Jan 062025
 


Rembrandt van Rijn Saskia en profil in expensive attire 1640-45

 

Trudeau Out: Canadian Prime Minister “Likely To Resign” This Week (ZH)
Musk Renews Attack On British PM Over Rape Scandal (RT)
Elon Musk And The Pack Raping of Over 250,000 English School Girls (SCF)
Musk Calls For Reform UK To Oust Farage (RT)
Reform UK’s Farage Disagrees With Musk’s Urge to Cede Party Leadership (Sp.)
Musk Compares Soros To Star Wars Villain (RT)
An American Honor No Longer Means Anything (Paul Craig Roberts)
Trump’s Plan to End Currency War 3.0 (Jim Rickards)
US House Speaker Vows To End ‘Deep State’ (RT)
US Deep State: Its Roots, Tools and Enablers (Sp.)
Zelensky Says He ‘Despises’ Russians (RT)
Zelensky Says ‘Too Bad’ Ukraine Doesn’t Have Nuclear Weapons (RT)
Trump Border Czar Homan Pushes Back Over Trump Admin Deportation Plans (JTN)
EU Could Establish Asylum ‘Return Hubs’ In Third Countries By March (RMX)
California Governor Orders Investigation Into Ultra-Processed Foods (ET)

 

 

 

 

Jordan Peterson

Grooming

Starmer

 

 

 

 

It’ll take years to recuperate from the damage he did..

Trudeau Out: Canadian Prime Minister “Likely To Resign” This Week (ZH)

Back on New Year’s Eve, when looking at the global tsunami of resentment and loathing at establishment politics and corrupt politicians that crushed incumbent political parties and politicians around the globe, we eyed the one person that was long overdue to be swept in the tidal wave. We are talking of course about Canada’s prime minister Justin Turdeau (sic)… and we are delighted to announce that his time has now also come: citing a source, Reuters reports that Canadian Prime Minister and the world’s most iconic virtue signaling blackface, Justin Trudeau, is “increasingly likely to announce he intends to step down, though he has not made a final decision.” The source spoke to Reuters after the Globe and Mail reported that Trudeau was expected to announce as early as Monday that he would quit as leader of Canada’s ruling Liberal Party after nine years in office.

Following the news, odds that Trudeau would be out before April surged to 97%. Trudeau’s departure would leave the party without a permanent head at a time when polls show the Liberals will be crushed by the official opposition Conservatives in an election that must be held by late October. Sources told the Globe and Mail that they did not know definitely when Trudeau would announce his plans to leave but said they expect it would happen before a emergency meeting of Liberal legislators on Wednesday, and could come as soon as today. An increasing number of Liberal parliamentarians, alarmed by a series of gloomy polls, have publicly urged Trudeau to quit. It remains unclear whether Trudeau will leave immediately or stay on as prime minister until a new Liberal leader is selected, the Globe and Mail report added, although it is unclear how he hopes to continue after confirming defeat.

Trudeau, who was recently mocked by Trump who proposed that he become governor of the “51st state of Canada”, took over as Liberal leader in 2013 when the party was in deep trouble and had been reduced to third place in the House of Commons for the first time. If he does resign, it would prompt fresh calls for a quick election to put in place a stable government able to deal with the administration of President-elect Donald Trump for the next four years. The prime minister has discussed with Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc whether he would be willing to step in as interim leader and prime minister, one source told the newspaper, adding that this would be unworkable if LeBlanc plans to run for the leadership.

Trudeau, 53, had been able to fend off Liberal legislators worried about the polls and the loss of safe seats in two special elections.But calls for him to step aside have grown since December, when Trudeau tried to demote Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, one of his closest cabinet allies, after she pushed back against his proposals for more spending. Freeland quit instead and penned a letter accusing Trudeau of “political gimmicks” rather than focusing on what was best for the country. “The country could face instability, notably from an economic threat in the potential of a 25% US tariff on Canadian imports from the incoming administration,” said a recent letter sent to the prime minister by Kody Blois, who leads a group of Liberal members from the four easternmost provinces. “Simply put, time is of the essence,” Blois said, adding that it’s “not tenable for you to remain as the leader.”

Trudeau propelled the Liberals to power in 2015 promising “sunny ways” and a progressive agenda that promoted the rights of women and a promise to fight climate change. But the everyday realities of governing gradually wore him down and like many Western leaders, the need to deal with the effects of the pandemic ate up much of his time. Although Ottawa spent heavily to protect consumers and businesses, racking up record budget deficits, this provided little protection from public anger as prices soared. A botched immigration policy led to hundreds of thousands of arrivals, straining an already overheated housing market. The Canadian currency strengthened as much as 0.4% to C$1.4388 per dollar after the Globe report before paring those gains. The currency has been trading near its weakest level since March 2020 and has lost more than 7% against the greenback in the past year. “Traders may be buying the loonie on the view that the worst is over for Canadian politics after all the recent uncertainty,” said Ken Cheung, a strategist at Mizuho Bank.

Read more …

“Prepare for some epic cringe..”

Musk Renews Attack On British PM Over Rape Scandal (RT)

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk renewed his assault on British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Sunday, attacking his handling of the grooming-gangs scandal in a series of posts on social platform X. Musk commented in one post about reports that the Home Office had allegedly urged the police forces in 2008 not to investigate sexual exploitation of underage girls given that they had purportedly made “informed choices” despite being below the legal age of consent. “Starmer must go. He is [a] national embarrassment,” he wrote. The billionaire also mocked the upcoming statement from Starmer to address Musk’s allegations, expected on Monday. “Prepare for some epic cringe,” he wrote in a subsequent post.

Musk launched a massive attack on Starmer earlier this week, accusing him of failing to tackle the grooming-gangs issue or to properly investigate numerous assaults on underage girls at the time when the incumbent Prime Minister led the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service, from 2008 to 2013. Among other things, the billionaire called the grooming gangs a “state-sponsored evil,” stating Starmer was “complicit in the RAPE OF BRITAIN” and should not only resign but also face criminal charges. Gangs across the UK, involving men of predominantly Pakistani origin, rape-tortured vulnerable girls on an industrial scale over the last thirty years, with multiple independent inquiries indicating systemic failures to investigate the crimes. According to three separate reports published in 2013, 2014, and 2015, local politicians and police alike opted to cover up the rapes partly out of fear that bringing the perpetrators to justice would be seen as “racist.”

Apart from personally attacking the British PM, Musk also sparred with British media and politicians over the “rape gangs” and other issues. He reiterated his calls for the release of right-wing activist Tommy Robinson, jailed in England on contempt of court charges. The billionaire sharply criticized the coverage of his remarks, suggesting the British media was complicit in hushing up the “rape gangs” issue as well. “This is the same media that hid the fact that a quarter million little girls were – still are – being systematically raped by migrant gangs in Britain. They are beneath contempt. Despicable human beings,” Musk wrote. The Robinson affair has also apparently caused a rift between Musk and the leader of the Reform UK party Nigel Farage, whom he had previously called the “only hope” for Britain. After the politician refused to back Musk’s stance on Robinson, the billionaire urged Reform UK to oust its leader as well.

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“..until the great unwashed can storm those gilded cages and finish off what Musk has started, Musk’s protestations, like those of others before him, will only amount to so much hot air..”

Elon Musk And The Pack Raping of Over 250,000 English School Girls (SCF)

Elon Musk threw the cat among the pigeons when he recently highlighted the pack raping of over 250,000 English school girls by packs of middle aged Pakistani men, who got away with their crimes for over a quarter of a century, thanks to the collusion of the British judiciary, the British constabulary, the British social services and the British political system, which are now all trying to squirm their way out of taking responsibility for the rankest of crimes they are all fully complicit in. Given how widespread was Official England’s collusion with these multiple Pakistani rape packs, there can be no talk of letting the (oxymoron of) British justice take its course or of “learning from our mistakes”.

Heads have to roll, literally, and the first head on the chopping block must be that of British Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer (who was the Director of the Crown Prosecution Service during these grooming gang rape gang revelations, who was the boss of the CPS lawyer who originally dropped the prosecution of Kabeer Hassan because he believed the 15 year old girl made “a choice to be a prostitute” and who discredited her as a witness even after reviewing DNA evidence and hours of testimony), followed by King Charles, who is not only the brother of Jeffrey Epstein sidekick, Prince Andrew, but who recently knighted Peter Mandelson, another key Epstein (and Tony Blair) conspirator, and who, in his role of Prince of Wales, was also bosom pals with Sir Jimmy Savile, the BBC’s child rapist in chief.

Although the urge to dispense vigilante style justice on these benighted “victims” is fully understandable, it serves no overall purpose because the British police who interviewed Vanessa George no doubt also felt like ripping her apart when they unsuccessfully tried to coax out of her the names of the babies she sexually molested as part of the prolific online grooming gang she was active in. When we recall that Australian “entrepreneur” Peter Scully had thousands of paying customers watching him rape and torture to death baby Daisy, and that the Syrian Arab Republic has been surrendered to MI6 assets, who keep child sex slaves as a matter of course, it is very difficult to see how anything less than getting fully medieval on every last one of these criminals and their white collar enablers would be appropriate.

Not that there is anything new or novel in these crimes. The Pall Mall Gazette, to its eternal credit, exposed the white slave trade in Victorian Britain and, though it is a half a century ago since I first read of it, the crimes they uncovered still sicken me to my core. Then there is the Paedophile Information Exchange and the North American Man/Boy Love Association, both of which were very active in the 1970s and both of which enjoyed widespread political support from senior politicians who remain active to this day.

And let’s remember Liberal Chief Whip Cyril Smith, Lord Ahmed, and child rapist Imran Khan MP (brother of alleged sex pest and notorious Russophobe Karim Ahmad Khan). Then there is Australian Peter Tatchell, who first shacked up with an under age English school boy, when he fled the Australian draft. Though he is often linked to the paedophile movement, Tatchell’s main activities have been advocating on war and peace issues that are aligned to NATO’s objectives. In this latter role, he has been an opponent of Jeremy Corbyn, of Syria and of Russia and has linked up with Volker Beck and other child sex advocates with similar pro NATO, Russophobic backgrounds and agendas. Tatchell, his sexual proclivities notwithstanding, is a handy gay imperialist radical NATO’s media can wheel out to give their criminal enterprises a radical sheen that Musk, perhaps despite himself, is now scraping off to reveal the grime beneath.

Although Sodom and Gomorrah are supposed to be the Bible’s benchmark in depravity, none of their ancient pack rapists are in the same league as England’s Pakistani pack rapists, England’s knights and their Labour Party apologists, Tatchell, Peter Scully’s customers, or Lord Janner, another of Blair’s well connected Zionist chums, who buggered Jewish waifs who survived the Holocaust. And, though the more prudish amongst us could be forgiven for reaching for the smelling salts, something much more potent than that old cure is urgently needed to deal with all these criminals. Although Musk has probably his own libertarian agenda afoot in turning his guns on the Pakistani pack rapists, they deserve all the incoming Musk gives them and their equally vile white collar collaborators.

But even Musk’s ire is nowhere near enough to balance the scales of justice. Although a rosary of top security prisons along the lines of El Salvador’s CECOT prison for the pack rapists and their friends and enablers would be a good start, not even that would be enough unless the judges, cops, social welfare workers and politicians who enabled all this are thrown in there along with the pack rapists and all belonging to them.

Because turkeys do not vote for Christmas or Thanksgiving Day, such a solution will not happen irrespective of whether Musk helps his pets make a political breakthrough in Germany and England. But Musk, at day’s end, is irrelevant in all of this, at least until the great and the good of Germany and England wrest power away from the Pakistani pack rape enablers. Though Musk has rattled our overlords’ cages, until the great unwashed can storm those gilded cages and finish off what Musk has started, Musk’s protestations, like those of others before him, will only amount to so much hot air that will get lost in the bread and circuses that keep the relatives of the raped in their opiated, emasculated and politically paralyzed state.

Read more …

Farage IS Reform UK. It’s either him or Tories and Labour.

Musk Calls For Reform UK To Oust Farage (RT)

Elon Musk has called for Nigel Farage to be replaced as leader of Reform UK, marking a dramatic reversal in the Tesla billionaire’s support for the right-wing leader. The announcement came just hours after Farage failed to back Musk’s inflammatory comments about British politicians. “The Reform party needs a new leader. Farage doesn’t have what it takes,” Musk posted on X, the social media platform he owns, on Sunday afternoon. His statement comes weeks after praising Farage and describing Reform UK as Britain’s “only hope.” The fallout appears to be tied to disagreements over far-right activist Tommy Robinson, who was jailed in England on contempt of court charges, as well as Musk’s recent controversial claims.

Earlier this week, the South African-born US tycoon called Prime Minister Keir Starmer “complicit in the rape of Britain” due to his oversight of the UK prosecution office during past grooming gang scandals. He also accused health minister Jess Phillips of being a “rape genocide apologist.” Speaking to the BBC on Sunday, Farage distanced himself from Musk’s remarks. “I don’t agree with everything he stands for,” the politician said. “But I do believe in free speech. I think he’s a hero.” Farage also rejected Musk’s calls to allow Robinson to join his party, saying he is “not what we need” in Reform UK. Musk, by contrast, has described the jailed activist as a political prisoner and repeatedly championed his release.

Reacting to Musk’s post, Farage expressed surprise but reaffirmed his stance. “Elon is a remarkable individual, but on this, I am afraid I disagree. My view remains that Tommy Robinson is not right for Reform, and I never sell out my principles,” he wrote on X. The rift comes despite Musk and Farage meeting last month at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, where reports suggested the tech mogul was considering a $100m (£80m) donation to Reform UK. Farage has since acknowledged their disagreements but emphasized the value of Musk’s influence. “Free speech is back,” he said. “Well, you may find it offensive, but it’s a good thing, not a bad thing.” Musk’s escalating comments have drawn condemnation from UK politicians, with Labour MP Wes Streeting branding them “disgraceful.”

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“Well, this is a surprise! Elon is a remarkable individual but on this I am afraid I disagree..”

Reform UK’s Farage Disagrees With Musk’s Urge to Cede Party Leadership (Sp.)

