles of fuel and ammunition of Ukraine’s 46th Airborne Brigade, which has been readying itself for the much-hyped looming Ukrainian counteroffensive, Vladimir Rogov, a senior Russian official in Zaporozhye Region, has claimed, citing the reports of locals. The strikes also destroyed two S-300 anti-aircraft batteries stationed in the area, the official told news agency TASS. According to Ukrainian emergency services, the explosions in Pavlograd damaged and destroyed up to 80 residential homes and about two dozen multi-story buildings. Emergency services have also acknowledged damage to an unspecified “industrial facility” in the area without revealing its exact nature.

In recent days, both Russia and Ukraine have seemingly ramped up long-range attacks against each other, with the uptick in military activities coming ahead of the long-advertised Ukrainian counteroffensive. Moscow has claimed the destruction of several command posts used by the Ukrainian military, and has reported striking groupings of Ukrainian reserves. Kiev’ for its part, has ramped up shelling of residential areas of Russia’s city of Donetsk, as well as other border regions, inflicting multiple civilian casualties. Ukrainian forces also carried out an attack on an oil depot in Crimea, with the spokeswoman for the Ukrainian military’s southern command, Natalya Gumenyuk, confirming the strike came in preparation for Kiev’s counteroffensive.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1653154884034732032

Read more …

“..the 46th brigade of the Ukrainian armed forces was refitted in Pavlograd, with the main reserves of fuel products and supplies being there..”

Russia’s Attack On Pavlograd Deprives Ukraine Of Resources For Advance (TASS)

Three brigades of the Ukrainian armed forces, whose redeployment to the Zaporozhye area completed on April 30, will not be able to shift to active combat actions due to loss of ammunition and fuel stores in Pavlograd as a result of Russia’s attack, chairman of the We Are Together with Russia movement Vladimir Rogov told TASS on Monday. “Redeployment has been completed, with all three brigades at the Orekhov section of the contact line. Part of them have arrived at the settlement of Shcherbaki,” he said. “I think that considering the fact that the 46th brigade of the Ukrainian armed forces was refitted in Pavlograd, with the main reserves of fuel products and supplies being there, they will most likely face logistics problems with supply of all required for combat actions now.


It will take another several days, or probably weeks to prepare, at least 2-3 days depending on how strong the attack on stores in Pavlograd was, whether heavy enough stocks of the Ukrainian armed forces’ reserves were destroyed,” Rogov explained. He said late on Sunday that the Russian forces had carried out strikes on railroad infrastructure and depots for ammunition and fuel in Pavlograd, which Ukrainian troops had been accumulating for an offensive toward Zaporozhye. Rogov told TASS earlier that the Ukrainian army command redeployed the 46th airborne assault brigade, as well as the 116th and 118th brigades to the Zaporozhye area in addition to 12,000 fighters already on the line of engagement near Gulyaipole and Orekhov. According to his assessment, should an offensive be launched in this area, Ukrainian units would avoid fighting in the cities and instead attempt break through to the Sea of Azov east of Melitopol to cut the land corridor to Crimea.

Ukr unit

Read more …

“It is no wonder that he no longer works for Fox News. The question is how he lasted so long..”

Why Tucker Carlson Had To Be Purged (Lew Rockwell)

Tucker came to recognize that the media are ideological state apparatuses whose functions are to indoctrinate, mislead, and support the reigning regime and their narratives, whether past, present, or future. Tucker attempted to subvert those media functions and became a danger to the regime. It is no wonder that he no longer works for Fox News. The question is how he lasted so long. As Rectenwald points out, Tucker has challenged the plot of brain-dead Biden and his gang on neocon controllers to start a nuclear war with Russia over the Ukraine: He said last October: “The question of who blew up Russia’s energy pipelines to Europe, which is not just a question in the news, it’s a historical question, we’ve addressed it a couple of times already, is not really much of a question anymore. So, on television, they’re assuring you that obviously the Russians did it. Vladimir Putin sabotaged his own pipelines.

With his nation at war, Putin intentionally destroyed Russia’s most vital national asset. Now why, you ask yourself, would Putin do that? Well, because…actually no one’s explained why Putin would do something like that. Bad people do bad things. That seems to be the idea. The Biden administration is responsible, either directly or through proxies, for the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines and the environmental catastrophe and the economic collapse that will certainly follow. That is true. It’s done. So the question is, where does that leave us? And that’s the problem. This act leaves us, the United States, with no option but total war with Russia. There is no off-ramp now. There is no way out. We are all in, no matter what that means, no matter where it goes. Are you shocked by this? Was there a vote on this? Did someone ask your opinion? No, but it’s been happening for months in slow motion.

It’s been hidden from public view by the near-total blackout imposed by America media outlets so you probably didn’t know any of the details. For example, in March, the Turkish government tried to broker a peace in Ukraine and they came very, very close. Wasn’t reported widely. Ukraine was prepared to guarantee neutrality, meaning it would not join NATO. That’s what the Russians wanted above all and in return for that, the Russian government would withdraw its forces from Ukraine and that might have been a neat solution, certainly for the rest of us. The global economy wouldn’t need to be destroyed. Nobody would die in a nuclear war. Negotiations to that point advanced to the stage that Vladimir Putin pledged to meet with Zelenskyy to sign a peace treaty and Zelenskyy was ready for it, too and we’re quoting, “I’m ready for a dialog,” he announced, but sadly, Zelenskyy could not act alone. Despite what you may hear on NBC News, Zelenskyy is not the independent leader of a democratic nation. No, not even close. That is a fiction.

Read more …

“..Rupert Murdoch held a previously unreported call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy this spring..”

“In other words, not only are we wrong — which is fine — we are disloyal Americans. We’re doing the bidding of a foreign power,” Carlson said. “That is not fine, that is slander.”

The Murdochs’ Ukraine Connection (Semafor)

Fox News Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch held a previously unreported call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy this spring in which the two discussed the war and the anniversary of the deaths of Fox News journalists last March. The Ukrainian president had a similar conversation with Lachlan Murdoch on March 15, which Zelenskyy noted in a little-noticed aside during a national broadcast last month. The conversations came weeks before the Murdochs fired their biggest star and most outspoken critic of American support for Ukraine, Tucker Carlson. Senior Ukrainian officials had made their objections to Carlson’s coverage known to Fox executives, but Zelenskyy did not raise it on the calls with the Murdochs, according to one person familiar with the details of the calls.

The Murdoch’s have not revealed which of Carlson’s many provocations triggered his firing, and there’s no particular suggestion that Zelenskyy — whom Carlson had called a “dictator” — delivered the final blow. But Carlson’s firing will immediately relieve pressure on key Capitol Hill Ukraine supporters whom Carlson had criticized on air — and sometimes pressed behind the scenes to change their positions on the war. Texas Rep. Michael McCaul has been one of the most outspoken Republican supporters of the US support for Ukraine, stepping out of line to occasionally reprimand figures in his own party who do not share his views on the subject. In a segment last year, the Fox News host told viewers that the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee had privately called his show “Russian disinformation.” “In other words, not only are we wrong — which is fine — we are disloyal Americans. We’re doing the bidding of a foreign power,” Carlson said. “That is not fine, that is slander.”

According to two people familiar with the conversation, the then-Fox News host also made his displeasure to McCaul known in a tense private conversation in which Carlson criticized the congressman’s comments, describing the congressman as having a low IQ. (Both Carlson and McCaul’s office declined to discuss the conversation). The populist Republican right remains hostile to the war effort and at times openly sympathetic to Russia. But none of Fox’s other top figures seem to share Carlson’s zeal. “Clearly, he spooked a lot of members into not being fully supportive of Ukraine,” a senior Republican congressional aide told Semafor. Carlson’s ouster, the aide added, “probably reduces the loudest voice out there against U.S. support.” Regardless of the reason for Carlson’s departure, more moderate pro-Ukraine members of the Republican caucus on the Hill are not hiding their relief.

“There have been some that have argued that he was setting foreign policy for the Republican Party, which I find to be bizarre. Certainly not for me,” Sen. Mitt Romney told the Hill. “To the primary [Republican] voter, the active participant, the grassroot voter, he’s a person they listen to and has a big influence.” Washington has a long history of pushing out dissenting voices on issues of war and peace. “Cable news may struggle to find an entertainer equally skilled at skewering comfortable pieties on the left and right,” Lee Harris and Luke Goldstein wrote in the progressive American Prospect, before being drubbed by their colleagues for ignoring Carlson’s appeal to racists.

Read more …

“..the world’s largest minefield..”. Depleted uranium isn’t even mentioned yet.

The Consequences Of The Conflict In Ukraine Will Be Felt For Decades (Lavrenin)

Since February of last year, when Russia launched its military offensive in the country, mine explosions have killed about 200 civilians in Ukraine, while hundreds more have been injured. The UN has already called Ukraine the most heavily mined state in the world. Yet the contamination continues to grow because of how positional warfare is carried out. With the conflict far from over, the further laying of explosives could have disastrous consequences. Official reports claim that 250,000 square kilometers (almost 62 million acres) of Ukrainian territory have been mined. This is equal to the entirety of the UK (244,000 square kilometers). According to Prime Minister Denis Shmigal, his country has become the world’s largest minefield, which has even spurred the government to create a special center to deal with the fallout.

Experts believe that the situation in Ukraine is worse than in Afghanistan and Syria. The number of unexploded ordnance, anti-personnel, anti-tank, and other mines and explosive shells is estimated to be in the millions of units. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s minefields are growing exponentially. In the past year, the entire length of the front line on both sides has been mined. They are often laid in a scattered manner and without mapping. Given Ukraine’s large size, this greatly complicates the process of finding and neutralizing them. “Indeed, there is a chance that the mined territories may expand further, both due to the prolongation of the conflict and the likely offensive from either side, which may move hostilities to previously unaffected territories,” Maxim Semenov, a political analyst and specialist in conflicts in the post-Soviet space, told RT.

Official sources also report that the contaminated area is expanding. Last summer, the Ukrainian Deminers Association stated that minefields covered about 133,000 square kilometers of Ukraine, but the number recently announced by Shmigal is already double that. Meanwhile, there are no solutions that can be totally effective, and most importantly, quick and simple. Demining is the exclusive job of sappers. For example, back in the 2000s, an average of 50 people a day were blown up on anti-personnel objects in Angola, one of the most heavily mined countries in the world. To this day, about 500,000 explosive devices remain, despite the fact that dozens of sapper units from all around the world have helped out in the country. It’s also worth noting that both the fighting and the scope of contamination in Angola were a lot less severe than in Ukraine.

Cavoli

Read more …

There is no coincidence.

US Corporations Cash In On Ukraine’s Oil And Gas (Norton)

As the war in Ukraine drags on, the government is selling off state assets in a big privatization spree. US fossil fuel corporations like ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Halliburton are participating in discussions to take over the Eastern European nation’s oil and gas industry, as Kiev pushes to increase production to replace Russian energy exports. This comes soon after Ukraine’s Western-backed leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, sent a friendly video message to a US corporate lobby group, thanking companies like BlackRock, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and Starlink, and promising “big business” for others. In September, Zelensky also symbolically opened the New York Stock Exchange, announcing that his country is “open for business”, offering more than $400 billion in “public-private partnerships, privatization, and private ventures” for US companies.

The Ukrainian government has used the war as an excuse to ram through some of the most aggressive anti-worker laws on Earth. The director of the Kiev-based workers’ rights NGO Labor Initiatives warned of a “full-scale attack on Ukraine’s labour rights”, writing in a German government-funded journal that the “war cannot be used to justify stripping workers of their rights”. In an attempt to bring an end to this war, China has taken the lead in advocating peace talks. Brazil’s President Lula da Silva has backed Beijing’s efforts. The West, on the other hand, has vociferously opposed all attempts at diplomatic negotiations and instead pushed to escalate the NATO proxy war on Russia, sending fighter jets and tanks to Kiev. Ukrainian officials, meanwhile, are treating their country as a for-profit company, frequently travelling to the United States in search of lucrative business opportunities.

The CEO of Ukraine’s state-owned energy company Naftogaz, Oleksiy Chernyshov, flew to Washington, DC this April to meet with US political and corporate officials. The Financial Times reported that Chernyshov sat down with representatives from ExxonMobil and Halliburton, following a similar meeting with Chevron in January. “The negotiations with big US fossil fuel players are part of a strategic push to increase natural gas production that Ukrainian officials believe could help replace Russian supply to Europe in the years ahead”, the newspaper wrote. Halliburton is notorious for its involvement in corruption schemes, involving fat government contracts. In 2017, it was fined $29.2 million by the US Securities and Exchange Commission for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act with highly profitable oilfield services contracts in Angola.

Halliburton is also the world’s biggest provider of fracking services, or hydraulic fracturing, a controversial form of gas extraction that is so environmentally destructive it was banned in the United Kingdom. Responding to the Financial Times report, economist Yanis Varoufakis, who previously served as Greece’s minister of finance, tweeted: “And there you have it. EXXON, HALLIBURTON & CHEVRON, after Iraq, are now taking over the Ukrainian oil and gas fields. Planning to introduce large scale fracking – a clear and present threat to poison U’s agriculture”. Chernyshov, the CEO of Ukraine’s state energy company Naftogaz, told the newspaper, “We want them [Halliburton] to expand [their presence] dramatically. We want them there seriously — boots on the ground”.

Read more …

“There are currently over 60 western military bases or facilities – and around 50,000 US troops – stationed in West Asia.”

Russia, Iran, China Aim To Reboot Persian Gulf Security (Askary)

The recent normalization of relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, brokered by China, is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of a larger paradigm shift in West Asia. Russia, Iran, and China (RIC) are all playing key roles in shaping this change, which could make Anglo-American interventions in the region obsolete. Although Russia, Iran, and China are often viewed as enemies, rivals, or competitors by the west, they have emerged as the main powerbrokers designing exit strategies from many of the western-sponsored crises in West Asia. While Russia and Iran have played more decisive military and security roles in this development, China has weighed in with its economic heft to bring to the fore this regional paradigm shift. Much of this change will be directed at the littoral states of the Persian Gulf, which the west has viewed as its exclusive zone of influence since early last century – for both its strategic waterway routes and its oil and gas wealth.

But in just the past few years, those dynamics have shifted dramatically. Today, Russia, Iran, and China share similar security concerns about western-manipulated conflicts and divisions in their regions. The RIC geography consists of relatively large territories with very diverse ethnic compositions. This diversity has been frequently weaponized by the west – in the form of separatist groups – to destabilize the central governments. Examples are rife: Russia faced a Chechen insurrection which ended with a decisive victory over the separatist elements, but at a high price. In China, the Muslim card was used to destabilize the western regions through support for Uyghur separatist groups that launched numerous terrorist attacks on mainland China. Similarly, Iran’s mosaic of Persian, Azeri, Kurdish, Lur, Arab, and Baloch ethnic groups has been a clear target for the use of separatism as a tool to destabilize the central government.

In the 1980s, Former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski advocated for “The Arc of Crisis” to fracture most of the countries on the border with China and the Soviet Union by supporting religious and ethnic separatist groups. In addition to security concerns related to separatist groups, there are also economic security concerns, such as the control of sensitive maritime route choke points, including the Malacca, Hormuz, and Bab al-Mandab Straits. These critical waterways can be used to cut off energy supplies and trade between China and the Persian Gulf region. To address these threats, Russia, Iran, and China have been conducting regular navy exercises. There are currently over 60 western military bases or facilities – and around 50,000 US troops – stationed in West Asia. Washington claims this oversized military presence is required in order to provide “security and prosperity” for the region, yet recent history suggests they are primarily there to maintain western hegemony.

Read more …

“The total oil output downfall is expected to amount to 1.66 million barrels per day..”

OPEC+ States To Further Cut Oil Production (RT)

Several members of the OPEC+ group, including Saudi Arabia and Russia, the cartel’s two biggest oil producers, have begun reducing crude output. The cuts, starting from May and lasting until the end of 2023, are expected to support global oil prices. In particular, Saudi Arabia and Iraq have started reducing oil production by 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) and 211,000 bpd respectively. Meanwhile, the UAE, Kuwait and Kazakhstan are slashing production of oil by 144,000 bpd, 128,000 bpd and 78,000 bpd respectively. Algeria and Oman have also joined the voluntary output reduction, with the former cutting production of crude by 48,000 bpd and the latter by 40,000 bpd. Gabon will see its output reduced by 8,000 bpd.


Earlier this year, Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said that Russian producers would extend a voluntary reduction in oil output of 500,000 bpd from the average February level until the end of the current year. The total oil output downfall is expected to amount to 1.66 million barrels per day. The production cuts are aimed at supporting oil prices, which had declined by more than 20% in the twelve months through April 5. The measure is also expected to mitigate the impact on crude oil prices of a sluggish global economy and of the fallout from the banking crisis in the US. The latest decision came as an additional step to the agreements to collectively reduce oil output by two million bpd that came into effect in November 2022 and came as part of the OPEC+ deal.

Read more …

Syria’s back in the Arab fold..

Syria Joins The Trend, Ditches US Dollar For Yuan (CP)

In a recent development, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has called for the abandonment of the US dollar for global transactions and urged the adoption of the Chinese yuan for international settlements. This move comes as part of the ongoing de-dollarization efforts led by the BRICS nations, in response to US sanctions imposed on Russia following the invasion of Ukraine. President al-Assad’s call for the adoption of the Chinese yuan in international settlements comes as the BRICS nations, including Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, have been increasingly focusing on alternative currencies. As the United States faces various macroeconomic challenges, a shift towards alternative currencies seems inevitable, with the BRICS nations spearheading this effort.

According to President al-Assad, the world needs China’s political and economic presence to facilitate the necessary global power shift. Syria has recognized the merit in the ongoing de-dollarization efforts and believes that the BRICS nations can play a leading role in dismantling the US dollar’s status as a global reserve currency. During a meeting with the Chinese Government’s Special Envoy for the Middle East, Zhai Jun, President al-Assad praised China’s mediation efforts that have led to the rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, both of which are applying for membership in BRICS. He believes that the improvement of their relations will positively impact the stability of the entire region. Zhai Jun assured President al-Assad that Beijing would continue to support Damascus in international forums and their battle against hegemony, terrorism, and external interference.

China’s diplomacy has been active in the region and beyond as it seeks to expand its influence on the global stage. China has also initiated talks about the potential enlargement of BRICS and is trying to promote the use of the yuan in international trade while supporting efforts to reduce dependence on the US currency. In a recent meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Iran’s Minister of Transport and Urban Development Mehrdad Bazrpash called for the expansion of bilateral cooperation between the two countries in various sectors, including banking, energy, transit, transportation, and tourism. He highlighted the potential for utilizing port access to establish shipping lines, thereby boosting exports and imports between Tehran and Damascus.

While Iran has fought for a decade to support the Syrian government, it currently has a small share of Syria’s trade, losing out to financially stronger players. Iranian parliament member Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh stated in May 2020 that Iran had invested $30 billion in Syria and needed to recoup it. With reconstruction costs in Syria estimated between $250-$400 billion, strengthening economic ties with regional countries is crucial. Syria’s call for the adoption of the Chinese yuan for international settlements is a significant development in the ongoing de-dollarization efforts. With the BRICS nations leading the charge, it remains to be seen how this development impacts the Middle East and the potential membership of Saudi Arabia and Iran in the BRICS alliance.

Read more …

“Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin revealed that Moscow was preparing two batches of free fertilizer to be shipped to Kenya and Nigeria..”

Russia Ramps Up Fertilizer Supply To Asia And Africa (RT)

Russian fertilizer company PhosAgro reported this week a significant exports increase to emerging markets in Asia and Africa, in the face of external restrictions. PhosAgro said its exports of agrochemical products to India saw a five-fold increase in 2022, amounting to 2.7 million tons, while supplies to other Asian countries more than doubled, to 400,000 tons. According to the company, PhosAgro is Russia’s largest exporter of fertilizers to Africa, with shipments to the continent having increased by a quarter last year to 500,000 tons. “Russian business faced unprecedented challenges last year: business as usual was no longer the case when it came to the rules and mechanisms of international trade, including in fertilizers and agricultural products,” the chairman of PhosAgro’s board of directors, Viktor Cherepov stated, noting that the company had been forced to quickly adapt to a new reality.


“Even in this environment, we were able to increase our supplies – primarily to emerging markets. We did everything to ensure that farmers in our priority market of Russia and all around the world had access to our fertilizers, which stand out thanks to their high quality and eco-efficiency,” Cherepov said. PhosAgro’s overall sales are up by 6.4% to 11 million tons year-on-year, marking the highest figure in the history of the company, according to the report. Earlier reports showed that Russia was India’s biggest supplier of phosphate fertilizers last year due to discounts amid Ukraine-related Western sanctions. PhosAgro has reportedly offered Indian companies a heavy discount on its products, while also covering bank commissions for payment transfers. Apart from exports, Russia has been supplying fertilizers and grain to poorer African nations free of charge. One such shipment of some 20,000 tons of fertilizer has reportedly been delivered to Malawi. Last week, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin revealed that Moscow was preparing two batches of free fertilizer to be shipped to Kenya and Nigeria.

Read more …

“Humans are ingenious animals, enterprising and resilient, though there will surely be fewer of us around..”

Econ 101, a Fable (Jim Kunstler)

Every story has a beginning, a middle, and an end, of course. As the fossil fuel supply drew closer to its end and further from the long, happy middle time of plenty, the business model for making-and-doing started to shudder and crack. It didn’t fall apart all at once, but it put many makers-and-doers out of business. They stopped making-and-doing. By then, the financial economy was a colossal phantom parasite that dwarfed its host. It was burdened with so much unreality, so many workings dissociated from nature, that it could no longer pretend to be anything but a phantom.To keep the host alive, it upchucked some of what it had sucked out of the host, adulterated with money based on unreal promises, hopes, and dreams. This turned more and more into a spewage of money so debased by broken promises, hopes, and dreams that making-and-doing just about stopped altogether.

That is when the phantom parasite of finance began to dissolve and humans began to regard it as an hallucination that had gone away, dissolved into mist. What remained were a lot humans embedded in nature. And that is the place where the humans of Western Civ find themselves in the 2020s. Western Civ was the first region of the world that tapped into the fossil fuel orgy and it is now the first region exiting this phase of history. Even when the financial hallucination melts into air there will be a lot of real things around that were made before the great age of making-and-doing stopped. Humans are ingenious animals, enterprising and resilient, though there will surely be fewer of us around. These fewer humans will likely be healthier, working more directly in nature and no longer compromised by the pernicious by-products of all the bygone making-and-doing.

We will figure out how to use the left-over useful things to get food out of nature and keep making other useful things. The new making-and-doing will happen at nothing like the former pitch or scale. It may represent a time-out from the lost experience of the old, ever more elaborate and complex makings-and-doings. After a while, humans may discover a new way to get more out of nature. Or maybe not. In the meantime, lodged as we are in the present, in the moment of this epochal transition, anxiety besets many millions of minds. Not a few minds have grown disordered watching all this go on around them, dreading the journey from one disposition of things to the next. Some have made themselves obnoxious. Let them do what they will until they tire themselves out. Keep your own well-ordered minds on the tasks ahead, your own makings and doings within the bounds of what is real. Take some time out to make some music. There are still plenty of good instruments around, and you can always sing. Put a meal together with your friends and loved ones and sing out. It’s all right, Ma, Bob sang out long ago, It’s life and life only.

Read more …

“It is not in our national interest to go to war with Russia or China. But militarists need war the way a vampire needs blood.”

The Enemy From Within (Chris Hedges)

America is a stratocracy, a form of government dominated by the military. It is axiomatic among the two ruling parties that there must be a constant preparation for war. The war machine’s massive budgets are sacrosanct. Its billions of dollars in waste and fraud are ignored. Its military fiascos in Southeast Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East have disappeared into the vast cavern of historical amnesia. This amnesia, which means there is never accountability, licenses the war machine to economically disembowel the country and drive the Empire into one self-defeating conflict after another. The militarists win every election. They cannot lose. It is impossible to vote against them. The war state is a Götterdämmerung, as Dwight Macdonald writes, “without the gods.”

[..] The mantra of the militarized state is national security. If every discussion begins with a question of national security, every answer includes force or the threat of force. The preoccupation with internal and external threats divides the world into friend and foe, good and evil. Militarized societies are fertile ground for demagogues. Militarists, like demagogues, see other nations and cultures in their own image – threatening and aggressive. They seek only domination. It was not in our national interest to wage war for two decades across the Middle East. It is not in our national interest to go to war with Russia or China. But militarists need war the way a vampire needs blood.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev and later Vladimir Putin lobbied to be integrated into western economic and military alliances. An alliance that included Russia would have nullified the calls to expand NATO — which the U.S. had promised it would not do beyond the borders of a unified Germany — and have made it impossible to convince countries in eastern and central Europe to spend billions on U.S. military hardware. Moscow’s requests were rebuffed. Russia was made the enemy, whether it wanted to be or not. None of this made us more secure. Washington’s decision to interfere in Ukraine’s domestic affairs by backing a coup in 2014 triggered a civil war and Russia’s subsequent invasion. But for those who profit from war, antagonizing Russia, like antagonizing China, is a good business model. Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin saw their stock prices increase by 40 percent and 37 percent respectively as a result of the Ukraine conflict.

A war with China, now an industrial giant, would disrupt the global supply chain with devastating effects on the U.S. and global economy. Apple produces 90 percent of its products in China. U.S. trade with China was $690.6 billion last year. In 2004, U.S. manufacturing output was more than twice China’s. China’s output is now nearly double that of the United States. China produces the largest number of ships, steel and smartphones in the world. It dominates the global production of chemicals, metals, heavy industrial equipment and electronics. It is the world’s largest rare earth mineral exporter, its greatest reserve holder and is responsible for 80 percent of its refining worldwide. Rare earth minerals are essential to the manufacture of computer chips, smartphones, television screens, medical equipment, fluorescent light bulbs, cars, wind turbines, smart bombs, fighter jets and satellite communications.

Read more …

“..it was during Barack Obama’s two terms that American foreign policy flirted seriously with fascism..”

The Coming War – Time to Speak Up (John Pilger)

In 2003, I filmed an interview in Washington with Charles Lewis, the acclaimed investigative journalist. We discussed the invasion of Iraq a few months earlier. I asked him, “What if the constitutionally freest media in the world had seriously challenged George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld and investigated their claims, instead of spreading what turned out to be crude propaganda?” He replied. “If we journalists had done our job, there is a very, very good chance we would have not gone to war in Iraq.” I put the same question to Dan Rather, the famous CBS anchor, who gave me the same answer. David Rose of the Observer, who had promoted Saddam Hussein’s “threat,” and Rageh Omaar, then the BBC’s Iraq correspondent, gave me the same answer. Rose’s admirable contrition at having been “duped,” spoke for many reporters bereft of his courage to say so.

Their point is worth repeating. Had journalists done their job, had they questioned and investigated the propaganda instead of amplifying it, a million Iraqi men, women and children might be alive today; millions might not have fled their homes; the sectarian war between Sunni and Shia might not have ignited, and Islamic State might not have existed. Cast that truth across the rapacious wars since 1945 ignited by the United States and its “allies” and the conclusion is breathtaking. Is this ever raised in journalism schools? Today, war by media is a key task of so-called mainstream journalism, reminiscent of that described by a Nuremberg prosecutor in 1945: “Before each major aggression, with some few exceptions based on expediency, they initiated a press campaign calculated to weaken their victims and to prepare the German people psychologically… In the propaganda system… it was the daily press and the radio that were the most important weapons.”

One of the persistent strands in American political life is a cultish extremism that approaches fascism. Although Trump was credited with this, it was during Barack Obama’s two terms that American foreign policy flirted seriously with fascism. This was almost never reported. “I believe in American exceptionalism with every fibre of my being,” said Obama, who expanded a favourite presidential pastime, bombing, and death squads known as “special operations” as no other president had done since the first Cold War. According to a Council on Foreign Relations survey, in 2016 Obama dropped 26,171 bombs. That is 72 bombs every day. He bombed the poorest people and people of colour: in Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan. Every Tuesday — reported The New York Times — he personally selected those who would be murdered by hellfire missiles fired from drones. Weddings, funerals, shepherds were attacked, along with those attempting to collect the body parts festooning the “terrorist target.”

Read more …

“..to retrieve the truth buried alive in the cesspit of lies and cynical propaganda operations the deep state — and I am fine with this term — inflicted upon us..”

The Most Powerful Demolition of Russiagate Yet (Patrick Lawrence)

Sometime in the mid–Russiagate years, when it became clear that America was on a swoon back into the collective neuroses of the 1950s, I began to think we would have to wait for future historians to retrieve the truth buried alive in the cesspit of lies and cynical propaganda operations the deep state — and I am fine with this term — inflicted upon us in response to Donald Trump’s rise in national politics. There seemed no sorting out the godawful mess amid the incessant waves of mis– and disinformation to which our corporate media subjected us. The task, if you were in the scribbling trade, was to write truthfully for readers, of course, but also to contribute, however modestly, to a record that tore a hole in mainstream media’s façade so that later historians looking back on our time could peer through it to see things as they were.


It is not an exotic thought: America has had alternative histories of this kind for nearly as long as it has been called America, and they often reflect revisionist readings of contemporary accounts. Jacob Siegel has just done all of us and all the historians to come an immense service in this way. He recently published an article in Tablet magazine, where he is a senior editor. His subtitle, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at Disinformation,” is literate, gutsy and suggestive of the gloves-off essay underneath it. This is the most powerful, sustained rip into the Russiagate disaster I have yet read — and certainly the best work published to date on the destruction of American democracy at the hands of a ruling elite that invented (1) the figment of a disinformation crisis and (2) the frightening apparatus that now drowns us in disinformation in the name of combating it. “Disinformation is both the name of the crime and the means of covering it up,” Seigel writes pithily, “a weapon that doubles as a disguise.”

Read more …

@jack has a new tool to sell…

Jack Dorsey Responds to Elon Musk’s Twitter Leadership (ET)

Twitter’s former CEO, Jack Dorsey, criticized Elon Musk’s leadership and taking over of Twitter of the company in a series of social media posts last week. Users of the social media platform Bluesky asked Dorsey a question about whether Musk was the right owner. His response was, “No.” “No. Nor do I think he acted right after realizing his timing was bad. Nor do I think the board should have forced the sale. It all went south,” Dorsey wrote last week. In April 2022, Dorsey previously described Musk as the “singular solution” to take over Twitter. Further, he said he trusted Musk to “to extend the light of consciousness” amid reports Musk wanted to purchase the social media platform.

He added that he is glad new social media platforms such as Bluesky—a new social media platform that is being called a possible alternative to Twitter that has been recently touted by mainstream media figures and celebrities—are being created and built. Dorsey, who is reportedly still a Twitter shareholder, has backed Bluesky since 2019. “I think he should have walked away and paid the [$1 billion]” breakup fee, he also said. After making a bid to purchase Twitter for $44 billion, or around $54.20 per share, Musk later signaled that he wanted to back out of the deal. It wasn’t clear that either Musk or Twitter had that option, as Musk would have had to provide proof to a Delaware court that he had a good reason for walking away from the deal.

When Dorsey headed Twitter before departing under the company’s previous management, he received widespread criticism for the alleged silencing of right-wing accounts or individuals with viewpoints that strayed too far from the mainstream narrative. While he was in charge, prominent people such as former President Donald Trump, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), and anti-COVID-19 vaccine writer Alex Berenson were permanently suspended. Meanwhile, a number of journalists have revealed internal Twitter messages over the past several years suggesting there was outsized external influence on Twitter’s content moderators to censor, deplatform, or reduce the reach of posts from a range of prominent accounts. The files also revealed alleged secret blacklists targeting several prominent accounts. Dorsey, in December 2022, suggested that Musk release everything to the public.

“If the goal is transparency to build trust, why not just release everything without filter and let people judge for themselves? Including all discussions around current and future actions?” Dorsey said on Twitter. “Make everything public now.” Musk, who laid off a significant portion of Twitter’s staff after he took over the company, has not publicly responded to Dorsey’s criticism. Reports have indicated that Musk laid off about 7,500 employees, while the Tesla CEO has explained it was done for cost-cutting purposes. Other tech companies, including Meta and Amazon, have laid off significant numbers of employees in recent months amid tightening macroeconomic conditions. As for Dorsey, he unveiled the Bluesky project four years ago, which was initially funded by Twitter to create an “open and decentralized standard for social media.” He wrote at the time that “the goal is for Twitter to ultimately be a client of this standard.”

While there have been claims Bluesky would distinguish itself from Twitter by allowing users to control their own data and be free from corporate influence, some researchers have said otherwise. According to The Wrap, Ashley Gjovik, an American program manager, posted screenshots warning that Bluesky’s terms of service give Dorsey and BlueSky “a ‘perpetual’ and ‘irrevocable’ license to all your content (posts, names, likeness, pics).” She added that “Bluesky can delete your account for any reason, but may refuse to delete it if you ask.” All disputes are resolved through individual arbitration. Over the past week or so, some figures like model Chrissy Teigen and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) have stated they’ve joined Bluesky. Over the weekend, a large number of legacy news outlets like The New York Times, The Verge, Vox, and Fortune published articles on the platform.

