Sep 252025
 


Edward Hopper The barber shop 1931

 

Only 36 Countries Back Ukraine In Key UN Vote (RT)
Trump’s Sudden Betrayal of Russia (Alexander Dugin)
NATO Fires $470,000 Sidewinders At $2,000 Drones (Ryumshin)
West’s Elevation Of ‘Cult Hero’ Zelensky Fueled His Hubris –The Economist (RT)
Russia Is A Bear, Not A ‘Paper Tiger’ – Kremlin to Trump (RT)
The EU Will Crack Under The Burden Of Ukraine (Romaenko)
Putin Declares It’s War Or Peace In Space (Helmer)
Zionist Trump Is No ‘Peace President’ (Paul Craig Roberts)
Presidential Walk of Fame Features Autopen, Not Biden (Salgado)
Can We Expect a James Comey Indictment ‘In the Coming Days’? (Margolis)
Here’s What the FBI Found in John Bolton’s Office (Margolis)
DOJ Investigator Ed Martin Questions FBI Agent in Alex Jones Lawsuit (CTH)
Secret Service Are Investigating Trump Escalator, Teleprompter ‘Mishaps’ (MN)
It’s Official: CV19 Vax Not Safe & Effective – Karen Kingston (USAW)
India, China, Europe, & The US Are On Very Different Population Paths (ZH)

 

 

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Albania, Andorra,….

Only 36 Countries Back Ukraine In Key UN Vote (RT)

A joint statement by Ukraine and the EU condemning Russia has received the backing of only 36 out of the 193 UN member states. The US notably abstained. Presented by EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrey Sibiga at the UN Headquarters in New York on Tuesday, the document describes Russia’s actions vis-a-vis Ukraine as a “blatant violation of the UN Charter.” It also calls on the global community to “maximize pressure” on Moscow, and to support Ukraine’s “territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders.”

The joint statement was endorsed by the 26 EU member states, with the exception of Hungary, and also endorsed by Albania, Andorra, Australia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Japan, Monaco, New Zealand, Norway, and the UK. Back in February, the UN Security Council rejected a resolution drafted by Kiev and its European backers that contained similar anti-Russian rhetoric. A competing resolution promoted by the US was eventually adopted, with Washington, Moscow, and eight other members voting in favor and five European nations abstaining. That version avoided branding Russia as an aggressor and called for a “swift end” to the Ukraine conflict.

Moscow’s deputy envoy to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, at the time described the outcome as a victory for common sense, claiming that “more and more people realize the true colors of the Zelensky regime.” Moscow has consistently characterized the Ukraine conflict as a proxy war being waged against it by the West. The Kremlin has repeatedly stated that the hostilities would end were Kiev to renounce its claims to the five regions that have joined Russia through referendums since 2014, reaffirm its neutral status, and guarantee the rights of the Russian-speaking population on its territory.

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Putin’s philosopher on X.

“The worst outcome would have been for us to be drawn in. Now there is nowhere left to be drawn..”

Trump’s Sudden Betrayal of Russia (Alexander Dugin)

“Trump announced that he now believes Ukraine can retake all territories from Russia by purely military means, that Russia is a ‘paper tiger,’ and that he intends to sell weapons to NATO’s European members so they can flood Ukraine with them. This is a wholly different position than the one he held a minute ago. That, however, is Trump through and through. There is no other. This is nothing like MAGA or Charlie Kirk, who consistently sided with Russia and opposed aid to Kiev. But Kirk was killed. The boldest figures in MAGA are already beginning to suspect that this is not just the act of a lone liberal with a rifle living with a transgender furry.

Trump is faithful to no one and utterly faithful to himself — half MAGA, half neocon, and willing to compromise with the Deep State. That is what he is. At the same time, a pattern emerges: Trump facilitates the construction of a multipolar world even as he attempts to resist it. Consider how his wild tariffs deftly pushed India closer to China. This dynamic repeats itself across the board.

One might have thought a deal with Trump on Ukraine was possible, but in reality it is not. His positions shift by the minute; he never engages with historical or geopolitical details, and any agreement struck by a businessman is immediately overturned if someone offers better terms. That is business. This is an extremely volatile and ruthlessly brutal arena of aggressive, inhuman deception. The worst outcome would have been for us to be drawn in. Now there is nowhere left to be drawn. We have only one path: the sacred patriotic war. It was so and it remains so. Once it begins, it can end only in our victory.”

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“The more unrealistic the idea, the more it distracts from weakness.”

NATO Fires $470,000 Sidewinders At $2,000 Drones (Ryumshin)

Why did a handful of foam plastic drones leave NATO in a panic? And why is Poland now proposing establishing a no-fly zone over Ukraine? It has been a long time since the West entertained ideas as reckless as these. Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski broke what had been a useful tradition of keeping quiet when he suggested NATO should impose a no-fly zone. The last time we heard this nonsense was at the very start of the Russia-Ukraine conflict, when Vladimir Zelensky demanded that NATO shoot down every Russian missile and aircraft over Ukraine. Estonia cheered him on, but NATO leaders dismissed it. They knew then what should be obvious now: a no-fly zone would mean war with Russia. No one in the alliance dared risk it in 2022, and nothing has changed since.

So why bring it up again? Not because Warsaw has suddenly gone mad or discovered a taste for apocalypse. It is political theater, closer to the instincts of a porcupine fish puffing itself up than of a serious power. Poland – and much of Western Europe with it – is desperately trying to appear larger and scarier than it really is. The trigger was an incident in which a group of UAVs entered Polish airspace. Western European politicians seized on the episode, trying to extract maximum political mileage. But decisive action is the last thing on their minds. The incident revealed just how unprepared NATO is for modern warfare. Nineteen unarmed, camera-less decoy drones crossed Polish skies. Their sole purpose was to commit “suicide” against air defenses before any real strike. NATO managed to shoot down only four. The rest wandered across Poland unhindered, some travelling nearly 500km before running out of fuel and falling from the sky.

In their panic, NATO scrambled F-35 fighters armed with AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles – each one costing $470,000. The price of a single decoy drone? No more than $3,000. To bring down a handful of foam contraptions worth $8,000-$12,000, NATO spent close to $1.9 million. The alliance failed at every level. Intelligence failed because it did not detect the drones in time and then lost track of most of them. The military failed because it had no plan for such an obvious scenario. And political leaders failed because in almost four years of conflict they have done nothing to adapt NATO to the realities of 21st-century warfare. If this is how Poland and its partners cope with nineteen decoys, how do they plan to defend Ukraine from the drone swarms of a real battle?

The no-fly zone talk is also pointless without the United States. Washington commands the only truly powerful air force in NATO, yet it shows no interest in such schemes. The alliance is deeply divided. Its European members are demanding that America stop “flirting” with Moscow and impose harsher sanctions. Donald Trump, however, is digging in his heels, telling Brussels to impose measures themselves – and add tariffs against India and China while they are at it. Even Trump, who rarely avoids hyperbole, did not join the hysteria. He limited himself to a post on social media and then suggested the drones may have strayed accidentally. That directly contradicted Warsaw’s alarmist claims. The US also quietly declined to participate in Operation Eastern Sentry, a mission designed to protect NATO’s eastern flank. Forced to rely only on European resources, the operation ended up looking feeble and unconvincing.

So what can Western Europe do in this situation? Only what it always does: raise the alarm and toss out outlandish proposals. The more unrealistic the idea, the more it distracts from weakness. The main audience for this show is Russia – NATO wants to puff up its chest and project menace. But the second audience is closer to home.Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk admitted the real goal is to curb pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian sentiment inside Western Europe. In 2022, Western leaders briefly managed to suppress their contradictions and present a united front. They want to revive that atmosphere now, even if it takes hysteria about drones and fantasies about no-fly zones. Will it work? Probably not. Opinion campaigns are under way, but there are no serious polls yet to show whether Western Europeans are buying the story. My belief is that they will not. The mood of 2022 cannot be recreated. The talk of no-fly zones will end the same way as earlier attempts to whip up panic – with nothing.

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“Zelensky was more democratic at the start, but all the applause sent him to space,” another government insider told the magazine. “He began to believe in destiny.”

West’s Elevation Of ‘Cult Hero’ Zelensky Fueled His Hubris –The Economist (RT)

Western praise of Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky encouraged overconfidence and increasingly authoritarian behavior in Kiev, The Economist argued in a piece published on Tuesday. In a “report card” assessing Ukraine’s deepening problems as its conflict with Russia drags on, the British magazine highlighted manpower shortages, a mounting budget deficit, and what it described as a growing loss of government legitimacy. Kiev’s attempted crackdown on anti-corruption agencies in July, which sparked mass protests, marked a breaking point, according to a senior Ukrainian official, who said “trust has broken down between government and society.”

“[Zelensky’s] rise as a cult hero in the West has encouraged hubris,” the outlet wrote. The Ukrainian leader was lionized by foreign officials and media, some of whom compared him to Winston Churchill. “Zelensky was more democratic at the start, but all the applause sent him to space,” another government insider told the magazine. “He began to believe in destiny.” The analysis echoed a November 2023 Time magazine story that described Zelensky’s belief in eventual victory as “immovable, verging on the messianic,” with sources saying his inner circle was unwilling to challenge the “delusion.” According to The Economist, Ukraine is now governed by “a shrinking circle of confidants,” particularly Zelensky’s chief of staff Andrey Yermak.

The latter was described as “a bruiser whose power does not seem warranted by his experience or his mandate as an unelected official,” and a person seen by some as a de facto co-president. The magazine said Zelensky’s administration “has sunk into some of Ukraine’s old vices,” citing attacks on opposition media, the use of lawfare against political rivals, and “shakedowns by the domestic-security service.” One industrialist alleged a colleague paid $2 million to avoid charges of having ties to Russia. The Economist concluded that Zelensky “will have to find something other than his role as Ukraine’s chief warrior to renew his legitimacy,” warning that he “seems to be running out of road.”

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A real bear, no less.

Russia Is A Bear, Not A ‘Paper Tiger’ – Kremlin to Trump (RT)

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has rejected US President Donald Trump’s description of Russia as “a paper tiger,” joking that the country is more commonly compared to a bear. On Tuesday, following his meeting with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky, Trump said he believes that Kiev is “in a position to fight and win all of Ukraine back,” if the EU and NATO continue to support it. He compared Russia to a “paper tiger,” claiming that the country is in “BIG Economic trouble” and that “this is the time for Ukraine to act.”

In an interview with Russian business daily RBK on Wednesday, Peskov disagreed with the US leader. “Russia is not a tiger. Russia is more often associated with a bear. There are no such things as ‘paper bears,’ and Russia is a real bear,” he quipped. Peskov added that the Russian economy has adapted to the ongoing conflict and has been able to provide its military with all the necessary equipment while acknowledging that it is facing certain “problems”, which are aggravated by unprecedented Western sanctions.Trump is a “businessman,” he said, suggesting that he is trying to force the world to buy American oil and gas at a higher price.