The head of the British right-wing populist party Reform UK, Nigel Farage, disagreed the words of the US entrepreneur Elon Musk that the party needed to remove him from the post of leader. Earlier, Musk, who called for a vote for Reform UK, said that the party needed to replace its leader Farage. As the British newspaper Telegraph pointed out, Musk and Farage disagreed about the founder of the far-right organization English Defense League Tommy Robinson, whom Musk praised on his social network, while Farage said that Robinson was “not the one we need.” “Well, this is a surprise! Elon is a remarkable individual but on this I am afraid I disagree. My view remains that Tommy Robinson is not right for Reform and I never sell out my principles,” Farage said on X in response to Musk’s post.

Following the elections held in July, Labour won an absolute majority (402 seats) in parliament, while Reform UK won only five seats. At the same time, Farage’s party took third place in the number of votes, gaining 14.3%. In terms of the percentage of votes cast, it took second place in 98 constituencies, 89 of which were won by Labour. Such a gap between the votes cast and the number of parliamentary mandates is explained by the electoral system in force in the country, in which the candidate who receives the maximum number of votes in his constituency gets into parliament.

This is not the first time Musk has called for voting for a right-wing party — he previously wrote in an article for the German newspaper Welt that the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party was the only political force in Germany capable of saving the country from becoming a “shadow of its former self.” The publication of this article sparked heated debates both in the Welt editorial office and in Germany as a whole. Welt’s head of opinion Eva Marie Kogel resigned after the article was published, and Friedrich Merz, a candidate for chancellor of Germany from the opposition bloc of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU), called the article an unprecedented interference in the German elections.

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“..Soros has focused on global initiatives that strengthen democracy, human rights, education, and social justice.”

Musk Compares Soros To Star Wars Villain (RT)

US-based tech mogul Elon Musk has likened liberal billionaire George Soros to Emperor Palpatine, also known as Darth Sidious, the principal villain in the Star Wars movie series. The barb followed Joe Biden’s decision to bestow the Presidential Medal of Freedom on the powerful financier. In recent months, Musk has emerged as an increasingly vocal supporter and close ally of President-elect Donald Trump, who has appointed him to co-head the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). In a message on X on Saturday, Musk posted a collage that depicts President Biden conferring the decoration on the Star Wars anti-hero, with the caption reading: “George Soros looking quite good here. Must be the lighting.”

Commenting on another user’s post, in which they compared the 94-year-old billionaire to Magneto – the main villain in Marvel’s X-Men comic book series – the South-African tech tycoon who also holds US citizenship said Soros’ decoration was a “travesty.” On Saturday, President Biden named nineteen recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom – America’s highest civilian honor, “presented to individuals who have made exemplary contributions to the prosperity, values, or security of the United States, world peace, or other significant societal, public or private endeavors.” The Democrat hailed those individuals as “good people” who “have made America and the world a better place.” Soros, whose propaganda and media network has supported coups and revolutions in multiple countries, did not attend the ceremony, with his son Alex accepting the award on his behalf.

According to a statement released by the White House, “through his network of foundations, partners and projects in more than 120 countries, Soros has focused on global initiatives that strengthen democracy, human rights, education, and social justice.” Also among those singled out by Biden for their contributions was former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who “made history many times over decades in public service.” In a post on X, Soros wrote: “As an immigrant who found freedom and prosperity in America, I am deeply moved by this honor.” Critics have accused the billionaire over his role in the collapse of the British pound in 1992 and in Thailand’s financial crisis five years later. Through his Open Society Foundations network, the businessman has actively attempted to influence political processes in multiple countries around the world. Its activities have been outlawed in several nations, including Russia, Pakistan and the Philippines.

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“Honors have become political payoffs..”

An American Honor No Longer Means Anything (Paul Craig Roberts)

Everything Biden Touches Turns to Excrement. And now he has destroyed the US Medal of Freedom by awarding it to two crooks, one of whom Elon Musk says hates humanity. Hillary Clinton, whose 2016 presidential campaign financed the fake Steele Dossier that disrupted President Trump’s first term with accusations that he conspired with Russian President Putin to “interfere” in the 2016 election, was a Medal of Freedom recipient. George Soros, who made his billions by conspiring against the currency of the UK, America’s most reliable ally, is another recipient. Soros’ money is believed to have put in office the three black prosecutors responsible for the orchestrated indictments of Trump that were supposed to prevent Trump’s reelection. Biden awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal to Liz Cheney and Bennie Thompson, two members of Congress who led the House committee “investigation” of the orchestrated “Jan 6 attack on the Capitol.” Honors have become political payoffs. President Trump should attempt to restore the luster of the medal by awarding it and a pardon to the “Jan 6 insurrectionists” falsely prosecuted and imprisoned by the criminal Biden regime.

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“Don’t be fooled by false claims of new currency wars. Trump is trying to achieve a new era of currency stability and lasting prosperity.”

Trump’s Plan to End Currency War 3.0 (Jim Rickards)

There has been a lot reported in recent days about the return of currency wars. With Trump 2.0 about to begin, let’s review his last term and what to expect in the second. Trump badly bungled his transition after first being elected president in 2016. He was not ready with a long list of loyal appointees. Many of his senior appointments such as Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State, James Mattis as Secretary of Defense, and John Kelly as Chief of Staff secretly disliked Trump but accepted their roles as so-called “adult supervision” around the supposedly reckless Trump. They thwarted his agenda. That backstabbing came on top of the large number of Obama holdovers in the Deep State who saw themselves as a “resistance” movement.

Trump is doing a better job of preparing for a second term as president, but the resistance is not sitting still either. As reported in The Washington Post, Politico, The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo Finance and other outlets, Trump is working on a secret plan to devalue the U.S. dollar. The goal would be to cheapen U.S. exports and thereby help the U.S. balance of trade and create exported-related jobs. But critics say that this will only increase U.S. inflation as Americans have to pay more for their imported goods using cheaper dollars. The critics also say that other countries will retaliate against the U.S. by cheapening their own currencies (that’s the essence of a currency war) and no country will be any further ahead. In fact, the entire world will be worse off.

[..] So, are the critics right that Trump has a secret plan to devalue the dollar? And are they right that this new stage in the currency war will bring inflation and hurt the U.S. economy? The critics are wrong and don’t understand what Trump is actually trying to do. Trump is not trying to start a currency war; he’s trying to end it once and for all. In the first place, no president has the power to unilaterally devalue the dollar. That might have been possible under the gold standard or some standard of fixed exchange rates, but that has not been the state of the world since 1973.

[..] Far from the reckless, inflationary process the media claim, Trump’s actual plan is based on the highly successful model developed by James Baker for Ronald Reagan and implemented in the Plaza Accord of 1985 and the Louvre Accord of 1987. After the severe economic recession of 1982 and Paul Volcker’s policy of moving interest rates to 20%, inflation in the U.S. was finally reigned in. Inflation dropped from 13.5% in 1980, to 6.1% in 1982, and then 3.2% in 1983. Investment in the U.S. went on a tear. U.S. real growth was 16% from 1983 to 1986. Everyone wanted dollars to invest in the U.S. and the dollar boomed reaching an all-time high in 1985. Finally, the Reagan administration decided the U.S. dollar was too strong and was hurting U.S. exports and jobs.

Treasury Secretary James Baker convened a meeting of the finance ministers of France, Germany, Japan, the UK, and the U.S. at the Plaza Hotel in New York City. The purpose was not to fight a currency war. The purpose was to create order in currency markets out of the chaos that had prevailed since 1973. The parties reached a joint agreement that would devalue the U.S. dollar in an orderly fashion versus the French Franc, Japanese Yen, UK pounds sterling, and the German Deutschemark. Once the targeted level for the dollar was achieved, the parties would use their best efforts, including market intervention as needed to maintain those levels within narrow bands.

A separate meeting in Paris at the Louvre in 1987 agreed that the devaluation phase was over, and the dollar would be maintained at the new parities. This was not currency war; it was currency peace achieved by agreement and implemented in a cooperative fashion. The Louvre Accord (this time including the U.S., UK, France, Germany, Japan and Canada) ushered in a period of global prosperity that lasted twenty years until the Global Financial Crisis of 2008.

Trump’s goal is to repeat the success of the Plaza and Louvre Accords. Trump’s advisor on this is Robert Lighthizer, who is one of the most brilliant financial minds around and was Trump’s U.S. Trade Representative (2017-2021). Lighthizer was also USTR for Ronald Reagan from 1983 to 1985 so he’s a veteran of prior currency wars and was in the administration around the time the Plaza Accord was being developed. Lighthizer is the perfect individual to help Trump achieve the kind of success that Reagan and Baker had in the 1980s. The media are trying to portray Trump as reckless when in fact he’s proposing something highly beneficial for U.S. jobs and U.S. industry. Don’t be fooled by false claims of new currency wars. Trump is trying to achieve a new era of currency stability and lasting prosperity.

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Just because it sounds good?

US House Speaker Vows To End ‘Deep State’ (RT)

US House Speaker Mike Johnson has outlined an ambitious legislative plan for 2025, pledging to prioritize tax cuts, border security and deregulation. In an appearance on Fox News, he also vowed to dismantle the “deep state.” Johnson, who was re-elected as speaker of the House in November 2024, emphasized that Republicans are prepared to act quickly on their agenda in the new Congress. “We’ve made a lot of campaign promises. And we’re going to be dismantling the deep state all along the way,” he said in the interview on the show Sunday Morning Futures. Central to the Republican plan is the prevention of what Johnson described as the “largest tax increase in US history,” set to occur if the 2017 tax cuts are not extended by the end of the year.

He promised to revive the economy by extending those cuts, eliminating taxes on Social Security benefits and tips, and increasing the cap on state and local tax deductions. The legislative package also focuses on boosting US manufacturing and reducing federal regulations. “We are going to incentivize American companies to manufacture in the US again, and we are going to make sure that the regulatory burden and the red tape that has smothered our free market is reduced and eliminated,” Johnson said on Sunday. To pass these reforms, Johnson plans to use budget reconciliation, a legislative mechanism allowing bills to pass the Senate with a simple majority.

He expects the package to be enacted within the first 100 days of the next Republican administration. The agenda also includes strict immigration policies aimed at enhancing border security. Johnson has expressed support for completing the US-Mexico border wall and increasing enforcement measures. Johnson’s re-election as speaker was widely viewed as a significant victory for conservatives. He has pledged to align closely with President-elect Donald Trump, who has similarly promised to dismantle the “deep state.” The term often refers to entrenched federal employees and bureaucracies some conservatives believe obstruct Republican policies.

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“The power that the Constitution gave to individuals now belongs to interest groups that determine elections with campaign contributions..”

US Deep State: Its Roots, Tools and Enablers (Sp.)

The “deep state”, never part of the Founding Fathers’ design, has turned US democracy into fiction, former US assistant treasury secretary and renowned economist Dr Paul Craig Roberts says. What does he mean? The deep state, described by US political scientist Francis Fukuyama as a network of “unaccountable professional bureaucrats,” is really a far more extensive entity. According to Dr Roberts, it encompasses not only bureaucrats but also elected officials, Wall Street, major corporations and even foreign government lobbyists. The modern-day Leviathan is deeply embedded within the structure of the US government, with professional bureaucrats serving merely as pawns in the games of their overlords, the economist says. But the game begins long before governance — it starts at the very phase of elections. Behind the façade of democracy in the US, voters can only choose from candidates approved by the establishment or the ruling elite, argues Dr Roberts.

“The power that the Constitution gave to individuals now belongs to interest groups that determine elections with campaign contributions,” the former assistant treasury secretary in Ronald Reagan’s government stresses. “In the United States elected representatives at all levels of government up to and including the President cannot represent the interests of the people or of the country as a whole because they are dependent for their election to office on campaign contributions,” writes Dr Roberts. He explains that as a result, elected representatives are beholden to the individuals and interest groups who funded and supported them. Those include the influential Israel lobby, arms manufacturers, intelligence agencies, pharmaceutical companies, agribusiness corporations, Wall Street and others, all of whom provide funding and favorable publicity to those they help elect. Intelligence agencies also occasionally provide staged false flag events to give a candidate or a policy a boost, he notes.

Significant efforts were made in the past history to prevent money from dominating elections. In 1907, the Tillman Act became the first legislation in the United States to prohibit corporations from making monetary contributions to national political campaigns. For nearly a century, various measures were enacted to curb the influence of big money on the US political system, particularly during elections. But those efforts were effectively overturned in 2010 by a landmark US Supreme Court ruling in Citizens United versus the Federal Election Commission (FEC), which paved the way for unlimited corporate funding of political campaigns. That same year, a related federal court decision in the case of Speechnow.org versus the FEC further expanded the influence of money in politics by allowing unlimited contributions to political action groups who distribute the donations to candidates — ostensibly isolating the candidate from receiving funds directly from a donor.

Roberts says that those decisions gave corporations, the Israel lobby and the super rich the power to purchase the US government. “For American democracy to be restored, money must be taken out of politics,” he argues. Roberts says another long-running and quietly advancing process — now actively encouraged by the deep state — is the gradual erosion of state governments in the United States and the consolidation of authority within the federal government. “The US government today is very different from the one the Founding Fathers set in place,” the economist writes. “Democracy was distrusted as mob rule, so members elected to the House of Representatives were limited to two years,” Dr Roberts notes. “The Senate was not elected. The Senators from each state were appointed by the State legislators.”

“This ensured that Senators represented the interest of their states, not the interest of foreign countries, such as Ukraine and Israel, or the agendas of interest groups with bases in other states. Most governing rights resided in the individual state,” he explains. Roberts argues that Abraham Lincoln, the 16th US president, used the Civil War of 1861-1865 to curtail the Constitutional powers given to the states.”The purpose of the ‘Civil War’ was to concentrate all power in Washington’s hands,” he notes. “This anti-American revolution was completed in the 1930s by the Franklin D. Roosevelt regime which turned Congress’ legislative powers over to executive branch regulatory agencies.” Once all power is concentrated in the federal center, the deep state will gain nearly unlimited scope for maneuvering and exerting control, the economist warns.

Even though Donald Trump vowed on the campaign trail to rein in the deep state, there are signs that business will continue as usual, the economist said.”During the Obama and Biden years many corporation executives and boards favored Woke agendas that bit them, and now they are aligning with Donald Trump,” writes Dr Roberts.He noted the ongoing “pilgrimage” of Silicon Valley giants, US industrial leaders and wealthy tycoons to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence, accompanied by seven-figure donations to the president-elect’s inauguration. Roberts recalls that last month Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr — nominated for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services — had dinner with Big Pharma executives, including Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, Lilly CEO David Ricks and Steve Ubl, CEO of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA).