Read more …

Two articles about early cancer detection in the same day. Nanoparticles…

New Nanoparticle Sensors to Detect Early Cancer via Simple Paper Test (ET)

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have designed nanoparticle sensors that could diagnose early-stage cancer through a simple urine test on a strip of paper. The scientists said these sensors, designed to detect many cancerous proteins, could also distinguish the type of tumor, how it responds to treatment, and whether it has metastasized. “We are trying to innovate in a context of making technology available to low- and middle-resource settings. Putting this diagnostic on paper is part of our goal of democratizing diagnostics and creating inexpensive technologies that can give you a fast answer at the point of care,” said Sangeeta Bhatia, a biomedical engineer at MIT and senior author of the study published on April 24 in Nature Nanotechnology.

Bhatia’s team had initially investigated the concept of detecting naturally occurring cancer biomarkers, such as proteins or circulating tumor cells, in the patient’s blood samples. However, these biomarkers are hard to find, especially at early stages, prompting the team to create “synthetic biomarkers” that could diagnose cancer by amplifying small-scale changes occurring within small tumors. Nanoparticles previously created by the team can detect the activity of proteases, biological catalysts that can help tumor cells spread. However, since this equipment is not always available, the researchers developed new nanoparticle sensors that could be analyzed more easily and affordably using a technology that reads repetitive DNA sequences called CRISPR.

Specifically, the nanosensors are designed so that when they encounter a tumor, they shed short sequences of DNA that will eventually end up in the patient’s urine. The urine sample can be analyzed using a paper strip that recognizes a signal activated by a CRISPR enzyme called Cas12a. When a particular DNA “barcode” is present, Cas12a enhances the signal so it appears as a dark strip on the paper test.

Read more …

… and AI.

UK Artificial Intelligence Tool Can Accurately Identify Cancer (Az.)

Doctors, scientists and researchers in the UK have built an artificial intelligence model that can accurately identify cancer in a development they say could speed up diagnosis of the disease and fast-track patients to treatment, Report informs referring to The Guardian. The AI tool designed by experts at the Royal Marsden NHS foundation trust, the Institute of Cancer Research, London, and Imperial College London can identify whether abnormal growths found on CT scans are cancerous. The algorithm performs more efficiently and effectively than current methods, according to a study. The findings have been published in the Lancet’s eBioMedicine journal.


“In the future, we hope it will improve early detection and potentially make cancer treatment more successful by highlighting high-risk patients and fast-tracking them to earlier intervention,” said Dr Benjamin Hunter, a clinical oncology registrar at the Royal Marsden and a clinical research fellow at Imperial. The team used CT scans of about 500 patients with large lung nodules to develop an AI algorithm using radiomics. The technique can extract vital information from medical images not easily spotted by the human eye. The AI model was then tested to determine if it could accurately identify cancerous nodules. “According to these initial results, our model appears to identify cancerous large lung nodules accurately,” Hunter said. “Next, we plan to test the technology on patients with large lung nodules in clinic to see if it can accurately predict their risk of lung cancer.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Hammer and nail

 

 

 

 

I dare you
https://twitter.com/i/status/1653083623891910680

 

 

 

 

Rhino
https://twitter.com/i/status/1653061612167675905

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Mar 292023
 


René Magritte Sixteenth of September 1956

 

Vax Report: $147 Billion in Damage, Tens Of Millions Injured, Disabled (ZH)
The Best Way to Protect US Troops in Syria (Ron Paul)
Global Security Dialogue Should Replace Arms Race – Belarus (TASS)
Bolton Issues Warning On Belarus (RT)
Zakharova: ‘Summit For Democracy’ Reflects US’ Neocolonial Practices (TASS)
Russia Knows Why It Fights In Ukraine, Russians Must Be Freed – Lavrov (TASS)
Serbian President ‘Very Afraid’ About Current Situation In The World (TASS)
Ukraine Being Obliterated – Trump (RT)
Drone Incident Hindered US Intelligence Gathering – CNN (RT)
Ukraine Struggles With Starlink Troubles (RT)
US Admits To Another Failed Hypersonic Test (RT)
Bellingcat & Mouse Game: Advance Russian Intel Of Nordstream Attack (Helmer)
Matt Taibbi Says Democrats Ditched Free Speech (ZH)
Jamie Dimon In Hot-Seat As Sworn Deposition Looms In Epstein Lawsuits (ZH)
The Great Food Reset Has Begun (Fazi)
Startling Rise In Testicular Injuries Among Woman Athletes (BBee)

 

 

 

 

Kherson Refugees Reject Western Media Claims of Russia “Kidnapping” Them

 

 

Tucker TikTok

 

 

Todd

 

 

 

 

Note: all these numbers are for 2022 alone.

Vax Report: $147 Billion in Damage, Tens Of Millions Injured, Disabled (ZH)

A new report estimates that 26.6 million people were injured, 1.36 million disabled, and 300,000 excess deaths can be attributed to COVID-19 vaccine damages in 2022 alone, which cost the economy nearly $150 billion. Research firm Phinance Technologies, founded and operated by former Blackrock portfolio manager Ed Dowd, Yuri Nunes (PhD Physics, MSc Mathematics) and Carlos Alegria (PhD Physics, Finance), split the impact of the vaccines into four broad categories to estimate the human costs associated with the Covid-19 vaccine; no effect or asymptomatic, those who sustained injuries (mild-to-moderate outcome), those who became disabled (severe outcome), and death (extreme outcome).


Data on vaccine disabilities and injuries comes directly from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), while the excess death figures are derived from official figures on deaths in the US via two different methods. It’s important to note that people in one category (injured, for example) can move into latter categories of severity – which this analysis does not take into consideration. “We need to remember that not only are these groupings an attempt to characterize different levels of damage from the inoculations, they are not static and could interact with each other,” reads the report. “For instance, there might be individuals who had no visible effects after vaccination but nonetheless could still be impacted.” “Individuals with mild injuries from the inoculations could, over time, develop severe injuries to the extent of being disabled, or an extreme outcome such as death.”

https://twitter.com/DowdEdward/status/1640734879355682816

Estimating the economic cost: In analyzing each of the above categories, Phinance used absolute excess lost worktime to determine that the direct economic cost of vaccine injuries was $79.5 billion in 2022, and $52.2 billion for those with severe disabilities. For deaths, Phinace used the average yearly absolute rise in excess deaths since 2021, which was 0.05% for the 25-64 year-old demographic, which amounted to $5.6 billion in lost productivity. In total, they found a total “economic cost” of $147.8 billion in 2022 due to the Covid-19 vaccines.

Read more …

“Bring them home. Tomorrow. Do not wait another day!”

The Best Way to Protect US Troops in Syria (Ron Paul)

Last week saw a sharp increase in attacks on US troops occupying northeastern Syria, with a drone strike against a US base blamed on “pro-Iran” forces and a US counter-strike said to have killed at least 19 people. After the US retaliation, another strike by “pro-Iran” forces hit a number of US sites in Syria. It may be just a matter of time before there are more strikes against the 900 US troops based in Syria against Syria’s wishes. One US contractor was killed last time. Next time it could be many more Americans. What’s behind the sudden escalation? Fundamental changes in the Middle East over the past month have highlighted how indefensible is the continued US occupation of Syria and Iraq. Take, for example, the recent historic mending of relations between former arch-enemies Saudi Arabia and Iran which was brokered by Washington’s own arch-enemy, China.

US policy in the Middle East has long been “divide and conquer,” dating back at least to the Iran/Iraq war in the 1980s. US switching sides in that war guaranteed that the maximum amount of blood was spilled and that the simmering hatreds would continue to prevent any kind of lasting peace. Then the US invaded Iraq twenty years ago and turned Iraq into an Iranian ally. That’s neocon foreign policy for you: a 100 percent failure rate. So this month China, which is interested in creating a regional transportation corridor that would include Iran, came in and instead of bombing, invading, and occupying – Washington’s modus operandi – actually brokered the restoration of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Republicans and Democrats in the US both love to attack China, but China has achieved what the US has resisted for years: peace in the region.

Should we be surprised that the continued US occupation is not welcome in the Middle East? The United States occupies that huge chunk of Syria where the oil and agriculture is located and the goal appears to be producing profits for US multinational corporations from stolen natural resources and preventing the natural wealth of Syria to be used to rebuild that country. Is it any wonder why the US is so unpopular in the Middle East? How hypocritical is it that the Biden Administration has spent $100 billion of our dollars to expel Russia from occupying proportionally less territory in Ukraine than Washington occupies in Syria? And Washington claims to stand for the “international rules-based order,” while they decimated an Iraq and Afghanistan that did not attack us, and before that a Serbia that could not have threatened us if it wanted to.

The end of the US occupation of the Middle East is upon us and the sooner we realize that the better. We have no business meddling in their politics, occupying their territory, and stealing their resources. Americans joined the US Military to defend the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, yet they have been manipulated by corrupt DC officials into occupying foreign lands and stealing their oil. Maybe this is why the US military cannot meet its recruitment goals? Here’s an easy way to protect US forces in Syria from further “Iran-allied” attacks: Bring them home. Tomorrow. Do not wait another day!

Syria

Read more …

“..multilateral disarmament mechanisms, non-proliferation and arms control..”

Global Security Dialogue Should Replace Arms Race – Belarus (TASS)

Minsk is confident that the rhetoric of confrontation and the arms race should be replaced with dialogue on bolstering the architecture of global security, the press service of the Belarusian Foreign Ministry told TASS on Tuesday. “The Belarusian side is confident that to replace the confrontation rhetoric and the escalating arms race, a constructive and mutually respectful dialogue should emerge, directed at strengthening the architecture of global and regional security, multilateral disarmament mechanisms, non-proliferation and arms control, including in the nuclear sphere,” the diplomatic agency said replying to a question by TASS about the outsized reaction by a number of countries to reports on the prospective deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons on Belarusian soil.


“We have been urging and continue to urge all our partners to [do] this,” the Belarusian Foreign Ministry reiterated. On March 25, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that Russia, at Minsk’s request, would deploy its tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, precisely the way the United States deployed its own nuclear weapons on the territory of its allies. Moscow has already handed over to Minsk the nuclear-capable Iskander system. According to the Russian leader, the construction of a storage facility for tactical nuclear weapons on Belarusian territory would be completed on July 1.

Read more …

Belarus wants peace, but Bolton does not.

Bolton Issues Warning On Belarus (RT)

Former US National Security Advisor John Bolton has warned that the Biden administration may not be taking Russian President Vladimir Putin’s pledge to move tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus seriously enough. Bolton added that he could foresee Russia and Belarus potentially merging into a single state. “[Putin] may not be bluffing here in the sense he may actually move tactical nuclear weapons into Belarus,” Bolton told CNN on Monday.Putin announced on Saturday that Russia will move some of its tactical nuclear weapons to facilities in Belarus as early as this summer. The Russian president said that he made the decision after the UK announced it would transfer toxic depleted uranium munitions to Ukraine, a move he described as “absolute recklessness.”

While Bolton is taking Putin’s words seriously, the White House has brushed them off. “We haven’t seen any movement of any tactical nuclear weapons or anything of that kind since this announcement,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Monday. Anonymous US and EU security officials told Politico they haven’t seen any indication that Russia plans on moving the weapons in the immediate future. Bolton’s concerns go beyond the stationing of Russian nuclear weapons in Belarus. He told CNN that the possibility of Russia reabsorbing the entire territory of Belarus is “something I don’t think we’ve been paying enough attention to.”

Belarus was made a territory of the Russian Empire by Catherine the Great in the 18th century, and was subsequently united with Russia under the Soviet Union. Since declaring its independence from the USSR in 1990, Belarus has remained a close ally of Russia, with Minsk and Moscow signing the Union State treaty in 1999, establishing a customs union and granting each other’s citizens freedom of movement. Military cooperation between the two states has since deepened, with a 2021 doctrine establishing a joint group of forces stationed in Belarus to deter threats from the West. Russian and Belarusian troops have held multiple military drills since last year, and Russian forces pushed south into Ukraine from Belarusian territory last February. As a result, Belarus has been hit with many of the same Western sanctions as Russia.

Bolton is well known for advocating regime change and military intervention around the world, and last year called for the overthrow of Putin. However, he has persistently warned about the consequences of current US foreign policy. Before cautioning about the growing ties between Russia and Belarus, he warned earlier this month that “the Chinese, the Russians, Iran, North Korea and several others are moving to shore up their relations” amid an apparent lack of strategic objectives in Washington.

Read more …

Hungary and Turkey are not invited, but that shining model of democratic values, Ukraine, is.

Zakharova: ‘Summit For Democracy’ Reflects US’ Neocolonial Practices (TASS)

The US-conceived ‘Summit for Democracy’ is nothing but a manifestation of Washington’s neocolonial practices, as the summit seeks to legitimize American instruments of control, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Tuesday. “The so-called ‘Summit for Democracy’ is a clear manifestation of neocolonial practices in US foreign policy. Behind the efforts to organize the summit is the desire to update and legitimize the American instruments of external control and interfere in the domestic affairs of other countries, forcing everyone to see the world through the prism of the ‘rule-based order’ promoted to serve Washington’s global interests,” the diplomat pointed out in her commentary in connection with the “Summit for Democracy” organized by the United States on March 28-30 under the pretext of supporting democracy in the world.

According to Zakharova, the summit is all about forming an ideological platform for combatting those countries whom the American political elite labels as autocracies, primarily Russia and China. “Washington is trying to consolidate the Western community and bring its rivals over to its side under the slogan ‘combatting autocratic regimes’,” the diplomat stressed. “The US has decided to take thematic sessions to regional platforms and appoint co-chair countries to pretend that its pseudodemocratic summit is universal. At the same time, the whole process is controlled either by the Americans themselves or by large non-governmental organizations (NGOs). These NGOs supervise the compliance of member states with the obligations undertaken by them. Apparently, they know nothing about the principle of sovereign equality of all states based on the UN world order,” Zakharova pointed out.

The diplomat underscored that she regretted the decision of the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to take part in such an “unworthy spectacle.” “On the whole, it is hard to expect from the American organizers of the ‘Summit for Democracy’, as well as from their ideological partners, anything other than pompous hypocrisy amid democratic messianism and certainly anti-Russian statements in the context of the Ukrainian crisis. Especially considering the fact that the tone of the summit will be set by a former comedian (Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky – TASS), not a democrat, who is the head of a criminal Nazi regime which deliberately violates all democratic values in his country. The fact that such people are invited to take part in the event clearly demonstrates how far Americans are from their declared goal of promoting democratic values,” she stressed.

As the Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman pointed out, Moscow was against American democracy being imposed as “infallible, the only way.” “The US has no moral right to lecture others amid chronic domestic issues. This binary way of thinking in ‘black-white’ or ‘good guys vs bad guys’ does not work in real life. And it is in no way good for building long-term relations with sovereign countries,” Zakharova emphasized. The diplomat also pointed out that a multipolar world order in international relations was actively being formed with the help of the global majority. “Responsible participants in international communication must not engage in ‘democratization’ and division. The US and its allies have to return to complying with the norms of international law and get involved in creating conditions for peaceful coexistence and mutually beneficial cooperation,” Zakharova concluded.

Read more …

“Now, this has all been thrown to the wind and to the Neo-Nazis, who now run the show in Kiev..”

Russia Knows Why It Fights In Ukraine, Russians Must Be Freed – Lavrov (TASS)

Russia is conducting its special military operation in Ukraine to protect Russians and the Russian-speaking population, which the Kiev authorities oppress in violation of all international norms. Russia wants to free these people from any threat to their lives, traditions and families, the country’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told TASS in an interview on Tuesday. “We <…> are conducting our special military operation precisely for these people who have been oppressed in violation of all possible international norms and principles, in violation of all these norms on which Ukrainian independence is based. Ukraine enshrined in its Declaration of Independence that it wanted to be a neutral, non-aligned state. It promised to ensure the rights of all Russians and Russian-speaking peoples, as well as other ethnic minorities. It was interested in living in peace, in the spirit of good neighborliness and harmony with all its neighbors. Now, this has all been thrown to the wind and to the Neo-Nazis, who now run the show in Kiev,” Lavrov said.


“And that is why we know what we are fighting for. We know that we want to free these people from any threat the current Ukrainian authorities can pose to their lives, traditions, and families,” the top diplomat stressed. Lavrov added that “history and geography cannot be chosen,” that is why Russia has “no right to leave these people to Nazis and racists.” Russian President Vladimir Putin in his State of the Nation Address pointed out that the country’s special military operation was launched to protect the people, ensure the country’s security and eliminate the threat emanating from the Neo-Nazi Kiev regime.

Read more …

“As for our little Serbian ship, we will steer it with a firm hand to preserve peace and stability..”

Serbian President ‘Very Afraid’ About Current Situation In The World (TASS)

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said on Tuesday that he was ‘very afraid’ about what is going on in the world. “I am not much of an optimist, I am a small leader of a small country. There are many leaders from big countries in Europe who know better about everything,” Vucic said at a joint news conference with Greek President Katerina Sakellaropoulou. “I fear that the consequences of this will be far worse than what we have seen so far,” he stressed. “But I am a small man from a small country, and I believe that the giants from other countries know better and can solve things. As for our little Serbian ship, we will steer it with a firm hand to preserve peace and stability,” Vucic stressed.


In February, Vucic opined that the conflict in Ukraine would only worsen over the next five to six months, eventually spiraling out of control. The president believes that after the decision to supply tanks to Ukraine, a decision to supply F-16 fighter jets will follow. On March 17, the Slovak government approved the transfer of 13 MiG-29 fighters to Ukraine, Prime Minister Eduard Heger said. At the same time, it was stressed that the fighters were transferred for defense purposes, not for attacking. The country’s Defense Ministry announced that for the shipment of MiG-29 to Kiev, Slovakia expects to be paid back by the European Union in the amount of $900 million. Earlier, Polish authorities also said they were planning to supply MiG-29 to Ukraine.

Read more …

“possible we’d be in World War III with these idiots that are doing what they are doing.”

Ukraine Being Obliterated – Trump (RT)

Donald Trump has once again claimed that he would need just 24 hours to negotiate peace in Ukraine. Speaking to Fox News, the former US president warned of a possible nuclear escalation and urged the hostilities to be ceased immediately. “The key to that is that war has to stop now, because Ukraine is being obliterated,” Trump told host Sean Hannity in an interview on Monday. Trump compared footage from the conflict to “hundreds of these demolition sites” that he used to see as part of his construction business. “There was not a building standing,” the former US leader explained. Trump repeated his assertion that he could reach a peace deal in Ukraine within 24 hours if elected back into office. However, he declined to explain his strategy, claiming it would be “very easy” but would not work if revealed prematurely.


Trump suggested that the US presidential election might not even happen next year, arguing it was “possible we’d be in World War III with these idiots that are doing what they are doing.” Such a conflict would make the two previous world wars look like “patty cakes,” he added. The nearly hour-long interview with Hannity was Trump’s first appearance on Fox News since he announced his 2024 presidential run. The former president has a complicated relationship with the leading conservative US news channel, which he has criticized for its positive coverage of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, his potential challenger for the Republican Party’s nomination. Hannity has been among the most outspoken Trump supporters on the network.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1640544019729252352

Read more …

“The new drone routes have kept the flights more than 40 nautical miles not only from Crimea but the Ukrainian coast as well..”

Drone Incident Hindered US Intelligence Gathering – CNN (RT)

A decision by President Joe Biden’s administration to reroute drone flights over the Black Sea to avoid provoking a direct conflict with Russian forces has curtailed intelligence gathering on the Ukraine crisis, a senior US military official has told CNN. Flying drones at greater distances from the conflict zone and at higher altitudes has reduced the quality of the intelligence that they can gather, CNN reported on Tuesday, citing the senior official without identifying the source. The rerouting was allegedly ordered earlier this month, after a US Air Force MQ-9 Reaper drone was forced down over the Black Sea by a Russian Sukhol Su-27 fighter jet on March 14.

Although the Pentagon was publicly dismissive of Russian complaints about the drone flight, declaring that the US will continue to “fly and operate wherever international law allows,” Washington began routing its unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) further south, keeping them at a greater distance from the Crimean peninsula and eastern portions of the Black Sea. The rerouting was done to “avoid being too provocative,” CNN previously cited another US official as saying. However, the outlet said, there is already “an appetite” to resume flying the UAVs closer to Crimea. A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment on how, if at all, the quality of intelligence gathering in the Black Sea has been affected. “We maintain a robust ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) capability in the region and beyond,” he said.

The Pentagon accused Russian pilots of reckless flying, claiming that one of the jets clipped the propeller of the unmanned aircraft, causing it to go down. However, the footage purportedly shot by the drone, only showed a Sukhoi Su-27 fighter jet buzzing over it and allegedly ejecting fuel in the process. Russia denied hitting the drone or using weapons against it, and said the US aircraft was flying with its transponder switched off in a no-go zone declared by the Russian military. The new drone routes have kept the flights more than 40 nautical miles not only from Crimea but the Ukrainian coast as well, rather than the 12 miles normally recognized as the limit of a nation’s airspace, CNN said. Having moved the flights further south, it may be more difficult to return to the former routes and assert freedom of international airspace for US aircraft, the senior official said. US Navy vessels have stayed out of the Black Sea since December 2021.

Read more …

“The official representative office of Starlink in Ukraine can’t help anyone either, as it has not yet opened – although the Kiev authorities granted it the required license last summer.”

Ukraine Struggles With Starlink Troubles (RT)

Many Starlink users across Ukraine have seen their terminals stop working, the Kiev outlet Strana reported on Tuesday. According to experts who spoke to the outlet, the outage is not some nefarious plan by Elon Musk to harm Ukraine, but the result of criminals trying to scam Starlink parent company SpaceX. The typical scenario is that a terminal stops working and flashes the message “No active account,” Vladimir Stepanets, founder of a Starlink support group, told Strana. “When they contact SpaceX technical support, the terminal owners are told there were signs of fraudulent activity,” he explained. SpaceX provided the Kiev government with a number of Starlink terminals beginning in February last year, which Ukraine has used for military communications.

Musk has objected to the “weaponization” of his technology, and last month restricted Kiev’s ability to use Starlink for remotely controlling drone strikes. When one US senator complained, Musk replied that his company “will not enable escalation of conflict that may lead to WW3.” The current problem is not due to some kind of Musk censorship, experts tell Strana, but rather the consequence of scam artists exploiting the flow of Starlink donations to Ukraine. Because demand for Starlinks has always outpaced their supply, and equipment sold directly by SpaceX costs 30% more than in Poland or Czechia, many “enterprising individuals” buy the terminals there and then resell or donate them to Ukraine.

Stepanets and engineer Oleg Kutkov described the scheme by which the scammers use promotions and discounts to acquire the Starlinks, but then use “chargeback fraud” to not pay SpaceX. “Starlink can be stolen, bought for a promotion for one euro, or listed for return, and the router that comes with it is resold to Ukraine. Then the person who bought it installs the router, and the account is blocked,” Kutkov told Strana. Stepanets said “tens of thousands” of terminals were in effect stolen from SpaceX through chargeback fraud, including many operated by the Ukrainian military.

Ukrainian users have no way of knowing whether their terminal is legitimate or stolen – until it stops working. Because SpaceX blacklists accounts associated with stolen equipment, users also have no way of reloading their subscription balance, while the debt continues to accrue. Stepanets also warned users not to attempt any “life hacks” through the military or the Ministry of Digital Development. “This can have bad consequences not only for you, but for the whole country. And it definitely won’t work,” he told Strana. The official representative office of Starlink in Ukraine can’t help anyone either, as it has not yet opened – although the Kiev authorities granted it the required license last summer.

Read more …

It appears to be about the heat-resistant coating of the missiles at Mach 10-15. Only Russia found one.

US Admits To Another Failed Hypersonic Test (RT)

The US Air Force has revealed at least the fourth failed test of a hypersonic missile system made by defense contractor Lockheed Martin, suggesting that it’s more likely to adopt a competing system built by Raytheon. “The one we just had was not a success,” Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall told members of a US House committee on Tuesday. “We did not get the data that we needed from that test, so they’re currently examining that to try to understand what happened.” Kendall was referring to a March 13 test of the AGM-183A Air-launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW), a hypersonic attack cruise missile, off the coast of Southern California. He gave no specifics on what went wrong with the launch. His comments may have come as a surprise to lawmakers because the Air Force issued a press release last week indicating that the ARRW test “met several objectives.” The release made no mention of the test’s failure.

The ARRW has been under development since 2018 and was delayed after three failed booster tests in 2021. The Air Force claimed the first successful launch of the missile last May, saying it reached speeds exceeding Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound. US forces don’t yet have a fully operational hypersonic missile system, as Washington has fallen behind Russia and China in the race to develop such weapons. Hypersonic missiles travel at speeds over Mach 5 and are highly maneuverable, making them difficult to shoot down. In light of the latest ARRW test, the Air Force is “more committed” to its other hypersonic program, the Hypersonic Attack Cruise Missile (HACM), Kendall told lawmakers. A budgeting decision on whether to adopt the ARRW is expected to be made next year, after as many as two more test launches.

The Air Force reportedly received about $423 million in research and development funding for the ARRW in the past two years, and it has requested an additional $150 million in the budget for its next fiscal year. HACM funding totaled $423 million for the current fiscal year alone, and the Air Force plans an additional $1.9 billion in spending on the program over the next five years. The HACM program has been “reasonably successful” so far, Kendall said. He added, “We see a definite role for the HACM concept. It’s compatible with more of our aircraft, and it will give us more combat capability overall.”

Read more …

“The NATO intelligence publicity department known as Bellingcat..”

Bellingcat & Mouse Game: Advance Russian Intel Of Nordstream Attack (Helmer)

The NATO intelligence publicity department known as Bellingcat has just produced new NATO-sourced evidence of an elaborate cat-and-mouse game which the navies and air forces of Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Poland, and the US played against Russian forces in the Baltic Sea off Bornhom Island in the week before the detonation of explosives on the Nord Stream gas pipelines last September 26. Cat and mouse is also the game the NATO propaganda agencies are now playing. The aim of the intelligence, published last week by the quasi-state German media platform called T-Online, and in the Danish offshoot of Bellingcat known as Oliver Alexander, is to accuse the Russian Navy of the pipeline attack, using a mini-submarine and deep-sea divers.

This is based on NATO and US identification and tracking of a six-vessel Russian flotilla several days before the explosions – an intelligence vessel, a deep-sea operations vessel, two tugs, and heavily armed anti-ship and anti-submarine frigate and corvette. “It was precisely such mini-submarines that could have placed the explosive charges attaching it to the pipelines, experts suspected from the very start,” T-Online claims, using the hypothetical followed by a conditional plus three more hypotheticals. “If it was confirmed that the SS-750 was at the scene, the Russian Navy would probably be the prime suspect from then on. ‘It would make absolute sense to use something like the AS-26 for such an attack,” Danish corvette captain and military analyst Johannes Riber told T-Online about this matter.

‘That would be the most plausible explanation so far for what happened to the Nord Stream pipeline.’” T-Online concluded: “In official statements, the activities of the Russian navy in the days before the attacks have so far played no role. Neither the German, Danish or Swedish investigators, nor NATO or the armed forces of the Baltic Sea states wanted to comment on them when asked by T-Online. Thus, the criminal case remains unsolved for the time being, but a chain of evidence has been added. It does not point to the USA or Ukraine. Some tracks now are leading to Moscow.” [..] the evidence Bellingcat is presenting as suspicion of Russian culpability in laying the pipeline charges, should be interpreted as evidence that the Russians had advance intelligence of the pipeline attack operation, and they were investigating what they could at the time — after the charges had been laid, but before they were detonated on September 26.

Viewed in this light, the Bellingcat reports confirm how crowded the crime scene was before the crime was committed – how many naval and air force units were operating, all of them under NATO command coordination – Danish, Swedish, German, Polish, and American. A crime scene full of suspects but empty of the weapon.

Read more …

“The modern Democratic Party is not the same one that your parents or grandparents were members of in the past. It’s obsessed with starting World War 3 in Ukraine, eroding the First Amendment, dismantling the Second Amendment, and normalizing ‘woke’ culture.”

Matt Taibbi Says Democrats Ditched Free Speech (ZH)

Independent journalist Matt Taibbi – of recent “Twitter Files” fame – has exposed the fact that civil liberties are no longer popular among Democrats. Taibbi appeared on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo” to reiterate his perspective that the modern Democratic Party no longer represents the values of the everyday American. “About all of this — Matt, how do you feel about all of this? I know before you started discovering this bad behavior, you identified as a Democrat, and now you’ve got all of your friends, quote-unquote, in the media attacking you for exposing this,” Bartiromo asked.


“Yeah, it’s funny, I mean, I was raised in a traditional ACLU liberal, I believed in free speech all my life. That was one of the things, frankly, that attracted me to the Democratic Party when I was a kid, the idea that we were the party that believed in letting everybody have a say, and we’ll just make a better argument, and that’s how the system works,” Taibbi said. He continued, “Apparently, something very dramatic has changed in politics in America, and there’s been a shift. There’s no question about it anymore, that now the parties have had a complete reversal on how they read these issues.”

Taibbi leads a team of journalists, including Michael Shellenberger, who have been given access to Twitter Files, revealing a startling network of government agencies, think tanks, and Twitter personnel coordinating efforts to attack the First Amendment. What we’ve learned from the Twitter Files is the ever-expanding coalition of groups working with the government and social media to target and censor Americans, including government-funded organizations. Twitter files are chilling in the details and show how Democrats have weaponized government and colluded with corporations to wage war on the First Amendment.


The modern Democratic Party is not the same one that your parents or grandparents were members of in the past. It’s obsessed with starting World War 3 in Ukraine, eroding the First Amendment, dismantling the Second Amendment, and normalizing ‘woke’ culture. What caused such a significant shift in the party in just a few short years? And what kind of blowback will Taibbi get for telling these truths?

Shellenberger

Read more …

“This case was not just Jes Staley … there will be numerous documents that go far beyond his office to the executive suite.”

Jamie Dimon In Hot-Seat As Sworn Deposition Looms In Epstein Lawsuits (ZH)

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon will be in the hot seat, as he is expected to be deposed under oath regarding his bank’s decision to keep deceased pedophile sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein as a client despite public knowledge of his status as a registered sex offender, the Financial Times reports, citing people familiar with the matter. The sworn deposition – the latest development in two combined high-profile cases, is expected to take place in May behind closed doors. The lawsuits claim that JPMorgan, which banked Epstein for 15 years from 1998 to 2013, benefited from human trafficking and ignored several internal warnings about their client’s illegal behaviour. The lender has described the claims as meritless.

The pre-trial process unearthed communications between JPMorgan employees that contained a reference to a “Dimon review” into the bank’s relationship with Epstein. The bank has denied that Dimon had any knowledge of such a review. -FT The US Virgin Islands and a group of Epstein victims claim Dimon had knowledge of Epstein’s activities based on emails exchanged between the late sex offender and former executive Jes Staley using his JPMorgan email address. “Jamie Dimon knew in 2008 that his billionaire client was a sex trafficker,” argued US Virgin Islands attorney Mimi Liu during a March hearing in front of Manhattan US District Judge Jed Rakoff, referring to the year Epstein was first criminally charged with sex crimes, CNBC reports. “If Staley is a rogue employee, why isn’t Jamie Dimon?” Liu said during the hearing to discuss the bank’s efforts to have the USVI lawsuit against the bank dismissed.

“Staley knew, Dimon knew, JPMorgan Chase knew,” Liu continued, noting that there were several cash transfers and wire transfers made by the prolific pedophile (Epstein), including several hundreds of thousands of dollars paid to several women which should have been flagged as suspicious. “They broke every rule to facilitate his sex trafficking in exchange for Epstein’s wealth, connections and referrals,” said Liu, adding “This case was not just Jes Staley … there will be numerous documents that go far beyond his office to the executive suite.”

That said, a person familiar with the bank’s internal probe into what Dimon knew says there are no records of any direct communications with Epstein, or records of discussions related to retaining him as a client. Last week Judge Rakoff denied JPMorgan’s request to dismiss the lawsuits, and allowed several claims to proceed against the bank. He also ordered JPMorgan to hand over documents between Dimon and former general counsel Steve Cutler from before 2006, the year Epstein was first arrested.

Read more …

Excellent overview from Thomas Fazi: “For now, at least, there is still time to resist the Great Food Reset.”

The Great Food Reset Has Begun (Fazi)

France is in flames. Israel is erupting. America is facing a second January 6. In the Netherlands, however, the political establishment is reeling from an entirely different type of protest — one that, perhaps more than any other raging today, threatens to destabilise the global order. The victory of the Farmer-Citizen Movement (BBB) in the recent provincial elections represents an extraordinary result for an anti-establishment party that was formed just over three years ago. But then again, these are not ordinary times. The BBB grew out of the mass demonstrations against the Dutch government’s proposal to cut nitrogen emissions by 50% in the country’s farming sector by 2030 — a target designed to comply with the European Union’s emission-reduction rules.