Still, Peskov stressed that Russian President Vladimir Putin “highly values” Trump’s efforts to mediate the Ukraine conflict while describing their relationship as “warm.” Talks between Russia and the US are moving slowly, he noted, explaining that Washington links the issue of restoring bilateral ties to the settlement of the Ukraine conflict. Moscow remains open to seeking a peaceful resolution to the hostilities, Peskov said while Ukraine’s battlefield situation is deteriorating. “The dynamics show that for those who do not want to negotiate today, their position will be much worse tomorrow or the day after tomorrow,” the Kremlin spokesman said.

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“..Trump’s statement might be read not as a promise but as a test: can the EU demonstrate that it is not itself a “paper tiger”?

The EU Will Crack Under The Burden Of Ukraine (Romaenko)

US President Donald Trump has called Russia a “paper tiger,” supposedly “in BIG economic trouble” – so big, he believes, that Kiev “is in a position to fight and WIN all of Ukraine back in its original form.” There’s one key caveat, though – according to Trump, that victory is possible “with the support of the European Union.” Support from the US is not included in the pep talk. This means that Trump is, for the moment, distancing himself from directly trying to end the war, at least in the short term. This also means that, unlike during the Biden years, when Washington was all but writing Zelensky a blank check, as well as supporting Kiev with intelligence and training, Trump appears to be drawing a line: responsibility should fall primarily on the EU and NATO.

The question is, do they actually have the resources, political unity, and stamina to propel Kiev to this supposed victory? EU economies are groaning under the strain of inflation and energy costs – self-inflicted wounds resulting in a large part from the cut-off of cheap Russian energy. Domestic political divisions are boiling up both between and within EU member states – again, the result of populations upset by their governments throwing cash into a bottomless pit with a “for Ukraine” sign next to it. This is where the “paper tiger” label begins to cut both ways, if not entirely backfire. Calling Russia a “paper tiger” is, above all, a psychological tactic. For decades, critics of Moscow have used similar language to argue that Russia’s military power is overstated, its economy brittle, and its system fragile.

Trump is not the first to say this, and he will not be the last. But such claims have been proven wrong as often as they have been vindicated – and since the beginning of Russia’s military operation and the ensuing sanctions, they have been proven nothing but wrong. The Russian economy, despite sanctions, has not collapsed. Predictions of its imminent demise have been made repeatedly since 2022, only to be walked back as Moscow adapted, re-routed trade, and leveraged its vast natural resources. That does not mean Russia is just shrugging off the West’s pressure: severe challenges and serious problems do arise and they are being openly discussed and overcome. Yet, the collapse thesis has become increasingly difficult to sustain after years of “imminent collapse” forecasts that never materialized.

This illustrates that narratives of inevitable collapse often serve political purposes more than analytical clarity. Trump’s framing fits neatly into this tradition: the “paper tiger” line does not come from sound economic analysis. It’s simply an attempt to undermine Russia’s psychological standing. For Ukraine, Trump’s affirmation that it can defeat Russia may have been meant as a morale boost. Except it probably doesn’t sound all that encouraging when Kiev realizes it will have to rely on its own nonexistent economy and the backing of European regimes that are struggling both politically and economically – struggles that come from blind support for Kiev to begin with. As EU leaders continue to try to drum up support with tired calls for “unity for Ukraine,” they keep bleeding voters. Defense spending is rising, but weapons and resources are being funneled to Kiev.

In several countries, support for the centrist establishment is in the gutter, and parties that promise to refocus on domestic problems are rapidly gaining popularity. If the burden of carrying Kiev falls entirely to EU nations, this will not only accelerate Ukraine’s own defeat, but also the demise of many of the EU’s own struggling governments. In this sense, Trump’s statement might be read not as a promise but as a test: can the EU demonstrate that it is not itself a “paper tiger”? Trump would love to go down in history as a great peace-maker, but what he wants even more – what he promised the voters who followed his “America First” banner – is to end Washington’s entanglement in losing battles.

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Putin wants new treaties. Trump should, too.

Putin Declares It’s War Or Peace In Space (Helmer)

Yesterday afternoon at the Kremlin meeting of the Security Council, President Vladimir Putin proposed to extend the current strategic nuclear weapons limitations of the New START Treaty expiring in February 2026, for one more year into 2027. This is the time Putin is giving President Donald Trump to choose between his Golden Dome escalation in space or new terms of nuclear deescalation by treaty with Russia. “Particular attention,” Putin declared, “must be directed towards US plans to expand strategic components of its missile defence system, including preparations for the deployment of interceptors in outer space. We believe that the practical implementation of such destabilising measures could nullify our efforts to maintain the status quo in the field of strategic offensive arms. We will respond appropriately in this case.”

“In order to prevent the emergence of a new strategic arms race and to preserve an acceptable degree of predictability and restraint, we consider it reasonable to maintain at this turbulent time the status quo established under New START. Accordingly, Russia is prepared to continue observing the treaty’s central quantitative restrictions for one year after February 5, 2026.” This isn’t Putin’s first offer of a timeout for Trump. On October 16, 2020, Putin had announced “to extend the [START] Treaty now in effect unconditionally for at least a year in order to have a chance to hold substantive talks on all the parameters of problems that are regulated by treaties of this kind, lest we leave our countries and all nations of the world with a vested interest in maintaining strategic stability without such a fundamental document as the Strategic Offensive Arms Limitation Treaty.”

Trump rejected that offer before he lost the election the following month. President Joseph Biden then accepted it and on February 3, 2021, the State Department and Foreign Ministry exchanged papers extending the New START terms for five years until 2026. Putin’s statement of yesterday is his explicit reply to Trump’s announcement of Golden Dome four months ago, on May 20. “There’s never been anything like this,” Trump said. “This is something that’s going to be very protective. I think you can rest assured there’ll be nothing like this. Nobody else is capable of building it either.”

According to Trump, the new Golden Dome system – to be part-paid by Canada, he added – “will integrate with our existing defence capabilities and should be fully operational before the end of my term. So we’ll have it done in about three years [2028]. Once fully constructed, the Golden Dome will be capable of intercepting missiles even if they are launched from other sides of the world and even if they are launched from space, and we will have the best system ever built. As you know, we helped Israel with theirs and it was very successful and now we have technology that’s even far advanced from that, but including hypersonic missiles, ballistic missiles and advanced cruise missiles, all of them will be knocked out of the air.”

“We will truly be completing the job that President Reagan started 40 years ago, forever ending the missile threat to the American homeland and the success rate is very close to 100 percent, which is incredible when you think of it, you’re shooting bullets out of the air. I’m also pleased to report that the One Big, Beautiful Bill will include $25 billion for the Golden Dome to help construction get underway”. Trump was asked by a reporter: “Have you addressed Russia’s ventures in space with a space based nuclear weapon and told Putin to stop in your conversations with him?” Trump replied: “We haven’t discussed it. But at the right time we will.” Putin has just called time. Trump has seventeen months.

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“..an obvious hoax. But it served for the neoconservatives to elicit from Trump that if “Russia keeps escalating” the US will defend Poland and the Baltic States from Russia.”

Zionist Trump Is No ‘Peace President’ (Paul Craig Roberts)

Robert Kagan, the Jewish Zionist Neoconservative Husband of another Jewish Zionist Neoconservative, Victoria Nuland, has written an article in the Jewish Publication, formerly the WASP magazine, The Atlantic, that blames Washington for assisting Ukraine in Washington’s war against Russia while avoiding direct confrontation with Russia when the real target was Russia. Kagan says that insufficient Russian forces made it possible for America to dispense with the alleged Russian threat.

Do you remember Kagan’s “Project for a New American Century?” It wasn’t a project for America. It was a project for Israel. All American neoconservatives serve Israel, not America. It is a reasonable conclusion that the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2021 was an inside job arranged by the highly placed neoconservatives in the US government led by vice president Dick Cheney. The purpose of the attack was to produce the “New Pearl Harbor” that the Zionist neoconservatives said was necessary to deceive the American people into a quarter century of war destroying the Arab countries in the way of Greater Israel.

The Americans fell for the orchestrated deceit of “the war on terror,” and sacrificed their money and their soldiers for the sake of Israel. Five of the “seven countries in five years” whose destruction the neconservatives called for have been destroyed. Norman Podhoretz proposed the project in the Jewish magazine, Commentary. Whether or not Podhoretz used the specific quote, “seven countries in five years,” he called for the overthrow of seven countries ending with Saudi Arabia. I read the article and most likely wrote about it. General Wesley Clark, Supreme Allied Commander Europe, told us about it in a speech to the Commonwealth Club of California in 2007. Neoconservatives talked about it openly. 9/11 created America’s “war on terror,” which was used to destroy Muslin countries opposed to Greater Israel.

In 2014 the neoconservatives used their high positions in the US government to overthrow the Ukraine government in the “Maidan Revolution,” appointed an anti-Russian president, and began the Ukrainian neo-nazi campaign against the Russian residents in Donbas, formerly part of Russia. This forced Russia’s intervention. Russia’s forced intervention was called “the Russian invasion of Ukraine.” The escalations of the conflict in Ukraine have been caused by the US which has supplied ever longer range weapons to Ukraine and the targeting information that permits their use. Recently the whore media reported a nonexistent “drone attack” by Russia on Poland and the Baltics, an obvious hoax. But it served for the neoconservatives to elicit from Trump that if “Russia keeps escalating” the US will defend Poland and the Baltic States from Russia.

In other words, the neoconservatives’ agenda is to expand the war from Ukraine to Poland and the Baltic States. By expanding the conflict, the neoconservatives hope to gradually wear down Russia. Putin handed this opportunity to the Russophobic neoconservatives with his never-ending, ever-widening war in Donbas. Putin’s failure to quickly win the conflict is proving to be a strategic blunder. Putin was too afraid of alarming the West to tend to Russia’s interest. In the meantime, the US military/security complex and the neoconservatives have wrested foreign and military policy out of Trump’s hands and catapulted the nuclear arms race into space with the Golden Dome escalation of deploying nuclear weapons in space, a project that will produce never-ending profits and cost overruns.

Putin has offered to extend the expiring START treaty one year, if Trump will agree, in order to avoid an even less predictable and more destabilizing nuclear situation. Trump, totally failing to comprehend the increased danger that accompanies Golden Dome, describes it as completing President Reagan’s work to “end the missile threat to the American homeland.” No, President Trump. Reagan worked to end, not escalate, the cold war that the Zionist neoconservatives have restarted and to normalize relations with Russia. Reagan’s “Star Wars” was a threat intended to bring the Soviet Union to the negotiating table, like your tariff threats are used to bring foreign investment to the US.

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“No politician trolls quite like Donald Trump does.”