The economist highlights how RFK Jr previously condemned the same Big Pharma firms, accusing them of producing unsafe COVID-19 vaccines that harmed millions and creating treatments that undermined the health of American children. “In other words, even private interests that are harmful have to be negotiated with. This doesn’t leave much room for reform to reach very far,” Dr Roberts says. “The conclusion is that democracy in America and in Europe, are fictions,” writes Dr Roberts. “The entire West is ruled by the US neoconservative doctrine of American hegemony and by the US interest groups who benefit from this hegemony. This is so entrenched that Trump is unlikely to be able to do anything about it.”

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“The “most dynamic and powerful conversation between us” was in Russian, Fridman admitted.”

Zelensky Says He ‘Despises’ Russians (RT)

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky explained his refusal to give an interview to Lex Fridman entirely in Russian, the only language in which both he and the podcaster speak fluently, which would have made the conversation easier for wider audiences worldwide to follow. In the introduction to the podcast published on Sunday, Fridman went to great lengths to explain why the three-hour conversation was conducted in a mix of Ukrainian, English, and Russian, and how listeners can switch audio tracks and subtitles to their liking. “Our conversation will be most effective and impactful if we speak in Russian,” the podcaster said in his opening question, prompting Zelensky to respond that he speaks it “perfectly,” but won’t do so “because this is how it is.”

“The people who attack us speak Russian. They attack people who were only recently told that this was actually in defense of Russian-speaking people, and this is why I respect neither the leader nor the director of today’s Russia, nor the people. I just… that’s it,” he said. Zelensky argued that he addressed Russians in their language back when the conflict escalated in 2022, but “they did not listen” and only “speak the language of weapons.” This is why I honestly despise these people, as they are deaf. They began the occupation in supposed defense of the Russian language, and that’s why, with all due respect, I would like to give an interview in Ukrainian. Despite Zelensky’s reluctance to speak Russian, during the interview, he repeatedly switched back and forth to better express his thoughts or use obscenities. The “most dynamic and powerful conversation between us” was in Russian, Fridman admitted.

The majority of Ukrainian citizens can speak or at least understand Russian, particularly in the east of the country. However, since the 2014 US-backed coup in Kiev, the new authorities have abolished Russian as an official regional language and adopted policies aimed at its suppression. In 2019, the Ukrainian parliament passed a law requiring Ukrainian to be used exclusively in nearly all aspects of public life, including education, entertainment, politics, business, and the service industry.

Moscow has repeatedly denounced Kiev’s crackdown on Russian culture and language as discrimination, insisting that “forced Ukrainization” violates international law and infringes upon the rights of native Russian speakers, who make up around a quarter of the population. Kiev has sharply intensified its de-Russification efforts since the escalation of the conflict with Moscow in February 2022. Ukrainian lawmakers have since imposed blanket bans on Russian-language works of art, concerts and performances, as well as movies, books, and songs. The study of Russian in schools and universities has also been outlawed.

Fridman Zel

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Yeah, that’s too bad…

Zelensky Says ‘Too Bad’ Ukraine Doesn’t Have Nuclear Weapons (RT)

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has reiterated his regret that Kiev does not possess nuclear weapons to effectively deter Moscow while discussing Western security guarantees that would satisfy him during a podcast with Lex Fridman on Sunday. During the three-hour conversation published on Sunday, Fridman mentioned he had a “dream” that the Ukrainian leader, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and US President-elect Donald Trump all “get together in a room and make peace.” His question about which security guarantees could possibly satisfy both Ukraine and Russia prompted Zelensky to embark on a lengthy rant about how Western “partners” and “security guarantors” had betrayed Ukraine in the past. “Ukraine had security guarantees. The Budapest Memorandum, nuclear weapons are the security guarantees that Ukraine had.

Ukraine had nuclear weapons. I do not want to characterize it as good or bad. Today, the fact that we do not have them is bad,” Zelensky stated. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, around 1,700 nuclear warheads were left on the territory of Ukraine. While this stockpile technically made Ukraine the world’s third-largest nuclear power, the weapons themselves always remained under the operational control of Russia. The current government in Kiev has repeatedly claimed that Ukraine gave up “its” nuclear arsenal under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum in exchange for security assurances from Russia, the UK, and the US. “The Budapest Memorandum, nuclear weapons, this is what we had.

“Ukraine used them for protection. This does not mean that someone attacked us. That doesn’t mean that we would have used it. We had that opportunity. These were our security guarantees,” Zelensky said. The Ukrainian leader went on to criticize the US, UK, and other nuclear powers for ignoring Kiev’s repeated pleas to protect Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. “They didn’t give a f**k,” Zelensky said in Russian, despite actively avoiding speaking the language during the interview. “Russia didn’t give a f**k, neither did all the other security guarantors… None of them gave a f**k about this country, these people, these security guarantees, etc.”

Zelensky has repeatedly accused Moscow of violating the Budapest Memorandum and expressed regret that his country surrendered its nuclear weapons, declaring in early 2022 – before Russia launched its offensive – that Kiev had “every right” to reverse the decision. In October, he stated that he has only two options to ensure its security: join NATO or obtain nuclear weapons. Russia has argued that Ukraine never had any nuclear weapons to begin with, as the Soviet assets legally belonged to Moscow. Russian officials have also repeatedly stated that the 1994 document was undermined by NATO’s eastward expansion, which threatened Moscow’s vital security interests, and that it was the US that trampled it by sponsoring the Maidan coup in Kiev in 2014, according to Putin.

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“We’re hoping that President Trump will work with Venezuela like he did with Mexico and El Salvador and get these countries to take them back,” Homan said. “If they don’t, they’re still gonna be deported..”

Trump Border Czar Homan Pushes Back Over Trump Admin Deportation Plans (JTN)

President-elect Donald Trump’s new border czar, Tom Homan, was a guest on CBS News’s “Face the Nation,” where host Margaret Brennan tried to argue that the Biden administration had deported more people than Trump during his first term in office. “Deportations are now at a decade high. They were at the end of 2024. Nearly 300,000 people deported by the Biden administration,” Brennan stated. She then said to Homan, “The incoming administration has promised the largest deportation operation in history. What’s the number? What’s the measure of success?” Homan turned the conversation to the Biden administration. He argued that 80 percent of the Biden administration’s deportation numbers are from Border Patrol arrests that were moved back across the southern border, according to The Hill.

“They weren’t interior enforcement arrests,” he said, adding the Biden administration is “playing a numbers game.” Brennan said that it’s still a higher number than when Trump was in office the first time. She pressed Homan as to whether success would come from arresting and deporting people already within the United States in addition to sealing off the southern border. “You can’t compare the number of deportations under Trump versus Biden,” he said. “When you consider a 45-year low in crossings, the number of deportations [is] going to be lower because we don’t have that population to process and deport.” Brennan questioned how they plan to deport so many people, particularly if other countries aren’t willing to accept them.

“We’re hoping that President Trump will work with Venezuela like he did with Mexico and El Salvador and get these countries to take them back,” Homan said. “If they don’t, they’re still gonna be deported. They’re just gonna be deported to a different country.” “We gotta put the safety of the American people first,” he continued. “We’ve had too many young women murdered and raped and burned alive by members of Venezuelan gangs. They need to be a priority under this administration. They’re gonna be a priority starting day one, and they will be deported.” Brennan concluded the interview, noting that the country will “stay tuned for the details.”

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The horse and the barn…

EU Could Establish Asylum ‘Return Hubs’ In Third Countries By March (RMX)

The European Union may establish asylum return centers outside its borders as soon as March, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson revealed on Thursday during a meeting with Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer in Vienna. The proposal, expected from the EU’s new migration commissioner, aims to stem the flow of irregular migrants who remain within the bloc despite having their asylum applications rejected. Kristersson is promoting the idea of “return hubs,” which would house individuals whose asylum applications have been denied, while they await deportation. He believes the centers will deter people with slim chances of success from seeking asylum in the EU. “It is a way of saying we do not accept that there is no difference between a refusal and a yes,” Kristersson told the TT news agency. “It will also reduce the driving forces if you know you have very little chance.”

According to EU data, only around 20 percent of migrants who are denied asylum actually leave EU territory. Kristersson says this undermines the system and creates “completely different concerns” as many end up going underground, working in the gig economy with others resorting to a life of crime. Kristersson cited Italy’s agreement with Albania as a model of how third-country processing could work. Under that pact, men from countries deemed “safe” by the Italian government have been transferred to Albania to await the outcome of their asylum applications, with certain exceptions for vulnerable individuals. However, Italian courts have repeatedly blocked the measure, setting Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s administration on a collision course with what Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini has called “left-wing activist judges.

The Italian judiciary cited EU law stipulating that entire countries must be deemed safe, not just parts of them. This legal snag has effectively halted transfers to Albania pending a judgment from the European Court of Justice. At a press conference with Nehammer, Kristersson noted that Sweden is set to record its lowest number of asylum seekers since 1996. He attributed this drop partly to changing migration routes within Europe, as well as policy shifts. “After an extensive restructuring of our policy, we have reduced the numbers,” Kristersson said.

During the migrant crisis of 2015, more than 162,000 refugees sought asylum in Sweden. By 2024, that figure is projected to hover around 10,000. Still, Kristersson acknowledged that the initial decline largely began in 2016, when the EU tightened its external borders, and that many of his government’s new laws have yet to take effect. Several groups including Amnesty International have raised concerns that the proposed return hubs are incompatible with both EU and international law, with Kristersson conceding the plan presents “difficult questions” but stressing that doing nothing about the issue is not an option.

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Gavin Newsom and RFK. Odd couple.

California Governor Orders Investigation Into Ultra-Processed Foods (ET)

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Jan. 3 issued an executive order directing state agencies to recommend actions to target ultra-processed foods and related health concerns in the state. The governor’s office said that such foods are known to carry health risks and that Newsom’s actions are “designed to support affordable, healthy living and reduce the growing impact of chronic illnesses on Californians.” “The food we eat shouldn’t make us sick with disease or lead to lifelong consequences,” Newsom said in a statement. “We’re going to work with the industry, consumers and experts to crack down on ultra-processed foods, and create a healthier future for every Californian.” The executive order asks the California Department of Public Health to provide recommendations to the governor’s office “regarding potential action to limit the harms associated with ‘ultra-processed foods’ and food ingredients that pose a health risk to individuals” by April 1, 2025.

It suggested that one of the potential actions could include warning labels for certain foods. The executive order also asks the California Department of Social Services to provide recommendations regarding “actions that the State can take to reduce the purchase of soda, candy, other ultra-processed foods and/or foods with synthetic food dye or other additives.” The governor also asked the California Department of Health Care Services to report by April 1 on the feasibility of requiring or encouraging Medi-Cal managed care plans and California hospitals to use their certain funds to “enhance access to fresh, healthy foods,” and “otherwise promote public health at the local level.”The executive order cited the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s latest updates to school nutrition standards and also asked the State Board of Education and the California Department of Education to identify by Oct. 1, “areas where California may adopt higher standards for healthy school meals.”

President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for his upcoming administration’s secretary of Health and Human Services is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has long criticized ultra-processed foods. A Nov. 22, 2024 report by the Congressional Research Service noted that there has been “increased attention by researchers and policymakers on the production, labeling, and marketing of ultra-processed foods.” However, there is no definition of what constitutes ultra-processed foods in U.S. laws or regulations. According to a recent report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 73 percent of adults 20 years old and older are overweight or obese, and 38 percent of children and youth between 12 and 19 years old are pre-diabetic.

“The widespread prevalence of nutrition-related chronic health conditions continues to be a major public health issue in the United States,” states the department in the report. Last September, Newsom signed legislation, Assembly Bill 2316, that bans public schools from serving foods containing six synthetic food dyes: Red 40, Yellow 5, Yellow 6, Blue 1, Blue 2, and Green 3. The law will go into effect at the end of December 2027.

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FCC

 

 

Füllmilch

 

 

Candace

 

 

Bernanke

 

 

Steve Keen

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Dec 022024
 


Rembrandt van Rijn Man with a falcon on his wrist (possibly St. Bavo) 1661

 

Joe Biden Pardons His Son Hunter (RT)
Trump Slams ‘Shocking’ Pardon of Hunter Biden (RT)
US Reps Urge Biden For Full Pardon Of Julian Assange (Antiwar)
Who is Kash Patel, Trump’s Pick to Head the FBI? (Sp.)
Kash Patel’s Prescription For Ailing FBI: Accountability, House Cleaning (JTN)
Ukraine’s Military Dead ‘Have Already Won’ – Zelensky (RT)
Ukrainian Military Desertions Skyrocket – FT (RT)
Norway To Open New Arctic Warfare Base (RT)
‘Netanyahu Needs War’, Can’t Be Trusted to Stick to Lebanon Ceasefire (Sp.)
The Return of Status-based Law (Paul Craig Roberts)
Trudeau Bends The Knee To Trump At Mar-a-Lago (MN)
Sebastian Gorka: British Intelligence Asset? (Grayzone)
Incoming FCC Chairman Brendan Carr Prepares For Censorship Battle (ZH)
Why Does The West Believe It Occupies The High Moral Ground? (Diesen)
The Failure of COP29: Does the “Green Agenda” Have A Future? (Machado)

 

 

 

 

Gingrich

Lawler

Kash J6
https://twitter.com/i/status/1863208821637722339

Pipe bomber

Galloway

Gideon Levy

 

 

 

 

“Hunter Biden’s lawyer has moved to dismiss his indictment based on his pardon…”

Without a indictment, there’s no need for a pardon.

The pardon covers all crimes, including possible murder.

Joe Biden Pardons His Son Hunter (RT)

Outgoing US President Joe Biden has gone back on his word and pardoned his son Hunter Biden, who was convicted earlier this year of breaking federal gun and tax laws. In June, the younger Biden was convicted of three felony charges related to the purchase of a revolver in 2018. According to the prosecutors, he lied on his gun-purchase paperwork that he was not addicted to or using illegal drugs. In a separate case, Hunter pleaded guilty to three felony tax offenses and six misdemeanor tax offenses in September. The sentencing for both convictions was supposed to happen this month. In a statement issued on Sunday evening, the president said the “full and unconditional pardon” covers offenses which his son “has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024, including but not limited to all offenses charged or prosecuted.”