While large farming companies have the means to meet these goals — by using less nitrogen fertiliser and reducing the number of their livestock — smaller, often family-owned farms would be forced to sell or shutter. Indeed, according to a heavily redacted European Commission document, this is precisely the strategy’s goal: “extensifying agriculture, notably through buying out or terminating farms, with the aim of reducing livestock”; this would “first be on a voluntary basis, but mandatory buyout is not excluded if necessary”. It is no surprise, then, that the plans sparked massive protests by farmers, who see it as a direct attack on their livelihoods, or that the BBB’s slogan — “No Farms, No Food” — clearly resonated with voters.

But aside from concerns about the impact of the measure on the country’s food security, and on a centuries-old rural way of life integral to Dutch national identity, the rationale behind this drastic measure is also questionable. Agriculture currently accounts for almost half of the country’s output of carbon dioxide, yet the Netherlands is responsible for less than 0.4% of the world’s emissions. No wonder many Dutch fail to see how such negligible returns justify the complete overhaul of the country’s farming sector, which is already considered one of the most sustainable in the world: over the past two decades, water dependence for key crops has been reduced by as much as 90%, and the use of chemical pesticides in greenhouses has been almost completely eliminated.

Farmers also point out that the consequences of the nitrogen cut would extend well beyond the Netherlands. The country, after all, is Europe’s largest exporter of meat and the second-largest agricultural exporter in the world, just behind the United States — in other words, the plan would cause food exports to collapse at a time when the world is already facing a food and resource shortage. We already know what this might look like. A similar ban on nitrogen fertiliser was conducted in Sri Lanka last year, with disastrous consequences: it caused an artificial food shortage that plunged nearly two million Sri Lankans into poverty, leading to an uprising that toppled the government.

EvaVlaar
https://twitter.com/i/status/1640787139896942612

[..] Alongside healthcare, agriculture is the main focus of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which finances several initiatives whose stated aim is to increase food security and promote sustainable farming, such as Gates Ag One, CGIAR and the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. Civil society organisations, however, have accused the Foundation of using its influence to promote multinational corporate interests in the Global South and to push for ineffective (but very profitable) high-tech solutions which have largely failed to increase global food production. Nor are Gates’s “sustainable” agricultural activities limited to developing countries. As well as investing in plant-based protein companies, such as Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods, Gates has been buying huge amounts of farmland in the US, to the point of becoming the biggest private owner of farmland in the country.

The problem with the globalist trend he embodies is obvious: ultimately, small and medium-scale farming is more sustainable than large-scale industrial farming, as it is typically associated with greater biodiversity and the protection of landscape features. Small farms also provide a whole range of other public goods: they help to maintain lively rural and remote areas, preserve regional identities, and offer employment in regions with fewer job opportunities. But most importantly, small farms feed the world. A 2017 study found that the “peasant food web” — the diverse network of small-scale producers disconnected from Big Agriculture — feeds more than half of the world’s population using only 25% of the world’s agricultural resources.

Traditional farming, though, is suffering an unprecedented attack. Small and medium-scale farmers are being subjected to social and economic conditions in which they simply cannot survive. Peasant farms are disappearing at an alarming rate across Europe and other regions, to the benefit of the world’s food oligarchs — and all this is being done in the name of sustainability. At a time when almost a billion people around the world are still affected by hunger, the lesson of the Dutch farmers could not be more urgent, or inspiring. For now, at least, there is still time to resist the Great Food Reset.

Read more …

“This new wave of testicular injuries to female athletes has really come out of nowhere..”

Startling Rise In Testicular Injuries Among Woman Athletes (BBee)

A new study indicates a disturbing trend as testicular injuries in women’s sports are increasing at an astounding rate. Researchers are baffled as these statistics have skyrocketed from literally zero reported testicular injuries among female athletes just a few years ago. “This new wave of testicular injuries to female athletes has really come out of nowhere,” said Dr. Ryan Kitchen of Boston College’s Institute of Sports Medicine. “Years ago, there were absolutely no reported testicular injuries that occurred during women’s sporting events. If only we could determine what led to this sudden rise. Such a puzzle!”

Institutions around the world have also noticed the disturbing trend and are pouring research dollars into discovering the cause, which is almost certainly a complicated issue with no easy or obvious answers whatsoever. Critics have argued that it’s not actually possible for a female athlete to suffer a testicular injury. “Yeah, that can’t happen,” said Dr. Adam Kinunen of the Restore Sanity to Sports research group. “Considering the fact that having testicles in the first place means a person is not a female, it would stand to reason that such an injury is impossible. In layman’s terms, these are dudes.”

Trans activist groups have come out in full force against anyone who dares to suggest women cannot have their testicles injured because women can’t have testicles. “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!” said Sunshine Fluffsprinkle, spokesperson for Insanity Now, a trans rights group in response to the findings. “BLLRRRAAAWWRRRR FFFRRGGGTHTHTH!” At publishing time, concerned researchers in the field of sports medicine were consulting with athletic equipment manufacturers to design protective athletic cups specifically designed to protect female testicles.

Tucker trans

Read more …

 

 

 

 


This dog was spotted politely waiting by a pizza truck. He doesn’t have to say what he wants. They already know his order. It is pizza.

 

 

Ames window

 

 


There are whales alive today who were born before Moby Dick was written. Some of the bowhead whales in the icy waters off of Alaska today are over 200 years old

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Mar 112023
 
 March 11, 2023  Posted by at 9:43 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  54 Responses »


Edward Hopper The barber shop 1931

 

Banking Rout Rattles Global Markets (RT)
The Real-World Impact Of SVB’s Failure (ZH)
The US Opts For Ham Handed Political Gestures (Larry Johnson)
US Must Pull Troops Out Of Syria, Stop Marauding – China (TASS)
Russia And China Dominate Washington’s Mindset (Gupta)
Moveable Multipolarity in Moscow: Ridin’ the ‘Newcoin’ Train (Escobar)
Pope Francis Sees Countries’ ‘Imperial Interests’ In Ukraine Conflict (TASS)
West Was Seeking Pretext To ‘Get Its Claws Into’ Russia – Lavrov (TASS)
Lavrov: Western Media Version Of Nord Stream Events ‘Incoherent Babble’ (TASS)
CIA Issued Advance Nord Stream Warning To Allies – WSJ (RT)
Everything, All at Once (Kunstler)
Lavrov Likens Protests In Georgia To 2014 Kiev Coup (RT)
Irish MEP Blasts West’s ‘Criminal’ Approach To Ukraine (RT)
Borrell: EU To Increase Financial & Military Support To Ukraine (Az.)
France’s First Lady Fails In Transgender Lawsuit (RT)

 

 

 

 

Nap/Macgregor

 

 

 

 

 

 

Arestovich

 

 

 

 

Shaman

 

 

 

 

And nobody saw anything coming?

Banking Rout Rattles Global Markets (RT)

European and Asian stock markets plummeted on Friday, following a rout in US equities amid liquidity concerns in the banking sector. The meltdown was triggered by US bank SVB Financial, known as Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), which plunged 60% on Thursday after revealing that it needed to raise more than $2 billion in capital to offset losses from bond sales. The announcement rocked financial stocks, with Euro Stoxx Banks index on Friday on pace for its worst day since June, led by a decline of more than 8% for Deutsche Bank. Societe Generale, HSBC, ING Group and Commerzbank all tumbled more than 5%. Asian stocks suffered their worst day in five months, with Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index plummeting 3% on losses in heavyweight technology stocks. The Shanghai Composite dropped 1.4%, while Japan’s Nikkei 225 index fell 1.67%.

Investors started offloading US bank stocks on Thursday after SVB, a major lender to the tech industry, announced aggressive measures to support its balance sheet. The bank had reportedly been forced to sell all of its available-for-sale bonds at a $1.8 billion loss as its startup clients withdrew deposits. The news, which follows the collapse of the crypto-focused bank Silvergate, led to another wave of deposit withdrawals, people familiar with the matter told CNBC. All of this led to the four largest US banks – JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup – seeing their stock prices lose a cumulative $52 billion in a single day.

SVB, which had a market value of $16.8 billion to end last week, was worth $6.3 billion as of Thursday. “The issues at SVB have been like a cold shower and with the Fed having just countenanced the idea of faster hikes once again, the potential for a very unhappy equity market should the jobs data surprise on the upside is very real indeed,” James Athey, investment director at global investment company Abrdn, told Bloomberg. “It has always been the case that the sort of hikes we have seen from the Fed were going to cause problems somewhere,” he added.

Read more …

FDIC guarantees up to $250k. Over 90% of SVB accounts held more than that. “About 37,000 customers accounted for nearly $157 billion or 74% of the bank’s assets with an average account size of over $4 million….at the end of 2022, 87% of the bank’s $173 billion in deposits were uninsured.”

Trying to find some stuff in between all the graphs ad stats. Here’s two threads ZH picked up on:

The Real-World Impact Of SVB’s Failure (ZH)

Brad Hargreaves explains in a brief thread how SVB’s closure & receivership is going to have a massive impact on the tech ecosystem. “SVB was not just a dominant player in tech but were highly integrated in some nontraditional ways. A few things we’ll see in the coming days / weeks… One, SVB was incredibly integrated into the lives of many founders. Not just their startup’s bank & lender, but also provided personal mortgages and other financial services. A whole mess for FDIC (or the eventual buyer) to unwind. Two, any “uninsured” balances at SVB – those above $250K – are in jeopardy. FDIC plans to pay them out “as it sells the assets of SVB”. Lots of startups exclusively banked with SVB as *this was a covenant of their debt*!

CEOs yesterday faced a hard choice: Pull your deposits and go into default on your venture debt or risk losing everything if the bank failed. Many chose to hold tight as SVB’s outright failure seemed outlandish. Now they may not be able to make payroll next week. Unpaid wages pierce the corporate veil, so boards are *incredibly* sensitive to employing workers they may not be able to pay. Expect mass layoffs later today, Monday at latest. And given the weak fundraising environment, a number of startups have been reliant on venture lenders – e.g., SVB – not aggressively pursuing amortization of debt or triggering default for covenant foot faults (e.g., cash balances). How will the FDIC handle this? Mass defaults?

Having run a startup through the GFC, this is the first thing I’ve seen since that is even vaguely reminiscent of that time. Total clusterfuck. One more thing: SVB also offered *wealth management services* to many of its founders. So your corporate lender, corporate bank, personal mortgage lender, and family’s wealth manager is… all one bank, which is now in FDIC receivership. Fun. JPow got his fucking debt crisis alright.”

[..] Garry Tan, the CEO of YCombinator echoes what we said just two days ago, namely that “this is an *extinction level event* for startups and will set startups and innovation back by 10 years or more” and warns that “30% of YC companies exposed through SVB can’t make payroll in the next 30 days.”

“The most important thing the FDIC and the US Government can do right now is *make the receivership as short as possible* There are thousands of US startups that banked at SVB, often as their *sole bank*. $250K per account is not going to last long. The #1 pressing issue for these startups is *payroll* – you can’t have people work if you can’t pay them. This means mass furlough. It might mean thousands of startups die before the FDIC gets through its receivership process and releases the funds. From what I hear, there are venture debt options coming from providers like Brex, but we’re going to need *a lot* of options in order to avoid a mass shutdown of all American startups in the next few weeks.

This is an *extinction level event* for startups and will set startups and innovation back by 10 years or more. BIG TECH will not care about this. They have cash elsewhere. All little startups, tomorrow’s Google’s and Facebooks, will be extinguished if we don’t find a fix. 30% of YC companies exposed through SVB can’t make payroll in the next 30 days. If you or your company are affected, I recommend that you reach out to your local congressman to get this on their radar TODAY. Now.

Pomboy
https://twitter.com/i/status/1634364937072959492

Read more …

50 feet is a nice sized boat. But how do you get 6 people to sit and sleep on it, along with tons of equipment?!

The US Opts For Ham Handed Political Gestures (Larry Johnson)

In theory, a covert operation is supposed to be elegant, sophisticated and smart. But that is not the case with the United States these days. Ham-fisted and clumsy are more apt descriptors. Yesterday’s simultaneous release of a new account of who destroyed the Nordstream pipeline in the New York Times, Die Zeit and a London paper placing the blame on shadowy pro-Ukrainians was not a coincidence. This was a coordinated information operation and the media reaction to this news is quite telling. The same news outlets that strenuously ignored Sy Hersh’s explosive, detailed revelation that it was a U.S. operation with help from Norway stumbled over themselves to breathlessly report that an unidentified pro-Ukrainian group was the guilty party.


Bavaria Cruiser 50 – Sailing yacht Andromeda. Image: Spiegel

Die Zeit provided the most hilarity with their fantastic tale of six people on a private yacht carrying out the deed. Looks to me like Die Zeit was channeling a Gilligan’s Island episode. We had Ginger and Mary Ann, accompanied by the Professor, the Skipper, Thurston Howell and Gilligan. They set to sea with a 1000 pounds of high explosive and used their snorkel gear to plant the charge. I bet you it was Ginger and Mary Ann who planted the bomb, of course, was built by the crafty Professor. Take a look at Moon of Alabama’s detailed breakdown of the nonsense:


“No. You do not dive down to 80+ meter for an industrial size job, involving the placement of hundreds of pounds of explosives in eight individual charges on very sturdy pipelines, from a sparsely manned boat. Such deep dives require special gases, special breathing equipment, special training, a decompression chamber for emergencies and lots of well trained people to maintain all that stuff. All three articles neglected to point out that you cannot dive in regular scuba gear to 200 feet in an arctic sea. You need a dry suit (as my friend Mark says, you look like the Stay Puft marshmallow man). That suit requires some specialized support equipment that does not fit on a yacht. This is a desperate, juvenile attempt to shift the blame from the United States. I cannot wait to see what happens when Sy drops a new story on Nordstream.”

A competent intelligence service would have prepared a detailed story that was plausible and contained enough details to create doubt in the minds of those who accepted Sy’s account. Instead of releasing the same skimpy story in three different media outlets on the same day, the release should have been spread out over a few days or a week. This bungled attempt to shift the blame to Ukraine is just one more piece of evidence that America does not have a competent intelligence service.

Read more …

China yesterday brokered a peace deal between Iran and Saudi Arabia. China wants the fighting to stop, to safeguard the Belt and Road.

US Must Pull Troops Out Of Syria, Stop Marauding – China (TASS)

China calls on the US to withdraw its troops from Syria and to stop plundering that country, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told a news briefing on Friday. “The United States has illegally intervened in military activities related to the Syrian crisis, which has led to the death of a large number of innocent civilians and a serious humanitarian disaster,” Mao said. “We call on the United States to sincerely respect the sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of other countries, and to immediately stop its illegal military presence and marauding in Syria,” she said. Mao called on the US authorities to lift “illegal unilateral sanctions” against Syria and to stop actions that aggravate the humanitarian situation in the country.


According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, during the years of the Syrian crisis in the country at least 350,000 people have lost their lives to the military conflict, and 14 million are in dire need of humanitarian assistance. The House of Representatives of the US Congress on Wednesday failed to pass a resolution according to which the Washington administration should withdraw all US troops from Syria. The initiative was introduced in February by Republican Matt Gaetz, from Florida. He stressed that Congress had not given permission to use US forces in combat operations on Syrian territory. On March 4, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, visited Syria, where he claimed that the US military presence in the country was of critical importance to the security of both the United States and its allies.

Read more …

“The China-Russia axis is the biggest cause for concern for Washington because of “their shared threat perceptions of the US”..”

Russia And China Dominate Washington’s Mindset (Gupta)

A top US intelligence official has expressed concern that the Chinese government – under its powerful President Xi Jinping, who started his historic third term this week – could emerge as the most potent force on the global stage in alliance with Russia to weaken Washington’s influence. Earlier this week, Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence in the administration of US President Joe Biden, appeared before a Senate committee to present the annual threat assessment report. Asia Editor Joydeep Sen Gupta decodes the key pressure points of the report, which identifies Beijing as a ‘near-peer competitor’ in a changing world order, The report dwells on China-Russia bonhomie as one of the high points of the annual review, which seldom gets a makeover from year to year.

Significantly, the section on China is much more elaborate this year than in recent times. It reinforces the Biden administration’s growing focus on Asia’s biggest economy, which is seen as punching above its weight in its bid to challenge the US’ military might. The report makes reference to China’s “capability to directly attempt to alter the rules-based global order in every realm and across multiple regions,” while acknowledging Beijing’s exalted status. The report identifies Beijing as a “near-peer competitor” for its ability to threaten its neighbors (read India). Simultaneously, it takes note of Russia’s “unprovoked full-scale invasion of Ukraine” that “has emerged as a defining characteristic of the current era.” The China-Russia axis is the biggest cause for concern for Washington because of “their shared threat perceptions of the US” in diverse fields largely pertaining to defense and security.

Haines singles out the Ukraine conflict “as a tectonic event that is reshaping Moscow’s relationships with the West and China,” and warns of potential conflict between Russia and the West that may lead to dire consequences. However, the report strikes a contradictory note when it cites Moscow’s dwindling influence because of a “range of constraints,” despite noting its prowess in military, security, malign influence, cyber, and intelligence tools. Russia’s interests in the oil-and-natural resources-rich Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region for “military access rights and economic opportunities” at Washington’s expense finds special mention. It also names the Central African Republic, Libya, Mali, and Syria in the Levant, where Russia “will present itself as an indispensable mediator and security partner.”

It predicts that both Russia and Iran will improve their “bilateral economic and defense cooperation” in a bid to circumvent Western sanctions. Similarly, it rings alarm bells regarding Russia’s overtures in Latin America in “countries that Moscow sees as key players or close partners, including Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela” to amplify its influence. “Russia will continue to use energy as a foreign policy tool to try to coerce cooperation and weaken Western unity on Ukraine,” the report says.

The focal point of the report is China’s strengthening of its military and its expanded operations in the Indo-Pacific region, which is being countered by a grouping consisting of the US, Japan, Australia, and India known as the Quad. A substantial part of the report is devoted to the Chinese Communist regime’s efforts to press Taiwan on unification and whether Beijing will attack the island nation. The Chinese military, according to the report, is working towards meeting Xi’s goal – to become powerful enough by 2027 to ward off any US-led intervention in the event of an armed conflict over Taiwan. It warns that China will avoid signing nuclear arms agreements with either the US or Russia because of an inadequate arsenal that needs to be modernized.

Read more …

As the west loses itself, the south is taking shape.

Moveable Multipolarity in Moscow: Ridin’ the ‘Newcoin’ Train (Escobar)

[..] please allow me to introduce one such technical blueprint for the newcoin. Let me start by saying that it should be partially (I suggest a share of at least 40% of value) backed by gold, for reasons that will soon become clear. The remaining 60% of the newcoin would be composed of the basket of currencies of the participating countries. Gold would provide the “external money” anchor to the structure and the basket of currencies element would allow the participants to retain their sovereignty and monetary flexibility. There would clearly be a need to create a Central Bank for the newcoin, which would emit new currency. This Central Bank could become a counterparty to cross-swaps, as well as provide clearing functions for the system and enforce the regulations. Any country would be free to join the newcoin on several conditions.

First, the candidate country needs to demonstrate that it has physical unencumbered gold in its domestic storage and pledge a certain amount in exchange for receiving corresponding amount of newcoin (using the 40% ratio mentioned above). Economic equivalent of this initial transaction would be a sale of the gold to the “gold pool” backing the newcoin in exchange for proportional amount of the newcoin backed by the pool. The actual legal form of this transaction is less important, as it is necessary simply to guarantee that the newcoin that is being emitted is always backed by at least 40% in gold. There is no need to even publicly disclose the gold reserves of each country, as long as all participants can be satisfied that sufficient reserves are always present. An annual joint audit and monitoring mechanism may be sufficient.

Second, a candidate country would need to establish a gold price discovery mechanism in its domestic currency. Most likely, one of the participating precious metals exchanges would start physical gold trading in each of the local currencies. This would establish a fair cross-rate for the local currencies using “external money” mechanism to set and adjust them over time. The gold price of the local currencies would drive their value in the basket for the newly-emitted newcoins. Each country would remain sovereign and be free to emit as much of local currency as they choose to, but this would eventually adjust the share of their currency in the newcoin’s value. At the same time, a country would only be able to obtain additional newcoin from the central bank in exchange for a pledge of additional gold. The net result is that the value of each component of newcoin in gold terms would be transparent and fair, which would translate into the transparency of newcoin’s value as well.

Finally, emissions or sales of newcoin by the central bank would be allowed only in exchange for gold for anyone outside the newcoin zone. In other words, the only two ways external parties can obtain large amounts of newcoin is either receiving it in exchange for physical gold or as a payment for goods and services provided. At the same time, the central bank would not be obliged to purchase newcoin in exchange for gold, removing the risk of the “run on the bank.”

Read more …

“The pontiff has repeatedly said that his visit to Kiev, on which the Ukrainian authorities have been insisting, is only possible if he is also able to make a trip to Moscow.”

Pope Francis Sees Countries’ ‘Imperial Interests’ In Ukraine Conflict (TASS)

Pope Francis believes that “the imperial interests” of various countries are shining through in the Ukraine conflict, the Vatican News writes, citing the pontiff’s interview for the Italian Swiss Radio and Television. “In a little over a hundred years, there have been three world wars: in 1914-1918, in 1939-1945, and this one, which is a world war. It started in bits and pieces and now no one can say it is not worldwide. The great powers are all caught up in it. The battlefield is Ukraine. Everyone is fighting there,” Pope Francis said, as cited by the Vatican News. “There are imperial interests there, not only of the Russian empire, but of empires elsewhere. It is typical of the empire to put nations in second place,” he added.


The pope confirmed his readiness to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, “an educated man.” Pope Francis noted that right after the start of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, he went to the Russian Embassy at the Holy See to say that he was willing to go to Moscow if the Russian authorities gave him “a window to negotiate.” “[Russian Foreign Minister Sergey] Lavrov wrote to me, saying thank you but now is not the time,” Pope Francis said. The pontiff has repeatedly said that his visit to Kiev, on which the Ukrainian authorities have been insisting, is only possible if he is also able to make a trip to Moscow. He previously echoed this sentiment on his way back from an apostolic journey to Africa in early February. The pope said at that time that he was open to meet with the presidents of both Ukraine and Russia. Pope Francis has met with Putin before, with the Russian leader’s last trip to the Vatican taking place in July 2019.

Read more …

“..the West is loath to listen to Russia’s criticism of its attempts to “live at the expense of others” in the post-colonial era.”

West Was Seeking Pretext To ‘Get Its Claws Into’ Russia – Lavrov (TASS)

The West was looking for some sort of pretext to “get its claws into” Russia after Moscow had come to be seen as too independent a player in the international arena, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday. “[The West] was waiting for a pretext to get its claws into Russia. They were waiting for a chance to do this because they had begun to see Russia as too independent a player, which, if perhaps not building up as much economic power as China or India, was nevertheless among the leading world economies and holds rather weighty moral and political stances in the international arena, advocating from a position of justice on those issues that are of critical importance for the developing countries,” he said in an interview with the “Bolshaya Igra” (“The Great Game”) public affairs program on Russia’s Channel One television. According to the top Russian diplomat, the West is loath to listen to Russia’s criticism of its attempts to “live at the expense of others” in the post-colonial era.

Read more …

“We had no plans. They had plans – to abandon Russian gas. They survived the winter, but how much did it cost the government and the taxpayers? They are not very eager to tell..”

Lavrov: Western Media Version Of Nord Stream Events ‘Incoherent Babble’ (TASS)

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called the latest reports in the Western media about the alleged involvement of a “Ukrainian oligarch” in the explosions on the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines “incoherent babble.” “When they threw in the last wave of stories in the American and to some extent in the German press regarding a new version [about the causes of the emergency on gas pipelines] – about “the Ukrainian oligarch, who had better confess himself,” [and that they] “did not want to talk about Ukraine’s involvement, because it could spoil German-Ukrainian relations” and all that jazz: this is incoherent babble,” he said. In an interview with “The Great Game” program on Channel One, the Russian top diplomat noted that even if one accepts the rationale about the “Ukrainian fingerprint” mentioned in the media, it will raise some questions in Germany.

“The burghers will wonder: why do I need this Ukraine at all, if they blow us up, whoever he (the saboteur – TASS) may be – an agent of Kiev, paid for by someone from abroad, or just a lone ranger, why do I need to send Leopards there, why do I need to admit this country into NATO?” Lavrov said. “Yes, now [German Chancellor Olaf] Scholz is boasting: “We survived the winter, Russia’s plan did not work.” We had no plans. They had plans – to abandon Russian gas. They survived the winter, but how much did it cost the government and the taxpayers? They are not very eager to tell,” Lavrov said. He also called the coverage of the incident in the Western media frivolous, citing as an example their information about the establishment of a “Ukrainian connection” in the emergencies on the gas pipelines.

“There was information in the Wall Street Journal, if I’m not mistaken, where they said that back in June and July, the CIA warned the secret services of Germany and other European countries about a “Ukrainian trail” for the plot. And in September, after the attack took place, The Times said that a week after the explosion it was established that the trail was Ukrainian. So, in June they warned that there would be [a Ukrainian trace] and in September it was established that it was. Anyway, they look at it in a very juvenile way, not the way an adult should,” he concluded.

Read more …

What Lavrov talked about.

CIA Issued Advance Nord Stream Warning To Allies – WSJ (RT)

The CIA warned allies in the EU about a potential attack by a pro-Ukrainian group on the Nord Stream gas pipelines, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing intelligence officials. According to the report, around June and July of last year, the CIA informed Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND) and other European agencies that three Ukrainian nationals were trying to rent out ships in states around the Baltic Sea, including Sweden, in preparation to target the pipelines, which were eventually attacked in September. As early as one month after the blasts, CIA Director William Burns and the White House’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, were said to have been considering the possibility that Kiev had orchestrated the sabotage on the route built to deliver Russian gas to Germany.

The report comes after the New York Times cited US officials on Tuesday as saying that an unidentified “pro-Ukrainian group” may have carried out the bombing. The WSJ said this assessment by US intelligence officials “isn’t definitive” and that they claimed they saw “no indication” that the alleged perpetrators had ties to the Ukrainian government. German news organizations reported this week that investigators were looking at a yacht operated by a Polish-based company that was “apparently” owned by two Ukrainians, in a possible connection with the sabotage. The German authorities later confirmed that they had searched the vessel in January, but did not disclose details about any items seized.

The new reports about alleged Ukrainian involvement contradict last month’s investigation by veteran journalist Seymour Hersh, who cited a source as claiming that the bombing was carried out by the US with help from Norway. The US and Ukraine have both denied any involvement, and the White House dismissed Hersh’s claims as “utterly false.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov suggested on Wednesday that the reports about a Ukrainian link were an attempt to divert attention from the real perpetrators and absolve NATO countries. “Obviously, this is a coordinated media hoax campaign,” Peskov said. Moscow has argued that the West is not really interested in a comprehensive international investigation of the incident.

Read more …

..But waitagoshdarnminnit!..

Everything, All at Once (Kunstler)

The defining moment of the week was the White House ceremony with Dr. Jill Biden and her side-piece, Tony Blinken, presenting an International Women of Courage award to Ms. Alba Rueda of Argentina, a biological man. But, of course! Kisses all around. Mattias Desmet, author of The Psychology of Totalitarianism, pointed out some time ago that a psychotic political regime would require the people to swallow ever-greater absurdities as things played out in its death-wish drive toward national nullity. But was that little scene more absurd than the regime’s campaign in Ukraine to do… uh, to do what, exactly? To punish Vladimir Putin, or something like that. Or is it nuclear war they’re really after? A war, they’re telling themselves, that we would surely win, as if being a continent-sized ashtray is winning.

Meanwhile, our Intel Community has discovered that it was… well might have been… Ukraine, after all, who blew up the Nord Stream pipelines — with help from some outside parties (namely, America’s Intel Community). But waitagoshdarnminnit! How does that get anybody off-the-hook for the costly caper? NATO supposedly backs Ukraine, right? And Germany is the European leader of NATO, right? So you’re telling me Ukraine blew up a systemically-important asset of a leading country that supports Ukraine? Something doesn’t add up in that-there rebus puzzle. I’ll spare you the mental labor. The US Spook Industrial Complex is just laying another trip on you. And the “you” includes poor bamboozled Germany, led by arguably the biggest sap ever elected by a supposedly advanced nation, Olaf Scholz, whose name will evermore ring through history as a synonym for “chump.”

Sooner or later, one or both of the following must happen: the German people will dump this chump and / or his replacement will find a way to bow out of Germany’s commitment to America’s foolish proxy war against Russia, leading post-haste to the disintegration of NATO, and leaving America’s army of vaccine-injured transsexuals to reconquer the Donbas and Crimea, led by Tony Blinken in an off-the-shoulder cocktail dress. Anyway, by the time that hallucination comes to pass, all the other things that are happening at once will be so vividly in America’s face that the epic sleepwalk of the Walking Woke ends with a jolt like unto a cattle prod upside the brain-pan. For instance, the implosion of our financial markets along with a sudden, shocking expiration of the US dollar as a credible currency. The mighty “woosh” heard from sea to shining sea will be the sound of capital going up in a vapor. The event will halt all that jabber about debt ceilings, budgets, and billions for Ukraine. A nauseated silence spreads across the land. Then, what?

Read more …

“A whole range of European nations have much more strict regulations in this field..”

Lavrov Likens Protests In Georgia To 2014 Kiev Coup (RT)

The massive protests Georgia has been facing over the past week closely resemble the 2014 Maidan coup in Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Friday. Backed by external powers, these protests are just another plot attempt, he told the ‘Great Game’ show on Russia’s Channel 1. Over the last week, thousands of people have gathered by the Georgian parliament in Tbilisi in order to protest a bill that would have required individuals and organizations with foreign funding to register as “agents of foreign influence.”The demonstrators hit the streets after the bill, which was introduced by the ‘Georgian Dream’ party, passed its first reading. The protests quickly spiraled out into clashes with the police in which several officers were injured and dozens of demonstrators were detained.

“[That] closely resembles Kiev’s ‘Maidan’ [coup],” Lavrov said, adding that, “There is no doubt that … the bill was nothing but a pretext for essentially launching a coup attempt.” According to the minister, the bill introduced by the Georgian lawmakers “pales” in comparison to how noncommercial organizations are regulated in the US, France, or Israel. The protests in Georgia have been “orchestrated” from abroad, the Russian minister believes, adding that their real goal is to create another “irritating” situation on Russia’s borders. In pursuing its goals, the West is attempting to sacrifice Georgia’s national interests and close economic ties with Russia, he added. Lavrov also blasted the EU over what he called a “hypocritical” stance on the issue. “A whole range of European nations have much more strict regulations in this field,” the minister insisted, adding that EU top diplomat Josep Borrell still claimed “without batting an eye” that the Georgian bill “contradicts European values” and deprives Georgia of the prospect of joining the bloc.

“The hypocrisy is obvious,” the minister added. Earlier this week, Borrell’s office issued a statement that blasted the bill as “incompatible with EU values and standards” and going “against Georgia’s stated objective of joining the European Union.” The statement also warned of “serious repercussions” for relations between Tbilisi and Brussels if the bill was passed. The Russian minister also pointed out the striking differences in how the EU and the US treated the protests in Georgia and Moldova. While backing demonstrations in Tbilisi, Washington and its allies still condemned similar actions in Moldova, which saw months of protests over a surge in cost of living and energy prices, Lavrov said. His words came as Georgian MPs have rejected the controversial bill during the second reading, despite it being previously withdrawn by its authors. The procedure was necessary for it to be officially squashed. The nation’s authorities have also announced they would be releasing all of the people who had been detained during the protests.

Korybko
https://twitter.com/i/status/1633813474139619330

Read more …

“The Global South is not on board with helping this proxy war persist, because it makes no sense..”

Irish MEP Blasts West’s ‘Criminal’ Approach To Ukraine (RT)

Irish MEP Mick Wallace has condemned the EU’s continued military support for Kiev, saying Brussels is not taking the option of peace talks seriously and arguing that Ukraine is being “sacrificed” for the geopolitical “obsessions” of the US. During a speech in the European Parliament, a clip from which Wallace posted to Twitter, he insisted that the EU, led by Washington, was refusing to “take the option of Peace seriously” amid the ongoing conflict with Russia. Instead, Wallace said, the EU was standing by and watching “the slaughter and devastation” continue. “The Global South is not on board with helping this proxy war persist, because it makes no sense,” Wallace said, adding that it is “increasingly clear that Ukraine is being sacrificed for the obsessions of the US establishment.”