Presidential Walk of Fame Features Autopen, Not Biden (Salgado)

Donald Trump‘s new White House Presidential Walk of Fame features a picture of the infamous autopen instead of the face of Joe Biden for the 46th president. Margo Martin, special assistant to the president and communications advisor, posted a video of the new Presidential Walk of Fame at the White House. “Wait for it…” she joked with a pen emoji. The White House followed up with an image of Trump looking at the autopen between the photos of himself on the walk.Trump had previously indicated that he would use a picture of the autopen in his new Walk of Fame and joked about not using a portrait with a smile. “This is going to be very controversial,” Trump predicted with satisfaction.

Judging from the ranting and raving already on X from leftists, he was absolutely right in that prediction. His administration is currently investigating the autopen scandal to assess who was actually running the country, since clearly Joe Biden was not. There are quite a few evil, anti-American, and/or insidious men on the Presidential Walk of Fame, including Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Lyndon Johnson, Andrew Johnson, Woodrow Wilson, Andrew Jackson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. But the face of the man who is arguably our worst president ever does not appear on the walk, with a classic Trump dig at his dementia-incapacitated predecessor’s lack of control in his own administration.

Trump has commented on the autopen scandal and ridiculed Biden and his advisers for it numerous times. Just a couple of weeks ago, Trump posted on Truth Social, “THE BIDEN AUTOPEN SCANDAL IS BIG, NOT AS BIG AS THE RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA HOAX, OR THE RIGGED 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, BUT, NEVERTHELESS, ONE OF THE BIGGEST, EVER!!!” The autopen scandal revolves around revelations that numerous pardons and other executive actions, including for felon Hunter Biden and COVID tyrant Dr. Anthony Fauci, were signed not by Joe Biden himself, in a continually deteriorating state of mind as he was, but by autopen. Recipients of the pardons included violent criminals, a child porn offender with CCP ties, Liz Cheney, and various members of the Biden family.

While presidents have been able to access an autopen for decades, the fact that it may be unconstitutional has meant it is usually not used for important documents. Obama raised controversy by authorizing the use of the autopen when he was not in Washington, D.C., but the Biden administration went further, in many cases seemingly using it for documents about which Joe Biden was not even aware. Therefore, it is quite likely that pardons signed by autopen are, in fact, invalid. No politician trolls quite like Donald Trump does. Every person who visits the Presidential Walk of Fame will be reminded that Dementia Joe Biden and his advisors presided over one of the most shameful scandals in modern American history.

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They’ve run out of time. That may doom the case.

Can We Expect a James Comey Indictment ‘In the Coming Days’? (Margolis)

Brace yourselves, folks, because Washington is rumbling again. Former FBI director James Comey, once the darling of the anti-Trump press, now finds himself staring down the barrel of an indictment, according to the progressive stronghold MSNBC and insiders familiar with the probe. That’s right: for all the years Democrats lionized Comey as the fierce guardian of the “Russia collusion” narrative, the tables may be turning in spectacular fashion. MSNBC broke the news on Wednesday afternoon that Comey is on the verge of facing criminal charges. Anchor Katy Tur told viewers, “Three sources familiar tell MSNBC former FBI director James Comey is expected to be indicted in the coming days.”

Tur added, “The full extent of the charges being prepared against Comey is unclear,” before bringing in MSNBC justice and intelligence correspondent Ken Dilanian and senior investigative correspondent Carol Leonnig for analysis. Leonnig explained, “We have some sources who say that for several weeks now, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Eastern District of Virginia, and actually in offices that are potentially much further south than Alexandria, have been eyeing ways to indict Comey, and they are getting very much closer.” She continued, “They are arguing that Comey — there is evidence to suggest Comey lied to Congress in his testimony on The Hill in September of 2020.”

Leonnig pointed out that the clock is running out for prosecutors. “For viewers out in the audience who may not be legally as nerdy as me and Ken, I’ll just say that there’s a statute of limitations to charge people with the crime of lying to Congress, or perjury, and that’s five years. The five-year statute runs this month.” According to CNN, prosecutors haven’t made a decision yet.

Federal prosecutors are nearing a decision whether to bring possible perjury charges against former FBI Director James Comey, with a legal deadline expiring on Tuesday, according to people familiar with the investigation. The probe, run by federal prosecutors at the US Attorney’s Office for Virginia’s eastern district, is examining whether Comey made false statements during his September, 30, 2020, testimony to Congress on his handling of the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election, people familiar with the matter said. Prosecutors, under criminal law, generally would only have five years to the day to bring a charge.

If a federal grand jury were to approve the case by next week, it would mark one of the highest-profile indictments of a political figure during President Donald Trump’s second term in office – and against one of the longtime figures whom Trump and his political allies detest the most from what they call the “deep state” of the federal government. If the Justice Department truly brings charges, it will represent a seismic test of accountability inside the federal bureaucracy. For years, the media have shielded Comey as a noble martyr of the “resistance,” but if prosecutors finally hold him to the same laws that every American faces, there’s no going back. The public must demand transparency because, without it, this indictment risks becoming just another D.C. power play buried under the weight of spin.

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Bolton was a secrets supermarket for ages.

Here’s What the FBI Found in John Bolton’s Office (Margolis)

The FBI raided John Bolton’s office and home last month and exposed yet another former government official who mishandled classified documents. Democrats and their media allies spent years screaming about Donald Trump’s document handling, stayed completely silent when Joe Biden had classified files in his garage, and now, predictably, aren’t losing any sleep over authorities catching one of their favorite anti-Trump Republicans with classified materials.

On August 22, federal agents raided Bolton’s Washington office and his Bethesda residence, walking away with a treasure trove of classified documents marked “secret,” “confidential,” and other sensitive designations. According to court filings, the materials reportedly span Bolton’s lengthy government career, including his time during the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations from 1998 to 2006, covering everything from weapons of mass destruction intelligence to strategic communications and United Nations mission documents.

What makes this particularly rich is the timing and the player involved. Bolton, who made a career out of positioning himself as the principled conservative willing to stand up to Trump, now finds himself facing potential Espionage Act violations. The same man who positioned himself as a paragon of national security virtue apparently kept classified materials in his office decades after leaving government service. The FBI’s investigation goes beyond simple document retention. Court filings reveal that agents are hunting for evidence of conspiracy to gather, transmit, or lose national defense information without proper authorization. That’s serious business, the kind that can land someone in federal prison for years. The seriousness of the situation is huge considering that, according to federal investigators, a “foreign entity” successfully hacked Bolton’s AOL email account.

Bolton’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, who previously represented Hunter Biden, is doing what defense lawyers do: claiming that everything was above board and that many documents had been cleared through pre-publication review processes. However, that defense rings hollow when considering the scope of what investigators found. These weren’t just a few memos that slipped through the cracks; this was an extensive collection of sensitive materials spanning multiple administrations and covering some of our nation’s most closely guarded secrets. This case also highlights the broader problem of Washington’s revolving door culture, where former officials routinely walk away with materials they claim are necessary for their post-government careers. Joe Biden, for example, had classified documents in his garage dating back to his days as a U.S. senator.

The fact that some of these documents in Bolton’s possession date back to the Clinton and Bush eras demonstrates just how long this problem has been festering. While Bolton built his reputation as a hawk who understood the importance of protecting American secrets, his alleged actions suggest a different reality, one where personal convenience trumped national security protocols. As this investigation continues, Americans deserve answers about how a former national security advisor could allegedly retain classified materials for decades while using compromised email systems that foreign adversaries could access. The Justice Department must pursue this case with the same intensity it has shown in other high-profile document cases, regardless of Bolton’s political positioning or media relationships.

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“..it wasn’t particularly smart for Alex Jones to post the letter on his Twitter account. Without much doubt the Ed Martin retraction was due to this knuckleheaded move.”

DOJ Investigator Ed Martin Questions FBI Agent in Alex Jones Lawsuit (CTH)

UPDATE: According to CNN, “in a new letter addressed to attorney Christopher Mattei on Wednesday, Martin withdrew his initial letter entirely. In a brief note, according to a person familiar with the letter, Martin wrote that there is no investigation of Aldenberg and “because of this, I hereby withdraw my request for information from you or your former client.”

As noted in the original outline below, it wasn’t particularly smart for Alex Jones to post the letter on his Twitter account. Without much doubt the Ed Martin retraction was due to this knuckleheaded move.

— Original Outline Below —
William “Bill” Aldenberg was the lead investigator for John Durham in 2020. Bill Aldenberg was also a plaintiff in the case against Alex Jones in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting 2012, lawsuit and civil trial 2022. According to a U.S. News and World Report article, “Aldenberg was among the law enforcement officers who responded to the school and found the dead children. That then led to years of abuse from people who believed the shooting was a hoax, he has said. His share of the judgment totaled around $120 million.” Bill Aldenberg was the first witness in the 2022 case against InfoWars. Alex Jones and InfoWars lost the lawsuit and were punished by a $1.4 billion damage award to the plaintiffs. InfoWars filed bankruptcy and the arguments over liquidation of assets is underway in Texas.

Here’s where things get weird. We know the FBI was conducting an operation called “Arctic Frost,” essentially the targeting of Donald Trump and key figures who aligned with Trump in the aftermath of the 2020 election. It is widely suspected, the massive amount of evidence captured in the Arctic Frost operation, was eventually fed to the January 6th Committee for use in their expanded investigation. That evidence then underpinned the case against President Trump that was being assembled by Jack Smith. Essentially, operation Arctic Frost was the evidence gathering operation, then the J6 Committee and special counsel Jack Smith used the FBI evidence to frame their cases. [Readers will note, this process is similar to the FBI “Crossfire Hurricane” operation, which fed evidence to special counsel Robert Mueller, to frame their cases.]

Back to FBI Investigative Agent William Aldenberg, who was lead for John Durham. DOJ attorney Ed Martin is looking at the connective tissue around all of the FBI targeting operations. He now asks the lawyers for William Aldenberg about details of their client’s involvement in the case against Alex Jones.


Alex Jones posted a copy of the letter on his Twitter [X] feed, along with a picture of him and Ed Martin. A rather knuckleheaded move by Jones considering how Ed Martin says in the letter he would prefer not to litigate the issue in the media. Then again, wisdom and sound judgement have never been Jones’ strong points. Really, it’s a convoluted mess making the serious issues around Arctic Frost get lost in the weeds. Then again, perhaps that is a feature not a flaw. Many people, CTH included, view Alex Jones through the prism of compromise ever since the $1.4 billion sword of Damocles was established over his head.

(USN&WR) – “[…] Ed Martin Jr., who leads the Justice Department’s “weaponization working group,” asked in the letter whether retired agent William Aldenberg received any financial benefits from helping to organize the lawsuit, in which he was a plaintiff along with victims’ family members. Aldenberg, like the parents and other relatives of the 20 children and six educators killed in the 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, has been the subject of false conspiracy theories spread by Jones on his “Infowars” broadcasts. Aldenberg was among the law enforcement officers who responded to the school and found the dead children. That then led to years of abuse from people who believed the shooting was a hoax, he has said. His share of the judgment totaled around $120 million.