The president argued that his son was prosecuted “selectively and unfairly” because of his familial ties. He claimed that “people are almost never brought to trial on felony charges solely for how they filled out a gun form.” “It is clear that Hunter was treated differently,” he said. The president went on to state that the charges against his son were brought “only after several of my political opponents in Congress instigated them to attack me and oppose my election.” He accused Republicans of sabotaging “a carefully negotiated plea deal” that would have been a “reasonable resolution of Hunter’s cases.” “No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son – and that is wrong,” the president said. “In trying to break Hunter, they’ve tried to break me – and there’s no reason to believe it will stop here. Enough is enough.”

The decision is a reversal of Biden’s previous position, as he and his team repeatedly said in the past that he would accept the jury verdict and would not pardon his son. Asked by ABC News in June if he would accept the outcome of the trial and if he would rule out pardoning his son, the president replied “yes” to both questions. In his statement on Sunday, Biden confirmed that his opinion on the matter has changed. “I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice,” he claimed. Hunter Biden released his own statement shortly after the pardon was announced. “I have admitted and taken responsibility for my mistakes during the darkest days of my addiction – mistakes that have been exploited to publicly humiliate and shame me and my family for political sport,” he said.

“I will never take the clemency I have been given today for granted and will devote the life I have rebuilt to helping those who are still sick and suffering.” Hunter Biden has been the subject of much scrutiny during his father’s term in office, as Republicans have claimed that he acted as the president’s ‘bagman’ in allegedly corrupt dealings with countries such as Ukraine and China. The president has denied the corruption allegations and publicly backed his son, describing him as “the smartest guy I know.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1863407436306014431

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“Does the pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years?”

“This pardon is Joe Biden’s admission that Hunter is a criminal..”

Trump Slams ‘Shocking’ Pardon of Hunter Biden (RT)

US President-elect Donald Trump and congressional Republicans have blasted outgoing President Joe Biden for pardoning his son, Hunter Biden, who was convicted of illegally purchasing a gun and tax evasion. The sentencing in both cases was scheduled for this month. Despite saying publicly that he would not interfere in his son’s cases, the president went back on his word and announced the pardon on Sunday evening. He labelled the convictions “a miscarriage of justice,” arguing that Hunter Biden has been “singled out” because of his ties to the president. According to the statement from the White House, the pardon applies to all offenses that were or may have been committed between January 1, 2014 and December 1, 2024.

This period covers accusations by Republicans that Hunter Biden acted as “a bagman” on behalf of his father during allegedly illicit business dealings in China and Ukraine. The president and his son have denied these allegations. The Republicans, who have long accused the Biden administration of politically motivated prosecutions, condemned the pardon. “The failed witch hunts against President Trump have proven that the Democrat-controlled DOJ and other radical prosecutors are guilty of weaponizing the justice system,” Trump’s spokesman, Steven Cheung, said in a statement. “That system of justice must be fixed and due process must be restored for all Americans, which is exactly what President Trump will do as he returns to the White House with an overwhelming mandate from the American people,” he added.

Trump compared the treatment of the president’s son to the prosecution of his own supporters who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, hoping to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. “Does the pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years? Such an abuse and miscarriage of justice!” he wrote on Truth Social. Many top Republicans in Congress were appalled, with Senator Chuck Grassley saying that he was “shocked” by Biden’s decision. “This pardon is Joe Biden’s admission that Hunter is a criminal,” Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote on X. Congressman Andy Biggs wrote that “Joe Biden will go down as one of the most corrupt presidents in American history.”

“This is an outrageous abuse of the rule of law – all to protect the Biden family business of selling access and influence,” Senator Josh Hawley wrote on X. The Republican-controlled House Committee on Oversight and Accountability released a statement, saying “Joe Biden’s unprecedented abuse of power has been a stain on the honor of the US presidency.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1863407192063283560

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Letter sent a day or two before the Hunter pardon.

US Reps Urge Biden For Full Pardon Of Julian Assange (Antiwar)

House Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and James McGovern (D-MA) have sent a letter to President Biden urging him to pardon WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to send a message that Biden will “not target or investigate journalists and media outlets simply for doing their jobs.” “We write, first, to express our appreciation for your administration’s decision last spring to facilitate a resolution of the criminal case against publisher Julian Assange and to withdraw the related extradition request that had been pending in the United Kingdom,” Massie and McGovern wrote in the letter dated November 1, which was first made public earlier this past week. Assange was freed in a plea deal earlier this year after spending more than five years in London’s Belmarsh Prison while battling a US extradition request.

He was indicted by the Trump administration in 2019 for exposing US war crimes by publishing classified documents leaked to WikiLeaks by former Army Private Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning in 2010. Under the indictment, Assange could have faced up to 175 years in prison in the US for publishing the documents, a standard journalistic practice. While the plea deal set him free, it required him to plead guilty to violating the Espionage Act. “The terms of Mr. Assange’s plea agreement have now set a precedent that greatly deepens our concern,” Massie and McGovern said. “A review of prosecutions under the Espionage Act makes clear that Mr. Assange’s case is the first time the Act has been deployed against a publisher.”

The lawmakers pointed to comments from Jodie Ginsberg, the CEO of the Committee to Protect Journalists, who said, “While we welcome the end of his detention, the US’s pursuit of Assange has set a harmful legal precedent by opening the way for journalists to be tried under the Espionage Act if they receive classified material from whistleblowers.” Massie and McGovern concluded the letter by saying, “We therefore urge you to consider issuing a pardon for Mr. Assange. A pardon would remove the precedent set by the plea and send a clear message that the US government under your leadership will not target or investigate journalists and media outlets simply for doing their jobs.” According to Fox News, Assange’s brother, Gabriel Shipton, is heading to Washington in January to push for a pardon before Biden leaves office.

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“..accused “the deep state” of being “the most dangerous threat to our democracy.” He applied the term to political leaders, Big Tech tycoons, media, and “members of the unelected bureaucracy.”

Who is Kash Patel, Trump’s Pick to Head the FBI? (Sp.)

Donald Trump has repeatedly derided the FBI as a “badly broken” agency over the years, saying it had “lost the confidence of America.” Current FBI chief Christopher A. Wray was also the target of Trump’s criticism. President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Kash Patel for the position of director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). As the current chief of the FBI, Christopher A. Wray, still has three years of his 10-year term left, he will either have to resign or Trump will have to fire him for the nomination to happen. Kashyap Patel, a former public defender and federal prosecutor, was a national security aide during Trump’s first term. Patel “played a pivotal role in uncovering the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, standing as an advocate for truth, accountability, and the Constitution,” Trump wrote on Saturday in a social media post.

Since 2016, Democratic Party officials have accused Donald Trump of illegally colluding with the Russian government as part of the discredited “Russiagate” narrative. The Trump-Russia probe turned out as a complete fiasco with no evidence being found to back the allegations. He is an ardent advocate of “housecleaning” in the Justice Department and FBI. The Bureau’s headquarters in Washington, DC, should be dismantled and turned into a “museum of the deep state,” he said in a podcast interview in September. Patel denounced the FBI for its 2022 search warrant of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, which resulted in charges being brought against the former president for retaining classified documents. Kash Patel has accused “the deep state” of being “the most dangerous threat to our democracy.” He applied the term to political leaders, Big Tech tycoons, media, and “members of the unelected bureaucracy.”

Appearing on the “War Room” podcast hosted by Steve Bannon last year, Patel vowed to “go out and find the conspirators not just in government, but in the media” who “helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections” in 2020. Kash Patel’s appointment would be subject to Senate confirmation. The announced pick has already sparked mixed reactions from lawmakers. Patel “needs to prove to the Senate Judiciary Committee that he has the right qualifications and […] will put our nation’s public safety over a political agenda focused on retribution,” Democratic Sen. Chris Coons wrote on X. “He’s been on side against some of the worst abuses of the FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] system. Kash Patel can help clean up all the things that we’ve seen that are wrong,” ex-Congressman Matt Gaetz said in a video message on X, adding that “Kash has guts!”

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“..the people at the very top are usually the most immoral, unethical people in the entire agency.”

Kash Patel’s Prescription For Ailing FBI: Accountability, House Cleaning (JTN)

President-elect Donald Trump’s new pick to lead the FBI, Kash Patel, subscribes to a similar prescription for the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, which has lost significant trust from the American people over a decade of scandal and failure. From his time as chief investigative counsel at the House Intelligence Committee, where he unraveled the FBI’s bogus Russia collusion narrative, to his best-selling book “Government Gangsters” where he chronicled the weaponization of law enforcement against Trump and conservatives, Patel has laid out clear plans on how to re-focus the bureau on its core missions of law enforcement and intelligence gathering and away from politics. That job, he insists, begins by cleaning house throughout the FBI’s several layers of leadership that became infected with ideologies like Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and created a culture where parents and traditional Catholics were viewed as extremist threats and support for Trump and the Second Amendment were deemed reasons to review an employee’s security clearance.

In his book “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy,” Patel argues that a thorough “house cleaning” of FBI leadership is the key to resetting the agency and unleashing the skills of its rank-and-file agents. “I regularly used to tell people that the fastest way to move up in the government is to just screw up, and the bigger the screwup, the bigger the promotion,” he wrote. “Every person implicated in your mistakes has an interest in covering up what they did, so they will promote you. That means the people at the very top are usually the most immoral, unethical people in the entire agency.” But he also has made clear that his disdain for the bureau’s current leadership is matched by a similar respect for the capabilities and patriotism of rank-and-file agents, recently shouting them out recently for uncovering an Afghan national’s plot to commit a terror attack on Election Day.

“That’s to the credit of the everyday men and women of the FBI, DOD and DOJ, not the leadership that has corrupted those institutions,” he said in October. Over the last two years in interviews with Just the News, Patel has laid out several ideas for fixing the FBI, including:
• Canceling plans for an expensive new FBI headquarters and turning the current headquarters into a “museum for the Deep State.”
• Moving leaders out of Washington and into the field closer to the people they serve
• Shrinking components of the FBI that have little public benefit; and
• Holding accountable those officials responsible for the politicization of prior investigations, including termination and prosecutions.

“The folks in power at the FBI and the IC (intelligence community) making these leadership decisions are terrified that their corruption. not the Bidens, and certainly not Donald Trump, but their corruption in government in senior positions will be exposed and subject to law enforcement,” he told Just the News earlier this year. Patel’s book and his ideas for ending politicized law enforcement were a major factor in Trump’s decision to name him his the next FBI director. Currently, the job is held by Christopher Wray, whom Trump appointed in 2017, and it includes a 10-year-old term. But it is widely expected Trump will either fire Wray or he will resign. “Kash is a brilliant lawyer, investigator, and America First fighter who has spent his career exposing corruption, defending Justice, and protecting the American People,” the president-elect said in a statement on TruthSocial announcing Patel as the next FBI director. “He played a pivotal role in uncovering the Russia, Russia, Russia Hoax, standing as an advocate for truth, accountability, and the Constitution.”

Conservatives hailed Patel’s pick. “Kash was INSTRUMENTAL in President Trump’s first term and will be EVEN GREATER in his second!” Rep. Ronnie Jackson, R-Texas, a former White House physician, wrote on X. “Time to clean this place up, and Kash is the man to do it!!! MAGA!” Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who presided over the now-discredited Russia collusion probe and later was fired, expressed doom for his former agency and said Patel’s selection was “a plan to disrupt, to dismantle, to distract the FBI.” Many legacy media suggested Patel got the nomination because he was a “loyalist” to Trump. But the 44-year-old son of Indian immigrants has an extensive government resume, including working on both sides of the judicial system as a federal public defender and a national security prosecutor before he joined the House Intelligence Committee.

In the first Trump administration, Patel served as a counterterrorism official on the National Security Council where he helped oversee the drone strike against an Iranian general accused of decades of terrorism and then as chief of staff to the Acting Secretary of the Pentagon.

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How cynical does it get?

“[Our] most important weapon is our people,” Zelensky said..”

Ukraine’s Military Dead ‘Have Already Won’ – Zelensky (RT)

Ukrainians who have died in the conflict between Moscow and Kiev “have already won,” Vladimir Zelensky claimed in an interview with Sky News released this week. Those sacrifices enabled Kiev to secure aid from its Western backers and eventually prevent Moscow from achieving its goals, according to the Ukrainian leader. When asked by Sky News chief correspondent Stuart Ramsay if he believed that those Ukrainians who had died throughout the conflict had given their lives for nothing, Zelensky said “it was wrong” to think so. “They are already winners,” he added. “Our people did not give their lives for nothing,” the Ukrainian leader said, adding that they “performed not only their personal but also constitutional duty to defend their country.”

He then went on to claim that “had Ukrainians not … sacrificed their lives and their comfort” back in February 2022, when Russia launched its military campaign against Ukraine, the country would have quickly yielded to Russia. “No one would have helped us then,” he said, apparently referring to Kiev’s Western backers. The Ukrainian leader also admitted that if Kiev loses the support of the US and its allies, it “will lose everything.” “[Our] most important weapon is our people,” Zelensky said. The Ukrainian leader also slammed those world leaders who are willing to talk to Moscow. He claimed they were only doing it for international fame as they “want to get on the front pages in the media.” Zelensky compared talking to Russian President Vladimir Putin to “opening Pandora’s box,” which could undermine the Western unity behind Kiev’s cause.

According to Zelensky, some world leaders are “afraid” of Putin. “When they are afraid, they start to communicate with their societies and divide their societies,” he said. The Ukrainian leader referred to Russia’s president as “an animal without any human values that we share.” He also claimed that Ukraine should be “at the same level” with Russia in terms of power or even “stronger” for peace talks to start in earnest. Zelensky then also demanded that Kiev’s backers adopt a “one voice policy” spearheaded by Ukraine when it comes to the conflict.

Zelensky also said that Kiev could agree to “end the hot phase of the war” without trying to take back former territories that officially joined Russia following a series of referendums in the fall of 2022. He still maintained that this would only be possible if the territories still under Kiev’s control are “invited” to join NATO and the US-led bloc recognizes Kiev’s territorial claims. Moscow has repeatedly stated throughout the conflict that it is ready for peace talks and would like to resolve all differences diplomatically. It has also consistently warned that it would never agree to Ukraine joining NATO and named the US-led bloc’s expansion eastward as among the root causes of the conflict.

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“..these draftees include the blind, the deaf, and the mentally handicapped..”