The Irish MEP said the only people benefiting from the conflict were “weapons manufacturers and Western corporations,” which he claimed were “buying up Ukraine now for a pittance.” “The Russian invasion is criminal, but the manner in which the West has been dealing with this has also been criminal,” he concluded. Russia has repeatedly said it is open to talks with Ukraine if its leaders accept what the Kremlin calls the “reality on the ground,” referring to the status of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions, which voted to join Russia in public referendums last autumn. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has floated a ten-point “peace formula” that would require Moscow to withdraw all of its troops from the territory Kiev claims as its own. However, Russia has rejected that proposal as unrealistic.

A 12-point peace plan put forward by China was met with a cool response from the West, with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg saying Beijing does not have “much credibility” in the issue. US State Secretary Antony Blinken, however, admitted that the plan included some “positive elements.” Last week, Wallace also called the September 2022 sabotage of the Russian-German Nord Stream pipelines “a premeditated terrorist attack on critical European infrastructure.” Fellow Irish MEP Clare Daly said it was “jaw-dropping” that the EU was not investigating potential US and Norwegian links to the attack after a report by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh alleged Washington was behind the sabotage.

Read more …

Sanctions failed. Here’s what’s next: your money.

Borrell: EU To Increase Financial & Military Support To Ukraine (Az.)

The EU has nearly exhausted its options for punitive measures against Russia and the bloc’s attention needs to shift to financial and military support for Ukraine, the EU’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell told EURACTIV in an exclusive interview, Report informs. “There is not much more to do from the point of view of sanctions, but we can continue to increase financial and military support,” Borrell told EURACTIV in Stockholm, following a meeting of EU defense ministers. “It would be strange that one year after the invasion began, there would be much more options left. We have been using our step-by-step process, and we have been incremental – maybe sometimes too incremental,” he added. Over the past year, the EU has approved 10 rounds of sanctions against Moscow meant to make financing the war more difficult and starve Russia of tech equipment and spare parts for arms to be used against Ukraine.


“But indeed, one year after the invasion, we’re getting to the end of the ladder,” Borrell admitted when asked about the next potential steps the bloc could take in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “The answer is always the same – to continue supporting Ukraine. Ukraine needs a lot of money just to keep the machinery working, a state at war has a lot of financial needs – this will require a lot of effort from our side – so sanctions and military support are not everything.”. Borrell said battlefield operations were “up to Ukraine to decide” but Europe’s responsibility “is to support them, also by providing arms and ammunition.”

Read more …

Crazy story competition.

“France’s first lady is actually her own transgender brother..?!

France’s First Lady Fails In Transgender Lawsuit (RT)

A Paris judge has thrown out Brigitte Macron’s case against two women who claimed in a YouTube show that France’s first lady is actually her own transgender brother. President Emmanuel Macron’s wife had a case for public defamation, but not for invasion of privacy and violation of image, the judge ruled. The video, posted on December 10, 2021, advanced a “completely outlandish” theory that Brigitte Macron was actually the trangender identity of her brother, Jean-Michel Trogneux. The video received hundreds of thousands of views, and the transgender rumor trended on Twitter for several days. The first lady filed a lawsuit in February 2022, almost two months after the video was posted, claiming it violated her “right to image” and invaded her brother’s privacy.

The hours-long video described the surgeries Macron allegedly underwent, denied she had given birth to three children, and publicized personal information about Trogneux, according to the lawsuit. The video was also said to have used “retouched, enlarged and recolored”photographs. Brigitte Macron’s separate lawsuit against the two women, for public defamation, was actually filed two weeks earlier, on January 31, 2022. That case is still pending. The first lady’s official biography says she was born Brigitte Marie-Claude Trogneux to a family of chocolatiers from Amiens. She married a banker named Andre-Louis Auziere in 1974 and had three children. In 1993, when she was 40 and teaching at La Providence Jesuit high school in Amiens, she met Emmanuel Macron – who was 15 at the time, and a classmate of her daughter Laurence.

Brigitte divorced Auziere in 2006 and married Macron in 2007. She is widely reported to have been key to his victory in the 2017 presidential election. Macron had planned to create an official “first lady” position for Brigitte using the American model, complete with a budget and staff, but changed his mind after popular backlash. The transgender rumor about the first lady appeared ahead of France’s 2022 presidential elections and quickly gained traction online. Macron ended up easily winning re-election.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

Capuchin bird

 

 

Robin Hood

 

 


Father and son

 

 

Elephant feet

 

 

Tarantula
https://twitter.com/i/status/1634130152622895108

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Mar 062023
 
 March 6, 2023  Posted by at 10:05 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  58 Responses »


Rembrandt van RIjn A Woman Standing with a Candle c.1631

 

‘No One Can Win this War’ – Viktor Orbán (HT)
Orban: “In A War Taking Place In Europe The Americans Have The Final Word” (ZH)
Only Ceasefire Can Put End To Conflict In Ukraine – Hungarian FM (TASS)
NATO and EU States Already Parties To Ukraine Conflict – Top Hungarian MP (RT)
US Forces EU To Finance Kiev Regime, But Incurs Lower Costs – Duma Speaker (TASS)
Biden Admin Not Ready To Unambiguously Support Kiev Position On Crimea (TASS)
Military Strategy Revolutionizes Political Strategy In Ukraine (Helmer)
The State Of Ukrainian Democracy Is Not Strong (Jacobin)
West Ready To Give Security Guarantees To Kiev After Conflict – Scholz (TASS)
The Valdai Meeting: Where West Asia Meets Multipolarity (Escobar)
Top US General Reaffirms Occupation Of Syria During Visit (Cradle)
US Army Resumes Theft Of Syrian Oil Weeks After Deadly Quake (Cradle)
People Behind Biden Announce Creation of Formal National Surveillance State (CTH)
Fauci Prompted Scientific Paper In Feb. 2020 To Disprove Lab Leak Theory (NYP)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nordstream

 

 

 

 

“The West has lost its ability to unite the world in the interest of a single cause. Its philosophical tenets are limited in space. This is a new phenomenon..”

‘No One Can Win this War’ – Viktor Orbán (HT)

Hungary is seriously affected by the war in Ukraine, the Western countries are not seeking peace, and EU leadership is following American interests, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán told a Swiss weekly. “There are some who want to force Hungary into the war, and they are not picky about the means with which to achieve that goal,” Prime Minister Viktor Orbán told Swiss weekly Weltwoche – according to a summary published on his website –, stressing that “Hungary’s leadership is strong enough to keep the war away from our country.” According to Prime Minister Orbán, Hungarians “are most affected by the EU sanctions introduced against Russia” which have drastically increased the price of oil and gas. He added that the war “is taking its toll on our soul, on our psyche.” “Ukraine is our neighbor where Hungarians live as well. They are being conscripted and are dying by the hundreds on the front,”he pointed out.”

Orbán said the most important realization of the war in Ukraine is that “Europe has retired from the debate.” “In the decisions adopted in Brussels, I recognize American interests more frequently than European ones. In a war that is taking place in Europe the Americans have the final word,” he added. The prime minister agreed with the journalist’s assumption that the deeper causes of Europe’s weakness should be sought in the European Union, because “it is destroying the nation states without replacing them with anything workable.” Regarding the outcome of the war, Orbán said “no one can win it.” There is a nuclear power with a population of 140 million up against the Ukrainians, while there is the whole of NATO up against the Russians. This is what makes things so dangerous. There is a stalemate which can easily escalate into a world war,” he pointed out.


The prime minister noted that two weeks before the outbreak of the war when he met with Vladimir Putin for the last time in Moscow, the Russian President told him that Hungary’s NATO membership was not a problem, only that of Ukraine and Georgia. “Putin has a problem – this is what he told me – with the American missile bases already created in Romania and Poland, and with NATO’s potential expansion towards Ukraine and Georgia in order to station armaments there. Additionally, the Americans terminated important disarmament treaties. This is why Putin could no longer have a good night’s sleep,” he explained, adding that he understood what Putin said, but cannot accept what he did. According to Viktor Orbán, the desire, the will to create peace is missing, at least in the West. He pointed out that “the Chinese, the Indians, the Arabs, the Turks, and the Brazilians all want peace.” The West has lost its ability to unite the world in the interest of a single cause. Its philosophical tenets are limited in space. This is a new phenomenon,” he underlined.

Read more …

“(How) can anyone want to be our ally in a military system while they’re shamelessly spreading lies about Hungary? So let’s stop for a friendly word and ask them how this can be.”

Orban: “In A War Taking Place In Europe The Americans Have The Final Word” (ZH)

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has said in a fresh interview with Swiss weekly Weltwoche that his country’s leadership is “strong enough to keep the war away from our country” while also stressing that Washington has become prime the decision-maker over the conflict in Ukraine. He further addressed the proxy war nature of the conflict in saying, “There are some who want to force Hungary into the war, and they are not picky about the means with which to achieve that goal.” “Ukraine is our neighbor where Hungarians live as well,” he continued. “They are being conscripted and are dying by the hundreds on the front.” The Hungarian government has long protested this practice and presented its complaints to Kiev.

“Europe has retired from the debate,” Orban complained of EU countries being dragged into confrontation with Moscow by Washington. “In the decisions adopted in Brussels, I recognize American interests more frequently than European ones. “In a war that is taking place in Europe the Americans have the final word,” he stressed in the interview. Most recently, Hungary has shown its unwillingness to go along with the rest of NATO by delaying a vote on ratifying Sweden and Finland’s accession bids. According to a Thursday Associated Press report, “The delay, which pushes the vote back by two weeks to the parliamentary session beginning March 20, comes as Hungary remains the only NATO member country besides Turkey that hasn’t yet approved the two Nordic countries’ bids to join the Western military alliance.” The report indicates:


“Hungary’s populist prime minister, Viktor Orban, has said that he is personally in favor of the two countries joining NATO, but alleges that the governments in Stockholm and Helsinki have “spread blatant lies” about Hungary which have raised questions among lawmakers in his party on whether to approve the bids. “It’s not right for them to ask us to take them on board while they’re spreading blatant lies about Hungary, about the rule of law in Hungary, about our democracy and about life here,” Orban complained. “(How) can anyone want to be our ally in a military system while they’re shamelessly spreading lies about Hungary? So let’s stop for a friendly word and ask them how this can be.” But even if Budapest were ready and willing to give its approval, Turkey’s ongoing resistance has been even fiercer, and thus Sweden and Finland are unlikely to enter the alliance anytime soon.”

Lavrov

Read more …

“We are a state that neighbors Ukraine, and we do not want more people to die. This is why we are working to stop it. We do not ship weapons, we continue to advocate peace.”

Only Ceasefire Can Put End To Conflict In Ukraine – Hungarian FM (TASS)

The solutions that Europe is trying to find in order to resolve the crisis in Ukraine are not working, and the conflict could only be ended through a ceasefire, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said in an interview for the SVT TV channel. “The first goal is to stop killing people, which means a ceasefire agreement and nothing more,” he said.According to Szijjarto, EU sanctions failed to stop the conflict. “We have already introduced 10 sanctions packages; has it brought us any closer to a resolution [of the conflict]? No. Has it brought Russia to its knees? No. Has it hurt us? Yes. I think that the ‘solutions’ that we have been trying to find in Europe simply didn’t work, because we’ve got too carried away with the war mentality,” he noted.


When asked why Hungary does not ship weapons to Kiev, the Foreign Minister said: “We are a state that neighbors Ukraine, and we do not want more people to die. This is why we are working to stop it. We do not ship weapons, we continue to advocate peace.”

Read more …

“Budapest has also been the only NATO nation to voice support for China’s recently unveiled peace plan for Ukraine.”

NATO and EU States Already Parties To Ukraine Conflict – Top Hungarian MP (RT)

Massive deliveries of military aid to Ukraine have made multiple NATO and EU nations parties to the ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev, according to Laszlo Kover, the speaker of Hungary’s National Assembly. Speaking to Hir TV late on Friday, Kover said certain members of the two blocs are already participants in the conflict, despite not “yet” actually engaging in the fighting themselves. He did not identify the countries to which he was referring. “Members of NATO and the EU have already sent almost $60 billion worth of lethal military equipment to Ukraine, one of the warring parties. This means that individual countries – members of the European Union and NATO – are participants of this war, although not yet fighting,” he said.

The speaker also shared his opinion on the potential accession of Finland and Sweden to NATO. While the move has already been approved by the vast majority of member states in the US-led military alliance, it has been opposed by Hungary and Türkiye. Budapest is expected to dispatch a delegation to the two Nordic nations shortly in an effort to resolve differences regarding the accession bid, Kover noted. Both Finland and Sweden have caused “damage” to Hungary, repeatedly making hostile moves against Budapest within the EU, he continued. “They cause specific, measurable damage to Hungary’s national interests. These people are putting pressure on the European institutions so that they do not allocate the EU funds due to Hungary. This is about specific damage, not just that our souls are sensitive,” Kover explained.


He also claimed that their potential accession to NATO would not increase the “sense of security” within the bloc, but rather yield the opposite result, greatly extending the alliance’s border with Russia. Earlier this week, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban called for the creation of a “European NATO,” arguing that America’s desire for the further expansion of its influence has led to the current tensions between the West and Russia. The EU needs to create a military bloc of its own to become free of American influence and stop doing Washington’s bidding, Orban suggested. Hungary has repeatedly called for peace since the outbreak of conflict between Moscow and Kiev, criticizing both the Western sanctions imposed on Russia and the continuous flow of arms to Ukraine. Budapest has also been the only NATO nation to voice support for China’s recently unveiled peace plan for Ukraine.

Read more …

“..Washington has once again showed that “the main principle of its policy is to use other countries to pursue its interests.”

US Forces EU To Finance Kiev Regime, But Incurs Lower Costs – Duma Speaker (TASS)

The United States is forcing European countries to finance the Kiev regime to the detriment of its citizens, but Washington itself allocates only 0.37% of its share of GDP for these purposes, Chairman of the Russian State Duma (lower house of the Russian parliament) Vyacheslav Volodin wrote in his Telegram channel on Sunday. “The US is forcing European countries to fund the Kiev regime at the expense of their own citizens’ well-being. However, as it turns out, they incur far lower costs than others. In terms of the cost of maintaining the Kiev regime, the United States ranks 12th, accounting for 0.37% of GDP,” Volodin stated.


According to him, this is 5.7-fold less than militarization and regime maintenance costs by Poland at 2.1% of GDP. “Estonia, Latvia, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Malta, Norway, Romania, and Cyprus are putting pressure on Washington to increase spending,” Volodin added. He emphasized that Washington has once again showed that “the main principle of its policy is to use other countries to pursue its interests.” “Furthermore, the EU countries bear additional costs as a result of anti-Russian sanctions, which have destabilized their economies. The total amount of support for Europe’s energy industry reached 570 bln euro. It cost Germany 7.2% of GDP,” Volodin said, emphasizing that “EU leaders are acting contrary to national interests at the expense of European citizens” by continuing to supply weapons to Kiev.

Read more …

“..Even if they don’t actually believe that it’s likely that Crimea will be returned to Ukraine militarily.”

Biden Admin Not Ready To Unambiguously Support Kiev Position On Crimea (TASS)

The US Administration is currently unwilling to unambiguously support Ukraine’s plans to capture Crimea, and Washington tries to avoid publicly clarifying its position on this issue, The Hill says in an op-ed published Sunday. According to the article, the Biden Administration is “keeping the door open” on the Crimea issue. The Administration officials “have repeatedly sidestepped questions about whether Washington would support Kyiv’s efforts to retake” the peninsula, “punting the issue to further ‘down the road’.” “Though U.S. officials have said that Washington will support Ukraine for however long it takes for them to win the war, they’ve been unwilling to give full support to Kyiv’s ambitions in Crimea,” the article reads, noting that this is in part due to heavy weapons that would be necessary to restore control over Crimea, including long-range missiles, tanks and planes.

The op-ed notes that US lawmakers asked the Administration to clarify its position on Crimea, but its officials have chosen to stick to a “strategy of ambiguity.” In particular, this is the approach that National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan adheres to. “They may believe that there is value in holding Crimea at risk in order to put pressure on the Russians to come to the negotiating table,” says Chris Chivvis, a former U.S. national intelligence officer in Europe and current director of the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment. “It’s possible that that’s driving their policy. […] Even if they don’t actually believe that it’s likely that Crimea will be returned to Ukraine militarily.”


Following the coup 2014 d’etat in Ukraine, authorities of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol held a referendum on reconciliation with Russia. Over 80% eligible voters participated, with approximately 96% of all voters favoring the reconciliation. On March 18, 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a treaty on accession of Crimea and Sevastopol to Russia; lawmakers ratified the treaty on March 21. Despite the convincing outcome, Kiev refused to recognize Crimea as a part of Russia.

Read more …

“What has remained of the plan of the destruction of Russia from those days is what there is today.”

Military Strategy Revolutionizes Political Strategy In Ukraine (Helmer)

In the history of the wars of the world, it almost never happens that the military strategy of a fighting state directs and revolutionizes the political strategy, and not the other way round — as aspiring politicians, military officers and policemen are taught by the venerable Sun Tzu and Carl von Clausewitz to believe. But it is happening in Europe now, on the Ukrainian battlefield, and in the war of the US and NATO alliance against Russia. So long, Sun; so long, Carl; so long, Pardner! For Russia it would never have turned out this way if President Boris Yeltsin had decided to run for a third term, ruling as medically incapable as President Joseph Biden, but deferring the succession until after Mikhail Khodorkovsky had sold the Yukos oil company to the US, and the other Russian oligarchs created by Yeltsin had followed suit. Heart, brain, and liver disease stopped the Yeltsin part of that. The Vladimir Putin succession plan then failed to deliver what had been intended.

What has remained of the plan of the destruction of Russia from those days is what there is today. The oligarchs survive but, according to the terms of the US and NATO sanctions war, they cannot have their assets and freedom of movement back unless they overthrow Putin, change the regime in the Kremlin, and destroy the capability of the Russian military to defend the country. The defensive strategy in response is obvious. Not only must the capacity of Ukrainian forces and their NATO weapons be destroyed at the front, and their remainder driven to a territorial line west of the Dnieper River, between Kiev and Lvov, out of range of Russian Crimea, Zaphorozhye, Kherson, Donetsk and Lugansk. Also, each of the NATO weapons must be defeated and destroyed which the US sends to the battlefield, and the airborne and ground systems for directing them at their Russian targets neutralized. .


If this Russian strategy succeeds, the implication for Europe – and the rest of the world (Taiwan) – will be plain. The US cannot defend NATO and NATO cannot defend its member states with a military capability that has been defeated. Article Five of the NATO treaty will become a dead letter. If and when that happens, the all-for-one-one-for-all principle of security in Europe which Article 5 promises will be replaced, first by the principle of every one for himself, and then for the principle of reciprocal security and non-aggression; that was the proposal of the Russian treaties of December 17, 2021.

Read more …

Oh, we’re going to acknowledge that now? Well, well…

The State Of Ukrainian Democracy Is Not Strong (Jacobin)

“Zelensky used the Russian invasion and the war as a pretext to eliminate most of the political opposition and potential rivals for power and to consolidate his largely undemocratic rule,” says University of Ottawa political scientist Ivan Katchanovski. March 3, 2022 saw the Ukrainian criminal code amended to include significantly harsher punishments for treason when committed under martial law — imposed the day of the invasion — and adding the new offenses of “collaborative activities” and “assistance to the aggressor state,” meant to simplify the law and speed up investigations and trials. Such changes had been introduced earlier but failed to get off the ground until the war.

Under the new law, “collaborationism” includes a broad range of activities, from supporting aggression against Ukraine, to spreading propaganda in education, to protesting or handling information in ways that help the enemy. Mykyta Petrovets, a lawyer at the Kyiv-based Regional Center for Human Rights, acknowledged that how responsibly the new laws are wielded comes down to how authorities interpret them. Since the law’s passage, treason and collaboration cases have exploded. According to data from the prosecutor general’s office, while 663 criminal proceedings for treason were recorded over the period 2014–2021, that number ballooned to 1,062 over 2022 alone. From February to March that year, the figure shot up more than fivefold, to 278. The number of collaborationist offenses, meanwhile, reached 3,851 between June, when they were first recorded, and the end of the year, with over six hundred referred to the courts.


For Chemerys, these changes are a way to silence Ukrainians with the “wrong” views and to make “speaking anything other than official propaganda in Ukraine” an imprisonable offense. Kotsaba charges they’re a way to keep society “scared and obedient” and to distract attention from Ukraine’s internal problems. Others point to Zelensky’s markedly weakened prewar approval ratings. As reports of the arrest of dissidents began spreading early in the war, Zelensky and his party first suspended and then banned eleven opposition parties over “links to Russia.” Alongside the suspension of two of the 2019 election’s top vote-getting parties, most prominent was the ban on Ukraine’s second-largest bloc, the pro-Russian Opposition Platform — For Life (OPZZh). This occurred even though most of its major figures took a pro-Ukraine position in the war and have since become reliable backers of Zelensky’s policies in parliament.

Read more …

Who will be in power in Kiev?

West Ready To Give Security Guarantees To Kiev After Conflict – Scholz (TASS)

Western nations are ready to give security guarantees to Ukraine after the conflict is over, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Sunday. He said that the Western countries do not object against Ukraine’s entering the European Union but Kiev will need to comply with certain requirements for that. The Wall Street Journal reported in February that the United Kingdom, Germany, and France were looking at signing a defense agreement between Ukraine and NATO after the conflict ends. Under the agreement, according to the newspaper, the Kiev authorities will have a wider access to advanced military equipment, weapons and munitions. This step is called to push Kiev toward talks with Russia, the newspaper claimed.

Read more …

A new world takes shape.

“..pave the way for a tripartite summit between Assad, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan.”

The Valdai Meeting: Where West Asia Meets Multipolarity (Escobar)

Bouthaina Shaaban, a special advisor to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, is a remarkable woman, fiery and candid. Her presence at Valdai was nothing short of electric. She stressed how “since the US war in Vietnam, we lost what we witnessed as free media. The free press has died.” At the same time “the colonial west changed its methods,” subcontracting wars and relying on local fifth columnists. Shaaban volunteered the best short definition anywhere of the “rules-based international order”: “Nobody knows what these rules are, and what this order is.” She re-emphasized that in this post-globalization period that is ushering in regional blocs, the usual western meddlers prefer to use non-state actors – as in Syria and Iran – “mandating locals to do what the US would like to do.”

A crucial example is the US al-Tanf military base that occupies sovereign Syrian territory on two critical borders. Shaaban calls the establishment of this base as “strategic, for the US to prevent regional cooperation, at the Iraq, Jordan, and Syria crossroads.” Washington knows full well what it is doing: unhampered trade and transportation at the Syria-Iraq border is a major lifeline for the Syrian economy. Reminding everyone once again that “all political issues are connected to Palestine,” Shaaban also offered a healthy dose of gloomy realism: “The eastern bloc has not been able to match the western narrative.” Cagri Erhan, rector of Altinbas University in Turkey, offered a quite handy definition of a Hegemon: the one who controls the lingua franca, the currency, the legal setting, and the trade routes.

Erhan qualifies the current western hegemonic state of play as “double-layered proxy war” against, of course, Russia and China. The Russians have been defined by the US as an “open enemy” – a major threat. And when it comes to West Asia, proxy war still rules: “So the US is not retreating,” says Erhan. Washington will always consider using the area “strategically against emerging powers.” Then what about the foreign policy priorities of key West Asian and North African actors? Algerian political journalist Akram Kharief, editor of the online MenaDefense, insists Russia should get closer to Algeria, “which is still in the French sphere of influence,” and be wary of how the Americans are trying to portray Moscow as “a new imperial threat to Africa.”

Professor Hasan Unal of Maltepe University in Turkiye made it quite clear how Ankara finally “got rid of its Middle East [West Asian] entanglements,” when it was previously “turning against everybody.” Mid-sized powers such as Turkiye, Iran, and Saudi Arabia are now stepping to the forefront of the region’s political stage. Unal notes how “Turkiye and the US don’t see eye to eye on any issue important to Ankara.” Which certainly explains the strengthening of Turkish-Russian ties – and their mutual interest in introducing “multi-faceted solutions” to the region’s problems. For one, Russia is actively mediating Turkiye-Syria rapprochement. Unal confirmed that the Syrian and Turkish foreign ministers will soon meet in person – in Moscow – which will represent the highest-ranking direct engagement between the two nations since the onset of the Syrian war. And that will pave the way for a tripartite summit between Assad, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Read more …

So you have Turkey, Syria and Russia getting closer, while US troops remain in Syria to steal their oil. How much longer can that last?

Top US General Reaffirms Occupation Of Syria During Visit (Cradle)

Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited US forces occupying northeastern Syria on Saturday, 4 March, allegedly to assess efforts to prevent a resurgence of ISIS and to review safeguards for US forces against attacks, including from drones flown by Iran-backed militias, Reuters has reported. Some 1,000 American troops continue to support allied Arab and Kurdish militias from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the region. Milley, whose term as chairman of the joint chiefs ends in September, met with the commander of the US-led coalition to defeat ISIS, Army Maj. Gen. Matthew McFarlane, and reviewed security measures from an undisclosed base in Syria’s northeast.


According to Al-Monitor, Milley’s visit to Syria signals the Biden administration’s seriousness about keeping troops in the country in support of the SDF. “We’re committed to maintaining our force presence in support of the enduring defeat of ISIS,” the Pentagon’s top Middle East policy official, Dana Stroul, told reporters last week. “This is a mission that has the full support of the Secretary of Defense,” Stroul said. Syria analyst Jennifer Cafarella of the Institute for the Study of War noted the importance of continuing the US military occupation in northeastern Syria. She observed in 2017 that “Whether Washington chooses to admit it or not, the US now has direct influence over the vast majority of Syria’s most productive oil fields,” and that the territorial gains of the SDF “are Syrian national treasures that when added up amount to brute geopolitical power for the US.”

Read more …

ISIS is no longer a credible threat, so ” the official rationale for the occupation changed once ISIS was largely defeated..”

US Army Resumes Theft Of Syrian Oil Weeks After Deadly Quake (Cradle)

The US occupation army renewed its oil smuggling campaign in northeast Syria three weeks after a 7.7 magnitude earthquake ravaged the war-torn country.According to eyewitness reports from the countryside of Al-Yarubiyah in Hasakah governorate, on 27 February, US troops transported at least 34 tankers filled with stolen Syrian oil through the illegal Al-Mahmoudiya border crossing to their bases in Iraq. The oil was plundered from Syria’s northeast Jazira region, the country’s primary energy and grain-producing region. Washington maintains approximately 900 troops in Syria, primarily split between the Al-Tanf base and the country’s northeastern region. Their occupation is illegal under international law as it was carried out without government approval.

Though US troops – accompanied by fighters from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – initially occupied large swathes of Syria under the pretext of fighting ISIS, the official rationale for the occupation changed once ISIS was largely defeated. In infamous comments made in 2019, former US President Donald Trump said: “We’re keeping [Syria’s] oil. We have the oil. The oil is secure. We left troops behind only for the oil.” The same year, the current US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for West Asia, Dana Stroul, noted during a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) that “one-third of Syrian territory was owned by the US military, with its local partner the SDF.”


The White House official made it a point to highlight that the territory Washington controls is the “economic powerhouse of Syria, so where the hydrocarbons are … as well as the agricultural powerhouse.” According to an investigation by The Cradle, dozens of tankers pass through illegal crossings between Iraq and Syria every week in convoys accompanied by US warplanes or helicopters. Shepherds in the region corroborate these claims, saying that the Syrian oil is transported to the Al-Harir military site in Erbil, the capital of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region (IKR), a region known as a “hub” for western and Israeli spy agencies.

Read more …

“All of the control systems previously assembled under the guise of the Dept of Homeland Security now become part of the online, digital national security apparatus..”

People Behind Biden Announce Creation of Formal National Surveillance State (CTH)

On March 2, 2023, the people in control of the Joe Biden administration officially announced that government control of internet content was now officially a part of the national security apparatus. If you have followed the history of how the Fourth Branch of Government has been created, you will immediately recognize the intent of this new framework. The “National Cybersecurity Strategy” aligns with, supports, and works in concert with a total U.S. surveillance system, where definitions of information are then applied to “cybersecurity” and communication vectors. This policy is both a surveillance system and an information filtration prism where the government will decide what is information, disinformation, misinformation and malinformation, then act upon it.

In part, this appears to be a response to the revelations around government influence of social media, the Twitter Files. Now we see the formalization of the intent. The government will be the arbiter of truth and cyber security, not the communication platforms or private companies. This announcement puts the government in control. All of the control systems previously assembled under the guise of the Dept of Homeland Security now become part of the online, digital national security apparatus. I simply cannot emphasis enough how dangerous this is, and the unspoken motive behind it; however, to the latter, you are part of a small select group who are capable of understanding what is in this announcement without me spelling it out.


Remember, we have already lost the judicial branch to the interests of the national security state. All judicial determinations are now in deference to what is called broadly “national security,” and the only arbiter of what qualifies to be labeled as a national security interest is the same institutional system who hides the corruption and surveillance behind the label they apply. We cannot fight our way through the complexity of what is being assembled, until the American People approach the big questions from the same baseline of understanding. What is the root cause that created the system? From there, this announcement takes on a more clarifying context – where we realize this is the formalization of the previously hidden process.

Read more …

How can you NOT question him under oath?

Fauci Prompted Scientific Paper In Feb. 2020 To Disprove Lab Leak Theory (NYP)

New emails uncovered by House Republicans probing the COVID-19 pandemic reveal the deceptive nature of Dr. Anthony Fauci. They show he “prompted” or commissioned — and had final approval on — a scientific paper written specifically in February 2020 to disprove the theory that the virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China. Eight weeks later, Fauci stood at a White House press conference alongside President Trump and cited that paper as evidence that the lab leak theory was implausible while pretending it had nothing to do with him and he did not know the authors.

“There was a study recently,” he told reporters on April 17, 2020, when asked if the virus could have come from a Chinese lab, “where a group of highly qualified evolutionary virologists looked at the sequences… in bats as they evolve and the mutations that it took to get to the point where it is now is totally consistent with a jump of a species from an animal to a human. “So, the paper will be available. I don’t have the authors right now, but we can make it available to you.” That paper, entitled “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” was sent to Fauci for editing in draft form and again for final approval before it was published in Nature Medicine on Feb. 17, 2020.


It was written four days after Fauci, and his NIH boss Francis Collins, held a call with the four authors to discuss reports that COVID-19 may have leaked from the Wuhan lab and “may have been intentionally genetically manipulated”. The House Oversight subcommittee published emails Sunday in which the paper’s co-author Dr. Kristian Andersen admits Fauci “prompted” him to write the paper with the goal of “disprove” the lab leak theory. On February 12, 2020, Andersen submitted the paper to Nature Medicine with a cover email: “There has been a lot of speculation, fear-mongering, and conspiracies put forward in this space. [This paper was] Prompted by Jeremy Farrah [sic], Tony Fauci, and Francis Collins”. Farrar, then head of British nonprofit, the Wellcome Trust, which has historic ties to the pharmaceutical industry and the Gates Foundation, was rewarded with the plum role of Chief Scientist at the WHO last December.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Chris Rock

 

 

 

 

 

 

Brussels
https://twitter.com/i/status/1632310744262885377

 

 

Leopard

 

 

Bridges

 

 

Whale shark

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Dec 052022
 
 December 5, 2022  Posted by at 9:17 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  85 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Chair 1942

 

Elon Musk: Worse Than Hitler (Titania McGrath)
Elon Musk Says There Are More Smoking Guns To Come And He’s Not Suicidal (PM)
Twitter Staff to Face Congress for Censoring Hunter Biden Laptop Story (ET)
A Baseline Understanding Mostly Missing Behind the Twitter Discussion (CTH)
Six Degrees from James Baker: A Familiar Figure Reemerges (Turley)
Katie Hobbs’ Office Contacted Twitter To Censor Posts (PM)
US Republican House Leader Calls For Big Tech Investigation (RT)
EU Desire To Pay For Ukraine Will Ruin Europe For Generations – Orbán (RMX)
EU Must ‘Take Action’ Against US – von der Leyen (RT)
EU Should Sue US – Lawmaker (RT)
Withdrawal Of Russian Weapons Is Key To Nuclear Plant Deal – IAEA Chief (RT)
Italy Justifies Russian Gas Imports (RT)
China Slams US Stationing In Syria, Oil And Grain Looting As Illegal (AlM)
Alameda’s Caroline Ellison Spotted In NY, May Be About To Roll On SBF (ZH)
Database Shows 10,000% Increase In Cancer Reports Due To Covid Vaccines (ARR)
Scientist Who Worked At Wuhan Lab Says Covid Was Man-made Virus (NYP)
What Is The Next Thing That Will Hit Us? It Will Be Huge (Ugo Bardi)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rogan Willink

 

 

 

 

Phones

 

 

 

 

Robert Kennedy Jr.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Only a fascist would seek to impose free speech on humanity.”