In a Sept. 15 letter to Christopher Mattei, a lawyer who represents Sandy Hook families, Martin suggested he was scrutinizing Aldenberg’s role in the lawsuit. Mattei responded to the letter in a text message to The Associated Press. “Thanks to the courage of the Sandy Hook families, Infowars will soon be finished,” he said, referring to the families’ efforts in court to liquidate Jones’ assets to help pay the judgment. “In his last gasps, Jones is once again harassing them, only now with the corrupt complicity of at least one DOJ official. It’s as disgusting as it is pathetic, and we will not stand for it.”

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Trump and Melania were stuck in a glass elevator. Ready for shooting practice.

Secret Service Are Investigating Trump Escalator, Teleprompter ‘Mishaps’ (MN)

President Trump’s Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has stated that the Secret Service are looking into incidents prior to and during President Trump’s speech to the UN where an escalator was seemingly purposefully stopped the moment he stepped onto it, and a teleprompter malfunctioned just as he was about to speak. Appearing on Jesse Watters’ show, Leavitt noted “There was some concerning reporting over the weekend from the London Times, as you pointed out, that U.N. globalist staffers were basically plotting to set up the president of the United States.” She continued, “And first it was the escalator, then it was the teleprompter, and then Katie Pavlich from Townhall, who we offered a seat in the press pool to cover the president’s historic speech today, noticed that the audio inside of the room was much lower and different for the president of the United States than the previous speaker.”

https://twitter.com/VigilantFox/status/1970691385524097362?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1970691385524097362%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fmodernity.news%2F2025%2F09%2F24%2Fsecret-service-are-investigating-trump-escalator-teleprompter-mishaps%2F

“So when you put all of this together, it doesn’t look like a coincidence to me,” the Press Secretary further asserted, adding “I know that we have people, including the United States Secret Service, who are looking into this to try to get to the bottom of it.” Leavitt further remarked that “if we find that these were U.N. staffers who were purposefully trying to trip up, literally trip up the president and the first lady of the United States, well, there better be accountability for those people. And I will personally see to it.” In addition to lambasting the UN for its “empty words” on global conflicts, Trump quipped “These are the two things I got from the United Nations: a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter.”

https://twitter.com/Viralvid_89/status/1970582389417222261?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1970582389417222261%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fmodernity.news%2F2025%2F09%2F24%2Fsecret-service-are-investigating-trump-escalator-teleprompter-mishaps%2F

While the teleprompter glitch was an embarrassing tech hiccup, it’s the escalator stoppage that demands scrutiny as a glaring security lapse. UN officials quickly attributed it to a safety mechanism triggered accidentally by Trump’s videographer backing up the stairs, and the White House has demanded an investigation into potential sabotage. But even if unintentional, the incident exposes deep vulnerabilities in protecting a leader with a massive target on his back. Trump has survived two assassination attempts in 2024 alone, and the recent murder of conservative firebrand Charlie Kirk, a brazen campus shooting by a lone gunman with leftist derangements, has only amplified the threats. Kirk’s killing, amid a surge in politically motivated violence on the left, underscores a rising tide of leftist aggression: from arson attacks on officials’ homes to targeted hits on high-profile voices challenging progressive orthodoxy.

Imagine the escalator halting not by glitch, but by design—or worse, exploiting a momentary freeze in Secret Service protocols. Trump, frozen in place on a confined, elevated platform, surrounded by international delegates and staff in a building teeming with potential bad actors. No quick exit, no buffer zone; just seconds of vulnerability where a concealed assailant could strike. This a near-miss that could have echoed the chaos of Butler, Pennsylvania, or the golf course attempt last year. The Secret Service, still reeling from those failures, must up their game: pre-clear every mechanism in high-threat venues, deploy redundant transport like private elevators, and drill for “stuck” scenarios that turn routine movements into kill zones. Anything less invites disaster, especially as Trump’s unfiltered rhetoric continues to provoke extremists on the left.

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She warned from the very start.

It’s Official: CV19 Vax Not Safe & Effective – Karen Kingston (USAW)

Karen Kingston is a biotech analyst and former Pfizer employee that told everyone not to get the CV19 vax because of all the health problems it would cause. She did this repeatedly after the CV19 vaccine rollout to wake up the public up to the dangers of the injections. She listed heart disease, auto immune problems, blood clotting and turbo cancers popping up everywhere, including the brain. These are just a few of the many problems caused by the CV19 vax that led to disability and death for millions of people around the world. The things Kingston revealed about why nobody should get the CV19 vax have now been officially acknowledged by the top doctors and researchers in the world at the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) this past week.

Kingston, who sat in on the six-hour meeting, says, “What happened during this meeting, the policies that were voted on, the evidence reviewed . . . is now going to become policy. This was not a Senate dog and pony show. This was a regulatory . . . legally binding meeting.” A few of the highlights that came out of this meeting, according to Kingston, “They said we have to be honest about Myocarditis caused by the CV19 vax. They said the CV19 vaccine causes short-term and long-term diseases and injuries, and those need to be addressed. Professor Levi said we must drop the term ‘safe and effective.’ It is propaganda, and it should never be used when describing the Covid 19 vaccine. The term ‘safe and effective’ has got to go away.”

Also, so-called ‘turbo cancers’ came up at the ACIP meeting and the fact they are caused by the CV19 vaccine. For years, pregnant women were told the CDC recommended they get the CV19 shots. That too is no longer the CDC recommendation. Another big change is true informed consent about the huge risks with the CV19 vaccines. The new rule would basically force doctors and pharmacists to tell the public about the possibility of death and disability with the risk of getting cancer, autoimmune disease, blood clotting and infertility, to name a few. Kingston says, “Informed consent was clearly defined throughout the presentations. . .. Informed consent is not just signing off on a piece of paper. It is a shared clinical decision. . .. In a shared clinical decision, you are now sharing responsibility with that patient. The old, informed consent was ‘I signed my form, I got my $20 CVS coupon, and I got my shot.’ That is not informed consent.”

So, they are going to actually have to tell you all the bad things that can happen if you get the CV19 vax. Kingston told everyone NOT to get the CV19 vax right after the rollout in 2021. All the reasons she gave back then have now come out in this recent ACIP regulatory meeting. If there is going to be true informed consent, Kingston says, “Nobody of sound mind would get these shots. . . .If your doctor knows all the evidence and all the serious adverse events, and your doctor still tells you to get the shots, is that malpractice at this point?” Another big lie exposed is that the CV19 vaccine made Covid19 milder. This is yet another total lie exposed at the ACIP meeting. Kingston says, “Professor Levi straight up said, the actual . . . clinical trials did not show decrease in hospitalization or death . . . they, in fact, showed harm.”

Also, at the ACIP meeting, the recent Rasmussen poll came up that showed 56% of Americans now believe the CV19 vax caused deaths. This is another signpost in the public’s perception on these dangerous and debilitating CV19 injections. Kingston contends this ACIP meeting was a turning point and says, “I think this is the beginning of the end of the CV19 shots.” There was even talk of treatment for the CV19 vax injured, but no definite treatments were put forth—yet. Maybe the CDC can talk to Dr. Betsy Eads or Dr. Pierre Kory about how to treat the millions of victims of the CV19 bioweapon vax. They and other doctors have been successfully doing it since the CV19 injections started.

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Interesting, but what use is it to look at global population prospects without looking at Africa? They’re the odd one out.

India, China, Europe, & The US Are On Very Different Population Paths (ZH)

This chart, via Voronoiapp.com, tracks the UN’s latest demographic projections for four large populations: India, China, Europe, and the United States. Together, they account for about half of today’s world population. The curves are shaped by what the UN expects to happen to future fertility, life expectancy, and migration worldwide. India and China are the world’s most populous countries today, and the UN projects that both will remain at the top through the end of the century. Yet their trajectories diverge sharply in these projections. China’s population has already begun to fall and is projected to more than halve to around 630 million by 2100. India, by contrast, is expected to keep growing for nearly four more decades, reaching about 1.7 billion people in 2060 and gradually declining to around 1.5 billion.

In contrast, the United States and Europe are projected to change more gradually. The US is expected to grow slowly and steadily, reaching about 420 million people by the end of the century. Europe’s population, meanwhile, is projected to decline. Based on these figures, its population peaked around 750 million in 2020, and is expected to fall to about 590 million by 2100, not far from China’s projected level. The UN’s model is the most widely used baseline for international population comparisons, but all population projections are sensitive to the underlying assumptions. Other research groups use different demographic assumptions about fertility, life expectancy, and migration to reach different long-term population figures.

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https://twitter.com/GenFlynn/status/1970584779054817584

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

May 182022
 


Pablo Picasso Young girl throwing a rock 1931

 

After the NATO War is Over (Batiushka)
The War in Ukraine. Scott Ritter’s Switcheroo (Whitney)
Fate Of Hundreds Of Ukrainian Soldiers Unclear As Azovstal Resistance Ends (G.)
‘Defenders of Mariupol Are The Heroes Of Our Time’ (G.)
‘Conflict Observatory’ to Document Evidence of Russian War Crimes (Celente)
McConnell Says Congress Hopes to Approve Sweden’s NATO Bid by August (ET)
EU Diplomat: ‘We Are Reaching Our Limits With Sanctions Against Russia’ (Euractiv)
Orbán Warns West is Subjecting Itself to “Suicide Waves” of Decline (SN)
Putin: EU Oil Sanctions “Economic Suicide” Ordered By “American Overlords” (ZH)
Over 120,000 Hunter Biden Emails Uploaded To Searchable Database (ZH)
‘The Real President Is Whoever Controls The Teleprompter’ – Musk (Fox)

 

 


Manhattan Project

 

 

Stella

 

 

Mercouris

 

 

“Just days ago it was announced that Russia expects record grain production this year (130 million tonnes). Russia may yet demand payment in roubles for all this as well.”

After the NATO War is Over (Batiushka)

Make no mistake about it: The tragic war that is currently taking place on Ukrainian battlefields is not between the Russian Federation and the Ukraine, but between the Russian Federation and the US-controlled NATO. The latter, also called ‘the collective West’, promotes an aggressive ideology of organised violence, a politically- economically- and militarily-enforced doctrine euphemistically known as ‘Globalism’. This means hegemony by the Western world, which arrogantly calls itself ‘the international community’, over the whole planet. NATO is losing that war, which uses NATO-trained Ukrainians as its proxy cannon fodder, in three spheres, political, economic and military.