Ukrainian Military Desertions Skyrocket – FT (RT)

More than twice as many Ukrainian soldiers have been charged with desertion this year than in 2022 and 2023 combined, the Financial Times has reported. The spike in desertions has hampered Kiev’s ability to replenish its thinned-out ranks. Ukrainian prosecutors opened 60,000 cases against deserters between January and October of this year, the British newspaper reported on Saturday, noting that those convicted face prison terms of up to 12 years. For some of these men, desertion is seen as the only way of getting off the front lines to rest. Ukrainian lawmakers dropped a provision from a bill earlier this year that would have allowed the country’s longest-serving conscripts to be demobilized in the coming months, and service members told the Financial Times that the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) lacks the manpower to give troops shorter four-week rotations off the front lines for rest and retraining.

”They’re just killing them, instead of letting them rehabilitate and rest,” one officer told the newspaper. Those killed are replaced by ill-trained and unfit draftees. In an earlier article, Ukrainian commanders told the Financial Times that on some busy sectors of the front, 50 to 70% of these new conscripts are killed or wounded within days of starting their first rotation. Those who survive often go AWOL as soon as they can, the newspaper reported. Some choose to desert while at training camps in NATO countries. An anonymous Polish security source told the Financial Times that around 12 Ukrainian men abscond from training centers in Poland every month. Earlier this week, a Ukrainian MP told the Associated Press that as many as 200,000 soldiers may have deserted since the conflict with Russia escalated in 2022.

There are around 350,000 active-duty soldiers in the UAF, although heavy losses – more than half a million since February 2022, according to the Russian Defense Ministry – have seen the country’s longest-serving soldiers replaced first by almost a dozen NATO-trained divisions, and then, after these divisions were chewed up during last year’s disastrous counteroffensive, by unwilling conscripts. Press-ganged off the streets and dragged out of nightclubs to serve, these draftees include the blind, the deaf, and the mentally handicapped, according to recent media reports and testimony from Ukrainian lawmakers.

”Men who are the right age for the military draft are scared to walk freely in the street,” one draft-dodger told The Telegraph earlier this week. A recruiter concurred, telling the newspaper that approaching a potential conscript is often “like dealing with a cornered rat.” The UAF is seeking to recruit around 160,000 new soldiers in the coming months. To reach this target, the US has begun pushing the Ukrainian government to lower the minimum draft age to 18, down from 25, the Associated Press reported on Wednesday.

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On Russia’s doorstep.

Norway To Open New Arctic Warfare Base (RT)

Norway plans to establish a new NATO Arctic and amphibious warfare center where US, British, and Dutch marines will be trained amid heightened tensions with Russia, the Defense Ministry in Oslo announced on Friday. The new hub will be created in the municipality of Sorreisa north of Lofoten in Norway’s Arctic, some several hundred kilometers, as the crow flies, from Russia’s strategic port of Murmansk, which is a key military and naval base. The NATO member’s facility will house several hundred soldiers and is expected to become fully operational in 2026. “We must train together to be able to defend Norway, the Nordic countries and NATO in crisis and war,” Defense Minister Bjorn Arild Gram said, adding that his country is now “in a more serious security policy situation.”

“We want an increased allied presence in Norway. More training and practice is good for Norwegian security. We need allies to be familiar with the Norwegian climate and weather conditions. We also need to practice together in case the need arises. So this is a desirable development,” he stated. The new center will have close links with several nearby military facilities, which the minister claimed will be extremely useful for NATO. The announcement comes after the Norwegian government presented a plan this spring for a historic increase in defense spending, with the aim of spending $54 billion on the military from 2024 to 2036.

As part of the package, Oslo also wants to acquire its first long-range air defense system and expand the army from one to three brigades, while boosting the size of the Home Guard to 45,000 troops. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov signaled this September that Moscow will check NATO’s expansionist ambitions in the region. “We see how NATO is stepping up exercises related to possible crises in the Arctic. Our country is fully prepared to defend its interests in military, political and military-technical terms,” he said at the time.

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“..then again, there are people in the Biden regime who dislike Netanyahu personally and may want to see him weakened..”

‘Netanyahu Needs War’, Can’t Be Trusted to Stick to Lebanon Ceasefire (Sp.)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced this week that he’s ordered the military to prepare for the resumption of an “intensive war” in Lebanon if Hezbollah violated the freshly-reached ceasefire deal. Sputnik asked one of the Middle East’s most prolific international affairs observers what this could mean for the region. “Netanyahu needs war, and he only accepted a ceasefire under a great deal of pressure. So no one has faith in the Israelis. The Israelis have always violated commitments,” political analyst and Tehran University Professor Seyed Mohammad Marandi told Sputnik, commenting on the Israeli PM’s threats to resume the Lebanon conflict. “After all, [Israel] is carrying out a holocaust in Gaza, a regime that carries out the holocaust and continues to do so in front of the eyes of the world after 14 months is not a regime that can be trusted for anything,” Marandi said.

Linking the Lebanon ceasefire to the crisis in neighboring Syria, where jihadist militants attacked the strategic city of Aleppo this week, Marandi characterized Netanyahu’s threats, combined with the terrorist advance, as attempts to pressure the Iranian-led Axis of Resistance anti-US, anti-Israel alliance, but assured that in the end the terrorists will be pushed back in the north and Israel kept at bay in the south. It’s highly likely that the regional forces looking to destabilize Syria “would like to see a breakdown of the ceasefire so that [their] al-Qaeda*-affiliated terrorists in the north could have a better chance of making progress,” Marandi suggested.

“It is a complicated situation and we’ll have to see how things play out. The United States is in a transition period. The Biden regime is escalating in Ukraine obviously, there are definitely elements within the Biden regime that would like to see escalation on the Lebanese border. But then again, there are people in the Biden regime who dislike Netanyahu personally and may want to see him weakened. And Trump himself also wants to see the fighting stopped before he comes to power. So we’ll have to see how things play out,” the veteran observer summed up.

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“We are ruled by the interest groups that purchase the government. Until the money is taken out of politics, American democracy will remain a sham, and the Constitution will die the death of a thousand cuts.”

The Return of Status-based Law (Paul Craig Roberts)

In this episode of On Target, Larry Sparano and I discuss the assault on the Constitution by the Speaker of the House, Majority Leader of the Senate, and president-elect Donald Trump. The assault weapon is the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which has already passed the Republican House. Senator Schumer is attempting to avoid a stand alone vote on the Act by attaching it to the defense appropriations bill. That way the senators can say they voted for the defense bill and not against the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The Antisemitism Awareness Act is the Israel Lobby’s response to the university protests against Israel’s slaughter of the Palestinians. The bill conflates Israel with Jews, defines Jews as “protected persons,” and removes accreditation and federal financial support from universities that fail to prevent student protests against Israel and Jews in general.

In effect it prohibits criticism of Jews. Criticism is undefined. In practice it will include anything to which Jews object. The Act is a violation of the 14th Amendment which requires equal protection of the law. The Antisemitism Awareness Act creates status-based privileges for a specific group that are denied to others. The Act also violates the 1st Amendment’s protection of free speech. So, why did the Republican Speaker of the House have the House of Representatives vote against the US Constitution? Why is the Democrat Senate Majority Leader trying to have the Act passed by attaching it to a defense bill? Why did Trump say that universities that permit protests of Israel’s murderous behavior should lose their accreditation and federal aid? Why is preventing criticism of Jews more important than the US Constitution?

The supporters of the Act have not said why only Jews among the many diverse peoples of the world are to be given the special privilege of immunity from criticism. It will be OK to criticize, Americans, Europeans, Asians, Arabs, Africans, Hispanics, but not Jews. In addition to the obvious unconstitutional content of the Act, there is an unacknowledged problem. What about Jews who criticize Israel? There are many of them. There are Israelis who protest the murderous policies of Netanyahu. Also, many US university presidents are Jews. How can they be punished by an Act that prohibits criticism of Jews? Punishment itself is an act of criticism. What happens when it is Jewish students and faculty who protest against Israel?

The House of Representatives’ vote against the US Constitution demonstrates the power of campaign donations. A member of Congress has to give the Israel Lobby what it wants or the money goes to one’s opponent. The same is true in the case of many other interest groups. Go against the military/security complex, Big Pharma, the financial lobby, and so forth, and the campaign money goes to your opponent. The realities of political campaign finance is the reason the people’s elected representatives cannot represent the people. They have to represent the interest groups that provide the funds that get them elected. American democracy is a sham. We are ruled by the interest groups that purchase the government. Until the money is taken out of politics, American democracy will remain a sham, and the Constitution will die the death of a thousand cuts.

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Trump owns Trudy.

Trudeau Bends The Knee To Trump At Mar-a-Lago (MN)

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Was pictured meeting with president-elect Trump and his team at Mar-a-Lago over Thanksgiving, as it emerged that he has made an agreement to crack down on drug trafficking. The meeting came following Trump’s announcement of a 25% tariff on all products coming from Mexico and Canada until they agree to secure their borders. In a Truth Social post earlier this week, Trump wrote “On January 20th, as one of my many first Executive Orders, I will sign all necessary documents to charge Mexico and Canada a 25% Tariff on ALL products coming into the United States, and its ridiculous Open Borders.” “This Tariff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!” Trump added.

He continued, “Both Mexico and Canada have the absolute right and power to easily solve this long simmering problem. We hereby demand that they use this power, and until such time that they do, it is time for them to pay a very big price!” Fast forward four days and Trudeau was seen sitting with Trump, Elon Musk, and the rest of his team. In a further post after the meeting, Trump explained, “I just had a very productive meeting with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, where we discussed many important topics that will require both Countries to work together to address, like the Fentanyl and Drug Crisis that has decimated so many lives as a result of Illegal Immigration, Fair Trade Deals that do not jeopardize American Workers, and the massive Trade Deficit the U.S. has with Canada.”

“I made it very clear that the United States will no longer sit idly by as our Citizens become victims to the scourge of this Drug Epidemic, caused mainly by the Drug Cartels, and Fentanyl pouring in from China. Too much death and hardship!” Trump continued. “Prime Minister Trudeau has made a commitment to work with us to end this terrible devastation of U.S. Families,” Trump further added, noting “We also spoke about many other important topics like Energy, Trade, and the Arctic. All are vital issues that I will be addressing on my first days back in Office, and before.”

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Certainly looks that way.

Sebastian Gorka: British Intelligence Asset? (Grayzone)

Sebastian Gorka’s involvement with British intelligence cost him a security clearance in Hungary. His longtime mentor is a UK spook currently engaged in covert operations against Russia. Is the Ukraine hawk and Trump counter-terror appointee operating on London time. After years in the wilderness of right-wing radio, where he flamboyantly proclaimed his loyalty to president-elect Donald Trump for years, Sebastian Gorka has finally found his way back into Trump’s inner circle, earning an appointment as incoming White House counter-terror advisor. Gorka served as Trump’s deputy assistant advisor on national security issues for eight months in 2017, storming out of his job with a petulant resignation letter that blamed “forces” within the administration that did not support Trump’s “MAGA promise.”

During his brief tenure in the White House, Gorka, a London-born immigrant, was credited with masterminding the President’s so-called “Muslim ban,” which refused admission to the US for citizens of countries identified as national security threats. While Democrats have hammered Gorka as “a far-right extremist” and MAGA sycophant, he has stood out as a voice of Biden foreign policy continuity within Trumpworld, pledging further aggression against Russia and even greater military aid to Kiev. During a November 23 interview, for example, Gorka promised that “the aid that we have given to Ukraine thus far will look like peanuts” if “the murderous KGB colonel” Vladimir Putin does not obey Trump’s dictates. Gorka’s full origin story explains why his views on the Ukraine proxy war track more closely with those of the anti-Trump turncoat John Bolton than incoming Vice President J.D. Vance, who has vowed to negotiate an end to the conflict.

As this investigation will demonstrate, the mindset of the Transatlantic policy operative was molded primarily through his intimate involvement in British intelligence circles—not his role within the America First movement. The son of an anti-communist Hungarian exile, Gorka joined a British Army intelligence unit while still in university. When he entered the world of national security studies, he learned at the knee of a notoriously conniving British military intelligence officer named Chris Donnelly, who has dedicated his career to instigating conflict with Russia, and was exposed by The Grayzone as an architect of the notorious Kerch Bridge bombing. Donnelly personally endorsed Gorka’s PhD thesis, granting him the imprimatur of a top intelligence officer in the British Ministry of Defence. The relationship fueled Gorka’s career within the burgeoning Atlanticist military infrastructure, yet ultimately cost him security clearance in his family’s native Hungary, where the country’s National Security Office suspected him of being a UK spy.

Soon after Gorka resigned from the first Trump administration, leaked documents exposed Donnelly as the founder of a secret, UK state-funded influence operation called the Integrity Initiative, which was aimed at drumming up war with Russia through a covert international propaganda network. A 2017 funding proposal submitted by the Integrity Initiative to the British Ministry of Defence promised to deliver a “tougher stance on Russia” by arranging for “more information published in the media on the threat of Russian active measures.” When Donnelly visited Washington in 2018 to expand his secret initiative, the first item on his agenda was breakfast with Gorka. To this day, Gorka refuses to discuss the meeting, or any aspect of his relationship with Donnelly, erupting with rage at reporters who have dared to inquire about the long friendship.

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“..Section 230 only confers benefits on Big Tech companies when they operate, in the words of the statute, “in good faith.” “The censorship cartel must be dismantled..”

Incoming FCC Chairman Brendan Carr Prepares For Censorship Battle (ZH)

Until the internet came along, pumping government propaganda into American homes was like shooting fish in a barrel. As a constellation of alternative media websites such as ZeroHedge emerged, however, the ability to shape narratives and steer the national dialogue quickly eroded. In order to regain control – particularly in the Trump-era, the government has been colluding with Big Tech, partisan ‘fact checkers,’ and an aptly named ‘advertising cartel’ to censor, de-monetize, and otherwise silence divergent opinions – particularly those which shed light on things like government malfeasance, bullshit wars, and cronyism. Incoming FCC Chairman Brendan Carr is getting ready to level the playing field.

Carr, a veteran Republican regulator who has echoed President-elect Trump’s promises to punish political bias within the national media complex, has argued that the agency should also regulate Big Tech – including Apple, Meta, Google and Microsoft. And in a Sunday interview with Fox News, Carr outlined the road ahead… “Combatting tech censorship is going to be one of the top priorities for me,” said Carr, adding “We need to restore Americans’ right to free speech… you mentioned Facebook and other companies. They’ve been part of a censorship cartel that has worked with advertisers, they’ve worked with government officials, to censor the free speech rights of everyday Americans. That’s gotta end.” “America is a country of founders, people who have pushed frontiers. When you silence speech, you silence ideas. Instead, we need to unleash prosperity, again.”