Elon Musk: Worse Than Hitler (Titania McGrath)

It is no exaggeration to say that Elon Musk’s annexation of Twitter is the most terrifying development in recent history. Only a fascist would seek to impose free speech on humanity. This is why there has been such a chorus of execration from left-wing commentators, celebrities and influencers. On the day that Musk seized control of Twitter, Washington Post columnist Taylor Lorenz noted that it was “like the gates of hell opened on this site tonight”. Charlie Warzel in The Atlantic wrote that there was “an apocalyptic feel to the ordeal”. But it was the Independent that really grasped the full gravity of this moment. Its headline read — “RIP Twitter, 2006-2022: Dead at the Hands of Elon Musk”. It is a testament to the cool-headed stoicism of left-wing journalists that they have managed not to overreact.

I also am trying my best to keep matters in perspective, but Musk’s takeover of Twitter is far worse than anything Hitler ever did. I do not approve of mass genocide, but it pales in comparison to providing a social media platform where Eddie Izzard might be misgendered. The whole point of Twitter is to ensure that the masses aren’t exposed to wild conspiracy theories. If tweets aren’t censored, people might start to think that Covid-19 could have originated from a lab in Wuhan, or that there was something dodgy on Hunter Biden’s laptop. Musk has argued that Twitter ought to be a place where all political viewpoints can be aired. But keeping people informed can have dire consequences. Democracy has no chance of working properly if people keep insisting on voting for the wrong candidates.

Like many on the left, I have decided to delete my Twitter account in protest. Musk won’t know what hit him. Without my wisdom on the platform, the company will soon collapse into oblivion. There will be an outcry, share prices will plummet, and Musk will come begging for me to return. But I shall stand firm. Come to think of it, maybe I should wait until next week to delete my account. I’ve got a book to sell.

Read more …

“Twitter doesn’t know what’s going on at Twitter,” Musk said. He also noted “it appears that Twitter falsely claimed that there was no election interference.”

Elon Musk Says There Are More Smoking Guns To Come And He’s Not Suicidal (PM)

“Well,” Musk said, “I’m somewhat leaving this up to Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss. But I think the natural thing would be to say like, ‘okay, what happened after the election? Y’know, Hunter Biden laptop stuff? This may sound bizarre, but Hunter Biden sounds kind of fun, to be honest.” [..] When asked what the next round of a Twitter Files drop would like like, he said “there are more smoking guns.” “Episode two,” he said, would cover information from after the 2020 president election. Speaking to ALX, whose account was only recently restored to the platform, Musk said that all requests from both the Biden campaign and the DNC to Twitter for the purpose of censoring individual users would be released.

In saying that he would release all the files, Musk reference Nelson Mandela, from his home country of South Africa, saying that he was undertaking something like a “truth and reconciliation.” “If you want reconciliation, there must be truth, so that’s the intention here, to just make it clear what was happening and provide transparency about the past, and in doing so, to build trust in the future,” Musk said. A big issue among many users was the use of the terms misinformation and disinformation, used by media outlets, social media moderators, and government officials to suppress contrary narratives and facts about Covid, vaccines, January 6, elections, voting, and other hot button issues.

He was asked about the situation where currently, the government are the “deciders” of what constitutes misinformation and disinformation. “It’s a big deal, I agree,” Musk said, “because the hard part of the situation is that if you don’t want to have government, and especially if they aren’t even an elected officials, maybe someone who is potentially a mid-level executive ministry is deciding this, who people don’t even know and was never elected, despite being a democratic country.” Others commented on his efforts to remove image of child exploitation from the site. “Twitter doesn’t know what’s going on at Twitter,” Musk said. He also noted “it appears that Twitter falsely claimed that there was no election interference.”

“I am definitely not going to be doing any open-air car parades.”

Read more …

Under oath, we may hope.

Twitter Staff to Face Congress for Censoring Hunter Biden Laptop Story (ET)

The top Republican on the House Oversight Committee said that Twitter staff involved in suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story ahead of the 2020 presidential elections will face Congress and testify about their actions. Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the GOP ranking member on the Committee, made the remarks in a Friday appearance on Fox News after Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk dropped part one of the so-called “Twitter Files,” an expose of the inner workings of Twitter’s censorship machine. “Every employee at Twitter who was involved in suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story will have an opportunity to come before Congress and explain their actions to the American people,” Comer told program host Sean Hannity.

Musk and independent journalist Matt Taibbi on Friday unveiled a series of internal Twitter communications that give insight into steps taken by staff at the social media platform around suppressing the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story. Republicans have long accused Twitter—and some media outlets—of suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story, which included reporting that bolstered claims that the president lied when he said he had no involvement in his son’s overseas business dealings. In order to suppress the Hunter Biden report, Twitter executives marked it as “unsafe,” limiting its spread and even blocking it from being directly shared via the platform’s direct message function, Taibbi said in comments on the disclosures.

He noted that such extreme restrictions were reserved for content such as child pornography. Messages between executives in Twitter’s communications and policy departments, shared by Taibbi in screenshots, show some confusion about the actions taken, with a communications executive writing: “I’m struggling to understand the policy basis for marking this as unsafe.” The disclosures show that both Democrats and Republicans had access to Twitter’s censorship system and each side lodged various requests and complaints with the social media platform’s staff. But because of Twitter employees’ predominantly left-leaning political convictions, Democrats had more avenues to press their case, Taibbi said.

Read more …

“What Obama and Holder did was take the preexisting system and retool it, so the weapons of government only targeted one side of the political continuum.”

A Baseline Understanding Mostly Missing Behind the Twitter Discussion (CTH)

Musk noted that in addition to Matt Taibbi he has given the Twitter files to Bari Weiss. However, the debate over what DC bureaucrats did -and are doing- from within the Biden administration, to censor speech, take down social media content and stop information adverse to their political interests, is a futile conversation without the full understanding of the current U.S. surveillance state. Some of the stage participants on the call with Mr. Musk have self-identified as targeted by the intelligence community, some are under active and ongoing investigation, yet they do not seem to have an understanding of what this U.S. social media surveillance system is. We cannot fight our way through the issues until we first realize what lies at the root of the problem.

Barack Obama and Eric Holder did not create a weaponized DOJ and FBI; the institutions were already weaponized by the Patriot Act. What Obama and Holder did was take the preexisting system and retool it, so the weapons of government only targeted one side of the political continuum. This point is where many people understandably get confused. Elevator Speech: (1) The Patriot Act turned the intel surveillance radar from foreign searches for terrorists to domestic searches for terrorists. (2) Obama/Biden then redefined what is a “terrorist” to include their political opposition. After 9/11/01 the electronic surveillance system that was originally created to monitor threats from abroad was retooled to monitor threats inside our country.

That is when all of our electronic ‘metadata’ came under federal surveillance. That inflection point, and the process that followed, was exactly what Edward Snowden tried to point out. What Barack Obama and Eric Holder did with that new construct was refine the internal targeting mechanisms so that only their political opposition became the target of this new national security system. The problems we face now as a country are directly an outcome of two very distinct points that were merged by Barack Obama. (1) The post 9/11 monitoring of electronic communication of American citizens; and (2) Obama’s team creating a fine-tuning knob that it focused on the politics of the targets. This is very important to understand as you dig deeper into this research outline.

Read more …

“For censors and political operatives in Twitter, Baker likely seemed like a “made man” for a company committed to systemic censorship.”

Six Degrees from James Baker: A Familiar Figure Reemerges (Turley)

As thousands of Twitter documents are released on the company’s infamous censorship program, much has been confirmed about the use of back channels by Biden and Democratic officials to silence critics on the social media platform. However, one familiar name immediately popped out in the first batch of documents released through journalist Matt Taibbi: James Baker. For many, James Baker is fast becoming the Kevin Bacon of the Russian collusion scandals. Baker has been featured repeatedly in the Russian investigations launched by the Justice Department, including the hoax involving the Russian Alfa Bank. When Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann wanted to plant the bizarre false claim of a secret communications channel between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, Baker was his go-to, speed-dial contact. [..]

The Bidens had long been accused of influence peddling, nepotism, and other forms of corruption. Moreover, the campaign was not denying that the laptop was Hunter Biden’s and key emails could be confirmed from the other parties involved. However, at the request of the “Biden team” and Democratic operatives, Twitter moved to block the story. It even suspended those who tried to share the allegations with others, including the White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who was suspended for linking to the scandal. Even inside Twitter, the move raised serious concerns over the company serving as a censor for the Biden campaign. Global Comms Brandon Borrman who asked if the company could “truthfully claim that this is part of the policy” for barring posts and suspending users. Baker quickly jumped in to support the censorship and said that “it’s reasonable for us to assume that they may have been [hacked] and that caution is warranted.”

Keep in mind that there was never any evidence that this material was hacked. Moreover, there was no evidence of Russian involvement in the laptop. Indeed, U.S. intelligence quickly rejected the Russian disinformation claim. However, Baker insisted that there was a “reasonable” assumption that Russians were behind another major scandal. Faced with a major scandal implicating a Joe Biden in the corrupt selling of access to foreign figures (including some with foreign intelligence associations), Baker’s natural default was to kill the story and stop others from sharing the allegations. The released documents may show why Twitter was so eager to hire Baker despite his role in the Russian collusion controversies. What likely would have been a liability for most companies seemed an actual draw for Twitter. For censors and political operatives in Twitter, Baker likely seemed like a “made man” for a company committed to systemic censorship.

Read more …

How to really rig a election. What a joke.

Katie Hobbs’ Office Contacted Twitter To Censor Posts (PM)

Arizona Governor-Elect Katie Hobbs is facing backlash as proof that her office requested for certain tweets to be censored came out of Elon Musk’s release of the “Twitter Files,” the internal documents showing collusion between government officials, campaign teams, and other like actors with the social media giant to silence political dissent. On January 7 2021, the communications director for Hobbs’ Secretary of State office emailed the Center for Internet Security (CIS), a 501 nonprofit cybersecurity organization that “makes the connected world a safer place for people, businesses, and governments through our core competencies of collaboration and innovation,” according to their website.

“I’m flagging this Twitter account for your review,” Hobbs’ comms director wrote to misinformation@cisecurity.org, linking to an unidentified profile. The subject line was “Election Related Misinformation.” The “misinformation” department at CIS then forwarded the message along to an employee at Twitter, writing “Please see this report below from the Arizona SOS office. Please let me know if you have any questions.” “Thank you,” Twitter wrote back. “We will escalate.” About seven hours later, a Twitter employee wrote again; “Thank you… both tweets have been removed from the service.” Copied on this response was an employee at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a branch under the federal government’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene called for an investigation into the matter, writing, “The SOS of AZ and Gov candidate, Katie Hobbs, used the power of the AZ SOS to collude w/ Twitter to unconstitutionally violate 1st Amendment rights of Americans for her own political gain.” “This is communism and Hobbs can not be governor. I’m calling for a Federal investigation,” she added.

Read more …

How much does Big Tech donate to the GOP?

US Republican House Leader Calls For Big Tech Investigation (RT)

The Republican Party must be ready to investigate some of the US’ largest tech firms, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has declared, in response to recently released documents showing how Twitter suppressed information damaging to Joe Biden in 2020. McCarthy said on Saturday that the incoming Republican majority “will get answers for the American people” about Twitter’s efforts to “silence the truth about Hunter Biden’s laptop just days before the 2020 presidential election.” This will happen when the GOP takes back control of the House of Representatives in January, McCarthy stressed.

Documents released by new Twitter CEO Elon Musk on Friday showed a top-down effort by the platform’s most senior staff to suppress the spread of a New York Post article alleging that Joe Biden took part in numerous pay-to-play schemes with his son’s foreign business contacts whilst he was vice president of the US. Twitter banned the sharing of links to the story, even in private messages. Facebook also took action to censor the Hunter Biden story, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg later saying he was instructed to by the FBI. Appearing on Fox News on Sunday, McCarthy called on the GOP to look beyond just Twitter.

“Now we need to start looking at Facebook, at Google. These now have become arms of the Democratic Party, arms of the Biden administration,” he said. The prospective Speaker also called for the investigation of dozens of former intelligence officials who falsely claimed that the Hunter Biden story had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” “[The Democrats] also used the intel community as well to lie to the American public. Should those people keep their clearances? Should those people still be allowed to have information?” he asked. “They used every arm not only of the government, but they had taken over businesses to lie to the American public,” McCarthy continued. “This is just the beginning. All this will be held up.”

Read more …

Europe has exactly one voice of reason.

EU Desire To Pay For Ukraine Will Ruin Europe For Generations – Orbán (RMX)

European policies which advocate mass joint borrowing among EU member states to further finance Ukraine’s resistance to the Russian invasion of the country will have devastating consequences for the continent, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán warned on Friday. During an interview on the “Good morning, Hungary!” program on Kossuth Rádió, Orbán slammed the futility of the existing EU sanctions on Russian energy. He also said that “not only our children, but also our grandchildren will suffer the consequences” of the mass joint borrowing scheme proposed by the European Union to continue financing Ukraine’s defense; furthermore, we will also have to pay for the states that become insolvent along the way, he added.

The Hungarian leader reaffirmed his country’s opposition to Brussels financing the operation of the Ukrainian state through joint borrowing, suggesting instead that agreements with Ukraine should be made at the national level through bilateral agreements between individual countries. “We do not want the European Union to become a community or group of jointly indebted states instead of a community of cooperating member states,” Orbán told listeners. He highlighted that Ukraine has now found itself in a situation whereby it is incapable of functioning as an independent nation because of the ongoing conflict, and while it needs help from its neighbors and allies in the short-term, it is not for Brussels to speak on behalf of all member states.

“We accept the need for support, but we are not happy about it; if there was no war, there wouldn’t be this necessity either,” Orbán said. The Hungarian prime minister also discussed the ongoing EU sanctions on Russian energy, including the latest oil sanctions due to come into effect on Dec. 5, which Hungary is exempt from. He warned that any further extension of EU sanctions on Russian gas or nuclear energy would have “tragic consequences” for Hungary, and insisted his nation must be exempt from such a decision. Orbán lamented the failure of the ongoing energy sanctions, which he argued have not brought us “one millimeter closer” to the end of the war.

Read more …

In the same breath, she talks about a Russia war crimes tribunal. Relevancy is hard to come by…

EU Must ‘Take Action’ Against US – von der Leyen (RT)

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warned on Sunday that to be able to compete with the US’ government-subsidized green industry, the EU must “take action” and step up state aid to its own companies. Signed into law by President Joe Biden in August, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is – despite its name – a $738 billion spending package that allocates $391 billion toward green energy and climate-friendly industry projects, including $270 billion in tax incentives. Initially lauded by liberals on both sides of the Atlantic, von der Leyen now sees the act as a threat to Europe’s industry.

The IRA’s provision of tax breaks for consumers who buy American products, and manufacturers who produce these products in the US, could “lead to unfair competition, could close markets, and thus fragment critical supply chains,” she told a gathering of students in the Belgian city of Bruges. With these incentives on the one hand, and the EU’s struggles with supply chain bottlenecks and record energy costs on the other, the IRA could place European industry at a disadvantage, she continued. Competition between the US and EU “must respect a level playing field,” she declared. “We must take action to rebalance the playing field, where the IRA and other measures create distortions.” To that end, von der Leyen said that the EU must increase state aid to its own industries, and invest in renewable energy, while lobbying the US to “address some of the most concerning aspects” of the IRA.

Earlier on Sunday, the head of the European Parliament’s trade committee, Bernd Lange, said that pressing the US to rewrite the act is a waste of time, and that the EU should file a complaint with the World Trade Organization instead. While von der Leyen blamed the Europe-wide energy crunch on Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, the EU’s own sanctions on Moscow impeded critical repair work along Russian-EU gas lines before deliveries were reduced. Moreover, the bloc pressed ahead with imposing a price cap on Russian oil on Saturday. On the same day, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow is not planning to recognize the measure. He added that the government is currently carrying out a review of the situation.

Read more …

Look, you lost…

EU Should Sue US – Lawmaker (RT)

The EU should file a lawsuit with the World Trade Organization (WTO) against the controversial US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Bernd Lange, head of the European Parliament’s Trade Committee, told the Berliner Morgenpost news outlet on Saturday. “My assumption is that the negotiations between the EU and the US will not be able to help agree even on small changes in the implementation of the IRA. The basic structure of the IRA will remain in place. In this regard, I think it is necessary for the EU to quickly file a complaint with the WTO in the coming months,” the lawmaker said ahead of a meeting of the EU-US Trade and Technology Council on Monday, at which the IRA package is expected to be discussed. He added that the lawsuit would help clarify “that the US’s actions are clearly not compatible with WTO regulations.”

The IRA is a $430 billion climate protection and social package passed by the US Congress in August. The package aims to help battle inflation and reduce energy prices, as well as tackling climate change. It offers generous tax breaks for US companies that invest in clean energy and significant subsidies for domestic electric vehicles, batteries and renewable energy projects. The measure has sparked concerns in the EU, with many warning that the “protectionist” legislation may be “discriminatory” towards European companies. French President Emmanuel Macron has slammed the subsidies provision in the IRA as “super aggressive,” while German Economy Minister Robert Habeck has called for a “robust” response to the law from Brussels.

Meanwhile, EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton told the newspaper Journal du Dimanche that the legislation would cause a “competitive imbalance” between the EU and other buyers of US goods. He called for the creation of a “European sovereignty fund” which would support industrial projects within the bloc. Lange also suggested the EU should step up its support for domestic industry in the face of the US legislation. “We also have to examine whether and how we can reduce energy prices for our industry, as at the moment they are up to ten times higher than in the US,” he stated.

Read more …

Yeah, that’s gonna happen…

Withdrawal Of Russian Weapons Is Key To Nuclear Plant Deal – IAEA Chief (RT)

Any deal for the “protection” of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) will involve the withdrawal of Russia’s arms from it, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi has stated. Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of shelling the site.Speaking to Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper on Friday, Grossi said that a deal to establish a ‘safe zone’ around the plant could be reached “by the end of the year.” The Ukrainian side is pushing for “the withdrawal of armaments” from the facility, Grossi continued, adding that such a pullback “would in any case be part of the general agreement.”

The largest nuclear power facility in Europe, the Zaporozhye plant was seized by Russian troops shortly after Moscow launched its military operation in Ukraine in late February. The wider region of Zaporozhye, along with three other former Ukrainian territories, eventually joined Russia after holding referendums in September. Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree in October declaring Russian ownership over the plant. Moscow also stated last month that it is open to establishing a demilitarized “security zone” around it, as long as an international monitoring mechanism were put in place. Without such a mechanism, any agreement would be treated like “an empty sheet of paper” by Kiev, Mikhail Ulyanov, Russia’s envoy to international organizations in Vienna, said in November.

Russia has repeatedly accused the Ukrainian military of shelling the plant, and Moscow’s troops have thwarted numerous attempts by Ukraine to retake the facility. Last month, Russian security services said they had foiled a planned “terrorist attack” on the plant orchestrated by the Ukrainian government. Grossi would not say whether he thinks Russia will agree to pull back its weapons, saying only that “Russia is not against an agreement and the principle of plant protection.” The IAEA head added that he hopes to meet Putin, as well as Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, before a deal is agreed.

Read more …

Today the total ban goes into effect. Right.

Italy Justifies Russian Gas Imports (RT)

Italy is still reliant on Russian natural gas, which it continues to import despite calls in the EU for a ban, according to Environment and Energy Security Minister Gilberto Pichetto Fratin. In an interview with La Stampa daily, he said 250 million cubic meters (mcm) of gas entered Italy the previous day, including 90 mcm from Algeria, which has become the country’s “main supplier.” The minister added that 30 mcm are still coming from Russia, with the average daily volume from the sanctioned country reaching around 20 mcm. “Fortunately, another 25 million cubic meters come via Trans Adriatic Gas Pipeline, about 10 million cubic meters from Norway, and 45 million cubic meters of liquefied gas load at our regasification terminals,” the energy minister explained.

He compared Italy’s energy transition plan to a “reversal of the hourglass that leads us to have to search in the South for the gas that previously came from the North and which in the future can also put Italy in a position of advantage over other European countries.” “We haven’t overturned the hourglass yet; Russia continues to have an interest in exporting gas and we are not in a condition of self-sufficiency. We’re not out of the tunnel yet,” he stressed.

According to Pichetto Fratin, Italy will make it through this winter, “but the concern remains strong because from May we have to fill the stocks to cover the next winter season, and this is a difficult undertaking.” Italy, along with other EU countries, has been battling record-high inflation, driven largely by rising energy costs. The country relies on imports for nearly 75% of its energy. At the start of this year, it was receiving 40% of its gas from Russia, but the imports later plunged due to sanctions on Moscow and the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline. In October, energy group Eni said that Russia now accounts for only around 10% of Italy’s gas imports.

Read more …

“..the US’s smuggling activities have cost Syria more than $100 billion of losses.”

China Slams US Stationing In Syria, Oil And Grain Looting As Illegal (AlM)

The Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, opened fire on the US’ illegal presence in Syria, shedding light on the continuous US looting of Syrian oil and grain and slamming the US occupation’s missile attacks on the country. In a press conference on December 2, 2022, addressing worldwide media outlets, Lijian said, “The US’s stationing of troops in Syria is illegal. The US’s smuggling of oil and grain from Syria is illegal. The US’s missile attack against Syria is also illegal.” Answering a question by the Chinese Shenzhen TV, whereby they asked the spokesperson to comment on the fact that “on the morning of December 1, the US forces sent 54 oil-laden tankers from northeastern Syria to its bases in northern Iraq, the latest shipment of stolen Syrian oil to be delivered,” Lijian said he noted the relevant reports, slamming the US occupation forces for leaving the Syrian people struggling to survive an anticipated harsh winter, as they continue to loot their oil and grain.


The Chinese diplomat also highlighted the financial losses of the continuous US looting and smuggling of Syrian oil, saying, “According to the official data from the Syrian government, between 2011 and the first half of 2022, the US’s smuggling activities have cost Syria more than $100 billion of losses.” According to Lijian, the US keeps violating international laws and rules, contrary to its claims that it advocates what it calls “the rules-based international order.” “When the US talks about ‘rules’, it is often just trying to find a pretext for serving its own interest and perpetuating its hegemony,” he stressed. The Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson quoted former French Ambassador to the US Gérard Araud as saying that “when the Americans basically want to do whatever they want, including when it’s against international law, as they define it, they do it. And that’s the vision that the rest of the world has of this order.”

Read more …

“..continues his deluded daily media appearances while casually throwing his former alleged lover, co-worker and penthouse-mate, Caroline – and pretty much all other co-workers – under the bus..”

Alameda’s Caroline Ellison Spotted In NY, May Be About To Roll On SBF (ZH)

As Sam Bankman-Fried enters day six of his whirlwind media tour in which he makes one or more daily appearances – against the advice of his lawyers – in hopes of convincing someone that he was too dumb to be a criminal mastermind with billions in crypto in cold storage and in bank accounts in Dubai and Singapore (luckily all his wire transfers can be traced), also known as the Simple Jack defense… the weakest link in SBF’s defense was just spotted in a New York coffee shop, amid speculation she is preparing to blow up SBF’s entire defense strategy. According to Autism Capital, the former CEO of Alameda Capital (which as a reminder was ground zero of the FTX implosion after it blew up $8 billion in FTX client funds on trades gone horribly wrong), Caroline Ellison, was spotted at 8:15am this morning at the Ground Support Coffee on West Broad in SoHo Manhattan.


This, as AC notes, “would mean she is not in Hong Kong and is in NY not in custody.” A statement from a barista at the coffee shop confirmed that it was in fact Caroline. Why does this matter? Because while the prominent Democrat donor, who reportedly is “responsible for Biden being in office” and who – at least according to Musk – donated over $1 billion to democrats…continues his deluded daily media appearances while casually throwing his former alleged lover, co-worker and penthouse-mate, Caroline – and pretty much all other co-workers – under the bus by claiming he has no idea how $8 billion in FTX client funds just vaporized in SBF’s personal hedge fund, Alameda (implying that only Alameda’s CEO, Ellison, was responsible for the theft and fraud) Caroline is two-steps ahead of SBF and is already cooperating with members of the DOJ, and specifically the SDNY, which we previously reported is probing the collapse of FTX.

Read more …

VAERS.

Database Shows 10,000% Increase In Cancer Reports Due To Covid Vaccines (ARR)

LifeSite is reporting that a researcher who queried the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) discovered a 10,661.4% increase in cancer reports as a result of experimental Covid-19 gene-base vaccines as compared with all FDA-approved vaccines over the last 30 years. Brian Shilhavy, who is the editor of Health Impact News, traced his steps in the search providing links to documentation of his various findings. Having first queried the cases of ‘the most common cancers [that] had been reported following Covid-19 vaccines,’ he found “837 cases of cancer, including 88 deaths, 66 permanent disabilities, and 104 life threatening events.

He emphasized that even these numbers were not exhaustive, and the VAERS database could not handle the larger search of ‘ALL cancers listed in VAERS’ under this category of Covid inoculations. ‘Using the exact same search terms for cancer,’ he wrote, ‘I then searched ALL FDA-approved vaccines for the previous 30 years and found only 140 cases of cancer reported. ‘That result is for 360 months (30 years), whereas the 837 cases following the experimental Covid-19 vaccines were reported in just 20 months, since the roll out of the Covid-19 shots beginning in December of 2020,’ Shilhavy wrote. ‘That is an increase of 10,661.4%!’ he concluded.

Shilhavy, whose organization is located in Texas, also made note of the significant number of the cancer cases in the database that were of young people, from age 12 up through many young adults in their 20s. Last October, a Swedish lab study found that the spike protein associated with the Covid-19 illness, and its experimental vaccines, enters the nucleus of cells and significantly interferes with DNA damage-repair functions, compromising a person’s adaptive immunity and perhaps encouraging the formation of cancer cells.

Read more …

“..the non-profit helped the Wuhan lab put together the “best existing methods to engineer bat coronaviruses to attack other species” for many years.”

Scientist Who Worked At Wuhan Lab Says Covid Was Man-made Virus (NYP)

A scientist who worked at a controversial research lab in China has claimed that COVID was a man-made virus that leaked from the facility, according to a report. Andrew Huff, who worked for a New York-based non-profit that studied viruses, said COVID leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China two-plus years ago and blamed authorities for the “biggest US intelligence failure since 9/11,” Britain’s The Sun reported Saturday. The lab has been at the center of fierce debates about the origins of COVID, with both Chinese government officials and lab personnel denying that the virus leaked from the facility. Huff, an epidemiologist, said in his new book, “The Truth About Wuhan,” that the pandemic was the result of the US government’s funding of coronaviruses in China.

He said that China’s gain-of-function experiments were carried out with lax security, which led to a leak at the Wuhan lab. “Foreign laboratories did not have the adequate control measures in place for ensuring proper biosafety, biosecurity, and risk management, ultimately resulting in the lab leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology,” he said in his book, which was exclusively excerpted in the newspaper. Over the last two years, increasing evidence has suggested that the virus was leaked from the lab. Some experts believe that the virus could have escaped through an infected scientist or the improper disposal of waste from the facility.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization, told a European politician that he feared that the virus escaped from the lab in “a catastrophic accident” in 2019, according to a report in the Daily Mail earlier this year. Huff is a former vice president of EcoHealth Alliance, a New York-based non-profit that studies infectious diseases. The group has been studying different coronaviruses in bats for more than a decade with funding from the National Institutes of Health, and had forged close ties to the Wuhan lab. Huff, who worked at EcoHealth Alliance from 2014 to 2016, said that the non-profit helped the Wuhan lab put together the “best existing methods to engineer bat coronaviruses to attack other species” for many years.

Read more …

“Not only it will harm the evil Putin, but it will reduce oil prices, so everyone in the West should be happy.”

What Is The Next Thing That Will Hit Us? It Will Be Huge (Ugo Bardi)

Do you remember how many things changed during the past 2-3 years, and changed so unbelievably fast? There was a pattern in these changes: one element was that we were told they were just temporary, another that they were done for our sake. We were told that we needed “Two weeks to flatten the curve,” and that “the sanctions will cause the Russian economy to collapse in two weeks,” and many more things. Then, the world would return to normal. Instead, the result was a “new normal,” not at all like the old one. Now, the obvious question is “what next?” More exactly, “what are they going to hit us with, next time?” There is this idea that there may be a new pandemic, a new virus, or the old one returning. But, no. They are smarter than that — so far they have always been one step, maybe two, ahead of us.

They are masters of propaganda, they know that propaganda is all based on memes and that memes have a finite lifetime. Old memes are like old newspapers, they are not interesting anymore. A particular bugaboo can’t scare people for too long, and the idea of scaring us with a pandemic virus is past its usefulness stage. They may have probed us with the “monkeypox” pandemic, and they saw that it didn’t work. It was obvious anyway. So, now what? Let me suggest one possible new way to hit us. You may have heard of it but, so far, it was supposed to be something marginal, not designed to create another “new normal.” But it may. It is huge, it is gigantic, it is arriving. It is the price cap on Russian oil. The idea is that a cartel of countries, mainly Western ones, will agree on prohibiting the import of Russian oil unless it is priced at less than $60 per barrel.

It will also make it more difficult for Russia to export oil abroad even to countries that do not subscribe to the agreement. This idea is, as usual, promoted as a way to help us. Not only it will harm the evil Putin, but it will reduce oil prices, so everyone in the West should be happy. But will it actually work? Unlikely, to say the least, and it is probable that the promoters know that very well. Think about that: it had never happened during the past hundred years that a cartel of countries had intervened to force a certain oil price worldwide. Even during the famed “Oil Crisis” of the 1970s, OPEC never did what it is often accused of having done, fixing a high oil price. OPEC can only set production quotas or sanction certain countries, but it has no power, and never had power, on prices, which are set by the international market.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Maajid George Webb

 

 

Cryptome

 

 

Vivaldi Accordeon
https://twitter.com/i/status/1599380903830048768

 

 

Bird colors
https://twitter.com/i/status/1599356266102411264

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Aug 102022
 
 August 10, 2022  Posted by at 9:17 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  45 Responses »


Gustav Klimt Field of poppies 1907

 

Is The US Preparing To Throw Zelensky Under The Bus? (Diesen)
Zelensky Aide: Counterattack Claims Part Of Kiev’s ‘Information Warfare’ (RT)
Welcome To The Third World (Matt Taibbi)
FBI Even Searched Melania’s Wardrobe Inn Trump Raid (Devine)
Judge Who OK’d Mar-a-Lago Raid Once Obama Donor, Jeffrey Epstein Lawyer (NYP)
Trump Ally Rep. Scott Perry Says The FBIs Seized His Cellphone (Fox)
EU Break-up Now Inevitable (Saxty)
Z for Zorro (Batiushka)
Hungary Offers Solution To Resume Russian Oil Supply (RT)
Lies, Damned Lies, and the Jan. 6 Committee (Sperry)
The Global Debt Scam – Day of Reckoning? (Salamah)
How Greece Became Europe’s Worst Place For Press Freedom (Pol.eu)
US Occupation Loots Most Of Syria’s Oil: Ministry (AlMa)
Lockdowns Increases Obesity, And Obesity Increases Covid Risk (DM)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Australia bombshell

 

 

Taiwan

 

 


EU imports of Russian Energy

1. Oil:
Jan – May 21: €25 bn
Jan – May 22: €43 bn
=> +71%

2. Gas:
Jan – May 21: €6 bn
Jan – May 22: €21 bn
=> +260%

3. Coal:
Jan – May 21: €1.5 bn
Jan – May 22: €4.0 bn
=> +170%

 


German front yr power futures have reached 411 €/MWh today.
Germany consumes about 500 TWh electricity annually. So at current prices the economy’s power bill stands at €205bn.
The 2010s average was €20bn.
The German electricity bill went up by €195bn. That’s 5% of GDP.

 

Myocarditis

 

 

 

 

“..there needs to be a fall guy to take the blame for the pending disaster..”

Is The US Preparing To Throw Zelensky Under The Bus? (Diesen)

Until very recently, the US successfully upheld the international image of Zelensky as some sort of reincarnation of Winston Churchill. Washington dominated the information war in which the complexity of the proxy fight was simplified with dichotomous imagery of the two leaders. Zelensky and Putin were successfully portrayed as a virtuous democrat versus a vicious dictator, a victorious David versus a failing Goliath. Presenting conflicts as a struggle between good and evil is an ideal strategy to mobilize public support and to depict the lack of compromise as a moral position. However, when a war is lost and compromise is necessary, the narrative must be changed. President Joe Biden must defend his weak political position at home and allies must be reassured about American resolve, thus there needs to be a fall guy to take the blame for the pending disaster.

While Washington will continue to send more weapons to bleed Russia, it appears to be simultaneously preparing for defeat by no longer shielding Zelensky from criticism. sIt has been a remarkably difficult month, so far, for Zelensky in the Western media, which had previously withheld all criticism. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, closely linked to the White House, reported that “there is deep mistrust between the White House and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine – considerably more than has been reported.” Friedman also detailed Washington’s growing concerns about Ukrainian corruption and mismanagement, a topic that has been denounced as Russian propaganda since February. This is the same media that until recently repeated every line from Zelensky, including labeling the mass surrender in Mariupol as an “evacuation.” No more.