Firstly, politically, the West has finally understood that it cannot execute regime change in Moscow. Its pipedream of replacing the highly popular President Putin with is CIA stooge Navalny is not going to happen. As for the West’s puppet-president in Kiev, he is only a creature of Washington and its oligarchs. A professional actor, he is unable to speak for himself, but is a spokesman for the NATO which he loves. Secondly, economically, the West faces serious resistance to the 6,000 sanctions it has imposed on Russia and Russians. Those sanctions have backfired. In the West, we can testify to this every time we buy fuel or food. The combination of high inflation (10% +) and even higher energy prices, caused almost solely by these illegal anti-Russian sanctions, are threatening the collapse of Western economies, much more than threatening Russia or China.

As a result of this reverse effect of sanctions against Russia, the rouble is at a three-year high, standing at about 64 to the US dollar and rising, though immediately after the sanctions it had briefly gone down to 150 to the dollar. After strenuously denying that they would do it, already most countries in Europe (at least 17 for now), including Germany and Italy, have agreed to open accounts with Gazprombank, as Russia advised them to do and to pay for oil and gas in roubles. And this number is growing by the week. The problems will be even greater with food shortages, as the world food chain is highly integrated and the agricultural production of Russia and the Ukraine (now controlled by Russia) is at least 40% of the world’s grain production. Just days ago it was announced that Russia expects record grain production this year (130 million tonnes). Russia may yet demand payment in roubles for all this as well.

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I had not see this when I wrote my piece yesterday. A curious turn around.

The War in Ukraine. Scott Ritter’s Switcheroo (Whitney)

On Sunday, the foreign policy blogs were abuzz with the news that Scott Ritter had done “an about-face in his assessment of the war”. It appears that the ex-Marine had examined recent developments in Ukraine and concluded that it’s going to be much harder for Russia to win than he had originally thought… Naturally, the news of Ritter’s reversal sent shockwaves across the internet, especially among the people who follow events in Ukraine closely and who greatly admire his even-handed analysis. Some of these people clearly felt betrayed by Ritter’s comments and blasted him as a “concern troll” which refers to a person who feigns sympathy while actually feeling the opposite. This is a terrible way to treat a guy who’s devoted so much of his time to informing people about an issue of which they might know very little without his research. Besides, Ritter is no hypocrite. Quite the contrary.

It’s fair to say, however, that Ritter has probably been the most outspoken proponent of the “Russia is winning” theory, a hypothesis that runs counter to everything we read in the legacy media or see on the cable news channels. Unfortunately, Ritter’s views on the matter have changed dramatically, and that’s due almost entirely to developments on the ground. As Ritter candidly admits, “The military aid the west is providing to Ukraine is changing the dynamic and if Russia doesn’t find a way to address this meaningfully… the conflict will never end.” That’s quite a turnaround from a statement he made just weeks earlier that, “Russia is winning the war, and winning it decisively.” So, what changed? What are the so-called developments that led to Ritter’s volte-face?

Here are a few excerpts from the interview that triggered the fracas. Ritter was joined by Ray McGovern and host Garland Nixon on Saturday Morning Live. (The quotes are copied from video. I accept blame for any mistakes.) Scott Ritter (start at 47:50 minute mark) — “The thing that frustrates me… is that, it was my assessment that it would be very hard for Ukraine to absorb this new equipment and material (Material– the additional lethal weapons that have recently been shipped to Ukraine) but the howitzers are already operating against Russia. (And) They are having an effect in the Kharkov region. Not all 90 of them, but they have several batteries in place that are being used. How did this happen?

And this is why I have radically changed my overall assessment, because I had been operating on the assumption that Russia would be able to interdict the vast majority of this equipment, but Russia has shown itself unable or unwilling to do this and– as a result– the Ukrainians are having meaningful impact on the battlefield. Not in the areas of main contention, like the Donbass, but on the periphery. This is why Russia has carried out tactical withdrawals north of Kharkov, because in order to match Ukraine’s best capabilities, Russia would have to divert resources from its main effort which Russia has decided not to do. So, they are re-configuring the battlefield. (trading land in different areas)…

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The Guardian. Rewriting history. Update: “959 Ukrainian soldiers surrendered at Azovstal since Monday: Russian ministry”

Fate Of Hundreds Of Ukrainian Soldiers Unclear As Azovstal Resistance Ends (G.)

The fate of hundreds of Ukrainian soldiers who have ended weeks of resistance at the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol remains unclear, after the fighters surrendered and were transferred to Russian-controlled territory. Ukraine’s deputy defence minister said they would be swapped in a prisoner exchange, but some Russian officials said on Tuesday they could be tried and even executed. MPs in Russia’s State Duma said they would propose new laws that could derail prisoner exchanges of fighters who Moscow claims are “terrorists”. Russian investigators have said they plan to interrogate the soldiers and could charge them with “crimes committed by the Ukrainian regime against the civilian population in south-east Ukraine”.

On Tuesday evening, seven buses carrying Ukrainian soldiers left the Azovstal plant in the port city and arrived at a former prison colony in the Russian-controlled town of Olenivka in Donetsk, Reuters reported. Russia called the Azovstal operation a mass surrender, while the Ukrainian army said the soldiers defending the steel plant had “performed their combat task” and that the main goal was now to save their lives. For weeks, hundreds of troops have been holed up in a warren of tunnels and bunkers underneath the steelworks, as Russian forces took control of the rest of the city after turning much of it into an uninhabitable wasteland. Many of those stuck at Azovstal had serious injuries, with limited medical care and dwindling supplies.

In the last few weeks, civilians who had also taken cover in the plant were rescued after a deal was brokered by the International Committee of the Red Cross to allow them to leave for Ukrainian-controlled territory. Ukraine had been pushing for a deal that would also allow the fighters to retreat to Ukrainian-controlled areas, or for their evacuation to a neutral country. However, with that not forthcoming, Ukrainian officials announced in the early hours of Tuesday that the defence of the plant was in effect over. Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, promised that the fighters who surrendered would be treated “in accordance with international standards”, but this was immediately undermined by statements from two other Russian officials.

Leonid Slutsky, a Russian MP who took part in negotiations with Ukraine earlier in the war, suggested Russia should lift its moratorium on the death penalty for fighters from the Azov regiment, one of the main forces defending the steelworks, calling them “animals in human form”. “Nazi criminals should not be exchanged,” said Vyacheslav Volodin, one of Russia’s most powerful officials and the chair of the State Duma, during a speech on Tuesday. “Our country treats those who surrendered or were captured humanely. But with regards to Nazis, our position should be unchanged: these are war criminals and we must do everything so that they stand trial.”

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More Guardian. What is wrong with these people?

‘Defenders of Mariupol Are The Heroes Of Our Time’ (G.)

Cut off from the world and low on food and ammunition, many of the hundreds of defenders of the Azovstal steel plant in Mauripol were wounded, some missing limbs. Their capitulation had been inevitable for weeks. That moment came late on Monday as more than 260 – bearded, filthy, emaciated, and including 51 severely injured – laid down their arms and were evacuated amid a wider concession of defeat after 82 days of fighting in the besieged port city. “The ‘Mariupol’ garrison has fulfilled its combat mission,” the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said in a statement. “The supreme military command ordered the commanders of the units stationed at Azovstal to save the lives of the personnel … Defenders of Mariupol are the heroes of our time,” it added.


And while several hundred fighters remained inside the plant, their commanders admitted their mission had “concluded” while officials continued with negotiations to “evacuate them”. Late on Monday, five buses carrying troops from Azovstal were seen arriving in nearby Russian-controlled Novoazovsk. In one, marked with a Z like many Russian military vehicles in Ukraine, men were stacked on stretchers on three levels. In a long-denied victory for the Kremlin, a battle that has gripped the world’s attention appeared finally over, leaving a city in ruins and perhaps thousands of civilians dead. With its urban areas sprawling along the coastline of the Sea of Azov in the shape of a comma, the siege of Mariupol came to define one of the most brutal episodes in Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.

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“Wouldn’t it be worthwhile for the department to set up another website devoted to allegations of war crimes committed under the Obama, Clinton, Bush, and Biden administrations in Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, and Syria?”

‘Conflict Observatory’ to Document Evidence of Russian War Crimes (Celente)

The U.S. State Department announced the launch of the “Conflict Observatory” program that will document evidence of war crimes committed by Russian troops during the Ukraine War to use in possible future prosecutions. The intention of the program is to “capture, analyze, and make widely available evidence of Russian-perpetrated war crimes and other atrocities in Ukraine,” the statement read. The website will share this “documentation to help refute Russia’s disinformation efforts and shine a light on abuses.” “This new Conflict Observatory program is part of a range of U.S. government efforts at both national and international levels designed to ensure future accountability for Russia’s horrific actions,” a statement read. Wired reported that outside organizations, and international investigators would be able access the program’s database.

Ned Price the State Department spokesperson, told reporters on Tuesday that the program is important because “no country – no matter how large, how potentially powerful, what types of weapons they may have in their arsenal – can escape accountability for the types of atrocities that we have seen Russia’s forces perpetrate against the Ukrainian people.” Ukraine has accused Russian forces of atrocities and said it has identified more than 10,000 possible war crimes, Reuters reported. “However long it takes, those responsible for war crimes and other atrocities in Ukraine will be brought to justice. A new, publicly available Conflict Observatory will collect open-source evidence for future prosecutions,” he tweeted later.

ConflictObservatory.org resembles a news site. One of the headlines read, “Evidence of Widespread and Systemic Bombardment of Ukrainian Healthcare Facilities.” The Yale Humanitarian Research Lab, which is part of the effort, along with Esri, Alcis, and Quiet Professionals LLC, reported that it identified 22 healthcare facilities in Ukraine “that sustained damage from apparent Russia-aligned bombardment between 24 February and 29 March 2022.” “The HRL verified damage through cross-corroboration of very high resolution satellite imagery and open source information. Based on a review of nearly 300 facilities across five cities and regions, the HRL has concluded that Russia-aligned forces have engaged in widespread and systematic bombardment of Ukrainian healthcare facilities.”

[..] NBC News published a report in April that challenged Washington’s claim that Russia was planning a chemical attack against Ukrainian forces, with one unnamed official going as far as to say that the claim was an effort by the U.S. to get into Russian President Vladimir Putin’s head. The report cited three U.S. officials who said there is no evidence that Russia is planning a chemical attack against Ukraine. While the mainstream media has generally ignored the latest D.C. lies, Antiwar.org was the first to point out the contradiction in the NBC News report that included a U.S. official who said the intelligence tied to chemical weapons was not “rock solid.” So the State Department wants to create a website built on evidence that is not rock solid? Wouldn’t it be worthwhile for the department to set up another website devoted to allegations of war crimes committed under the Obama, Clinton, Bush, and Biden administrations in Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, and Syria? Don’t hold your breath.

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Who benefits? Not Finland and Sweden, they’re just painting targets on their own backs. Raytheon for the win.