In a November letter, Carr accused several Big Tech companies of having “participated in a censorship cartel that included not only technology and social media companies but advertising, marketing, and so-called “fact-checking” organizations as well as the Biden-Harris Administration itself.” “The relevant conduct extended from removing or blocking social media posts to suppress their information and viewpoints, including through efforts to delist them, lower their rankings, or harm their profitability.” Carr then suggested that their protection from liability under Section 230 may be on the line. “As you know, Big Tech’s prized liability shield, Section 230, is codified in the Communications Act, which the FCC administers. As relevant here, Section 230 only confers benefits on Big Tech companies when they operate, in the words of the statute, “in good faith.” “The censorship cartel must be dismantled,” Carr said in a November post on X.

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“We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”

Why Does The West Believe It Occupies The High Moral Ground? (Diesen)

For almost three years, NATO countries have boycotted diplomatic contact with Russia, even as hundreds of thousands of men die on the Ukraine conflict’s battlefield. The decision to reject diplomacy is morally repugnant. Diplomacy could have reduced violence, prevented escalation, and even opened a path to peace. Instead, political and media elites skillfully presented this rejection as a sign of moral righteousness, labeling dialogue as treason and war as virtuous. To exhaust Russia in a long war, the goal was to ensure that the Russians and Ukrainians kill each other for as long as possible. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin outlined the US objective in the Ukraine War as weakening its strategic adversary: “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”

In late March 2022, Vladimir Zelensky revealed in an interview with The Economist: “There are those in the West who don’t mind a long war because it would mean exhausting Russia, even if this means the demise of Ukraine and comes at the cost of Ukrainian lives.” The aim has been to exhaust Russia in a protracted conflict, ensuring that Russians and Ukrainians continue killing each other for as long as possible. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin outlined the objective: “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.”

Israeli and Turkish mediators confirmed that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to a peace deal in Istanbul, where Russia would withdraw and Ukraine would restore its neutrality. Yet the West rejected this. The goal wasn’t peace — it was to bleed Russia through its proxy army in Ukraine. Both Germany and France have admitted that the Minsk Peace Agreement was never meant to be implemented, but used as a vehicle to build up Ukraine’s military. The Turkish Foreign Minister and former Israeli Prime Minister have both acknowledged that NATO states actively wanted the war to continue. Former NATO figures, such as retired General Harald Kujat, have said the war was deliberately provoked by NATO, with the US and UK blocking peace efforts to weaken Russia politically, economically, and militarily.

US lawmakers, such as Lindsey Graham, have been openly supportive of fighting Russia “to the last Ukrainian.” They argue that assisting Ukraine without risking American lives is a smart investment in weakening Russia. Meanwhile, Mitch McConnell called it an investment in America’s national security, and Mitt Romney called financing the war “the best defense spending ever.” These statements underscore the growing sentiment in the West that the war is a proxy battle where Ukraine is expendable, serving merely as a tool to diminish Russia. NATO’s leadership, including Jens Stoltenberg, has stated that a “victory” for Ukraine would result in a battle-hardened Ukrainian army on the West’s side, with a weakened Russia.

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No.

The Failure of COP29: Does the “Green Agenda” Have A Future? (Machado)

Following the conclusion of the multilateral climate conference COP29, held in Baku, Azerbaijan, the atmosphere is one of defeat. Nearly an entire week of speeches and endless meetings did not suffice to reach a reasonable consensus on a series of practical measures that had been anticipated. Specifically, the debate on funding climate policies sank. The so-called “developing countries” had expected an annual grant policy exceeding $1 trillion for energy transition and climate change mitigation policies, but only $300 billion per year will be allocated—optimistically. Moreover, this sum will not necessarily be in the form of grants but may include loans and other financing mechanisms that bring interest and debt. India denounced the final result of COP29, supported by Bolivia, Cuba, and Nigeria, as a farce and an insult from developed countries to developing nations.

This financing debate will now be deferred to COP30, scheduled to take place in Brazil in 2025. However, the chances of COP30 succeeding where COP29 failed seem very slim. While climate alarmism and eco-globalism are now part of Brazil’s official ideology, in the rest of the world, these postmodern beliefs are losing momentum. Take, for example, the reasons why expanding funding for the “Green Agenda” has been impossible in “developed countries.” Observing European governments’ behavior since the beginning of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, one can see increasing difficulty in advancing energy transition and net-zero carbon policies. Germany, for instance, was once one of the main drivers of climate alarmism worldwide, even closing its nuclear power plants “for the environment” (despite nuclear plants being far less polluting than most other energy sources).

Yet today, facing an energy crisis caused by the NordStream’s destruction, Germany is reopening its coal-fired power plants. Sweden, long a leader in international climate activism, has reversed many of its previous environmental measures. The Ministry of the Environment has been dismantled, and the government now prioritizes ensuring cheap fuel. Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, the previous administration of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak suspended the ban on diesel car sales and decided to stop promoting the replacement of gas heaters. Similar examples can be found in several other countries. Clearly, sanctions and the NordStream’s destruction have made Europe’s energy situation difficult enough to raise living costs, convincing European governments to roll back at least some environmental measures and dampen their enthusiasm for promoting global climate alarmism.

This retreat by European nations will be compounded by the fact that, starting in 2025, the United States will likely be governed by Donald Trump, who holds a critical stance toward climate alarmism and promises to intensify fracking for hydrocarbon extraction in the country. This is corroborated by the nominations of Chris Wright as Secretary of Energy and Lee Zeldin to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

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Plimer

 

 

1 million

 

 

Frens
https://twitter.com/i/status/1862869429555769795

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Jan 252024
 
 January 25, 2024  Posted by at 9:46 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  59 Responses »


Amedeo Modigliani Elvira Resting at a Table 1919

 

Texas Governor Defies Biden (RT)
The United States Has No Borders (Paul Craig Roberts)
Israel Loses Control Of Its Borders (Harb)
Ukraine A ‘Terrorist State’ – Senior Russian MP (RT)
Time For West To Realize It Is Helping Nazis – Top Russian MP (RT)
French Mercenaries Dying in Ukraine (SCF)
The Plan For Reviving Donetsk (Helmer)
US Has Lost Race for Hypersonic, Directed Energy Weapons – Senator (Sp.)
Moscow Won’t Beg ‘Uncle Sam’ For Forgiveness – Lavrov (RT)
Court Declares Trudeau’s Crackdown on the Truckers to be Unlawful (Turley)
70% of Nikki Haley Voters Not Registered Republicans (BB)
Alaska Airlines Finds Loose Bolts On “Many” Boeing Jets (RT)
Satan’s Agent: The World Economic Forum (Paul Craig Roberts)

 

 

 

 

Tucker CA


https://twitter.com/i/status/1750271296716620250
https://twitter.com/i/status/1750307168971022359

 

 

 

 

Kamala

 

 

Gorka

 

 

 

 

Elon BBC

 

 

NATO
https://twitter.com/i/status/1749862196677333308

 

 

 

 

 

 

He appears to defy the Supreme Court as well.

“Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, and Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte all announced that they stand with Texas and Gov. Greg Abbott.”

Note: immigration is now the no.1 issue for US voters.

Texas Governor Defies Biden (RT)

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has refused to back down in his border-security row with US President Joe Biden’s administration, arguing that regardless of this week’s Supreme Court ruling in Washington’s favor, his duty to protect his constituents “supersedes” any federal laws. “The federal government has broken the compact between the United States and the states,” Abbott said on Wednesday in a statement. “The executive branch of the United States has a constitutional duty to enforce federal laws protecting states, including immigration laws on the books right now. President Biden has refused to enforce those laws and has even violated them.” As a result, Abbott claimed, more than 6 million illegal aliens have crossed into the US since Biden took office three years ago – exceeding the populations of all but 17 states – causing “unprecedented harm on the people all across the United States.”

The federal government’s failure to fulfill its constitutional duty has triggered a constitutional right of self-defense reserved to the state, he added. “I have already declared an invasion… to invoke Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself,” the Republican governor said. “That authority is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary.” Abbott issued the statement two days after the Supreme Court ruled that federal Border Patrol agents must be allowed to remove the concertina wire that the state had installed to prevent illegal aliens from crossing its border. The dispute escalated earlier this month when the Texas National Guard seized control of a park at a key border-crossing point and blocked federal officers from accessing the site.

The Texas National Guard and state troopers will continue working to secure the border, based on the state’s right to defend itself in lieu of the federal government doing its job, Abbott said. The Texas Military Department, which includes the state’s National Guard units, issued a statement on Tuesday pledging to “hold the line” to prevent illegal border crossings. “We remain resolute in our actions to secure our border, preserve the rule of law and protect the sovereignty of our state.” US Representative Chip Roy, a Texas Republican, applauded Abbott’s decision to fight Biden on the border crisis. “Washington is forcing our hand,” he said of Monday’s Supreme Court ruling. He added, “Consider that we are a nation so unserious and broken that we are paying Border Patrol to secure the border but will pay them instead to cut razor wire… to stop Texas from trying to do what Border Patrol’s core mission is.”

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“..We often hear that the Supreme Court is a Republican court, but in actual fact it is a Tower of Babel Court committed to the total destruction of the United States as a nation..”

The United States Has No Borders (Paul Craig Roberts)

I don’t know if Americans have any comprehension of what is happening to their country. I think not. I think most Americans are lost in their insouciance and in their comfortable myths about the greatness and freedom of their country. Flag waving patriots who can believe no evil of their country are the easiest to tyrannize. A plethora of July 4ths and Memorial Days have done the job. Americans are upset about foreign borders such as Ukraine’s and Israel’s, but even those few who try can do nothing about America’s own totally undefended borders. Texas tried to do something, but the US Supreme Court just ruled that Texas cannot protect its borders or the borders of the United States. The Supreme Court, ruling of course in line with the tyrant Abe Lincoln’s destruction of states rights, said the Biden Regime can destroy the fence Texas built to protect Texas’ and America’s borders.

There you have it. The so-called “civil war” did not only destroy the Confederate States of America. Lincoln’s war also destroyed the United States of America when it destroyed states’ rights. The 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court forbids Texas from protecting its borders, and thereby the borders of the United States, from being overrun by immigrant-invaders. We often hear that the Supreme Court is a Republican court, but in actual fact it is a Tower of Babel Court committed to the total destruction of the United States as a nation. What the Supreme Court, like the Biden Regime, the whore media, the anti-American Woke universities, The Rino Republicans, and the Democrat attorneys general and prosecutors are creating is a non-nation, a tower of babel that has no common interests, no common morals, no common religion, and no common agenda. This is the SATANIC CURSE of “diversity and multiculturalism.”

How did Americans fall for a program designed FOR THEIR OWN DESTRUCTION?! They fell for it because they are generous and weak-minded. The Daily Caller reports: “federal Border Patrol agents began cutting wire fences that, among other uses, helped channel individuals— unlawful migrants and U.S. citizens alike—to a lawful border crossing at a port of entry,” Texas Solicitor General Aaron Nielson wrote. “Border Patrol began this practice of destroying Texas’s property, according to the district court’s findings, in order to ‘facilitate the surge of migrants into Eagle Pass,’ using boats to ‘literally usher’ people across illegally.” In other words, the Biden Regime cut the fence in order to allow entry into the US that could not be monitored. The fence was in place to insure that immigrant-invaders had to pass through lawful border crossings, where their numbers are allegedly recorded.

But this is not enough for the Biden Regime which is intent on replacing America’s white population, which once constituted a nation, with a Tower of Babel. Why are the Biden Regime, the Democrats, the Rino Republicans, the universities, the media, the corporations, and alleged human rights organizations so determined to deprive Americans of a cohesive nation and to replace the American nation with a Tower of Babel in which there is no common culture and no common values? If white Americans are actually sufficiently braindead to have voted Biden Democrats into office, the dumbshits have committed self-suicide. People this stupid cannot expect to survive. Yesterday I got a message from the US Department of Health and Human Services. It was about Medicare. It was in 30 foreign languages.

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“..widely spun myths of a “promised land,” a “land without a people,” the “only democracy in the Middle East,” and the “only secure place for Jews in the world.”

Israel Loses Control Of Its Borders (Harb)

Israel once reigned supreme on the back of some immovable narratives: widely spun myths of a “promised land,” a “land without a people,” the “only democracy in the Middle East,” and the “only secure place for Jews in the world.” Today, those lofty soundbites lie in tatters, with the occupation state reeling from an unprecedented blow to its foundational ideas. This transformation has unfolded with unexpected intensity since the 7 October Al-Aqsa Flood resistance operation and Israel’s devastating, genocidal war on Gaza. But it is not just the challenge of narratives that has Israel on its back feet. For the first time in its 76-year history, Israel’s entire security calculations have been turned upside down: the occupation state is today grappling with buffer zones inside Israel. In past wars, it was Tel Aviv that established these “security zones” inside enemy territory — advancing Israel’s strategic geography, evacuating Arab populations near their state border areas, and fortifying its own borders.

This shift can be attributed to various factors, including vulnerabilities within the so-called “Arab Ring States” (Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon). Throughout its history, Israel has consistently exerted military and political dominance, enforcing security measures on neighboring states, with the unconditional backing of allies like the US and Britain. But in this current war, Tel Aviv is slowly understanding that the equations and calculations of military confrontation have fundamentally changed — a process that began in 2000 when the Lebanese resistance, Hezbollah, forced Israel to withdraw from most occupied territories in southern Lebanon. Today, Israel is horrified to find itself retreating from direct confrontation lines with its arch-enemies in Gaza and Lebanon. The formidable capabilities of the resistance now include drones, rockets, targeted projectiles, tunnels, and spanking new shock tactics, casting doubt on the feasibility of Israeli settlers remaining safe in any of Israel’s border perimeters.

There is now one common refrain among settlers in the north and south of occupied Palestine: “We will not return unless security is restored on the border.” But prospects for their return appear elusive at present. The Israeli Defense Ministry, which pledged a swift and decisive war to safeguard its settlers over 100 days ago, is now actively devising plans to shelter approximately 100,000 people along the northern border, deeper inside its territory. This measure could involve evacuating settlements that may come under fire during any future military escalation with Hezbollah in Lebanon. This situation implies three critical outcomes: any immediate return of settlers remains unlikely, additional evacuations are anticipated, and numerous Israeli families – in the interim – may establish permanent settlements in other, more secure locations at a much further distance from the borders with southern Lebanon and the Gaza envelope.