It is seemingly also no longer taboo to report on the internal divisions in Ukraine as a source of failure. The New York Times reports on Zelensky’s reckless purge of the military and security services, while the Washington Post accuses Zelensky of sidelining mayors and centralizing control over all recovery aid “to weaken any future political rivals.” Sky News, a very anti-Russian news agency, also aired a segment with the title “Zelensky ‘not all he’s portrayed as’ by Western media.”An anchor accused Zelensky of dismantling Ukrainian democracy by seizing control of the national media, banning political opposition parties, and arresting the opposition leader. All true, but previously taboo..

Read more …

“All public remarks by Ukrainian officials are part of information warfare against Russia..”

“He ruled out Kiev’s military defeat as a possible scenario, predicting that Western nations will funnel weapons to Ukraine regardless of the cost..”

Zelensky Aide: Counterattack Claims Part Of Kiev’s ‘Information Warfare’ (RT)

All public remarks by Ukrainian officials are part of information warfare against Russia, Mikhail Podolyak, an aide to Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenksy, claimed in an interview on Tuesday. The comment came as Podolyak was discussing Kiev’s plans to take back the city of Kherson from Russia with the BBC. Ukrainian officials have repeatedly claimed that a major counterattack was looming and that Russia was concentrating its forces in return, suggesting that a major battle in southern Ukraine was about to break out. Speaking to the British broadcaster, Podolyak said that “war is a dynamic process” that entails “a constant correction of tactical goals” and that he preferred to discuss “the possibility of lifting the blockade in broad terms” rather than particular maneuvers.

When pressured on the promises of a counteroffensive, he conceded that they could have been meant to deceive Russia. “Certainly, all public comments are part of information warfare. We need to demoralize the Russian army,” he said. The official erroneously called Kherson the largest city captured by Russia since attacking Ukraine in February, explaining its symbolic importance for Kiev. The port of Mariupol is bigger, the BBC noted in an editorial remark. Zelensky’s adviser claimed that Ukrainian forces were waging a “creative war,” as opposed to Russia, which he believes has little regard for its own casualties. “Russia hates us so much that it is ready to lose 100,000 of its people just to prove that it has the right to kill,” he declared.

Podolyak said that Zelensky will remain in power in Ukraine for as long as the armed conflict continues, dismissing the idea that the country could hold a presidential election before the hostilities end. Responding to the widely-used assertion that the government would fight “to the last Ukrainian,” he said the fight would be “to the last Russian citizen in Ukrainian territory.” He ruled out Kiev’s military defeat as a possible scenario, predicting that Western nations will funnel weapons to Ukraine regardless of the cost. Western nations won’t negotiate a truce with Russia at the expense of Ukraine “because the reputation of President Zelensky is such that no such talks can be held behind his back,”Podolyak said.

Read more …

“..you’ll quickly lose track if you try to count the named and unnamed intel spooks appearing in coverage today..”

Welcome To The Third World (Matt Taibbi)

Headline from Politics Insider this morning: “Feds likely obtained ‘pulverizing’ amount of evidence ahead of searching Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home, legal experts say.” Pulverizing! Hold that thought. We’ve reached the stage of American history where everything we see on the news must first be understood as political theater. In other words, the messaging layer of news now almost always dominates the factual narrative, with the latter often reported so unreliably as to be meaningless anyway. Yesterday’s sensational tale of the FBI raiding the Mar-a-Lago home of former president Donald Trump is no different. As of now, it’s impossible to say if Trump’s alleged offense was great, small, or in between. But this for sure is a huge story, and its hugeness extends in multiple directions, including the extraordinary political risk inherent in the decision to execute the raid.

If it backfires, if underlying this action there isn’t a very substantial there there, the Biden administration just took the world’s most reputable police force and turned it into the American version of the Tonton Macoute on national television. We may be looking at simultaneously the dumbest and most inadvertently destructive political gambit in the recent history of this country. The top story today in the New York Times, bylined by its top White House reporter, speculates this is about “delayed returning” of “15 boxes of material requested by officials with the National Archives.” If that’s true, and it’s not tied to January 6th or some other far more serious offense, then the Justice Department just committed institutional suicide and moved the country many steps closer to once far-out eventualities like national revolt or martial law.

This is true no matter what you think of Trump. Despite the early reports of “cheers” in the West Wing, the mood in center-left media has already drifted markedly from the overnight celebration. The Times story today added a line missing from most early reports: “The search, however, does not mean prosecutors have determined that Mr. Trump committed a crime.” There are whispers throughout the business that editors are striking down certain jubilant language, and we can even see this playing out on cable, where the most craven of the networks’ on-air ex-spooks are crab-crawling backward from last night’s buzz-words: The hugeness of the story has become part of its explanation. An action so extreme, we’re told by expert after expert, could only be based upon “pulverizing” evidence.

Throughout the Trump years we’ve seen a numbing pattern of rhetorical slippage in coverage of investigations. The aforementioned Politics Insider story is no different. “Likely” evidence in the headline becomes more profound in the text. An amazing five bylined writers explain: Regardless of the raid’s focus legal experts quickly reached a consensus about it: A pile of evidence must have backed up the warrant authorizing the search. They then quoted a “former top official in the Justice Department’s National Security Division” — you’ll quickly lose track if you try to count the named and unnamed intel spooks appearing in coverage today — who said, “There’s every reason to think that there’s a plus factor in the quantum and quantity of evidence that the government already had to support probable cause in this case.”

Read more …

Theater. Bad theater, but still..

FBI Even Searched Melania’s Wardrobe In Trump Raid (Devine)

FBI agents scoured Melania Trump’s wardrobe and spent several hours combing through Donald Trump’s private office, breaking open his safe and rifling through drawers when they raided the former First Family’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida Monday morning. The Post has learned that the search warrant used by the FBI to enter the palatial Palm Beach property focused solely on presidential records and evidence of classified information being stored there. A source close to the former president expressed concern that FBI agents or DOJ lawyers conducting the search could have “planted stuff” because they would not allow Trump’s attorneys inside the 128-room building to observe the operation, which lasted more than nine hours.


The raid by over 30 plain clothes agents from the Southern District of Florida and the FBI’s Washington Field Office extended through the Trump family’s entire 3,000-square-foot private quarters, as well as to a separate office and safe, and a locked basement storage room in which 15 cardboard boxes of material from the White House were stored. Feds arrived at 9 a.m. and didn’t leave until 6:30 p.m. An eyewitness to the raid said all of the boxes were confiscated by federal agents Monday, but it is unknown if anything else was taken as no itemized list of items was provided by the FBI.

Read more …

Nothing the FBI does can be clean.

Judge Who OK’d Mar-a-Lago Raid Once Obama Donor, Jeffrey Epstein Lawyer (NYP)

The Florida federal magistrate judge who signed off on a search warrant authorizing the FBI raid of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort donated to Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign — months after he left the local US Attorney’s office to rep employees of convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein who had received immunity in the long-running sex-trafficking investigation of the financier. Sources tell The Post that Judge Bruce Reinhart approved the warrant that enabled federal agents to converge on the palatial South Florida estate on Monday in what Trump called an “unannounced raid on my home.”

Reinhart was elevated to magistrate judge in March 2018 after 10 years in private practice. That November, the Miami Herald reported that he had represented several of Epstein’s employees — including, by Reinhart’s own admission to the outlet, Epstein’s pilots; his scheduler, Sarah Kellen; and Nadia Marcinkova, who Epstein once reportedly described as his “Yugoslavian sex slave.” Kellen and Marcinkova were among Epstein’s lieutenants who were granted immunity as part of a controversial 2007 deal with federal prosecutors that allowed the pervert to plead guilty to state charges rather than federal crimes. Epstein wound up serving just 13 months in county jail and was granted work release. According to the Herald, which cited court documents, Reinhart resigned from the South Florida US Attorney’s Office effective on New Year’s Day 2008 and went to work for Epstein’s cohorts the following day.

Epstein, who was found dead in August 2019 of an apparent suicide in the Manhattan Correctional Center while awaiting trial on federal sex-trafficking charges, had hired a stable of high-powered lawyers for his defense in the late 2000s, including former independent counsel Kenneth Starr. Ten months after starting work for Epstein’s co-conspirators, according to Federal Election Commission records, Reinhart gave $1,000 directly to the Obama campaign and another $1,000 to its fundraising arm, the Obama Victory Fund. Though the records show the judge made mostly small-dollar donations to his law firm’s political action committee in subsequent years, Reinhart also donated $500 to Jeb Bush’s 2016 presidential campaign in November 2015.

Reinhart was later named in a civil lawsuit by two of Epstein’s victims that accused him of violating Justice Department policies by switching sides in the middle of the Epstein investigation, suggesting he had spilled inside information about the probe to build favor with the notorious defendant, the Herald reported in 2018. In a 2011 affidavit, Reinhart denied he had done anything improper and insisted that since he was not involved in the federal investigation of Epstein, he was not privy to inside information about the case. However, in a 2013 court filing, Reinhart’s former colleagues contradicted him, saying that he had “learned confidential, non-public information about the Epstein matter” while employed by the US Attorney’s Office.

Read more …

“My phone contains info about my legislative and political activities, and personal/private discussions with my wife, family, constituents, and friends. None of this is the government’s business.”

Trump Ally Rep. Scott Perry Says The FBI Seized His Cellphone (Fox)

Republican Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania says that the FBI has confiscated his cellphone. Perry, in an exclusive statement, told Fox News on Tuesday that while traveling with his family earlier in the day, he was approached by three FBI agents who handed him a warrant and requested that he turn over his cellphone. The confiscation of the congressman’s personal phone comes one day after FBI agents searched former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. “This morning, while traveling with my family, 3 FBI agents visited me and seized my cell phone. They made no attempt to contact my lawyer, who would have made arrangements for them to have my phone if that was their wish.

“I’m outraged — though not surprised — that the FBI under the direction of Merrick Garland’s DOJ, would seize the phone of a sitting Member of Congress,” Perry said in his statement. “My phone contains info about my legislative and political activities, and personal/private discussions with my wife, family, constituents, and friends. None of this is the government’s business.” Perry asserted in his statement that “as with President Trump last night, DOJ chose this unnecessary and aggressive action instead of simply contacting my attorneys. These kinds of banana republic tactics should concern every Citizen — especially considering the decision before Congress this week to hire 87,000 new IRS agents to further persecute law-abiding Citizens.”

Perry, a five-term congressman and loyal Trump ally, is an original member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus and took over as the group’s leader at the beginning of the year. Perry was also a strong supporter of Trump’s repeated unproven claims that his 2020 election loss to now-President Biden was due to massive voter fraud. Perry has been a target of interest of the Democratic dominated January 6 House select committee that is investigating the deadly 2021 attack on the Capitol by right wing extremists and other Trump supporters who aimed to disrupt the congressional certification of Biden’s Electoral College victory. Perry was in communication numerous times with the Trump White House in the days and weeks ahead of the storming of the Capitol.

Read more …

“Since Orbán returned to power in 2010 marriages in Hungary have doubled, abortions have halved, divorces have hit record lows, and the birth rate has risen by a quarter.”

EU Break-up Now Inevitable (Saxty)

Back in 2020, Dutch Prime Minister – Mark Rutte – asked (perhaps slightly tongue-in-cheek as to whether they might have an EU without that troublesome duo of Hungary and Poland? It was a telling moment, hinting at frustration in western Europe with what many there see as recalcitrant ex-communist states. Then in 2021, Rutte said Hungary had no business being in the European Union anymore owing to the banning of LGBT issues to under-18s. While Rutte said he could not push Hungary out of the EU by himself he somewhat candidly added: “The long-term aim is to bring Hungary to its knees on this issue”. Now bad blood is brewing between progressive Brussels and conservative-nationalist central and eastern Europe over the tying of EU cash to rule of law issues, something Hungary and Poland see as a thinly-veiled attempt to impose liberal values upon them.

To some extent, central and eastern Europe got a bait and switch with the EU, believing they were joining an enhanced free trade bloc, they ended up joining a political union with a strong progressive ideology. That said, Hungary and Poland have been in the club long enough by now to know the rules. Budapest and Warsaw must, by now, be aware the EU is not going to change to suit them. Officially, majorities in most central and eastern EU states support EU membership. In reality, however, most back being part of a beefed-up trade alliance, not an ideologically-fixed political union. Plus, the EU cannot chuck the two out. As Brexiteers know, the only way out is Article 50 and it must be triggered by the country in question. Article 7 can impose sanctions, including losing the right to vote in the European Council.

However, this requires unanimity, and Hungary and Poland – not to mention other central and eastern European states – generally have one another’s backs. How much longer then can Hungary and Poland keep doing this dance, and how much longer can both sides of the EU divide ignore the cultural Iron Curtain which has caused a schism on the Continent? Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is not just an irritant to Brussels, he sees the world from an entirely different perspective. Since Orbán returned to power in 2010 marriages in Hungary have doubled, abortions have halved, divorces have hit record lows, and the birth rate has risen by a quarter.

Orbán has also overseen a constitution with references to God and Christianity; funded Christian schools, and banned content deemed to promote LGBT issues to minors. None of this has endeared him to Brussels but has proved extremely popular in central and eastern Europe. But it is almost certainly the case that what Brussels sees as Hungary’s and Poland’s draconian policies is a direct reaction to what Budapest and Warsaw feel is coming their way from Brussels.

Read more …

“Today the question is, after the UK, who next? A popular choice is Hungary. But who knows? Apart from the imbecile-afflicted UK, there is already political turbulence in three EU countries, Bulgaria, Estonia and Italy.”

Z for Zorro (Batiushka)

The collapse of the EU has never been a question of ‘if’, only of ‘when’. The decomposition of the Brussels Yoke of unelected bureaucrats has already long been visible and its collapse foretold years ago. First there was Grexit (which was averted at the last moment at huge cost), then Brexit, which actually happened, and then was an alphabet jungle of Frexit, Italexit, Nexit, Dexit, Polexit etc. Today the question is, after the UK, who next? A popular choice is Hungary. But who knows? Apart from the imbecile-afflicted UK, there is already political turbulence in three EU countries, Bulgaria, Estonia and Italy.

It all sounds as if these are only ‘the beginning of troubles’. Winter is coming to Europe on 1 December with probable food riots, looting and mass civil disobedience, caused by the refusal and inability to pay soaring energy bills because of the EU millionaire elite’s refusal to buy Russian gas. The only way out is if European countries free themselves from the shackles of the USA in order to find their natural places as part of the Eurasian, or rather, Afro-Eurasian, world. This liberation deserves a sign. We can think of no sign more topical – or more native to the Western world – than the sign ‘Z’. Let me explain. Z was the sign of a fictional Spanish-Mexican character, El Zorro, created by an American author in 1919. Zorro is portrayed as a masked, nineteenth-century avenger who defends the common people and native peoples of Spanish-run California against an oppressive imperialist dictator in Madrid, his corrupt and tyrannical local servants and other evildoers.

His name Zorro, (in Spanish, ‘The Fox’), comes from his foxlike cunning. Using the tip of his rapier, he leaves his mark, the initial ‘Z’, on his defeated enemies and on objects in order to sign his presence. However, this purely fictional Zorro goes back to several real figures, notably to three main characters, real ones, indeed so real that they have become myths in European history. These are: Eadric was one of many Englishmen, well-known in their day, who lived in the wilder parts of England after 1066 in order to fight back against the barbaric Norman occupiers. Called ‘the Wild’ or ‘the Woodsman’, Eadric was a nobleman (‘Cild’ in Old English) and landowner in the hills of the west of England. (Remarkably, Eadric’s descendants inherited his lands in a place called Acton Scott in the west of England and these lands still belong to his descendants, the Actons, after a thousand years). Here Eadric led the English Resistance to the Norman occupation and was active in 1068–70.

Read more …

“Transneft, announced on Monday that attempts to pay Ukraine for transit have been blocked due to EU sanctions.”

Hungary Offers Solution To Resume Russian Oil Supply (RT)

The Hungarian oil and gas company MOL confirmed on Tuesday that Russian crude supplies via the southern branch of the Druzhba pipeline stopped a few days ago, and said it had initiated negotiations to assume obligations to pay for transit. The company responsible for Russian oil supplies to the EU, Transneft, announced on Monday that attempts to pay Ukraine for transit have been blocked due to EU sanctions. According to news outlet Origo, MOL has offered to pay transit fees on behalf of Transneft, but has not received a reply from Ukraine. “Although MOL has enough reserves for several weeks, it is working on a solution and has also initiated negotiations on the assumption of the fee obligation,” the energy company said in a statement.


On Monday, Transneft announced that Ukraine had suspended Russian oil flows to parts of central Europe since August 4 because Western sanctions prevented Moscow from making payments for transit. According to the Russian company, the suspension of pipeline flows has affected Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Transneft said it was working on alternative options for the transfer of funds. Druzhba, which is one of the longest pipeline networks in the world, carries crude some 4,000km from the eastern part of European Russia to refineries in the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. Russia normally supplies about 250,000 barrels of oil per day via the southern leg of the route. The northern branch of the Druzhba pipeline running through Belarus to Poland and Germany continues to operate as normal, according to Transneft.

Read more …

“While in some cases, it lied by omission, in others, it lied outright.”

Lies, Damned Lies, and the Jan. 6 Committee (Sperry)

The Select Committee to Investigate Jan. 6 has adjourned for a well-deserved summer break. Misleading the public is exhausting work. A careful review of the official transcripts of its eight long hearings shows the committee repeatedly made connections that weren’t there, took events and quotes out of context, exaggerated the violence of the Capitol rioters, and omitted key exculpatory evidence otherwise absolving former President Donald Trump of guilt. While in some cases, it lied by omission, in others, it lied outright. It also made a number of unsubstantiated charges based on the secondhand accounts—hearsay testimony—of a young witness with serious credibility problems.

These weren’t off-the-cuff remarks. Panelists didn’t misspeak. Their statements were tightly scripted and loaded into teleprompters, which they read verbatim. In other words, the committee deliberately chummed out disinformation to millions of viewers of not just cable TV, but also the Big Three TV networks—ABC, CBS, and NBC—which agreed to preempt regular daytime and even primetime programming to air the Democratic-run hearings. And because Democrats refused to allow dissenting voices on the panel or any cross-examination of witnesses, viewers had no reference points to understand how they, along with the two Trump-hating Republicans they allowed on the committee, shaded the truth.

This charade of an honest investigation appears to have had the desired effect. Polls show the Jan. 6 hearings hurt Trump, who plans to run again, with independents. Unaffiliated voters have grown more likely to blame Trump for the Capitol riot and to show support for Democrats in the midterms, according to a new Morning Consult/Politico survey.

Read more …

“..a mere 0.88% (US$ 866 Bill) is owed by Africa comprising 54 countries. And even then, more than half of the African debt is owed by just three countries…”

The Global Debt Scam – Day of Reckoning? (Salamah)

Global debt is now claimed to exceed $300 Trillion, while the poor countries’ debt continues to rise in percentage terms – The Poor are always the culprits. It is all a matter of definition, you set it according to your understanding, objectives, or motives. We can make it a lot more alarming by theoretically adding the liabilities of the derivatives and futures markets which could be considered hypothetical debts should they be allowed to become due; then, global debts would be in the Zillions. Economists just love creating definitions, no matter how practical or impractical they are, or how narrow and rigid they become, and end up wagging the dog! On a closer look, however, it transpires that the US$ 300 Trillion global debt includes the internal and external debts of all countries.


In other words, it probably includes Aunt Jemima’s debt to her local grocer. While this is important and helps understand how deep the world has fallen into the hole it has dug, it is probably of higher priority to address the External Debt of countries; debt owed to parties outside their borders. These are the debts that will immediately impact countries’ currency exchange rates, ability to import especially food and energy, and fund development. They are quicker to trigger inflation and disrupt economies and societies. Accordingly, when we look at the Global External Debts, we are taken aback by their distribution. (Bear in mind that the actual numbers are approximations as they cover different years as well as slightly differ from one compiler to another, however they all point in the same direction):

What is striking here is that approx. 80% of global external debt is owed by the advanced countries (the US, its close Allies, and Europe), while a mere 0.88% (US$ 866 Bill) is owed by Africa comprising 54 countries. And even then, more than half of the African debt is owed by just three countries. As for Asia, it owes 3.62% (US$ 3.5 Trill) distributed among 42 countries with the top 4 countries owing half of it. Similarly, 29 Latin American countries owe just 2.25% (US$ 2.2 Trill) with the top three responsible for more than half. Most financial data, including the World Bank and IMF, kick off with a display of debt as a percentage of GDP (a ratio) and relegate the actual nominal debt figures to links that are harder to find or access. This approach may be useful to assess the size and seriousness of the debt problem in an individual economy, but it is not the only tool.


A country’s ability to pay its debts over a period of time can also be affected by inflation, which could falsely paint a rosy shrinking debt-to-GDP picture and vice versa, at least in the short term. Also, a sudden contraction or bounce up of GDP could occur as a result of multiple causes such as wars, market collapses or spikes, and rebounds in economies after sharp falls such as the ‘post covid’ temporary activity. Hence, the actual debt numbers add an important aspect to any analysis. Not surprisingly, the global Debt-to-GDP percentages/ratios tend to tally with the conclusions of the above table of actual numbers. The ratios of advanced nations and Europe are way, way higher than those of the poorer countries. In fact, quite a few of their ratios make Japan, with its famously excessive ratio, appear to be thrifty.

Read more …

I’m not sure this is helpful. The trend is everywhere. The farmers in Holland get very little coverage. But now Rutte can say: Look at Greece, it’s much worse…

How Greece Became Europe’s Worst Place For Press Freedom (Pol.eu)

Reporters across Europe raced to follow up on the piece, which provided evidence of possible criminal behavior. Interview requests poured into Germany’s Der Spiegel, one of the outlets behind the story. One country, however, was noticeably quiet on the matter: Greece. “You’d be hard pressed to find any reference to it in the pro-government press, which dominates, especially the airwaves,” said Giorgos Christides, a reporter at Der Spiegel. “In Greece, there’s two parallel media universes.” The moment illustrated what journalists, media analysts, civil rights groups and EU investigators have been warning about for years. Greece, they say, is now seeing the troubling, violent and oppressive results of a years-long erosion of press freedom in the country.

It’s a problem, they say, born during the Greek financial crisis, which destabilized the country, polarized its politics and sapped media outlets of the profits that helped them stay independent. News organizations became increasingly partisan. Threats, attacks and surveillance targeting journalists rose. The pandemic only made things worse. Press conferences were halted and essentially never came back. Questions arose over whether the government was favoring friendly outlets with taxpayer funds. A new law claimed to curb misinformation but is fueling concerns that journalists could be tossed in jail for critical reporting. And just last week, the spying web that had ensnared journalists blossomed into a full-blown scandal that forced two top officials to resign. “Due to the financial situation, media owners have handed over the keys of their businesses to the government,” said Tasos Telloglou, an investigative reporter in Greece.

“This, combined with a government that believes that it does nothing wrong, is an explosive combination.” The situation reflects a broader trend across Europe. Demonstrators going after reporters. Demonization from officials. Public funds withheld. Countries from Germany to Luxembourg to Slovenia, Poland and Hungary have all slipped in annual press freedom rankings. But Greece fell to the bottom of all European countries on the latest list. The Greek government insists the fears are vastly overblown. Press freedom is enshrined in the country’s constitution and there is no press censorship, officials note, correctly. “Greece is a country where everyone can write and publish whatever they want about anyone, without any censorship and no government control,” Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis told the European Parliament in a recent debate, holding up two newspaper front pages featuring negative articles about the government.

Read more …

Shameless. The Russians should kick them out.

US Occupation Loots Most Of Syria’s Oil: Ministry (AlMa)

The Syrian Oil Ministry revealed that the US occupation loots the majority of Syria’s oil, knowing that the daily production of the eastern oil fields is 80.3 thousand barrels.” During a meeting held to discuss its work plans and the work of its subsidiaries during the first half of this year, the Syrian Ministry of Oil stated that “the amount of oil production during the first half of this year amounted to about 14.5 million barrels, with an average daily production of 80.3 thousand barrels.” The Ministry added that the barrels are delivered to refineries at a rate of 14.2 thousand barrels per day, stressing that the US occupation forces and their mercenaries steal up to 66,000 barrels per day from fields in areas in the eastern region that they occupy.


“Around 2 billion cubic meters of natural gas were produced, with a daily production rate of 11.3 million cubic meters, of which 11.1 million cubic meters is renewable natural gas,” it stated. The Ministry detailed that “82% of the gas produced is delivered to the Ministry of Electricity, 3% to the Ministry of Industry, and 15% to the Ministry of Oil.” It is worth noting that the daily average quantity delivered to the Ministry of Electricity is 8.6 million cubic meters, as per the Ministry. [..] Besides being an occupation force that backs armed groups for its own operations and agenda in the region, the US occupation forces continue to steal Syrian oil by smuggling it from their bases in Syria to their bases in Iraq. Convoys of tens of vehicles, including tankers loaded with stolen oil from oil fields occupied by US forces in Syria, are frequently seen crossing toward northern Iraq, in addition to trucks loaded with military equipment.

Read more …

“.. the most important independent risk factor for the development of severe infections in youths..”

Lockdowns Increases Obesity, And Obesity Increases Covid Risk (DM)

One of Australia’s top Covid-19 experts says lockdowns have drastically affected the health of children as a study shows two years of coronavirus restrictions have made people fatter and unhealthier. Professor Peter Collignon, an influential infectious diseases physician with the Australian National University, shared a medical study on his Twitter in which American experts researched the link between the pandemic response and obesity in children and adolescents. ‘Lockdown measures affected healthy lifestyle behaviors through modification of dietary habits, reduction of physical activity and alteration of sleep patterns, and also increased the levels of stress and anxiety, overall promoting weight gain and obesity,’ Prof Collignon wrote on Twitter.

‘Paediatric overweight/obesity—an alarming epidemic of increasing proportions, before Covid-19, has been demonstrated to be the most important independent risk factor for the development of severe infections in youths, requiring admission to hospital/ICUs,’ Prof Collignon said. The paper published by the National Library of Medicine concluded, ‘the dramatic lifestyle changes forced by Covid-19-related lockdown promoted weight gain, with a stronger impact on obese subjects, at higher risk of severe infection.’ The study looked at both the risk factors of lockdown-induced weight increase and the impact of obesity on the risk of hospital admission in children and adolescents. The study also concluded those who were classified as obese had a higher probability of being hospitalised compared to the normal weight population and Covid-19 and obesity represent ‘epidemic conditions with detrimental impact’.

Epidemiologist Professor Catherine Bennett says the full effect of Covid restrictions have had on the obesity epidemic are not yet fully grasped ‘It is one of those things we have been concerned about yet with obesity the challenge is those rates have been rising anyway, so the question is how much can be attributed to the increase from restrictions from Covid?’ Prof Bennett said. ‘Constraints on individual liberties, exercise, organised sport disruption in and outside of schools would all contribute to the nature of the problem. ‘It is really important that we invest in actively understanding the impacts of Covid restrictions. It is crucial so we can put in place things that might help minimise the long term impacts and address the impacts in terms of obesity and chronic illness.’

Read more …

 

 

 

Man

 

 

“Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cloud seeding


 

 

 

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

 

 

 

Mar 042021
 


J.J. Grandville ‘A Comet’s Journey’, Illustration from ‘Un Autre Monde’ 1844

 

It’s Time for Major Wealth Redistribution (Lee Camp)
Joe Biden Just Yanked Away Stimulus Checks From 17 Million Americans (Week)
COVID Relief Showers States With 600% Of Lost Tax Revs (ZH)
Durham File: A Documentary Roadmap To Special Counsel Probe (JTN)
Trump Eyes 2024 Run Without Mike Pence (ZH)
A Change in the Water (Ben Hunt)
When Does This Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham Finally Implode? (CHS)
No Shots Fired By Rioters, No Firearms Recovered During Siege On Capitol (JTN)
Biden Bans Export Of Defense Articles To Russia, Which Got None Since WWII (RT)
Delusions of Self-Defense: Biden Bombs Syria (OffG.)

 

 

So many articles today, I’ll put up a separate Covid Rattle shortly here: Covid Rattle March 4 2021.

 

 

“Tucker every once in a while has a segment that just completely knocks it out of the park.This is one of those times.”
Tucker Dr. Seuss

 

 

 

 

 

Excess savings, sure, but only among the rich. Who don’t spend it.

 

 

“..the cumulative tab for our four-decade-long experiment in radical inequality has grown to over $47 trillion from 1975 through 2018..”

It’s Time for Major Wealth Redistribution (Lee Camp)

[..] we desperately need wealth redistribution. And before anyone starts yelling something about Joseph Stalin, here’s the part that’s going to blow your mind — in the United States we’ve already had wealth redistribution for decades. Fifty trillion dollars has been redistributed from the poorest Americans to the top one percent over the past several decades. That’s right, a new study shows the richest people in the world have stolen trillions from average Americans. To put this in easier to access terms — you know how mad you get when someone takes the last donut? Well, imagine that multiplied by 50 trillion. (Quick reminder: If you make $40,000 a year, it would take you 1.25 Billion years to make $50 trillion.)

The new study reveals, “…that the cumulative tab for our four-decade-long experiment in radical inequality has grown to over $47 trillion from 1975 through 2018. At a recent pace of about $2.5 trillion a year, that number we estimate crossed the $50 trillion mark by early 2020.” And to be clear, this money has been stolen from nearly every American. Had income distribution and buying power remained the same as it was from the end of World War II to 1975, ” . . . the aggregate annual income of Americans earning below the 90th percentile would have been $2.5 trillion higher in the year 2018 alone. That is … enough to pay every single working American in the bottom nine deciles an additional $1,144 a month. Every month. Every single year.”

The richest people in America are pilfering over $1,100 from you personally and everyone you know every single month of every single year. Just imagine what each living soul in America could do with an extra $13,700 per year — how many people that would feed, how much less stressful their lives would be, how many fewer foreclosures there would be, and how many more people would get the healthcare they need. Yet every time the most modest tax increases are proposed on the richest Americans, or every time someone so much as mumbles about putting in a public jungle gym or putting in filters to take the metal chunks out of the water or fixing the holes in our bridges that are bigger than the ones in Maria Bartiromo’s head — every time someone brings up these common sense solutions, the elites of our society (who own the media outlets and the levers of the state and the law enforcement and the courts) start screaming from their wine-soaked ski resort orgy balconies, “That’s wealth redistribution! That’s class war!”

Read more …

Sure they’ll all vote for him again.

Joe Biden Just Yanked Away Stimulus Checks From 17 Million Americans (Week)

During the campaign for the two Georgia Senate races, Joe Biden repeatedly promised to pass $2,000 stimulus checks if the Democrats won. After they did, the administration argued that $2,000 really meant $1,400 in addition to the $600 that had already gone out in the December rescue package. Whether that is true or not, now Biden is inarguably breaking his promise. Under pressure from moderate Senate Democrats, he has reportedly agreed to cut down the formula under which the checks will be sent out. In the previous packages, the amount started phasing out at $75,000 in income for individuals and $150,000 for joint filers, and vanished entirely at $100,000 and $200,000 respectively (as of 2019). Now the phase-out will start start in the same place but end at $80,000 for singles and $160,000 for couples.


The $1,400 promise clearly implied at least that the checks would go out according to the previous formula used under Trump. But now singles making between $80,000-100,000 and couples making between $160,000-200,000 will get nothing. The Washington Post’s Jeff Stein reports that roughly 17 million people who previously got checks now will not. The supposed justification here is that moderates want the aid to be more “targeted.” In fact this formula is horribly inaccurate, because the income data the IRS uses is from the year before the pandemic (unless people have already filed their taxes — and by the way, if your income decreased in 2020, you should do that immediately). This formula is therefore doubly wrong — there are no doubt millions of people who have lost jobs and should qualify but won’t, and a smaller number that have gotten raises and shouldn’t qualify but will. And this change will only save a pitiful $12 billion.

Read more …

So the states get what their citizens can’t.

COVID Relief Showers States With 600% Of Lost Tax Revs (ZH)

Joe Biden is giving so much money to states as part of the $1.9 trillion stimulus package that they’re set to receive approximately six times more money than estimated tax revenue shortfalls across the country, according to Bloomberg. While the package carves out nearly $200 billion for state governments, the cumulative tax revenues which have disappeared in the current fiscal year are just $31 billion. “In other words, that money could make up for that loss and be plowed back into states’ economies, such as their own version of relief checks, infrastructure projects and more, depending on the federal guidelines around the aid.”