McConnell Says Congress Hopes to Approve Sweden’s NATO Bid by August (ET)

“We hope to approve it before August,” he said. “We are confident it will be approved.” McConnell also shared a statement on Monday following his visit to both Sweden and Finland where he reiterated his support for both nations joining NATO, stating that both would “bring tremendous value as new NATO members and would strengthen the alliance significantly.” “Sweden and Finland already have long track records as two of the United States and NATO’s most capable friends and partners, even from outside the alliance,” the Senate Republican leader said. “Both countries have massive geographic importance, professional and well-equipped armed forces, strong military industrial bases, and significant interoperability with U.S. and NATO forces. Both nations’ robust commitments to defense funding mean that their accession would directly address longstanding concerns about burden-sharing and the financial contributions of our allies,” McConnell said.

He added that he would do “everything in my power to ensure that our part of their accession process moves smoothly and expeditiously.” Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson told reporters in Stockholm on Monday that the decision to join NATO was driven in part by Finland’s recent move to join the alliance. Finnish leaders, with backing from lawmakers in the country, announced plans to officially seek NATO membership over the weekend. “Should Sweden be the only country in the Baltic Sea region that was not a member of NATO, we would be in a very vulnerable position. We can’t rule out that Russia would then increase pressure on Sweden,” Andersson said. The vote to approve new membership into NATO must be unanimous among all members.

However, Turkey has threatened to block the bid by Sweden and Finland, citing their alleged willingness to support terrorist organizations, including the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), and followers of Fethullah Gulen, who Ankara accuses of being behind the 2016 attempted coup in Turkey. “Neither of these countries has a clear, open attitude toward terrorist organizations,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at a joint news conference with his Algerian counterpart Abdelmadjid Tebboune on Monday. “How can we trust them?” Erdogan also described Sweden as an “incubation center for terrorist organizations,” and claimed that some members of Sweden’s Parliament supported the PKK. He also pointed to the fact that both Sweden and Finland imposed arms export embargoes on Turkey in 2019 after its incursion into Syria.

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Oh, you’re well past your limits…

EU Diplomat: ‘We Are Reaching Our Limits With Sanctions Against Russia’ (Euractiv)

“If there was such a mess with Russia’s oil, imagine what would happen with a proposal to ban gas”, an EU diplomat told EURACTIV after the end of the EU foreign ministers meeting on Monday. “The 7th package of sanctions against Moscow will be extremely difficult […] We are very close to reaching our limits. What will the 7th package include?” the diplomat wondered.The diplomat explained that at the foreign affairs meeting yesterday, although there is ongoing progress in talks with Hungary to lift its veto over Europe’s proposal for an embargo on Russian oil, the atmosphere indicated that “we even took a step back”. “Hungary is doing everything to get guarantees […] essentially to get the money from the Recovery Fund and even more than that”, the diplomat said.


According to the diplomat, a deal between the Commission and Budapest is highly likely after the executive presents on 18 May its REPowerEU plan to phase out Russian fossil fuels. “It’s in no one’s interest to take the issue to the EU summit level […] Viktor Orbán knows he will be under huge pressure there, so he also wants a solution before that”, the diplomat noted. The diplomat stressed that Orbán’s stance on the matter brings other governments in a difficult position back to their homes, considering that if Budapest gets what it wants, it would be hard for others, such as Bulgaria, to explain why they did not get similar concessions. “The same happened with Spain and Portugal when they got the gas price cap,” the diplomat concluded.

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“They forget that man alone can never be free, only lonely..”

Orbán Warns West is Subjecting Itself to “Suicide Waves” of Decline (SN)

In a speech to mark him taking the oath of office, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán warned that the west is subjecting itself to “suicide waves” of decline in the form of self-inflicted economic wounds, mass migration and an obsession with identity politics. Orbán’s conservative Fidesz party swept to victory in the election last month with another two-thirds majority, despite a massive effort by globalist interests to derail his candidacy. During a speech in parliament, Orbán cautioned that the continent faced perilous times ahead. “Everything that has happened since 2020 points in one direction: Europe and the Hungarian people in it have entered an age of danger,” said Orbán. “The decade began with the coronavirus epidemic and continued with the war. The sanctions from the war brought an economic downturn.”

“The war and sanctions policy caused an energy crisis, and U.S. interest rate hikes brought an age of inflation,” he added. The Hungarian leader went on to lament that Europe was entering an “age of economic downturn” and a worsening mass migration problem. Orbán said we are now witnessing the “suicide waves of the Western world” characterized by the replacement of Christianity with a vacuous cult of identity politics. “Such is the program of the great European population exchange, the essence of which is to replace the missing Christian children with migrants. Such an experiment is a program of gender madness and a liberal Europe that transcends nation-states and Christianity, and puts nothing in their place,” said Orbán.

“They forget that man alone can never be free, only lonely,” he added.

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“Of course, such an economic suicide is a domestic affair of the European countries..”

Putin: EU Oil Sanctions “Economic Suicide” Ordered By “American Overlords” (ZH)

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that EU countries are committing “economic suicide” by refusing Russian energy resources amid a push to impose an oil embargo, but which has been thus far blocked by Russian energy-dependent Hungary and a handful of others. As quoted in RIA Novosti, Putin described that the oil sector is busy undergoing a “tectonic shift” which will only be made worse by “ill-thought-out” sanctions by the West. The address was given virtually to an energy conference of the country’s industry heads. “Changes in the oil market are tectonic in nature and doing business as usual, according to the old model, seems unlikely,” he said. “In the new conditions, it is important not only to extract oil, but also to build the entire vertical chain leading to the final consumer.”

He called out the current EU-US trajectory of seeking to inflict maximum punishment on Moscow as a strategy ensuring higher energy prices and higher inflation. That’s when he observed: “Of course, such an economic suicide is a domestic affair of the European countries,” based on the AFP translation. At the same time, Putin additionally pointed out, Europe’s “chaotic actions” would eventually serve to boost oil and gas revenues for Moscow, also as Russia diverts energy supplies to “friendly” countries. He urged Russian industry authorities to be more proactive in leveraging the situation for the nation’s benefit. Putin described a scenario of Europe feeling the brunt of the crisis worst, according to state media:

“Rejection of Russian energy resources means that Europe will systemically become the region with the highest energy costs in the world. Yes, of course prices will rise and resources will go to this region, but it will not be possible to radically alter the situation. This will seriously – and according to some experts irrevocably – undermine the competitiveness of a significant part of European industry, which is already losing the competition to companies in other regions of the world,” Putin said, speaking at a meeting with officials devoted to energy issues on Tuesday. He added that Western officials and populations had long been overconcerned with “climate issues” – betting too big on the effectiveness of alternative energy, in a theme the Russian president has stressed for years.

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But key ones are missing?

Over 120,000 Hunter Biden Emails Uploaded To Searchable Database (ZH)

A former Trump White House staffer has uploaded more than 120,000 emails found on Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop to a searchable database this week, which can be found at the (slowly loading) website: BidenLaptopEmails.com. In addition to searching, visitors can download the emails as well. Set up by former Peter Navarro aide Garrett Ziegler, who worked in the Trump administration Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy, the emails contain infamous hits such as the “10 for the big guy,” in which Hunter Biden’s business partner James Gillar suggested he should hold 10% of a multi-million-dollar deal with the Chinese. Ziegler posted the emails through his organization, Marco Polo.

“Another email in the database, previously published by DailyMail.com, shows Hunter describing an extraordinary apparent quid pro quo with a Mexican billionaire’s son, outlining how he got him into the White House and inauguration, and thanking him for visits to his villa. Some messages did not appear to be included in the database. One email published by DailyMail.com shows Hunter inviting his foreign business partners and associates to a 2015 dinner at Washington DC restaurant Café Milano. In the email he reveals that his father will secretly be joining – and says that the dinner is ‘ostensibly to discuss food security’. The White House at first denied the then-vice president was there, but eventually admitted it when photographs emerged from the event.”-Daily Mail

That said, the Daily Mail notes that the above email is not included in Ziegler’s database, which contains 14,603 fewer emails than a batch of 142,838 analyzed by cyber forensic firm Maryman & Associates last year for the Mail. “Here are the 128k emails from the Biden Laptop, which is a modern Rosetta Stone of white and blue collar crime under the patina of “the Delaware Way,”” reads the website, referring to a term frequently used by Joe Biden. “Prior to the discovery of the Rosetta Stone, a number of ancient languages were mere gibberish and hash marks. Similarly, the emails on the Biden Laptop illuminated previously convoluted webs of the people you see leading the charge for global governance; truly, the emails can be considered a translation tool for Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) gathering.”

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“The path to power is the path to the teleprompter.”

‘The Real President Is Whoever Controls The Teleprompter’ – Musk (Fox)

Tesla CEO Elon Musk, whose purchase of Twitter remains ongoing, slammed President Biden in a podcast interview Monday and warned that if the government continues printing money, inflation will get worse and the U.S. might follow the path of Venezuela. Musk, who said he has voted “overwhelmingly for Democrats,” slammed the Democratic Party and Biden in particular. He suggested that Biden is something of an empty suit. “The real president is whoever controls the teleprompter,” the Tesla CEO said. “The path to power is the path to the teleprompter.” “I do feel like if somebody were to accidentally lean on the teleprompter, it’s going to be like Anchorman,” the CEO added, referencing the 2004 film in which Ron Burgundy reads whatever is written on the teleprompter, even if it would ruin his career.


“This administration doesn’t seem to get a lot done,” Musk said. “The Trump administration, leaving Trump aside, there were a lot of people in the administration who were effective at getting things done.” He also claimed that the Democratic Party is “overly controlled by the unions and by the trial lawyers, particularly the class action lawyers.” He argued that when Democrats go against “the interests of the people,” it tends to come from the unions and the trial lawyers, while when Republicans do that, “it’s because of corporate evil and religious zealotry.” “In the case of Biden, he is simply too much captured by the unions, which was not the case with Obama,” Musk said. The Tesla CEO defended Obama as “quite reasonable,” but insisted that Biden prioritizes the unions ahead of the public.

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Stella

 

 

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Oct 172020
 


Pablo Picasso Self portrait with palette 1906

 

Battleground State Polling Shows Tighter Race Than National Polls (JTN)
AOC, House Progressives Warn Biden On Corporate Hires (Pol.)
Wall Street Donors Line Up Behind Biden In Massive Q3 Fundraising Haul (CNBC)
Michigan Appeals Court Strikes Down 2-Week Window To Count Ballots (JTN)
New Book Warns Of Danger Of Kamala Harris Presidency (OffG)
Nancy Pelosi Won’t Tell Anybody What’s In The Coronavirus Deal (IC)
Russia Quitting MH17 Panel A Logical Result Of Dutch Provocations (Clark)
Spain’s Pain and the Perils of Textbook Economics (Steve Keen)
Amazon, Apple, Google And Facebook Scooping Up Office Space In New York (F.)
Google & Oracle to Monitor US Vaccine Recipients for up to Two Years (Webb)
Counting Long Covid In Children (BMJ)
Sex Banned Indoors For Tier 2 Couples Living Apart (St.)