Channel 13

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“..there had been another IL-76 carrying 80 more Ukrainian POWs in the sky at the time of the incident. This plane was turned around after the crash..”

Ukraine A ‘Terrorist State’ – Senior Russian MP (RT)

Ukraine should be designated as a terrorist state, and the government in Kiev should be branded a terrorist cell, the head of the State Duma Defense Committee Andrey Kartapolov has said, following the crash of an IL-76 military aircraft in Russia’s Belgorod Region. Earlier on Wednesday, the Russian military transport plane crashed near the village of Yablonovo, around 90km from the Ukrainian border. It was carrying 65 captured Ukrainian military personnel for a prisoner swap, as well as six crew members and three people accompanying the POWs. It is believed that there were no survivors.

According to Kartapolov, Kiev was well aware of who this plane was transporting and accused the Ukrainian forces of shooting down the aircraft using what he claimed were “three Patriot or Iris-T air defense missiles.” He also noted that there had been another IL-76 carrying 80 more Ukrainian POWs in the sky at the time of the incident. This plane was turned around after the crash, the MP said. Regarding the exact details of the incident, Kartapolov said “specialists will figure this out later,” but noted that Kiev had demonstrated an unbelievable degree of cynicism by destroying its own soldiers.

“There can be no negotiations with these ‘people,’” he said, calling on the international community to open its eyes and realize who it is trying to help. Ukrainian media have also reported that the country’s military destroyed the plane, citing government sources. Ukrainskaya Pravda, however, claimed that the aircraft had been transporting S-300 air defense missiles rather than prisoners. Some time after its initial report, the newspaper removed the reference to Kiev’s role in the incident, stating only that its military sources had confirmed the crash.

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The Ukrainskaya Pravda newspaper first said the plane was filled with missiles. That piece was swiftly deleted.

Time For West To Realize It Is Helping Nazis – Top Russian MP (RT)

US and German lawmakers must finally realize that by sending weapons to Kiev, they are helping a “Nazi regime” that has stooped to knowingly killing dozens of its own prisoners of war, Russian State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin said on Wednesday. The lawmaker’s comments came shortly after the Russian Defense Ministry reported the crash of an IL-76 cargo aircraft carrying 65 captured Ukrainian service members, as well as several crew and accompanying personnel, in Belgorod Region bordering Ukraine. The soldiers were being transported to the area to be exchanged, officials said. Russian MP Andrey Kartapolov claimed that Kiev knew about the impending exchange and the flight route, but attacked the plane anyway.

He stated that the IL-76 had been downed by three missiles fired from either a US-made Patriot or German-made IRIS-T air defense system, and suggested that further prisoner exchanges were out of the question for the time being. Commenting on the tragedy, Volodin advised the Russian parliament to draft an appeal to the US Congress and German Bundestag, so that those lawmakers could “finally understand who they are funding.” “This is a Nazi regime, nurtured by [US President Joe] Biden, [French President Emmanuel] Macron, [German Chancellor Olaf] Scholz… they must understand their responsibility,” he added, urging Western legislators to impeach the aforementioned leaders.

Volodin claimed that Kiev had shot down its own troops in mid-flight: “Their mothers, wives, and children were waiting for them. They also killed our pilots… defenseless, who were on a humanitarian mission, using American and German missiles.” Russia has repeatedly condemned Western arms deliveries to Ukraine, arguing that they only prolong the conflict. Officials in Moscow have also said that Kiev is actively using Western-supplied munitions to target civilian infrastructure both in Donbass and elsewhere.

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“..these non-Ukrainian citizens are not protected by international humanitarian law and that Moscow has already made it clear that, if captured, they will be judged as neo-Nazi mercenaries..”

French Mercenaries Dying in Ukraine (SCF)

Recently, Russian forces bombed military facilities in Kharkov, killing more than sixty foreign mercenaries, most of them French. The case gained great attention in the media for showing the high participation of foreign troops in hostilities against Russia, which makes it clear that NATO countries are participating in the conflict in an intense way, not only with the mere sending of money and weapons.The incident in Kharkov resumed discussions on the topic of the presence of foreign mercenaries on Ukrainian soil. Since the beginning of the special military operation, non-Ukrainian citizens have often died on the battlefield when fighting on Kiev’s side. Russia has already made it clear that eliminating enemy mercenary troops is one of its top priorities, which is why attacks like this recent one will continue to happen until foreigners stop arriving in Ukraine.

There are several reasons why mercenary soldiers enlist to fight in Ukraine. There are those militants who are ideologically committed to the ultranationalist ideology of the Kiev regime, who join the Ukrainian forces in “solidarity” with the neo-Nazi dictatorship. There are those ordinary citizens, mainly from emerging countries, who are attracted by the opportunity of a job in the military field, being induced to enlist. And there are also professionals from the private military sector who are hired by the Ukrainian state or Western countries to conduct operations in Ukraine. All these foreign troops play a vital role in the Western-Ukrainian war efforts. Foreigners help compensate Kiev for its losses, as they replace native fighters who perish in combat. At the same time, these soldiers, especially those from NATO countries, help the Western bloc acquire real direct combat experience with Russian forces – preparing the alliance for a possible future scenario of total war.

Currently, the Atlantic military alliance cannot send official troops to Ukraine, as this would represent the start of a direct war with Moscow. The real meaning of the conflict in Ukraine is precisely the use of Kiev as a proxy to wage war against Russia, however this could change in the future. As Ukraine rapidly loses and anti-Russian paranoia in the West continues to grow, it is possible that the situation will become out of control at some point. In this sense, one way for Western countries to prepare is by sending unofficial troops to the Ukrainian battlefield, where frictions with the Russians are already occurring. These soldiers tend to pass on field experience and data to officers in their countries, which is why they must be considered especially dangerous, with their elimination being a priority for Moscow.

However, one detail that draws attention in the recent case of Kharkov is the strong presence of French citizens among the mercenaries. In fact, there are undoubtedly many French nationals fighting for the Ukrainian regime. Last year, Paris’ intelligence admitted that at least 400 French fighters were on the Ukrainian front – around thirty of them being known neo-Nazi criminals. Considering that these are public data exposed by the French government itself, it is possible to say that the real number may be much higher. Paris is believed to be secretly encouraging large numbers of mercenaries to join Kiev’s forces, especially after political events in the African Sahel. With the recent wave of pro-Russian revolutions in African countries, the French sphere of influence on that continent has been severely diminished.

Paris appears to be trying to “compensate” for its frustration in Africa with massive support for Kiev, sending large numbers of mercenaries to defend the regime. This is also the opinion of Stevan Gajic, an analyst at the Institute of European Studies in Belgrade, who recently said in an interview that Macron is “hysterical” about Russia. Gajic believes that the French president’s recent speeches in Paris and Davos, calling for a “victory” against Russia, show how fanaticized he is in his anti-Russian hatred. Gajic stated that Paris is “especially frustrated” after the wave of revolutions in Africa and that he thinks “that’s another motive for such feverish support of the Ukrainian cause, and NATO’s cause against Russia”.

However, any kind of support for the Ukrainian regime is becoming embarrassing for the West itself. Just as NATO’s weapons are destroyed every day on the battlefield, foreign mercenaries are frequently targeted and neutralized. Instead of “wearing down” Russia or training its citizens for direct war in the future, the West is only losing influence and being demoralized. Furthermore, with massive deaths on the front lines, the tendency is for fewer and fewer mercenaries to accept fighting for Kiev. It is also important to remember that these non-Ukrainian citizens are not protected by international humanitarian law and that Moscow has already made it clear that, if captured, they will be judged as neo-Nazi mercenaries – in the same way that has happened with militants from fascist organizations such as the Azov Battalion.

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“..the sources are considering importing North Koreans to fill the manpower gap..”

The Plan For Reviving Donetsk (Helmer)

There is no lack of confidence in Donetsk that the war will be won, but no conviction when exactly that will be. A Ukrainian heavy artillery salvo hit the Kirovsky district market, on the western outskirts of Donetsk city on Sunday, killing at least 27 people, and wounding about as many. The New York Times reported falsely “it was not possible to independently confirm which side launched the strike.” The reaction in Donetsk, and also in Moscow, is that the incident triggers serious questioning of how the Russian military operations can be failing still to drive long-range Ukrainian artillery, rockets and missiles far enough westwards to protect the civilians of Donetsk region; and also the three other accession regions of expanded Donbass; as well as the Russian border regions to the north of Belgorod, Bryansk, and Kursk.

The daily operations briefing and bulletin from the Ministry of Defense in Moscow are reporting exceptionally high casualty rates for the Ukrainian side – 860 last Thursday; 1,005 on Monday; 700 on Tuesday. The bulletin, which is blocked on the internet in many of the NATO allied states, also reveals a rising toll on the US and NATO-supplied long-range guns, and a changing ratio for Russian army operations each day from defence to offence. Still, sources in Donetsk and Moscow acknowledge that although the pace and impact of Russian operations along the line of contact have been growing in recent days, the east-to-west depth of the demilitarized zone required for long-term security remains a hope and military ambition — not yet the reality on the ground, or in the economy of Donetsk.

Donetsk business sources say they are actively planning for the reconstruction of the region’s mining and metals fabrication industries, and they are negotiating terms of financial assistance for both with the federal authorities, as well as the regional administration. The sources said this week they are sure that in the plans now being discussed there will be no return of the Ukrainian oligarchs who controlled Donetsk’s economy in the past, especially Rinat Akhmetov, Igor Kolomoisky, and Victor Pinchuk. The Donetsk sources said the most pressing problem at the moment is the lack of manpower to return from the fighting to work; the sources are considering importing North Koreans to fill the manpower gap. For the longer term, the conviction in Donetsk is that there will also be no return of the criminal gangs who had dominated the local economy in parallel with, and accommodated by the oligarchs. “From the Russian side,” said a business figure in the steel industry, “I am sure the recovery and reconstruction will be done with a heavy hand. No mafia.”

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“..That is like using a howitzer to shoot a duck..”

US Has Lost Race for Hypersonic, Directed Energy Weapons – Senator (Sp.)

The United States has already lost the race to develop hypersonic and directed energy weapons to its rivals, Independent Senator Angus King said during a hearing of the US Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday. “We are woefully behind on the issue of directed energy,” King said. “On hypersonics and directed energy, we have lost the race or we are badly losing the race. We have a lot of catching up to do. This should be a hair on fire catching up priority.” In the Red Sea, the US Navy was currently forced to use multi-million dollar missiles to shoot down inexpensive drones fired by the Houthi rebels in Yemen that cost less than 1% of the price of the US systems, King said.

“The missiles we are using are costing $2 million to $4 million each. That is like using a howitzer to shoot a duck,” King added. Earlier on Tuesday, the National Defense Industrial Association and the Emerging Technologies Institute said in a new report that the Biden administration and the Defense Department had failed to give US business and industry the clear direction and leadership it needs to develop directed energy weapons systems and as a result it will not be able to produce such weapons for a long time to come.

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“Moscow bears no responsibility for US-Russia relations reaching an all-time low, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said..”

Moscow Won’t Beg ‘Uncle Sam’ For Forgiveness – Lavrov (RT)

Moscow bears no responsibility for US-Russia relations reaching an all-time low, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said, insisting that the burden of restoring them lies solely with Washington. Relations between the US and Russia went into a tailspin after the start of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022, with Moscow condemning Washington and other Western countries for introducing unprecedented sanctions and sending weapons to Kiev. The Kremlin argues the deliveries will only prolong the conflict but not change its outcome. Another major issue in bilateral relations has been NATO’s creeping expansion toward Russia’s borders, which Moscow views as an existential threat. Russia has said that Ukraine’s desire to join the US-led military bloc was one of the main reasons for the current conflict.

In an interview with CBS News on Monday, when asked about the potential for improving relations between Moscow and Washington amid the stand-off over Ukraine, Lavrov stressed that Russia would not take the initiative to repair them because it was not his country that spoiled them in the first place. We are not going to… run to Washington: ‘Uncle Sam, please forgive us. We were bad boys.’ We have nothing to complain about. The minister stressed that the ties between the two powers were shattered by “those who invented the Russian threat” and “those who ignored huge amount of goodwill shown by President Vladimir Putin during his first two terms.” According to Lavrov, Western policymakers decided that the Russian leader was “so nice,” and tried to “keep him in [their] pocket,” which was a mistake.

Lavrov went on to regret that the current generation of politicians in Washington had seemingly drawn no lessons from what he described as “unacceptable policies which the United States started to promote” in the early 1990s. The minister’s comments come after Putin admitted last month that he was a “naive” person early in his political career because he believed that there was no fundamental reason for Russia and the West to be at odds after the collapse of the Soviet Union. However, he said that he later realized that Western countries were seeking to bring about the partition of Russia into several entities in order to gain more global influence.

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“The characterization of political critics as terrorists has long been a signature of authoritarian governments..”

Court Declares Trudeau’s Crackdown on the Truckers to be Unlawful (Turley)

Two years ago, I wrote a column denouncing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s use of a counter-terrorism law to shut down the Freedom Convoy trucker protests as an authoritarian attack on free speech. Now, a Canadian court has agreed and ruled that the use of the Emergencies Act was unlawful and “unreasonable.” Despite Trudeau’s attacks on civil liberties, he remains a favorite of the media as an iconic figure on the left. Various civil liberties groups have opposed the iron-handed measures of Trudeau, including The Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the the Canadian Constitution Foundation. The characterization of political critics as terrorists has long been a signature of authoritarian governments. The Canadian Parliament actually extended those powers, dismissing civil liberties concerns. Fortunately, despite the actions of Trudeau and the Parliament, there is an independent court system in Canada.

The use of the Emergencies Act allowed the government to arrest the leaders of the Freedom Convoy, freeze bank accounts of protesters, and seize donations of other citizens. Trudeau simply declared that the protesters were “threats to the security of Canada that are so serious as to be a national emergency.” In his ruling, Justice Richard Mosley wrote: “I have concluded that the decision to issue the Proclamation does not bear the hallmarks of reasonableness – justification, transparency and intelligibility – and was not justified in relation to the relevant factual and legal constraints that were required to be taken into consideration.” Trudeau merely cited the potential for violence without any compelling support for an imminent risk of violence. The court declared: “The potential for serious violence, or being unable to say that there was no potential for serious violence was, of course, a valid reason for concern. But in my view, it did not satisfy the test required to invoke the Act particularly as there was no evidence of a similar “hardened cell” elsewhere in the country, only speculation.”