In short – states, assuming they don’t squander the funds (who are we kidding?), could play a pivotal role in accelerating the recovery – assuming the money actually stimulates jobs and/or ends up in the hands of consumers. The funds would also allow for the unwinding of various budgetary cuts which began last March, and are responsible for the elimination of more than 1.3 million state and local government jobs – which Bloomberg notes is “nearly twice as many as were lost after the last recession.” Republicans, however, argue that some of the stimulus should be cut or shifted to other priorities which could have a more immediate impact than essentially giving states their own giant slush funds.

“If the whole point of this bill is to stimulate economic activity, the federal government has ways of doing that, that may be more efficient than sending checks to state and local governments,” said Moody’s director of public sector research, which estimates that $56 billion is the actual price tag states need to cover shortfalls through 2022 after previously allocated aid is taken into account. Bloomberg also notes that “the financial impact overall has been far smaller than initially feared when Covid last year sent the US economy into the deepest recession since World War II, which left governors nationwide braving for the gravest fiscal crisis of modern times.”

Deficits on that scale were averted after the federal government pushed through stimulus plans in March and again late last year, driving stocks to record highs and promising to increase collections of capital gains taxes. The magnitude of the shortfalls also reflects the unusually uneven nature of the recession: While lower paid service industry employees were thrown out of work, the highest earners who pay far more in state taxes were less affected because they were able to work from home.

Read more …

A lot of information here.

Durham File: A Documentary Roadmap To Special Counsel Probe (JTN)

Freed from his double duty as Connecticut’s chief federal prosecutor, Special Counsel John Durham is zeroing in on the final phase of his far-reaching investigation into whether FBI officials or others committed crimes while conducting the Russia collusion probe, such as misleading federal judges or Congress. All expectations were that Durham would wrap up his probe with final indictments and/or a report last fall after a plea deal was reached with former FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who admitted he falsified a document submitted to substantiate an application for a surveillance warrant targeting the Trump campaign.

But FBI Director Chris Wray revealed Tuesday that the entire process — including the bureau’s ability to discipline agents involved in the Russia case — was slowed down at Durham’s request because of continuing concerns about potential criminality. “Because we are cooperating fully with Mr. Durham’s investigation, at his request we had slowed that process down to allow his criminal investigation to proceed,” Wray told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “So at the moment, that process is still underway in order to make sure we are being appropriately sensitive to the criminal investigation.” Wray’s comments signaling additional crimes are being investigated are consistent with what former Attorney General William Barr said late last year when he upgraded Durham from a U.S. attorney to a special counsel and expanded his investigative staff.

Interviews with a half dozen sources who have had interactions with Durham’s team say he is focused on whether FBI executives knowingly and unlawfully misled the FISA court and Congress by withholding exculpatory evidence, extending an investigation without justification and creating the illusion there was evidence of Russia collusion when most had been debunked or dismissed. The sources said one former senior FBI official has provided invaluable cooperation and context to what decisions FBI leadership and field agents were making in the probe on such consequential matters as what to tell Congress, the courts and Justice Department lawyers about the flaws, political origins and falsehoods in the Russia collusion narrative.

Most of the evidence that supports those concerns is now in the public domain after a series of declassifications that began last year and ended when former President Donald Trump declassified hundreds of pages of the most sensitive evidence during his last 24 hours in office in January. .

Read more …

May be he should let Biden’s blunders grab the spotlight for a while.

Trump Eyes 2024 Run Without Mike Pence (ZH)

Former President Donald Trump is telling allies he’s seriously considering a run for president in 2024, but may do so without former Vice President Mike Pence on his ticket, according to Bloomberg, citing ‘people familiar with the discussions.’ On Sunday, Trump all but announced at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that he was running again – while privately, according to two of Bloomberg’s anonymous sources, he’s discussed “alternatives to Pence as he takes stock of who he believes stood with him at the end of his term and who didn’t.” Trump’s advisers have discussed identifying a Black or female running mate for his next run, and three of the people familiar with the matter said Pence likely won’t be on the ticket.

That said, given Trump’s history of choosing the ‘best person for the job’ regardless of color or sex, and notwithstanding obvious establishment picks, we imagine that last bit may be a non-starter for Trump. According to the report, Trump is considering South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem – who Trump Jr. and girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle are hosting a Friday fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago. Meanwhile, Trump publicly endorsed South Carolina Senator Tim Scott’s re-election. Scott is the only black Republican in the Senate.Following the 2020 election, Trump was livid after Pence didn’t “do the right thing” and reject Electoral College votes for Joe Biden from several contested states. In response, Trump tweeted that Pence “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our country and our Constitution.”

Pence rejected his boss’s appeals to unilaterally overturn Trump’s re-election defeat when he presided over the congressional count of Electoral College votes on Jan. 6. The event turned into an insurrection by Trump’s supporters, who invaded the Capitol, disrupted the count and forced the vice president and members of Congress to flee. Five people died in the melee. The two men didn’t speak for days afterward. Pence hasn’t said whether he’d be interested in running with Trump again, according to person familiar with the situation, who believes it’s doubtful Pence would. -Bloomberg. “President Trump hasn’t made any decisions regarding a potential 2024 run, but the buried lede here is that the media can’t stop talking about him,” said Trump adviser Jason Miller. According to the report “there’s been no serious consideration of future vice presidential candidates yet,” and if Trump runs, he won’t likely make a formal announcement until summer 2023, according to the anonymous sources.

Read more …

Inflation?!

A Change in the Water (Ben Hunt)

Every morning, we take the previous day’s financial news – all of it – and run it through the Narrative Machine to see if any interesting clusters pop out as a topic for us to write about in one of these quick Zeitgeist notes. And when I say clusters, I literally mean clusters – the building blocks of a graphical representation of linguistic connectivity. But when I say clusters, what I really mean is patterns. I really mean changes in the narrative structure. We’re not doing this to learn new facts. We’re not really interested in the specifics of what people are saying. We are very interested, though, in how people are saying it. We’re looking for changes in how we talk about what is important in markets and investing. We’re looking for changes in the water in which we swim.

That water is changing today. It’s changing a lot. Increasingly, the common knowledge of our investment world – what everyone knows that everyone knows – is that inflation is a problem and you should be focused on it. For example, today in a popular financial news media aggregator, RealClearMarkets.com, of the 21 articles highlighted on their frontpage aggregator, 6 of them were about inflation … is it here? is it coming? what does it mean for your portfolio? does Bitcoin fix this? etc. etc. Again, I have zero interest in the specifics or the facts or the message or the sentiment of these selected articles (even though one of them was yesterday’s Epsilon Theory note).


What interests me a lot, though, is the CHOICE made by the editors and algorithms of RealClearMarkets.com to select these articles over all of the other financial news stories available to them. What interests me a lot is the recursive ENGAGEMENT that these articles and their shared linguistic structures trigger in readers, such that they will look for more articles on this topic, which means that more articles on this topic will be written. This is how common knowledge happens. This is how the water in which we swim changes.

Read more …

“Wall Street and its vast army of apologists, lackeys, toadies, schemers, scammers, con-artists and profiteers will have us believe that the Everything Bubble is permanent..”

When Does This Travesty of a Mockery of a Sham Finally Implode? (CHS)

The mutually reinforcing crises aren’t in the future, they’re here now, and Jay Powell’s shuck-and-jive has lost its magical powers to cloak the rot with speculative bubbles. How many more times do we have to watch Jay Powell claim his speculative bubble isn’t a bubble, and that his massive expansion of billionaires’ fortunes will magically create jobs for all those living in the real world he’s created of stagnation, social depression and inequality? In other words, when will this travesty of a mockery of a sham finally implode? When will the Universe tire of the lies, fraud, embezzlement and corruption and bring the whole rotten charade down? When will we tire of the stale tale of reflation, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing?

We all know the Status Quo’s response to the global financial meltdown of 2008 has been a travesty of a mockery of a sham–smoke and mirrors, phony facades of “recovery”, simulacrum “reforms,” serial bubble-blowing and politically expedient can-kicking, all based on borrowing and printing trillions of dollars, yen, euros and yuan, quatloos, etc. and funneling them to financiers, corporations, monopolies, cronies and billionaires. When will the travesty of a mockery of a sham finally come to an end? How many more “saves” does the Ponzi Scheme of central banking possess? Wall Street and its vast army of apologists, lackeys, toadies, schemers, scammers, con-artists and profiteers will have us believe that the Everything Bubble is permanent and its continued expansion will hide all the systemic rot hollowing out America.

On the other hand, maybe manipulation, lies and artifice can no longer keep the Everything Bubble from popping. The chart I prepared back in 2008 (below) give us a flavor of the confluence of crises that are no longer in the future–they’re here now. Cycles are not laws of Nature, of course; they are only records of previous periods of growth/excess/depletion/collapse, not predictions per se. Nonetheless their repetition reflects the systemic dynamic of growth, crisis and collapse, and so the study of cycles is instructive even though we stipulate they are not predictive.

Since each mechanism that burns out or implodes tends to be replaced with some other mechanism, this creates the recurring cycle of expansion / excess / depletion / collapse. Four long-wave cycles are plotted in the chart:

Read more …

“No one has been charged with a firearms violation.”

No Shots Fired By Rioters, No Firearms Recovered During Siege On Capitol (JTN)

No firearms were recovered on the U.S. Capitol grounds on Jan. 6 during the riot, and no shots were fired by the demonstrators, an FBI official on Wednesday told Congress.”To my knowledge we have not recovered any [firearms] on that day from any of the arrests at the scene at this point,” said Jill Sanborn, assistant director of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division. “No one has been charged with a firearms violation.” Sanborn made her comments during a joint oversight hearing in the Senate to examine the breach of the U.S. Capitol. In addition to Sanborn, witnesses included the commander of the Washington, D.C. National Guard, and civilian officials from the Pentagon.

During testimony, Sanborn responded to questions from Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, who asked whether firearms were present or used during the siege. “How many shots were fired that we know of?” Johnson asked. “The only shots fired were the ones that resulted in the death of the one lady,” Sanborn said, referencing Ashli Babbitt, a protester who was shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer during heightened tension inside the building. Other testimony examined the timeline of when the National Guard was dispatched to help an overwhelmed civilian police force during the siege on the Capitol.

The National Guard was dispatched to the riot more than three hours after Capitol Police made a desperate call for help with a “dire emergency,” a two-star general testified Wednesday before Congress. Major Gen. William Walker, who commands the District of Columbia National Guard, told senators that the 1:49 p.m. call for help from the guard on Jan. 6 was approved in a message that reached him after 5 p.m. At that point, troops who were waiting on buses sped to the Capitol, and helped to secure a perimeter, Walker said. Walker made his comments during a hearing to examine the breach of the U.S. Capitol. In addition to Walker, civilian officials from the Pentagon and the FBI are scheduled to testify.

Read more …

“More US sanctions were announced yesterday against our country. In this particular case, with regard to arms exports, they cause bewilderment…”

Biden Bans Export Of Defense Articles To Russia, Which Got None Since WWII (RT)

Russia’s Service of Military-Technical Cooperation has noted its “bewilderment” after Washington imposed an export ban on “defense articles and defense services” to the country, despite Russia not receiving any US arms since 1945. On Tuesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken unveiled new sanctions against Moscow after the alleged poisoning and “attempted assassination of Russian opposition figure Aleksey Navalny.” “The US government has exercised its authorities to send a clear signal that Russia’s use of chemical weapons and abuse of human rights have severe consequences,” a press statement from Blinken said. As part of the restrictions, Russia has been included in Section 126.1 of the US International Traffic in Arms Regulations, which essentially means that any requests from Moscow to buy defense-related items would be flatly rejected.

“More US sanctions were announced yesterday against our country. In this particular case, with regard to arms exports, they cause bewilderment,” the federal service noted. “Arms supplies from the United States to Russia are not carried out and, of course, are not planned.” The government body also noted that the last time any military equipment was delivered to Russia from the US was through the lend-lease program during WWII, which ended on August 21, 1945. Speaking to Moscow daily RBK, Russian International Affairs Council expert Andrey Frolov noted that the new sanctions are likely to be toothless and do not pose any threat to the military-industrial complex, which does not rely on American supplies.

Another expert, Ruslan Pukhov from the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies think tank, revealed that restrictions won’t actually prevent any export contracts if the US wants to implement them. In particular, he cited the example of Rosoboronexport, which was removed from the sanctions list to sign a contract to supply the Afghan Army with helicopters, and was put back on the list straight after.

Read more …

Defying credulity, the spokesman suggested that the US had “acted in a deliberate manner that aims to de-escalate the overall situation in both eastern Syria and Iraq.”

Delusions of Self-Defense: Biden Bombs Syria (OffG.)

Every power worth its portion of salt in the Levant these days seems to be doing it. On February 25, President Joe Biden ordered airstrikes against Syria. The premise for the attacks was implausible. “These strikes were authorized in response to recent attacks against American and Coalition personnel in Iraq,” claimed Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, “and to ongoing threats to those personnel.” More specifically, the strikes were in retaliation for rocket attacks in northern Iraq on the airport of Erbil that left a Filipino contractor working for the US military dead and six others injured, including a Louisiana National Guard soldier. The targets in Syria were facilities used by Iranian-backed militia groups, including Kataib Hezbollah and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada. According to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the attack left up to 22 people dead.

The Biden administration has resorted to tactics long embraced by US presidents. To be noticed, you need to bomb a country. The measure, more a sign of raging impotence than stark virility, is always larded with jargon and bureaucratic platitudes.“We said a number of times that we will respond on our timeline,” explained Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to reporters keeping him company on a flight from California to Washington. “We wanted to be sure of the connectivity and we wanted to be sure about the right targets.” He was convinced “that the target was being used by the same Shia militants that conducted the [February 15] strikes.”

Seven 500-pound bombs were used in the operation, though Stars and Stripes initially reported that “the type of weaponry used” was not disclosed. The Pentagon had been keen to push a larger range of targets, but Biden was being presidential in restraint, approving, as the New York Times puts it, “a less aggressive option”. Kirby insisted the operation had been the sensible outcome of discussions with coalition partners. “The operation sends an unambiguous message: President Biden will act to protect American and Coalition personnel.” Defying credulity, the spokesman suggested that the US had “acted in a deliberate manner that aims to de-escalate the overall situation in both eastern Syria and Iraq.”

Read more …

 

 

We try to run the Automatic Earth on donations. Since ad revenue has collapsed, you are now not just a reader, but an integral part of the process that builds this site. Thank you for your support.

 

 

From Trump’s world to Orwell’s world.

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in virustime. Click at the top of the sidebars to donate with Paypal and Patreon.

 

Feb 262021
 


Jean-Francois Millet The flight into Egypt 1864

 

Ivermectin Could Cut Covid Deaths By Up To 75% (DM)
CDC Reports Shocking Data About Asymptomatic Spread (Fed.)
Report Says Spirulina Algae Could Reduce Covid Mortality Rate (JPost)
Latin American Govts ‘Held To Ransom’ By Pfizer During Vaccine Talks (RT)
US Bombs Facilities In Syria Used By Iran-Backed Militia (AP)
Russia Is ‘Existential Threat’ To West That NATO Must Neutralize (RT)
Senate Parliamentarian: Minimum Wage Can’t Be In Covid Relief Bill (CNN)
Secret Memo Shows How Harris Must Now Advance Minimum Wage Hike (DP)
In Final Days, Trump Gave Up on Forcing Release of Russiagate Files |(Maté)
The Great Reset Is Here (Rickards)
Boeing 777 Makes Emergency Landing In Moscow Due To Engine Trouble (ZH)
700+ Children In Detention at US Border, Spike In Unaccompanied Crossings (RT)
Atlantic Ocean Circulation At Weakest In A Millennium (G.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

We need more testing! Only 100s of millions of people have taken it! Who knows if it’s safe?

Ivermectin Could Cut Covid Deaths By Up To 75% (DM)

A cheap and safe drug widely used against parasites cuts Covid infections, hospitalisations and deaths by about 75 per cent, a study shows. More than 30 trials across the world found that ivermectin causes ‘repeated, consistent, large magnitude improvements in clinical outcomes’ at all stages of the disease. The peer-reviewed study, to be published in the US journal Frontiers of Pharmacology, says the evidence is so strong that the drug – used to treat head lice and scabies – should become a standard therapy everywhere, so hastening the global recovery.

Study co-author Professor Paul Marik, director of emergency and pulmonary care at the Eastern Virginia Medical School in the US, said: ‘The data is overwhelming – we are in a pandemic, and this is an incredibly effective way to combat it. If we use ivermectin widely, our societies can open up.’ Other medications have been touted as effective treatments for combating coronavirus, only for trials to dash hopes – notably with hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malarial drug. An earlier study by Professor Andrew Hill of Liverpool University also concluded that ivermectin cuts death rates by around three-quarters. He recommended there should be larger trials before it was approved by UK regulators. A new trial of ivermectin as a Covid treatment is due to start shortly at Oxford University.

Dr Tess Lawrie, director of the Evidence-Based Medicine Consultancy in Bath, convened an online summit of international experts last weekend to discuss the new data. It included evidence that widespread use of ivermectin in parts of India and South America has led to a big reduction in infections and deaths. Yesterday Dr Lawrie submitted a 97-page report to the World Health Organisation, urging it immediately to recommend ivermectin to treat Covid. The drug, taken in tablet form or as drops, is licensed in Britain only as a treatment for parasitic worms, head lice and scabies. It has been used by hundreds of millions of patients over the past 30 years, mainly in developing countries, and at around £50 per patient – less in some countries – is far cheaper than other new Covid treatments, such as the rheumatism drug tocilizumab, which costs £1,000 per patient.

Read more …

”If the contagiousness of people without symptoms is not what drives the spread of SARS-COV-2, then no COVID restriction on public life besides staying home when you are clearly sick could be justified..”

CDC Reports Shocking Data About Asymptomatic Spread (Fed.)

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control slipped in a shocking piece of evidence in a recent report on low in-school COVID-19 transmission that severely undercuts the rationale for most COVID restrictions, including lockdowns. The Jan. 29 report’s conclusion seems to fit the pro-mask narrative, of course: “Schools might be able to safely open with appropriate mitigation efforts [such as masking and not allowing student cohorts to mix] in place.” In the 17 rural Wisconsin schools surveyed, only seven cases were linked to in-school transmission out of 4,876 pupils, and no staff members were infected at school during the study period.

While the report spends ample time explaining the mitigation strategies employed in the schools and the high reported mask compliance (92%) among students, the authors later discuss something you probably have not seen in any of the mainstream media’s coverage of this report . “Children might be more likely to be asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19 than are adults…This apparent lack of transmission [in schools] is consistent with recent research (5), which found an asymptomatic attack rate of only 0.7% within households and a lower rate of transmission from children than from adults. However, this study was unable to rule out asymptomatic transmission within the school setting because surveillance testing was not conducted”

The “recent research” the study authors cite is a meta-analysis of 54 household COVID-19 transmission studies that observed 77,758 participants, which was posted as a pre-print this summer and published in December. The text of the analysis is even more consequential than the CDC’s reference makes it seem: “Estimated mean household secondary attack rate from symptomatic index cases (18.0%; 95% CI, 14.2%-22.1%) was significantly higher than from asymptomatic or presymptomatic index cases (0.7%; 95% CI, 0%-4.9%; P<.001), although there were few studies in the latter group. These findings are consistent with other household studies, reporting asymptomatic index cases as having limited role in household transmission”.

The 0.7 percent figure includes not just people who never show symptoms of COVID-19, but people who haven’t yet shown symptoms—two groups that have been alleged to be major factors driving the spread of the virus. This is a major data point often underplayed or even challenged in much media coverage of the virus. The key, if not central, rationale for non-pharmaceutical interventions such as masking, distancing, and staying at home is allegedly significant transmission from people who don’t show symptoms. If the contagiousness of people without symptoms is not what drives the spread of SARS-COV-2, then no COVID restriction on public life besides staying home when you are clearly sick could be justified, considering the obvious negative consequences of these restrictions.

Read more …

Anti-inflammatory.

Report Says Spirulina Algae Could Reduce Covid Mortality Rate (JPost)

A team of scientists from Israel and Iceland have published research showing that an extract of spirulina algae has the potential to reduce the chances of COVID-19 patients developing a serious case of the disease. The research, published in the peer-reviewed journal Marine Biotechnology, found that an extract of photosynthetically manipulated Spirulina is 70% effective in inhibiting the release of the cytokine TNF-a, a small signaling protein used by the immune system. The research was conducted in a MIGAL laboratory in northern Israel with algae grown and cultivated by the Israeli company VAXA, which is located in Iceland. VAXA received funding from the European Union to explore and develop natural treatments for coronavirus. Iceland’s MATIS Research Institute also participated in the study.


In a small percentage of patients, infection with the coronavirus causes the immune system to release an excessive number of TNF-a cytokines, resulting in what is known as a cytokine storm. The storm causes acute respiratory distress syndrome and damage to other organs, the leading cause of death in COVID-19 patients. “If you control or are able to mitigate the excessive release of TNF-a, you can eventually reduce mortality,” said Asaf Tzachor, a researcher from the IDC Herzliya School of Sustainability and the lead author of the study. During cultivation, growth conditions were adjusted to control the algae’s metabolomic profile and bioactive molecules. The result is what Tzachor refers to as “enhanced” algae.

Read more …

Anyone surprised?

Latin American Govts ‘Held To Ransom’ By Pfizer During Vaccine Talks (RT)

A number of Latin American countries have reportedly experienced extremely aggressive negotiating tactics by US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, which has demanded full immunity from any civil claims and state assets as a guarantee. The questionable negotiating tactics by the pharmaceutical giant have been highlighted in a fresh report by the UK-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ). Officials from Argentina, as well as from another unspecified Latin American country, talked to the outlet, describing Pfizer’s approach to negotiations as “high-level bullying” that made the governments feel like they were being “held to ransom.” Argentina was among the first countries to begin negotiations with the company.

The talks started last June, yet ultimately flopped as Pfizer’s demands became less and less reasonable, an official told the BIJ. The pharmaceutical giant assertively demanded additional clauses that would make it immune against any civil claims citizens might file over side effects from receiving the Pfizer jab. While a new bill regulating the vaccination process was adopted in October, the company was still unhappy with its wording, as it did not grant full immunity to pharmaceutical companies but rather allowed a change of jurisdiction established in advance in the contract. Pfizer ultimately requested a “new law” from the government, then-Health Minister Gonzalez Garcia said in December, describing the demands as “somewhat unacceptable.”

“Argentina could compensate for the vaccine’s adverse effects, but not if Pfizer makes a mistake,” the official, cited by BIJ, said. “For example, what would happen if Pfizer unintentionally interrupted the vaccine’s cold … and a citizen wants to sue them? It would not be fair for Argentina to pay for a Pfizer error.” The company then urged Argentina to take out international insurance to pay for potential future cases against the manufacturer, and ultimately demanded that it put up unspecified sovereign assets as collateral in December. “We offered to pay for millions of doses in advance, we accepted this international insurance, but the last request was unusual: Pfizer demanded that the sovereign assets of Argentina also be part of the legal support,” the official said.

Read more …

Who are in reality Iraqi troops fighting ISIS?

US Bombs Facilities In Syria Used By Iran-Backed Militia (AP)

The United States launched airstrikes in Syria on Thursday, targeting facilities used by Iranian-backed militia groups. The Pentagon said the strikes were in retaliation for a rocket attack in Iraq earlier this month that killed one civilian contractor and wounded a U.S. service member and other coalition troops. The airstrike was the first known military action undertaken by the Biden administration, which in its first weeks has emphasized its intent to put more focus on the challenges posed by China, even as Mideast threats persist. “This proportionate military response was conducted together with diplomatic measures , including consultation with coalition partners,” the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, John Kirby, said in announcing the strikes.

“The operation sends an unambiguous message: President Biden will act to protect American and coalition personnel. At the same time, we have acted in a deliberate manner that aims to deescalate the overall situation in eastern Syria and Iraq.” Biden administration officials condemned the Feb. 15 rocket attack near the city of Irbil in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish-run region, but as recently as this week officials indicated they had not determined for certain who carried it out. Officials have noted that in the past, Iranian-backed Shiite militia groups have been responsible for numerous rocket attacks that targeted U.S. personnel or facilities in Iraq. Kirby, the Pentagon spokesman, had said Tuesday that Iraq is in charge of investigating the Feb. 15 attack.

“Right now, we’re not able to give you a certain attribution as to who was behind these attacks, what groups, and I’m not going to get into the tactical details of every bit of weaponry used here,” Kirby said. “Let’s let the investigations complete and conclude, and then when we have more to say, we will.”

Read more …

Syria, Iran, Russia.

Russia Is ‘Existential Threat’ To West That NATO Must Neutralize (RT)

The Cold War ended decades ago, but Moscow is still working to maintain its Soviet-era influence over Eastern Europe, one of Washington’s top generals has claimed, warning that the US must take on Russia to deliver world peace. In a speech published by the Pentagon’s press service on Wednesday, the head of the country’s European Command, Air Force General Tod D. Wolters, claimed that, when it comes to projecting American force abroad, “everything we do is about generating peace.” However, he caveated, “we compete to win … and if deterrence fails, we’re prepared to respond to aggression, primarily through NATO.”

Wolters is also the US-led bloc’s supreme allied commander on the continent, and recent weeks have seen its members stage drills and engage in a series of stand-offs with Russian sailors in the Black Sea. “Beyond exercises,” he added, “we conduct operations and other activities to compete, deter and prepare to respond to aggression,” including maintaining a presence in the disputed region. The general insisted that the West is locked in a struggle for dominance with Moscow, and it has to come out on top. “We’re in an era of global power competition. Winning in this era is ensuring that global power competition does not become a global power war,” he argued. “Despite widespread international condemnation and continued economic sanctions, Russia engages in destabilizing and malign activities across the globe, with many of those activities happening close to home,” he said.

The US Department of Defense has since added a caveat to the transcript to make it clear he meant to refer to shadowy Russian schemes in Europe, rather than, say, an American presidential election. In that context, Wolters claimed, “Russia remains an enduring existential threat to the United States and our European allies,” he said. “Russia… and China – having declared itself a near-Arctic power – continued to militarize the region and seek to establish economic footholds to gain influence over regional governance,” he suggested. This, Wolters said, underlined the need to “maintain a credible Arctic deterrence and ensure vital sea lines of communication remain open by securing the Greenland, Iceland and United Kingdom gap.”

Read more …

They’re hiding behind a guy who only gives advice?

Senate Parliamentarian: Minimum Wage Can’t Be In Covid Relief Bill (CNN)

The Senate parliamentarian has ruled against including the increase in the minimum wage in the Covid relief bill. While Democrats had pushed for the increase to be included — and leadership expressed its disappointment in the ruling Thursday evening — its removal may actually make it easier to pass the bill, senior Democratic sources believe, because it’ll avoid a messy fight over whether to strip it out of the bill and whether to compromise. “President Biden is disappointed in this outcome, as he proposed having the $15 minimum wage as part of the American Rescue Plan,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement. “He respects the parliamentarian’s decision and the Senate’s process.”


For now, far from being a defeat, the ruling is viewed as clearing the way for the bill’s passage in the Senate, a Biden administration official told CNN. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday evening the provision will remain in the House bill on which the chamber is voting Friday. However, the parliamentarian ruled that the increase to $15 per hour did not meet a strict set of guidelines needed to move forward in the Senate’s reconciliation process. That means that the House will pass its bill, the Senate will have to strip the minimum wage provision out, and then eventually the House will have to pass that bill again at the end of the process.

Read more …

Well, they can’t. Kamala can do it. And she won’t.

Secret Memo Shows How Harris Must Now Advance Minimum Wage Hike (DP)

On Thursday, a key Senate official advised Democratic lawmakers that the chamber’s rules do not allow them to include a minimum wage increase in President Joe Biden’s first COVID-19 relief legislation. The ruling from the parliamentarian means that Vice President Kamala Harris could decide the fate of one of the Democratic Party’s most significant campaign promises — but it remains unclear what she will end up doing. As the presiding officer of the Senate, Harris — who has long touted her support for a $15 minimum wage — can now use the power her predecessors have used to ignore the advisory opinion and fulfill Biden’s campaign promise to boost the wage. A confidential memo obtained by The Daily Poster now circulating on Capitol Hill spells out exactly how that could be accomplished.

However, White House chief of staff Ron Klain this week declared that Harris will refuse to use that power — a decision that would effectively put the Biden-Harris administration in the position of potentially killing the prospect of minimum wage legislation for the foreseeable future. Immediately after the parliamentarian’s ruling, the White House issued a statement reiterating Klain’s comment, declaring that “Biden respects the parliamentarian’s decision.” Some congressional Democrats have already been arguing that the Biden administration’s refusal to overrule the parliamentarian would be immoral and a political disaster for their party. “It’s been 12 years since we’ve raised the minimum wage, and if we’re going to make those promises, we have to be able to deliver on them,” Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal said Wednesday on MSNBC.

“Because, I’ll tell you what, in two years… when people vote in the midterms, you’re not gonna be able to say, ‘Well, I’m sorry, we couldn’t raise the minimum wage because the parliamentarian ruled that we couldn’t do it.’ That’s not gonna fly.” The maddening process conversation surrounding a $15 minimum wage increase is the result of Democrats refusing to eliminate the legislative filibuster, which means Republicans can block most legislation unless Democrats find 60 votes. As such, Democrats are working to pass the COVID bill using the convoluted budget reconciliation process. The process will allow for a simple majority vote on the final legislation, but it also allows Senate parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough to recommend tossing certain provisions if she decides they violate the so-called Byrd Rule, which is designed to prohibit extraneous matters outside of federal spending issues to be added to budget legislation.

The minimum wage, however, has budget implications, according to the Congressional Budget Office — which is why proponents had hoped MacDonough would advise that it is in order, especially since the nonpartisan parliamentarian has previously ruled that other less significant budget-related issues were in order. MacDonough, however, refused to do so on Thursday evening. The development is not catastrophic for the $15 minimum wage provision — if Harris simply uses her power to ignore the opinion and clear the path for the measure she has long insisted she supports. The problem is that the White House is signaling she will do the opposite.

Read more …

We will never know.

In Final Days, Trump Gave Up on Forcing Release of Russiagate Files |(Maté)

After four years of railing against “deep state” actors who, he said, tried to undermine his presidency, Donald Trump relented to U.S. intelligence leaders in his final days in office, allowing them to block the release of critical material in the Russia investigation, according to a former senior congressional investigator who later joined the Trump administration. Kash Patel, whose work on the House Intelligence Committee helped unearth U.S. intelligence malpractice during the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane probe, said he does not know why Trump did not force the release of documents that would expose further wrongdoing. But he said senior intelligence officials “continuously impeded” their release – usually by slow-walking their reviews of the material. Patel said Trump’s CIA Director, Gina Haspel, was instrumental in blocking one of the most critical documents, he said.

Patel, who has seen the Russia probe’s underlying intelligence and co-wrote critical reports that have yet to be declassified, said new disclosures would expose additional misconduct and evidentiary holes in the CIA and FBI’s work. “I think there were people within the IC [Intelligence Community], at the heads of certain intelligence agencies, who did not want their tradecraft called out, even though it was during a former administration, because it doesn’t look good on the agency itself,” Patel [said]. Although a Department of Justice inspector general’s report in December 2019 exposed significant intelligence failings and malpractice, Patel said more damning information is still being kept under wraps. And despite an ongoing investigation by Special Counsel John Durham into the conduct of the officials who carried out the Trump-Russia inquiry, it is unclear if key documents will ever see the light of day.

Patel did not suggest that a game-changing smoking gun is being kept from the public. Core intelligence failures have been exposed – especially regarding the FBI’s reliance on Christopher Steele’s now debunked dossier to secure FISA warrants used to surveil Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. But he said the withheld material would reveal more misconduct as well as major problems with the CIA’s assessment that Russia, on Vladimir Putin’s orders, ordered a sweeping and systematic interference 2016 campaign to elect Trump. Patel was cautious about going into detail on any sensitive information that has not yet been declassified.

Read more …

“Once the cattle (that’s us) have been herded into the digital slaughterhouse, we will be told to “use it or lose it” when it comes to our own money. In other words, either we spend the money, or the government will take it away.”

The Great Reset Is Here (Rickards)

In 1999, the euro replaced the individual currencies of Germany, France, Netherlands, Italy and other major economies in Europe. Today, the number of countries that have joined the euro is up to 19, and more countries are awaiting admission. The euro is the second largest reserve currency asset after the U.S. dollar. The creation of the euro can be thought of as a stepping stone from national currencies to a single world currency. Now, the euro (along with the Chinese yuan) is moving quickly to become a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). A CBDC combines a traditional currency with the blockchain technology of a cryptocurrency. It’s an important move in the direction of eliminating cash and forcing users into a 100% digital system using credit cards, debit cards, and smartphone apps.