 

 

 

 

Clapper

 

 

Giuliani

 

 

Giuliani 2

 

 

Think electoral college.

Battleground State Polling Shows Tighter Race Than National Polls (JTN)

While national polls may reliably forecast the national popular vote in a presidential election, given the electoral college map, battleground state polling is more meaningful — and in 2020 battleground polls show a much tighter race between President Trump and challenger Joe Biden. In the RealClearPolitics polling averages on Thursday, Biden led Trump by 9.4% nationally but just 4.9% in key battleground states. In the battleground states, moreover, Trump on Thursday was running 0.5% ahead of where he was at this stage of the 2016 campaign, according to the RCP average — the 12th consecutive day on which the president outperformed his corresponding 2016 numbers.

Pollster Scott Rasmussen, who conducts the Just the News Daily Poll, also released for PoliticalIQ a series of polls in four battleground states showing a race for the White House that remains competitive. Trump was victorious in all four states in 2016, and they are crucial to his reelection hopes. Rasmussen reported that Biden leads narrowly in all four — Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. However, with a slightly stronger-than-expected Republican turnout, Rasmussen said the president would take the lead in Florida and North Carolina. Like the polls in the RealClearPolitics average, Rasmussen’s nationwide poll for Just the News also showed a wider lead for Biden than among his PoliticalIQ key battleground polls.

And the PoliticalIQ polls conducted among 800 likely voters show results in all four states that were within the margin of error, meaning that Trump could prove victorious and defy conventional wisdom as he did in 2016. “One particular challenge involves estimating the number of mail-in votes that will be cast,” Rasmussen wrote. “Those who plan to vote by mail overwhelmingly prefer Biden over Trump. Therefore, the larger the number of votes cast by mail, the better it is for the Democrat.” Rasmussen told Just the News that the polling wild card this cycle is sampling during a pandemic — something for which there is no precedent, as polling wasn’t practiced in 1918 during the last global pandemic. Rasmussen said if the race remains close, this could create a crisis of legitimacy for whoever wins.

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They think they’ll have massive power. Ask Bernie why they’re wrong.

AOC, House Progressives Warn Biden On Corporate Hires (Pol.)

The election is still 18 days away but Democrats are already drawing battle lines over what a Biden administration ought to look like. Left-wing House members including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Katie Porter, Ayanna Pressley, Raúl Grijalva and candidate Jamaal Bowman along with 39 progressive groups signed a letter, obtained by POLITICO, arguing that no C-suite level corporate executives or corporate lobbyists ought to have Senate-confirmed positions in a Biden administration. “One of the most important lessons of the Trump administration is the need to stop putting corporate officers and lobbyists in charge of our government,” they wrote. “As elected leaders, we should stop trying to make unsupportable distinctions between which corporate affiliations are acceptable for government service and which are not.”

The letter, which was delivered to Senate leaders Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell on Friday morning, called on both parties to adopt this standard, but organizers told POLITICO it was also intended to send a message to Joe Biden’s transition team as it vets potential candidates. “It’s not addressed to Biden, but there’s an understanding that he’d be in charge and be the person making nominations,” said Grijalva, an Arizona Democrat, who drafted the letter and recruited the signees. The letter is the latest sign of the deep divisions that continue to simmer within the Democratic Party.

The clashes between the left-wing and the center — particularly over economic policy — have eased over the past several months as the factions unite to defeat President Donald Trump but are likely to reignite if Biden is victorious. Biden would be forced to manage a potentially unwieldy coalition of aggressive left-wing Democrats and a new class of more moderate swing district Democrats from the suburbs. Those divisions could result in an intraparty brawl over nominations for senior level posts at Treasury and other economic agencies early in Biden’s term. The dueling sides could also put Schumer in a difficult position as he tries to fend off a potential primary challenge in 2022 — possibly by Ocasio-Cortez.

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Do they have the same interests as voters?

Wall Street Donors Line Up Behind Biden In Massive Q3 Fundraising Haul (CNBC)

The joint committees, which raise money for the Biden campaign, the Democratic National Committee and state parties, are being fueled, at least in part, by Wall Street executives. Those committees accept six-figure contributions. This surge of donations from people in the finance and investment industry comes even as Biden calls for raising taxes on those making over $400,000, as well as an increase in the corporate tax rate. It also comes as Biden faces pressure from progressive activists not to allow Wall Street leaders to join his Cabinet if he were to defeat Trump. Tim Geithner, former Treasury secretary under President Barack Obama and current president of private equity firm Warburg Pincus, contributed $150,000 to the Biden Action Fund in August.

Antonio Gracias, founder of Valor Equity Partners, and Jonathan Shulkin, a partner at the same firm, each shelled out more than $300,000 that same month to the committee. John Doerr, chairman of venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, gave over $355,000 to the Biden Action Fund last quarter. Stephen Mandel, founder of Connecticut-based hedge fund Lone Pine Capital, contributed more than $310,000. Pete Muller, founder of investment manager PDT Partners, gave the committee $360,000. Jonathan Soros, an investor and son of billionaire George Soros, gave just under $145,000. Biden Action also saw large contributions from leaders at Blackstone, JPMorgan Chase, The Carlyle Group and Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts, among other firms.

The Biden Action Fund raised more than $4 million from those in the finance industry in the third quarter of 2020. The fund raised over $30 million overall last quarter. People in the financial industry have largely favored Biden, spending more than $50 million to back his candidacy, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, compared with more than $10 million for Trump. Several finance executives privately say that they’re tired of dealing with the impact of Trump’s tweets on their investments. They are starting to be convinced of a sweep by Democrats come Election Day.

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Utter chaos. Cui bono?

Michigan Appeals Court Strikes Down 2-Week Window To Count Ballots (JTN)

A Michigan appeals court on Friday struck down a two-week extension ordered to tally votes after the election, ruling all mail-in ballots in the battleground state must arrive by Nov. 3 to count. The decision in a case brought by a group know as the Michigan Alliance for Retired Americans was a victory for President Trump, who has argued long delays in counting could lead to fraud, and a loss for Democrats who embraced the extension. The three-judge panel ruled unanimously that the 14 extra days ordered by a lower state court was not legal, or warranted by the pandemic or concerns about the postal service’s ability to deliver ballots.


The judges ruled the state constitution requires all votes to be turned in by 8 p.m. of Election Day to be counted, and could not be changed by a judicial order. “The Constitution is not suspended or transformed even in times of a pandemic, and judges do not somehow become authorized in a pandemic to rewrite statutes or to displace the decisions made by the policymaking branches of government,” Judge Mark Boonstra in one of the opinions. Trump won Michigan narrowly in 2016 and and Democrats are trying to turn the state back to blue this tie around.

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There’s a reason she never polled above 2%. As someone said recently, she makes Hillary look likeable.

New Book Warns Of Danger Of Kamala Harris Presidency (OffG)

With the 2020 US presidential election less than a month away, there is widespread speculation concerning Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s mental and physical fitness at 77 years of age if he were to defeat incumbent Donald Trump on November 3rd. The former Vice President and Senator from Delaware would surpass his opponent as the oldest to ever hold the office of the presidency if victorious, while his generally acknowledged cognitive decline has led many to question whether he is even capable of serving a single term. Given the concerns about his health, the likelihood that Biden’s running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, would become his successor has put the controversial former prosecutor and California Attorney General’s own politics under scrutiny, though not to a degree sufficient with the odds she could very well become commander-in-chief in the near future.

Trump himself suggested it was the hidden motivation behind House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s recent introduction of a 25th Amendment commission on removing a “mentally unfit” president to enable the replacement of an incapacitated Biden with Harris after the election. Even Saturday Night Live recently joked about Biden’s poor first debate performance as a Harris term in-the-making — but as journalist Caleb Maupin explains in his new book Kamala Harris and the Future of America: An Essay in Three Parts, the prospect of her becoming president is no laughing matter. Maupin’s ambitious essay surpasses the redundant analysis of the vice-presidential nominee by placing her political success in a broader historical context while forewarning the unique danger of a budding Harris administration waiting in the wings.

The majority of the critical examinations of Harris during the campaign have critiqued her rebranding as an outwardly “progressive” figure in stark contrast with the reality of her career as a ruthless criminal prosecutor turned establishment politician. While that is true, Maupin’s analysis takes an important step further by formulating the rise of Harris, who is the first Jamaican and South Asian-American nominee on a major party ticket, as the culmination of the US left’s failures in the last several decades resulting in its present deteriorated state preoccupied with liberal identity politics.

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This has turned into a very ugly game.

Nancy Pelosi Won’t Tell Anybody What’s In The Coronavirus Deal (IC)

Last friday, the Trump administration offered House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a $1.8 trillion stimulus deal, which she promptly rejected. It’s $400 billion smaller than the House Democrats’ plan and probably wouldn’t pass the GOP-controlled Senate. A handful of Democrats are calling on Pelosi to take it anyway, and dare Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to be the one to kill it. Now, Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin are back on the phone, and reportedly inching closer to an agreement. But most House Democrats haven’t spoken out one way or another, in part because no House Democrat other than Pelosi knows what’s actually in the proposal.

The top-line spending amounts and some of the major provisions have been confirmed, but no one has seen the text, and no one’s sure what else Republicans have stuffed into it. Meanwhile, the typical lines of battle in the House have been scrambled. The left is urging Pelosi to quickly cave to Trump and take whatever deal is on offer, while the centrist Problem Solvers Caucus is doing the same, hoping to pick off enough progressives that they can team with Republicans to box McConnell in. It’s politically disorienting, made all the more confusing by Pelosi’s inability to put forward anything other than a callous rationale for her objections.

Pelosi defended her strategy in a contentious interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday, repeatedly lashing out at the host for asking why she wouldn’t accept Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s recent $1.8 trillion offer when Americans are being evicted and waiting in food lines. Blitzer cited the pressure within the Democratic Party to accept a deal, pointing to California Rep. Ro Khanna and former presidential candidate Andrew Yang, who have called on Pelosi to accept the GOP’s offer. “I don’t know why you’re always an apologist and many of your colleagues are apologists for the Republican position,” Pelosi told Blitzer. “Ro Khanna, that’s nice. That isn’t what we’re going to do. And nobody’s waiting until February. I want this very much now because people need help now. But it’s no use giving them a false thing just because the president wants to put a check with his name on it in the mail.”

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Why did they ever talk in the first place?

Russia Quitting MH17 Panel A Logical Result Of Dutch Provocations (Clark)

Russia’s decision to quit the three-sided consultations with the Netherlands and Australia on flight MH17 is not surprising. It’s surprising that Moscow hasn’t done this earlier, having been declared guilty from day one.
Almost as soon as the terrible news came out on 17th July 2014 that a passenger airliner had come down over eastern Ukraine with the loss of all 298 people on board, the fingers of blame in the West were pointing at Russia, and the Kremlin was declared guilty until proven innocent. ‘Putin’s Missile’ was the headline of the Sun newspaper, implying that the Russian President had personally fired the missile which allegedly downed the airliner. ‘MH17: Can Russia be held to account?’ asked The Economist – again implying it was a foregone conclusion who was responsible.