Why are China and Europe so focused on eliminating cash? I’ve said all along that you cannot put negative interest rates on consumers until you eliminate cash. Otherwise, savers would just withdraw cash from the banks and stuff it in mattresses to avoid the negative rates. Implicitly, the European Central Bank (ECB) seems to agree. One of the ECB Board members says that negative rates (really confiscation) will be applied as a “penalty” against “hoarding” cash. In plain English, that means they will create digital money, force you to spend it, and if you don’t spend it, they will take it away as a “negative rate.” Now all of the pieces of the global elite plan are converging. The IMF SDR issuance will reliquify global central banks that cannot print dollars. Then CBDCs will be used to eliminate cash.

Once the cattle (that’s us) have been herded into the digital slaughterhouse, we will be told to “use it or lose it” when it comes to our own money. In other words, either we spend the money, or the government will take it away. Of course, the spending can be channeled into politically correct causes by excluding unpopular vendors such as gun dealers or conservative social media platforms from the payment system. This represents total domination of human behavior through world money + digital currencies + confiscation. This is not speculation anymore; it’s happening in front of our eyes. The Great Reset is coming fast. The future is here.

Read more …

“designed by clowns…supervised by monkeys”

Boeing 777 Makes Emergency Landing In Moscow Due To Engine Trouble (ZH)

It really has not been a good year for Boeing. Or a good decade for that matter. Just days after a Boeing-777 became the latest symbol of all that is wrong with the once almighty aircraft maker, when the plane’s right engine exploded (with debris striking houses below it in a scene right out of Breaking Bad) and only a miracle prevented a tragedy, moments ago another Boeing-777 made an emergency landing in Russia’s Sheremetyevo airport outside of Moscow, Interfax reports, adding that the plane crew requested the landing after one of left engine control channels failed The news service doesn’t name the airline operator; but said that the plane was flying from Hong Kong to Madrid. Luckily, no injuries were reported.

The latest mishap followed even more bad news for the aerospace giant, which earlier on Thursday agreed to pay $6.6 million to U.S. regulators as part of a settlement with the Federal Aviation Administration over the planemaker’s failure to comply with a 2015 safety agreement including quality and safety-oversight lapses going back years, a setback that comes as Boeing wrestles with repairs to flawed 787 Dreamliner jets that could dwarf the cost of the federal penalty. As Reuters reported, Boeing is beginning painstaking repairs and forensic inspections to fix structural integrity flaws embedded deep inside at least 88 parked 787s built over the last year or so. The inspections and retrofits could take up to a month per plane and are likely to cost hundreds of millions – if not billions – of dollars, though it depends on the number of planes and defects involved.

The penalties include $5.4 million for not complying with the agreement in which Boeing pledged to change its internal processes to improve and prioritize regulatory compliance and $1.21 million to settle two pending FAA enforcement cases. “The FAA is holding Boeing accountable by imposing additional penalties,” FAA Administrator Steve Dickson said in a statement. But the biggest challenge facing Boeing is whether or not it can find passengers for its 737 MAX now that the infamous deadly airplane which was reportedly “designed by clowns…supervised by monkeys” is set to fly again. While the plane may indeed have gotten a green light from the FAA, a far bigger question is whether Boeing has by now lost the trust of the public for good.

Read more …

The “left wing” press will bury it.

700+ Children In Detention at US Border, Spike In Unaccompanied Crossings (RT)

Hundreds of unaccompanied minors have been held at the US border waiting to be processed, Axios reported. Almost a third of them have been lingering in detention for more than two days, as the backlog piles up. Around 700 minors who crossed into the US on their own were kept in Border Patrol Custody as of Sunday, Axios reported on Wednesday, citing an internal Customs and Border Protection document. By that time, around 200 children had already been held up for over 48 hours, and in the case of nine child migrants, for over 72 hours, which exceeds the maximum limit under the Flores Settlement Agreement, which stipulates that CBP cannot hold children for more than three days. Per the same agreement, asylum-seeking children transferred to ICE detention centers cannot spend more than 20 days there, after which they must be released.


The processing system is under increasing strain due to an influx of child migrants. In January, CBP encountered 5,707 child migrants at the southwest border, almost a thousand more than in December (4,855). President Biden, who was promising a U-turn from the Trump administration’s ‘zero tolerance’ immigration policy, has recently come under fire for reopening a child detention facility in Carrizo Springs, Texas. The Biden administration was quick to defend the move as a temporary fix in the times of pandemic, arguing that the infamous Trump facility was reopened since the Office of Refugee Resettlement cannot house as many asylum seekers as before due to the Covid-19 restrictions.

Read more …

If you say things like “..could reduce by about 34% to 45% by the end of this century..”, people will think: I won’t be alive by then, so would should I care?

Atlantic Ocean Circulation At Weakest In A Millennium (G.)

The Atlantic Ocean circulation that underpins the Gulf Stream, the weather system that brings warm and mild weather to Europe, is at its weakest in more than a millennium, and climate breakdown is the probable cause, according to new data. Further weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) could result in more storms battering the UK, more intense winters and an increase in damaging heatwaves and droughts across Europe. Scientists predict that the AMOC will weaken further if global heating continues, and could reduce by about 34% to 45% by the end of this century, which could bring us close to a “tipping point” at which the system could become irrevocably unstable. A weakened Gulf Stream would also raise sea levels on the Atlantic coast of the US, with potentially disastrous consequences.

Stefan Rahmstorf, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, who co-authored the study published on Thursday in Nature Geoscience, told the Guardian that a weakening AMOC would increase the number and severity of storms hitting Britain, and bring more heatwaves to Europe. He said the circulation had already slowed by about 15%, and the impacts were being seen. “In 20 to 30 years it is likely to weaken further, and that will inevitably influence our weather, so we would see an increase in storms and heatwaves in Europe, and sea level rises on the east coast of the US,” he said. Rahmstorf and scientists from Maynooth University in Ireland and University College London in the UK concluded that the current weakening had not been seen over at least the last 1,000 years, after studying sediments, Greenland ice cores and other proxy data that revealed past weather patterns over that time.

The AMOC has only been measured directly since 2004. The AMOC is one of the world’s biggest ocean circulation systems, carrying warm surface water from the Gulf of Mexico towards the north Atlantic, where it cools and becomes saltier until it sinks north of Iceland, which in turn pulls more warm water from the Caribbean. This circulation is accompanied by winds that also help to bring mild and wet weather to Ireland, the UK and other parts of western Europe. Scientists have long predicted a weakening of the AMOC as a result of global heating, and have raised concerns that it could collapse altogether. The new study found that any such point was likely to be decades away, but that continued high greenhouse gas emissions would bring it closer.

Read more …

 

 

We try to run the Automatic Earth on donations. Since ad revenue has collapsed, you are now not just a reader, but an integral part of the process that builds this site. Thank you for your support.

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in 2021. Click at the top of the sidebars to donate with Paypal and Patreon.

 

Feb 112021
 
 February 11, 2021  Posted by at 10:02 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  41 Responses »


Ansel Adams Evening at McDonald Lake, Glacier National Park 1942

 

AstraZeneca Says Vaccine Against New Covid Variant May Take 6-9 Months (G.)
CDC: Fully Vaccinated People Don’t Need To Quarantine If Exposed To Covid (NBC)
Deaths of Elderly Who Recovered From COVID, but Died After Vaccine (Attkisson)
Dershowitz Destroys Democrats’ Impeachment In Under 2 Minutes (WND)
Dershowitz: Trump Defense Must Avoid ‘Trap’ Of Debating Election Fraud (JTN)
‘Feel Our Pain,’ Politicians Demand (Tracey)
The Disarticulation of Pandemic War Propaganda (MPN)
New US Military Base in Northeast Syria Latest of Biden’s Warlike Moves (MPN)
Facebook New Algorithm Will ‘Reduce Political Content’ On News Feeds (JTN)
Former Republican Officials In Talks To Form Anti-Trump Third Party (R.)
Will Corporation-Owned Smart Cities Come To Nevada? (AN)
Yellen Eyes Innovation To Battle Misuse Of Cryptocurrencies (R.)
Assange Prosecution Will Continue Under Biden (Gosztola)
In Mail-In Impeachment Vote, Senate Convicts Trump 8275 To 3 (BBee)

 

 

 

 

COVID numbers in the UK and US crashed at the exact same moment. How is that possible?

 

 

“About Thatcher’s death: Let’s privatise her funeral. Put it out on competitive tender and accept the cheapest bid. That’s what she would have wanted.”
– Ken Loach

 

 

What are your plans until 2022? Forget them.

AstraZeneca Says Vaccine Against New Covid Variant May Take 6-9 Months (G.)

AstraZeneca has said that it could take between six and nine months to produce Covid-19 vaccines that are effective against new variants of the coronavirus. The company’s vaccine, developed jointly with scientists at the University of Oxford, remains effective on at least one variant of the virus first discovered in Kent, England, but preliminary findings in a small-scale trial prompted South Africa to limit its use while it ascertains its efficacy. However, a six-month turnaround for an updated vaccine would represent a vast improvement over traditional vaccine development timelines. The vaccine is particularly important for poorer countries, because the company – unlike some of its rivals such as Pfizer – has pledged to sell it at cost price.


The vaccine also does not require very low temperatures during transport, making it cheaper to deliver. Announcing its financial results for 2020 on Thursday, AstraZeneca said: “In collaboration with the University of Oxford, AstraZeneca is focused on adapting C19VAZ to new disease strains if required and hopes to reduce the time needed to reach production at scale to between six to nine months, by utilising existing clinical data and optimising its established supply chain.” AstraZeneca will not incorporate revenues from the vaccine into its financial results, but it said that 2020 performance in its main profit-making business remained strong.

Read more …

Pfizer says they don’t know if their vaccine protects you from infections, or those around you. But the CDC now knows better? Or is this true only when wearing 3 masks?

CDC: Fully Vaccinated People Don’t Need To Quarantine If Exposed To Covid (NBC)

People who have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19 do not need to quarantine if they are exposed to the coronavirus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday in updated guidance on its website. Quarantine is typically recommended for healthy people who have been exposed to the virus. During quarantine, people are asked to isolate from others for one to two weeks to see whether they develop symptoms of Covid-19. By not exposing others, quarantining can help stop the spread of the disease. In the updated guidance, the CDC said such quarantining is not necessary for fully vaccinated people within three months of having received their last doses as long as they do not develop any symptoms.

“Fully vaccinated” means that at least two weeks have passed since a person has received the second dose of a two-dose vaccine or one dose of a single-dose vaccine. Other recommendations remain in place for fully vaccinated people. They include wearing masks, social distancing and avoiding crowds and poorly ventilated spaces. The guidance says the risk that fully vaccinated people could spread the coronavirus, to others is “still uncertain.” However, “vaccination has been demonstrated to prevent symptomatic Covid-19; symptomatic and pre-symptomatic transmission is thought to have a greater role in transmission than purely asymptomatic transmission,” according to the CDC.

The CDC already recommends that people who have had Covid-19 and recovered do not need to quarantine for 90 days after the illness, if newly exposed to someone who is infected; the new guidance for vaccinated people aligns with the earlier recommendations. The guidance “makes sense,” said Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital, although he said he was curious about what evidence the CDC was using. Early data from AstraZeneca and Moderna’s Phase 3 clinical trials have suggested that vaccines may slow transmission of the virus, although more work is needed to confirm the findings.

Read more …

2 days after 14 infections among fully vaccinated in pensioners’ home in Germany.

Deaths of Elderly Who Recovered From COVID, but Died After Vaccine (Attkisson)

Two small clusters of deaths after COVID-19 vaccination have been reported among nursing homes in Kentucky and Arkansas. In Kentucky, four seniors died the same day of their vaccination on Dec. 30, 2020. Three of the four who passed away reportedly already had had coronavirus prior to getting vaccinated. In Arkansas, four seniors died at a long term care facility about a week after their vaccination. All tested positive for COVID-19 after vaccination. The deaths are reported in a federal database called VAERS, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. Deaths after vaccination don’t necessarily mean the vaccine is to blame. Of those receiving coronavirus vaccines, many are elderly and frail, or already suffering from serious illnesses. That makes it difficult to know whether there’s a connection.

According to VAERS reports, the Kentucky deaths occurred on Dec. 30 after vaccinations with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. An ill 88-year-old woman who was “14 + days post covid” was given the Pfizer-BioNTech shot while she was “unresponsive in [her] room.” She died within an hour and a half (914961-1). An 88-year-old who was “15 days post covid” got the shot, was monitored for 15 minutes afterward, and passed away within 90 minutes (914994-1). A third report says an 88-year-old woman who was “14 + days post covid” vomited four minutes after receiving her shot, became short of breath, and passed away that night (915562-1). And an 85-year-old woman vaccinated at 5 p.m. was “found unresponsive” less than two hours later and died shortly after (915682-1). In response to questions about the Kentucky cluster, a spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said its experts noted “no pattern … among the [Kentucky] cases that would indicate a concern for the safety of the COVID-19 vaccine.”

Scientists differ on whether people who have had coronavirus, like the Kentucky patients, should receive the COVID-19 vaccination at all. The CDC insists it’s safe for people who have recovered from COVID-19 to get vaccinated and that there’s no minimum interval recommended between infection and vaccination. “Vaccination should be offered to persons regardless of history of prior symptomatic or asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 [the virus that causes COVID-19] infection,” it states. But other scientists say vaccinating people who are already considered immune after a natural COVID-19 infection wastes valuable doses of vaccines when there are shortages. And neither Pfizer’s nor Moderna’s studies showed any benefit to vaccinating previously infected patients.

Read more …

“No. 1 they have no jurisdiction. No.2 it’s a bill of attainder, No. 3 they’re impeaching him for constitutionally protected speech..”

Dershowitz Destroys Democrats’ Impeachment In Under 2 Minutes (WND)

Famed Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz was on President Trump’ defense team during the first impeachment trial one year ago. And while he’s not a member of the team this time, he’s offering a quick, two-minute argument he says should close the case. “You don’t have to listen to me. Listen to James Madison, who’s the father of the Constitution,” Dershowitz said on “The Charlie Kirk Show” podcast. “He said that impeachment is only for somebody who’s still sitting in office. He said it quite clearly in the Federalist Papers,” Dershowitz said of Madison. “There’s no way around that.” The Harvard professor insisted the text of the Constitution is clear as well.

“It says impeachment is for purposes of removing a president. Once a president is removed you can also vote to disqualify him but disqualification doesn’t stand alone as a remedy,” he said. “If it did, then the Congress would have a roving commission to go through the entire United States and decide who to impeach and who not to impeach, and who to prevent from running for office,” said Dershowitz. “Say the Republicans come up with a young vibrant candidate to run against Biden four years from now. All the Democrats would have to do is impeach him, even though he’s never held office, and just disqualify him from running for office. Or find someone … who had a smaller officer earlier, and they can impeach him,” Dershowitz said.

“That’s not what the Framers had in mind. What the Framers had in mind is not allowing the Senate to put people on trial. That’s called a bill of attainder and a bill of attainder is specifically prohibited by the Constitution.” Dershowitz said there are “so many things wrong with this impeachment.” “No. 1 they have no jurisdiction. No.2 it’s a bill of attainder, No. 3 they’re impeaching him for constitutionally protected speech,” he said. Dershowitz said the impeachment itself “is doing a tremendous amount of damage to our Constitution.”

Read more …

“This is not the forum in which any evidence of election fraud is going to be seriously considered,” Kline said. “They have no interest in it…”

Dershowitz: Trump Defense Must Avoid ‘Trap’ Of Debating Election Fraud (JTN)

Key legal allies of former President Trump say his defense team must avoid the “trap” of debating election fraud during his Senate impeachment trial. House impeachment managers Tuesday cited Trump statements challenging the integrity of the 2020 election in arguing that the former president engaged in a “months-long effort to incite” an “insurrection” which culminated on Jan. 6, when a pro-Trump mob forced its way past police lines into the U.S. Capitol. House Democrats’ move to frame Trump’s electoral fraud claims as incitement in their impeachment narrative created an opening for Trump’s defense to, in effect, put the 2020 election itself on trial before a nationwide viewing audience, as many of his supporters have urged.

Some Trump allies say his electoral fraud case has never received a full public airing due to legal challenges being tossed out on grounds of standing, timeliness and other technical issues rather than on merit. But former Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, who helped lead the successful defense that gained Trump’s acquittal in the 2020 impeachment trial, said this move would be “a terrible mistake” for Trump. “It’s a trap that the Democrats are trying to set for the Trump lawyers,” Dershowitz told Just the News in an interview Wednesday. “It’s a trap to have them talk about electoral fraud, because if they do, they’ll lose [Senate Minority Leader Mitch] McConnell and other senators.” The “absolute trap,” Dershowitz said, “was being set by Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), who is leading the Democrats’ impeachment case. Raskin studied law under Dershowitz, who called his former student “a smart guy.”

[..] Attorney Phill Kline, a Trump supporter and director of the Amistad Project of the Thomas More Society, has litigated many cases involving claims of electoral fraud during the 2020 election. He told Just the News that while he thinks a national conversation about electoral fraud should continue, he doesn’t believe that the impeachment forum is ideal. “This is not the forum in which any evidence of election fraud is going to be seriously considered,” Kline said. “They have no interest in it. They refuse to acknowledge clear facts. And so it’s the wrong audience and the wrong time.” Kline said the Trump defense team should focus on the former president’s First Amendment right to speak openly and raise questions about election fraud. “They have been trying to criminalize thought for some time now,” Kline said. “This is just the fruit of their belief that if you do not think as they do, you’re a threat to the nation.”

Read more …

It’s become quite theatrical.

‘Feel Our Pain,’ Politicians Demand (Tracey)

Congress is increasingly not a place where the average member partakes in what’s generally understood as legislative activity, but rather engages in a variety of elaborate self-promotional exercises. The diminishment in the power of average House Members (as opposed to Party leaders who run their respective caucuses like fiefdoms) has been amply documented. One consequence of this trend is that “comms” has become far more of an all-consuming focus for a certain type of Member, particularly those who are most adept at social media. One “comms” strategy that appears highly effective at the moment in generating outsized public attention is extreme, heavily-personalized emotional exuberance.

With the “trauma” of the MAGA goofball mob intrusion still apparently dominating their psyches, members of Congress have taken it as a solemn duty to claim “space” for the “sharing” of their “lived experience” relating to this event. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a true pioneer in importing the rhetoric of therapeutic trauma jargon, already the lingua franca of an ascendant activism-minded cultural and media cohort, into the mainstream of the Democratic Party. At her direction, it will only become more ubiquitous. And given that such rhetoric deliberately inverts the normal epistemology of contested political claims — it’s deemed incumbent on the listener not to critically evaluate the veracity of such claims, but instead uncritically believe them — the new mode of public argument she’s popularizing is likely to prove highly effective, as it inherently forecloses the prospect of any argument at all.

Per this framework, arguments are replaced with subjective assertions that must be presumptively accepted, lest one be guilty of “minimizing” or “belittling” the elected official’s experiences and thus compounding their trauma. Jamie Raskin, the Democrats’ lead impeachment manager, took a page from this playbook during the opening presentation of Donald Trump’s trial Monday, breaking down in tears at one point as he wove a narrative about the terror of January 6 with his own personal turmoil. Raskin’s son died on December 31, and the pain he felt from that experience was integrated seamlessly with the pain that he posited all members of Congress must have felt during the goofball riot.

Of course, everyone who’s not a psychopath would sympathize with Raskin for having lost a son to suicide. But to invoke this tragedy in the context of an impeachment trial has an obvious political intent. The intent was to heighten the emotional resonance of the prosecution’s case for convicting Trump, as according to Raskin, he feared that his daughter might also face untimely death because she happened to be in the Capitol with him on January 6. The more intense the “pain” that can be conveyed to the juror-senators, the more likely they are to vote to convict Trump — or so the calculation seemingly goes.

Fellow impeachment manager David Cicilline charged that every single member of Congress nearly avoided being slaughtered in a mass execution-style attack that day — “They could have killed all of us,” he said — although no real evidence has ever been presented to substantiate this dramatic theory, which seems only to be professed by partisan Democrats. A number of basic facts stemming from the Capitol intrusion which could provide clarity are still mysteriously absent from the public record, such as whether any of the rioters brandished or discharged firearms. You’d think this would be helpful information to know before proclaiming, as Cicilline did, that what occurred was an “armed insurrection.” It would be a very curious “armed insurrection” for no firearms to have been deployed over the course of the “insurrection.”

Read more …

“The study Fauci funded at the WIV in 2014 was done so in contravention to the [Obama] moratorium then in effect.”

The Disarticulation of Pandemic War Propaganda (MPN)

A now-deleted fact sheet published by the U.S. State Department on January 15, 2021, claimed that for over a year, “the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has systematically prevented a transparent and thorough investigation of the COVID-19 pandemic’s origin.” The official release of that fact sheet focuses on the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV); a controversial research lab in the Hubei province of China which has been the target of well-earned suspicions over its work on bat-borne zoonotic diseases like SARS-CoV-2, better known as the COVID-19 coronavirus.

Missing from the State Department’s missive is the intimate bond that this particular laboratory has to American scientific institutions and to a tight-knit group of individuals with direct links to the U.S. intelligence apparatus and the biodefense establishment. National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Anthony Fauci’s funding of gain-of-function (GoF) research in 2014 at the Chinese lab is just one example. The highly polarizing GoF studies, which entail turbo-charging a pathogen’s virulence through the “generation of viruses with properties that do not exist in nature” present considerable biosafety hazards, which led the Obama administration to issue a federal moratorium on GoF research. The study Fauci funded at the WIV in 2014 was done so in contravention to the moratorium then in effect.

Deeper and more disturbing ties to outfits like USAID-funded Ecohealth Alliance have been covered by independent journalists like Same Husseini and others, revealing the WIV’s close relationship to people like David R. Franz – former commander of Fort Detrick, the pre-eminent biowarfare and biodefense facility in the U.S. and the source of the anthrax spores used in the infamous 2001 anthrax attacks. In July 2020, this author carried out an investigation into the nexus between the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), USAID and zoonotic disease research in Asia.

Recently, some of these facts have seeped into mainstream news outlets as the “lab-leak” hypothesis, which suggests that the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen escaped from a laboratory in China. Careful to avoid drawing attention to links between American scientific institutions and their Chinese counterparts, a narrative is gathering momentum as the idea of a ‘cover-up’ by Chinese authorities is promulgated on prime time television news magazine shows like “60 Minutes,” which ran an expose the promoted the idea that China is “weaponizing” the pandemic. The narrative is not new and has been lingering in the background since the pandemic was declared.

Read more …

“this new center [is being built] with the aim of observing Russian forces..”

New US Military Base in Northeast Syria Latest of Biden’s Warlike Moves (MPN)

The U.S.-government funded outlet Voice of America has confirmed rumors that a new military base is being built in northeastern Syria. A convoy of 40 troop carriers and other vehicles arrived and began setting up shop in the city of Hasakah near the Turkish and Iraqi borders over the weekend. “The U.S. flag is now raised over a building,” said journalist Jindar Berekat, a native of the city, “it is not clear how many American soldiers will be stationed at this location, but their armored military vehicles are here and it looks like they are still constructing parts of it.”

“Many here believe that the building of a U.S. base inside Hasakah could be a response to the growing Russian presence in the city,” a local reporter told Voice of America, “this new center [is being built] with the aim of observing Russian forces in Hasakah.” Russian military units have been present in Syria since 2015, intervening on behalf of the government of Bashar al-Assad. The two foreign superpowers have come close to armed confrontation in Syria many times, including in 2017, when President Trump ordered the bombing of a Russian airbase near the Lebanese border. Already, the American presence has prevented the Russian military from carrying out patrols in northeastern Syria.

While the United States has presented its role in Syria as a counter terrorism operation, Assad’s government has accused it of plundering its resources, “condemn[ing] in the strongest terms the agreement signed between al-Qasd militia (SDF) and an American oil company to steal Syria’s oil under the sponsorship and support of the American administration.” Around 500 American troops have been guarding the country’s oilfields for months, and last summer, Senator Lindsay Graham confirmed that the U.S. had indeed signed a deal with the SDF to “modernize” the country’s oil industry. Damascus considers the agreement “null and void.”

The new base at Hasakah is the latest in a string of actions that suggest the United States wishes to bolster or expand its presence in the war-torn country. Last month, American forces reinforced another base along the M4 highway, which runs from the city of Aleppo through the north of the country and towards the Iraqi border in the east. At the same time, its ally Israel was conducting a series of major airstrikes across the east of the country, reportedly targeting Iranian or pro-Iranian forces.

Read more …

Only the good stuff?!

Facebook New Algorithm Will ‘Reduce Political Content’ On News Feeds (JTN)

Facebook announced on Wednesday the social media platform will in the coming weeks start limiting the amount of political content viewers see on their news feeds. The company is aware that “people don’t want political content to take over their News Feed,” Product Management Director Aastha Gupta wrote in a blog post on the site. The change will begin with Facebook temporarily reduce the distribution of political content in News Feed for a small percentage of people in Canada, Brazil and Indonesia this week. Gupta said the process will begin in the U.S. in the coming weeks.


The initial rollout will allow the company to explore different methods of ranking political content prior to its deciding on a permanent solution. Facebook has in recent months and years attempted to reducing political content, include no new political ads in the final week of the 2020 presidential campaign. However, the company and other social media giants have meanwhile faced growing scrutiny of what third-party content they choose to censure or block. “Our goal is to preserve the ability for people to find and interact with political content on Facebook, while respecting each person’s appetite for it at the top of their News Feed,” Gupta said.

Read more …

They’ve lost their party. Might as well start another one.

Former Republican Officials In Talks To Form Anti-Trump Third Party (R.)

Dozens of former Republican officials, who view the party as unwilling to stand up to former President Donald Trump and his attempts to undermine U.S. democracy, are in talks to form a center-right breakaway party, four people involved in the discussions told Reuters. The early stage discussions include former elected Republicans, former officials in the Republican administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Trump, ex-Republican ambassadors and Republican strategists, the people involved say. More than 120 of them held a Zoom call last Friday to discuss the breakaway group, which would run on a platform of “principled conservatism,” including adherence to the Constitution and the rule of law – ideas those involved say have been trashed by Trump.

The plan would be to run candidates in some races but also to endorse center-right candidates in others, be they Republicans, independents or Democrats, the people say. Evan McMullin, who was chief policy director for the House Republican Conference and ran as an independent in the 2016 presidential election, told Reuters that he co-hosted the Zoom call with former officials concerned about Trump’s grip on Republicans and the nativist turn the party has taken. [..] Call participants said they were particularly dismayed by the fact that more than half of the Republicans in Congress – eight senators and 139 House representatives – voted to block certification of Biden’s election victory just hours after the Capitol siege.

Most Republican senators have also indicated they will not support the conviction of Trump in this week’s Senate impeachment trial. “Large portions of the Republican Party are radicalizing and threatening American democracy,” McMullin told Reuters. “The party needs to recommit to truth, reason and founding ideals or there clearly needs to be something new.”

Read more …

Why is the idea of surrendering control of parts of the US to Facebook, Google etc. not shot down on sight?

Will Corporation-Owned Smart Cities Come To Nevada? (AN)

With plans reportedly still moving forward for Blockchains, LLC, to break ground on a Tom Wiscombe Architecture and Ehrlich Yanai Rhee Chaney Architects (EYRC)-designed smart city in Nevada in 2022, Governor Steve Sisolak is looking to give it, and similar developments across the state, the power to form their own governments. According to documents acquired by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Sisolak has floated a draft proposal to create “Innovation Zones” across the state in a bid to draw technology companies, and giving them the power to set up their own governments. In exchange for this autonomy, the Nevada state government would forgo the tax abatement or incentive packages typically used to encourage big businesses to relocate.

Sisolak first mentioned the idea during his January 19 State of the State address but later confirmed that a draft bill was in the works on February 4 via Twitter. According to the text reviewed by the Las Vegas Review-Journal (subject to change before a final bill is submitted), such an “alternative form of local government” is needed to entice big tech companies, and that over time, the administration of those zones would gradually take over governmental duties from their respective counties. Each zone would be overseen by a three-person board of supervisors, with the company behind the development having the majority of the say in who gets appointed.

It should be noted that the governor’s proposal only extends to companies doing “innovative” work; relating to blockchains, healthcare, robotics, renewable energy research, biometrics, autonomous vehicles, and similar cutting-edge research. Any company applying to set up an Innovation Zone through the Governor’s Office of Economic Development would need to own and be intent on developing at least 50,000 acres not already part of a city or town, $250 million on hand, and a plan to invest at least $1 billion in the area over the next 10 years.


Tom Wiscombe Architecture and EYRC revealed their design for the Blockchains city in 2018, and now the project’s developer may get the power to form its own government there. (Courtesy EYRC Architects and Tom Wiscombe Architecture)

Read more …

No. What Yellen eyes is control.

Yellen Eyes Innovation To Battle Misuse Of Cryptocurrencies (R.)

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Wednesday warned about an “explosion of risk” from digital markets, including the misuse of cryptocurrencies, but said new financial technologies could also help fight crime and reduce inequality. In remarks to a financial sector innovation roundtable, Yellen said such technologies could be used to stem the flow of dark money from organized crime and fight back against hackers, but also to reduce digital gaps in the United States. She said passage of the Anti-Money Laundering Act in December would allow the Treasury Department to rework a framework for combating illicit finance that has been largely unchanged since the 1970s.


“The update couldn’t have come at a better time,” Yellen told policymakers, regulators and private sector experts. “We’re living amidst an explosion of risk related to fraud, money laundering, terrorist financing, and data privacy.” The COVID-19 pandemic had triggered more – and more sophisticated – cyberattacks aimed at hospitals, schools, banks, and the government itself, she said. Cryptocurrencies and virtual assets offered promise, but they had also been used to launder the profits of online drug traffickers and to finance terrorism. Innovation in the sector could help address these problems while giving millions of people access to the financial system, she said.

Read more …

“..the Biden Justice Department is effectively signaling his administration is not all that serious about press freedom..”

Assange Prosecution Will Continue Under Biden (Gosztola)

The Justice Department under President Joe Biden plans to continue the case against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange that was launched under President Donald Trump. “We continue to seek his extradition,” Justice Department spokesperson Marc Raimondi told Reuters, days before February 12, the deadline for the United States government to submit its “grounds for appeal.” The statement represents a departure from President Barack Obama’s administration, which declined to prosecute Assange. Justice Department officials were reportedly concerned about the threat it would pose to press freedom.

On January 4, British district judge Vanessa Baraitser rejected the U.S. government’s extradition request and concluded Assange’s mental condition was “such that it would be oppressive to extradite him to the United States of America.” She accepted that Assange would likely be imprisoned at a supermax prison in the U.S. under special administrative measures (SAMs) and would find a way to commit suicide. “I am satisfied that, in these harsh conditions, Mr. Assange’s mental health would deteriorate causing him to commit suicide with the ‘single minded determination’ of his autism spectrum disorder.” However, the Biden Justice Department plans to contest the judge’s conclusion that Assange should not be extradited because he would likely commit suicide.

[..] During Biden’s first foreign policy speech on February 4, he proclaimed, “We believe a free press isn’t an adversary; rather, it’s essential. A free press is essential to the health of a democracy.” However, in Trump’s last year in office, he signed a counterintelligence strategy document that lumped in “leaktivists” and “public disclosure organizations,” like WikiLeaks, with Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, and terrorist groups, which U.S. security agencies view as “significant threats.” That strategy document, which covers 2020-2022, sharply conflicts with Biden’s assertion that the U.S. government believes the free press is not an adversary. Indeed, it shows U.S. security agencies believe they should monitor, neutralize, and even target dissident media organizations that may employ practices pioneered by WikiLeaks.

While the tone of the new administration may sound more polite toward elite journalists, by refusing to abandon this dangerous political case, the Biden Justice Department is effectively signaling his administration is not all that serious about press freedom and what officials have to say are empty platitudes that should not pacify people aware of what is at stake if Assange is brought to the U.S. and put on trial.

Read more …

“The Senate then moved on to other business, passing universal healthcare by a margin of 320,000 to 4.”

In Mail-In Impeachment Vote, Senate Convicts Trump 8275 To 3 (BBee)

In a historic move, the U.S. Senate decided to switch to voting by mail for Trump’s second impeachment trial. After all the votes were counted by an intern in a back room with no cameras, the Senate ruled to convict President Trump of incitement to violence by a vote of 8275 to 3. “Our holy democracy has spoken,” said Senator Chuck Schumer. “Do not ask any questions or you are a blasphemer against the sacred sacredness of our vote. Everyone can go home now!” A couple of troublemaking Senators attempted to overthrow the Constitution by bringing up the point that there are only 100 Senators, making it impossible to arrive at a tally of 8275 to 3, but they were quickly removed from the Senate Chambers and condemned for “attempting to suppress the votes of people of color.” The Senate then moved on to other business, passing universal healthcare by a margin of 320,000 to 4.

Read more …

 

 

We try to run the Automatic Earth on donations. Since ad revenue has collapsed, you are now not just a reader, but an integral part of the process that builds this site. Thank you for your support.

 

 

 

 

Support the Automatic Earth in 2021. Click at the top of the sidebars to donate with Paypal and Patreon.