Russia’s guilt was already established – before any inquiry was held – and even saying ‘let’s wait a while before we see more evidence’ could bring you under attack as part of ‘Putin’s lie machine.’ That has more or less been the case ever since. Just eight days after the tragedy, the Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans said the EU would widen its already existing sanctions on Russia on account of the crash. The explanation for the disaster was simple. The plane had been shot down by separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine who had been armed by Russia. End of Story. Since 2014 we’ve had investigations into the crash by the Dutch Safety Board and the Joint Investigation Tim (JIT) – which included Ukraine.

But, as the Kremlin has stated, both appeared to have started off from the premise Russia was guilty, and worked backwards from there. Those who weren’t prejudiced against Russia – and simply wanted to get to the truth without fear nor favour, saw clearly what was happening. “We are very unhappy, because, from the very beginning, it was a political issue on how to accuse Russia of the wrongdoing. Even before they examine, they already said Russia. And now they said they have proof. It is very difficult for us to accept that.” was the view of the Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamed. “As far as we are concerned, we want proof of guilt … but so far, there is no proof. Only hearsay,” he added. “I hope everybody will go for the truth.”

The fact that Malaysia, the country whose airliner was the one lost in the tragedy, believed there was ’no proof’ of Russian guilt should have been front-page news in the West, but of course it was ignored because it didn’t fit the dominant anti-Russian narrative. In 2018 Russia agreed to hold trilateral consultations with the Netherlands and Australia but it was clear that the aim of these consultations was only to try and make Russia admit guilt – and in the process make it liable for compensation to the relatives of the crash victims. Proof of this is the fact that the Dutch government did not even wait for the preliminary results of these consultations before taking Russia to the European Court of Human Rights in July, for its ’role in the downing’ of MH17. The only surprise is that it’s taken Russia three months after that incredibly provocative act to quit the consultation.

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Steve also predicts a “full-blown GFC-style global financial crisis” next year.

Spain’s Pain and the Perils of Textbook Economics (Steve Keen)

As I write these words, Spain is suffering from its second wave of Covid-19, and it ranks 7th in the world for Covid-19 cases, while its rank in world population is far lower. It has, and is, experiencing more than its fair share of pain from the novel coronavirus. Spain suffered far more than its fair share of pain during the Global Financial Crisis too. There is now a terrible danger that these two crises will compound each other, because neither Spain nor the rest of the world had truly recovered from the financial crisis when Covid-19 began. I use the USA for most of my examples in this book, but in many ways Spain is a textbook example of the economic forces that caused the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), and how conventional economic thinking — epitomized most dramatically in the European Union’s limits on government debt and government deficits—helped cause the crisis, and made its impact even worse.

The data on Spain’s crisis and its bungled aftermath are so obvious that you might wonder why the thesis I defend in this book—that economic crises are caused not by government debt, but by private debt—is not the conventional wisdom. The role of the Euro in triggering the boom in private debt, and thus making a crisis more likely, is also obvious. After an exciting first eight years, the Euro and its “Growth and Stability Pact” have led to contraction and instability. Much was made of Spain’s success in meeting the Growth and Stability Pact’s target of government debt being below 60% of GDP. Government debt was 70% of GDP when the Euro commenced in 1999, and it fell to a low of 35% of GDP by mid-2008.

It was almost the only country in the Eurozone to meet and exceed both of the Euro’s policy targets: a government debt level of less than 60% of GDP, and a deficit of less than 3% of GDP. In fact, it exceeded the deficit target handsomely, running not merely a small deficit, but a substantial surplus between 2004 and the crisis, peaking at 2.5% of GDP in mid-2006—see Figure 1. If the Euro’s rules had the effect they were intended to have, this should have meant that Spain was less likely to experience a crisis, and well prepared to handle it if one did occur. This proved to be the opposite of the truth.

The reason is starkly evident in Figure 2: while Spain was lauded for halving its level of Government debt, across the same time span, private debt almost trebled—and throughout, it dwarfed government debt. Private debt had no trend before the introduction of the Euro: it was 67% of GDP in 1970, rose as high as 85% in 1977, but by the start of the Euro, it had risen not at all: it was also 85% of GDP in 1999. However, from the introduction of the Euro until 2010, it rose far more rapidly than government debt fell: as government debt fell by 35% of GDP, private debt rose by 140%.

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All Your Base R Belong to Us.

Amazon, Apple, Google And Facebook Scooping Up Office Space In New York (F.)

Big Tech is bucking two big workforce trends. Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Google are all scooping up New York City commercial real estate after prices have plummeted due to the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic. The companies are making a bold contrarian bet that Manhattan will bounce back and there will still be a need for people to work in offices. According to the New York Times, Facebook leased enough space in the city to triple the amount of people that can work in New York. Apple, which has been in the city for at least a decade, plans to expand its footprint there. Google and Amazon are snatching up space in New York—greater than any other place in the U.S. Amazon recently paid about $1 billion to acquire the Lord & Taylor flagship building in Midtown Manhattan from WeWork. Collectively, the tech behemoths can accommodate over 20,000 workers.


After seven months of remote work, it seems that both employees and employers are seeking a balance and options. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said in an interview at the TIME100 Honorees: Visions for the Future event, the company will be more “flexible” with its workers and offer a “hybrid” model that will include a blend of both remote and in-office methods of working. Pichai, who was recognized by TIME as one of the world’s most influential people, acknowledged that his employees have distinct needs, as it relates to their work style and preferences, stating, “We firmly believe that in-person, being together, having a sense of community is super important when you have to solve hard problems and create something new so we don’t see that changing. But we do think we need to create more flexibility and more hybrid models.”

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“incredibly precise . . . tracking systems”

Google & Oracle to Monitor US Vaccine Recipients for up to Two Years (Webb)

Moncef Slaoui, the official head of Operation Warp Speed, told the Wall Street Journal last week that all Warp Speed vaccine recipients in the US will be monitored by “incredibly precise . . . tracking systems” for up to two years and that tech giants Google and Oracle would be involved. Last week, a rare media interview given by the Trump administration’s “Vaccine Czar” offered a brief glimpse into the inner workings of the extremely secretive Operation Warp Speed (OWS), the Trump administration’s “public-private partnership” for delivering a Covid-19 vaccine to 300 million Americans by next January. What was revealed should deeply unsettle all Americans.

During an interview with the Wall Street Journal published last Friday, the “captain” of Operation Warp Speed, career Big Pharma executive Moncef Slaoui, confirmed that the millions of Americans who are set to receive the project’s Covid-19 vaccine will be monitored via “incredibly precise . . . tracking systems” that will “ensure that patients each get two doses of the same vaccine and to monitor them for adverse health effects.” Slaoui also noted that tech giants Google and Oracle have been contracted as part of this “tracking system” but did not specify their exact roles beyond helping to “collect and track vaccine data.”

The day before the Wall Street Journal interview was published, the New York Times published a separate interview with Slaoui where he referred to this “tracking system” as a “very active pharmacovigilance surveillance system.” During a previous interview with the journal Science in early September, Slaoui had referred to this system only as “a very active pharmacovigilance system” that would “make sure that when the vaccines are introduced that we’ll absolutely continue to assess their safety.” Slaoui has only recently tacked on the words “tracking” and “surveillance” to his description of this system during his relatively rare media interviews.

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I can see the potential crisis, but why not tell us how many children we’re talking about?

Counting Long Covid In Children (BMJ)

With the recent announcement that the NHS will provide services for patients with long covid, there was a palpable sense of triumph among the community of long haulers. We both have long covid and are active campaigners for this condition. We should have been elated; after all, this was the recognition campaigners had been advocating for since the release of the video “Message in a bottle—Long Covid SOS.” Although we are pleased by this commitment from the NHS to recognise long covid, we have ongoing concerns for the lack of paediatric services for children with covid-19. One of us (Frances Simpson) is a mother of two children who have also been experiencing symptoms for almost seven months, and has met many other parents whose children have had covid-19.

Existing research shows that children have generally been found to have less severe covid-19, but there is concern among campaigners that paediatric long covid has received much less attention. Many of the parents in online support groups share this concern, describing their fear at the strange and fluctuating symptoms experienced by their children, their frustration at the lack of medical care, and their struggles to be believed. When the World Health Organization extended an invitation to the campaign group LongCovidSOS to share experiences of Long Covid, Frances took the opportunity as a speaker at the meeting to present the narratives of children and parents who have symptoms of long covid. She shared the views from the many long covid support groups on social media, as a means of drawing attention to the possibility that symptoms of long covid may extend to children.

The quantification of this was impossible due to the lack of empirical data. However, with this in mind, she conducted an informal poll on closed social media groups including the Body Politic/Slack support group, the LongCovid Support Group, and the Parents of Longhauler children support group on Facebook. There are of course limitations of a survey of this kind due to selection and other types of reporting biases, but in the absence of any existing data, this was a scoping exercise. Parents reported that their children experienced fatigue, general gastrointestinal issues, sore throats, headaches, and muscle pain or weakness. Other symptoms included fevers, nausea, mood changes, rashes, dizziness, breathing difficulties and cognitive blunting. The findings of this very informal patient-led survey demonstrate that there is a need for further epidemiological data collection, in order to quantify and qualify the existence of long covid in children. There is also need for research into pathophysiology of these symptoms as is being currently instigated in adult cohorts.

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Deaf and dumb politics.

Sex Banned Indoors For Tier 2 Couples Living Apart (St.)

Couples living apart in areas with Tier 2 restrictions are not allowed to have sleepovers unless they are in a “support bubble”, Downing Street confirmed today. Boyfriends and girlfriends will be able to meet outdoors in Tier 2 but are expected to adhere to social distancing rules such as hands, face and space. They must also adhere to the rule of six. The Prime Minister’s official spokesman told a briefing of Westminster journalists: “The rules on household mixing in Tier 2 set out that you should mix with your own household only unless you’ve formed a support bubble and that obviously does apply to some couples.”


A support bubble is a network between a single-person home and one other household of any size , according to the government rules. It comes as both London and Essex are set to be plunged into Tier 2 at midnight tonight. Asked why there was no exemption for people in established relationships in Tier 2, he replied: “Because the purpose of the measures that were put in place is to break the chain in transmission between households and the scientific advice is there is greater transmission of the virus indoors.” Asked if couples in Tier 2 can meet outside, he said: “Yes, as it was set out in the guidance that was published this week the ban on household mixing is in relation to indoors and outdoors the rule of six applies.”

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Biden Teleprompter

Biden smear campaign

 

 

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