In many ways, the court stated the obvious, but this was an obvious point that other courts and a majority in Parliament ignored: “I agree with the Applicants that the scope of the Regulations was overbroad in so far as it captured people who simply wanted to join in the protest by standing on Parliament Hill carrying a placard. It is not suggested that they would have been the focus of enforcement efforts by the police. However, under the terms of the Regulations, they could have been subject to enforcement actions as much as someone who had parked their truck on Wellington Street and otherwise behaved in a manner that could reasonably be expected to lead to a breach of the peace. [309] One aspect of free expression is the right to express oneself in certain public spaces. By tradition, such places become places of protected expression…To the extent that peaceful protestors did not participate in the actions of those disrupting the peace, their freedom of expression was infringed.”

Bravo.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1750227176773841104

https://twitter.com/i/status/1750299455532798201

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“..about 7 in 10 said they were registered as undeclared prior to Tuesday.”

70% of Nikki Haley Voters Not Registered Republicans (BB)

Nikki Haley relied heavily on the support of Independents and Democrats in the New Hampshire primary yet still lost by wide margins. Of Haley voters in the Granite State, CNN said, “about 7 in 10 said they were registered as undeclared prior to Tuesday.” CNN relied on an exit poll to make its shocking statement. New Hampshire’s loose requirements allow for voters to cross over, while future Republican caucuses and primaries will consist overwhelmingly of registered Republicans. Trump crushed Haley in the New Hampshire primary by double digits with results still outstanding. The Associated Press called the New Hampshire results within three minutes. In Iowa, where Trump won by a historic thirty percent, it took the Associated Press 31 minutes to call the race. Trump’s path to the nomination seems all but inevitable after his crushing victory. Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Debbie Fischer (R-NE) endorsed Trump within minutes of his victory.

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How to save Boeing this time? Who still feels safe in a 737 MAX? Also, a few days ago a wheel came off a 757 on a runway just seconds before take off.

Alaska Airlines Finds Loose Bolts On “Many” Boeing Jets (RT)

Alaska Airlines, the US air carrier whose Boeing 737 MAX 9 jet suffered a midair blowout earlier this month, triggering a nationwide grounding of the model for safety inspections, has confirmed that it has found loose bolts on “many” of the planes in its fleet. ”It makes you mad that we’re finding issues like that on brand new airplanes,” Alaska Airlines CEO Ben Minicucci said on Tuesday in an NBC News interview. He added, “I’m more than frustrated and disappointed. I’m angry. This happened to Alaska Airlines. It happened to our guests and happened to our people.” Minicucci was referring to a January 5 flight bound for California from Portland, Oregon, that had to turn back after a door plug blew off at 16,000 feet, injuring several of the 171 passengers aboard.

The outcome could have been far worse, he said, had the seat next to the door plug not been vacant – one of just seven empty seats on the flight. “We had a guardian angel, honestly, on that airplane.” The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) responded to the near-catastrophe by grounding all Boeing 737 MAX 9 jets in the country for safety checks. The latest incident follows the temporary banning of the 737 MAX, Boeing’s top-selling airliner, by aviation regulators around the world in March 2019, after crashes in Ethiopia and Indonesia killed a combined 346 people. The planes were cleared to go back into service around two years later, following repairs to their flight control systems. Minicucci said Alaska Airlines will send auditors to scrutinize the quality-control systems at Boeing to ensure that all of the jets it has ordered from the company are safe to fly. He added that the carrier will reconsider plans to buy a newer version of the 737, the long-delayed MAX 10, from Boeing.

Boeing issued a statement to NBC acknowledging that “we have let down our airline customers and are deeply sorry for the significant disruption to them, their employees and their passengers.” The massive defense contractor added that it’s taking steps to get the 737 MAX 9s back into service and improve its quality performance. Like Minicucci, United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby is rethinking plans to buy more Boeing jets following the latest safety scare. United also detected loose bolts when it performed safety inspections of its grounded 737s. “I think the MAX 9 grounding is probably the straw that broke the camel’s back for us,” Kirby said on Tuesday in a CNBC interview. He added that Boeing needs “real action” to restore its reputation for quality.

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“..Russia, China, and Iran view the WEF as an ally in the destruction of the West. This is a mistake..”

Satan’s Agent: The World Economic Forum (Paul Craig Roberts)

The World Economic Forum is the worst source of disinformation in the world. Even the name is disinformation as it is not a world forum representing the world. It is a group of stupid American and European corporate executives who have been conned by Klaus Schwab, the world’s worst ego-manic, into believing that you don’t count until you are a member and devote of the WEF. Schwab has sold the executive class the line that WEF attendees are members of the most prestigious country club and are members of a privileged caste that exists so far above “useless eaters” that the goal of culling the world population by 7.5 billion people is not shameful. At the recent WEF meeting in Davos, Switzerland, Schwab and his devotees took a hit broadside from Jaier Milei, the newly elected president of Argentina.

Milei told them that the Western world is in danger because the West’s leaders had abandoned freedom and adopted collectivism. Milei was talking about the WEF. Either he is a very brave man or he did not realize to whom he was speaking. I expect that he will have an “airplane accident” or be pushed out of office by some concocted charges from Washington. Washington’s diminishing influence and power has encouraged other long silent voices in Latin America to speak up. The distinguished Peruvian, Dr. Victor Andres Belaunde Gutierrez, took up Milei’s theme and unloaded on the WEA groupies as disgraceful and shameful: “The demonstrations of frivolity and intellectual mediocrity that the famous forum emits are increasingly scandalous. For example, the impression that the prostitute traffickers make during these meetings – why not some orgies while we save the world with 2100 euro-a-night women?”

“The pitiful spectacle of a supposed witch, sorceress, or God knows what, emitting sounds and spitting on the faces of some panelists, is decidedly pathetic. I cannot conceive how a person who has any notion of self-respect, would tolerate being a part of pranks of that caliber. Can people who willingly participate and applaud such farces be recognized as serious?” “Have they no shame? Is it that their need to belong to the cool people of the planet is so powerful? – Is it that the cool and sophisticated is now inevitably ridiculous and shameful?” The WEA is an anti-human cult devoted to the destruction of freedom and human life. In my opinion, it would be wondrous if the next time the collection of stupid and evil beings assemble, Russia, China, or Iran would launch a missile attack that completely destroys the WEF.

They won’t because Russia, China, and Iran view the WEF as an ally in the destruction of the West. This is a mistake, because the Russian, Chinese, and Iranian populations are also fated to be culled. Judging by the effort of the World Health Organization, the WEF’s ally, to centralize in its hands the health protocols of the entire world and its forecast of a doomsday pandemic, the culling device will be a biowarfare pathogen released on the world. No Western legislature is doing anything to shut down the illegal labs. As Russia knows where many of the illegal biowarfare laboratories are located, Russia should take them out with missile strikes. Evil has to be confronted and overcome or evil will prevail. Evil has already recruited the corporate and political leadership of the Western world. How much more advantage shall we permit Evil before we are overcome?

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Newman

 

 

Dead vax

 

 

 

 

Assange Stone

 

 

Love cats
https://twitter.com/i/status/1750145213509578961

 

 

Love
https://twitter.com/i/status/1750170343036088672

 

 

TigerIce
https://twitter.com/i/status/1750196777662230833

 

 

King in the mist

 

 


The Karakoram Highway, connecting Pakistan to China, is one of the highest paved roads in the world, at maximum elevation of 4,714 m. It is often referred to as the Eighth Wonder of the World.

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Aug 242022
 
 August 24, 2022  Posted by at 9:00 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  66 Responses »


Edouard Vuillard The flowered dress 1891

 

Ukraine Will Seize Crimea ‘By Any Means Necessary’ – Zelensky (RT)
No-Fly Zone (Schryver)
Evidence Of Ukrainian Shelling Of Zaporozhye Provided To UN
In Memoriam: Daria Dugina (Batiushka)
German Military Stock At Its Limit After Supplying Ukraine – Der Spiegel (RT)
World in the Process of Bankrupting – Bill Holter (USAW)
China’s Growth Sacrifice (Stephen S. Roach)
Biden’s War On Natural Gas Will Kill (Shellenberger)
Norway Wants Facebook Fined For Illegal Data Transfers (Pol.eu)
Rand Paul Lays Groundwork For Potential Fauci Probe (RT)
Twitter Whistleblower: Company Hid “Extreme, Egregious, Deficiencies” (ZH)
Trudeau Building Huge New Facility For Ministry of Climate Change (TCS)
Study Links Genetic Code of Covids Spike Protein To Moderna Patent
More Than 70% Of Pubs Do Not Expect To Survive Winter As Energy Costs Soar (G.)

 

 

 

 

White House Lied
https://twitter.com/i/status/1562189675791466498

 

 

Tucker Atlas

 

 

 

 

Yeah, Russia’s going to give up its warmwater port after 95% of Crimeans voted to join them. Zelensky, too, wants to fight until the last Ukrainian.

Ukraine Will Seize Crimea ‘By Any Means Necessary’ – Zelensky (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky announced on Tuesday that Ukraine will take the Russian territory of Crimea, by military force if necessary and without consulting any country, including Kiev’s Western backers. The Ukrainian military’s strikes on the peninsula have thus far been limited. Speaking at the so-called ‘Crimea Platform’, a Ukrainian-organized gathering of 60 nations and international organizations that back Kiev’s claim of sovereignty over Crimea, Zelensky said that “Ukraine is strong and powerful enough” to make the idea of a “Ukrainian Crimea” a reality. “We will return Crimea by any means that we consider correct, without consulting with other countries,” Zelensky said, according to Strana.ua, a Ukrainian news outlet.

“I know that Crimea is with Ukraine, [and] is waiting for us to return. We need to win the fight against Russian aggression. Therefore, we need to free Crimea from occupation.” Considered Russian land since imperial times, Crimea was an autonomous republic within the Soviet Union until it was appended to the Ukrainian SSR by Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev in 1954 for logistical reasons. The peninsula remained in Ukrainian hands after the fall of the USSR, until its people voted overwhelmingly to join Russia in 2014, after the Kiev government rejected a number of plebiscites during the 1990s aiming at re-establishing Crimea as an independent republic. The US-led NATO alliance considers Crimea to be “illegally annexed” Ukrainian territory, and has demanded that Moscow return the region to Ukrainian control.

A US official told Politico last week that Washington has given Ukraine its blessing to strike targets of its choosing in Crimea. Kiev’s military has carried out a number of these strikes in recent weeks, including a drone attackon the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol on Saturday. Explosions at military sites on the peninsula have been blamed by Russia on Ukrainian “sabotage,” but Kiev has neither officially confirmed nor denied responsibility. With its forces tied up fighting Russian and allied troops in Donbass, Ukraine has relied on drones to carry out its sporadic attacks on Crimea. The aim of these attacks is “not military, but psychological,” Crimean official Oleg Kryuchkov stated after Saturday’s strike, adding that owing to their small payload of explosives, drones are unable to inflict extensive damage.

Zelensky ruled out the prospect of a ceasefire on Tuesday, telling the summit that Ukraine would not freeze the current front line to “calm down Russia.” Moscow has repeatedly blamed Kiev for the breakdown of peace talks earlier this year, with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accusing Western governments of “keeping Ukraine from any constructive steps”toward a peace settlement.

Roger Waters Ukraine

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Sounds impressive.

No-Fly Zone (Schryver)

I’ve become increasingly intrigued by the fact that western military analysts – even among those not burdened with the epidemic strain of virulent antipathy towards Russia – have not spoken much (if at all) about what I consider to be quite arguably the most impressive revelation of the war in Ukraine. In addition to imposing a virtual “you fly, you die” rule against the Ukrainian Air Force and the various drones they employ, the Russians are, with a formidable array of air defense systems of varying capacities, routinely shooting down: ballistic missiles, MLRS rockets, HARMS anti-radiation missiles, and even artillery shells. They are also effectively employing a variety of electronic counter measures to: block signals to GPS-equipped ordnance; spoof the targeting radars of both satellites and radar-equipped missiles, and otherwise confuse the variety of targeting technologies employed in both older Soviet and American weapons being fielded by Ukrainian forces.

This is an absolutely unprecedented achievement on the battlefield. Neither Israeli nor American systems have ever demonstrated the capability to routinely shoot down advanced missiles or rockets of any type. Iraqi Scud missiles defeated the American Patriot missile defense system, as have much cruder missiles fielded by the Houthis in Yemen against Saudi targets ostensibly protected by American-provided US air defense systems. More relevantly, Iranian missiles have proven to be much more formidable than was previously believed. And although it remains uncertain (or purposely unacknowledged) that US air defense systems were in the vicinity at the time, Iran dropped a couple dozen of their home-made ballistic missiles with 1000 lb. warheads within 5-meter circles at the US air base at Ayn al-Asad in Iraq during their “Vengeance for Soleimani” strike in January 2020.

This is particularly embarrassing for the US, because they had prior warning, hours in advance, that a missile strike would be launched against Ayn al-Asad. Even in strictly controlled tests against advanced ballistic missiles, the successful interception rate for US Patriot and THAAD (TerminalHigh Altitude Air Defense) systems falls far short of impressive. And yet, after a handful of successful early strikes by Ukrainian forces, the Russians have now shot down the overwhelming majority of the Soviet-era Tochka-U ground-to-ground missiles Ukraine has fired over the course of the past six months. The Tochka-U is a reasonably formidable weapon. Mach 5.3; 150 meter accuracy; variable warhead. But other than a single ammo dump strike, there have been no successful Tochka-U hits on Russian targets since the third week of March 2022. Dozens have been shot down.

By comparison, the US ATACMS missile is almost twice as large as the Tochka-U, with a longer range, but considerably slower speed (Mach 3+). There is little reason to suppose the ATACMS can succeed where the Tochka-U has failed – at least if it is used against targets covered by Russian air defenses. But, of course, it’s not just the ballistic missiles Russia is shooting down. They have been shooting down Ukrainian artillery rockets from the beginning of the war. And most recently, they are shooting down an impressive percentage of the HIMARS GPS-guided GMLRS rockets when they challenge air defense coverage areas. And just in the past week, as yet unconfirmed evidence has emerged of a US HARMS (high-velocity anti-radar missile system) missile shot down by Russian air defenses. I suspect we’ll see additional evidences of that capability in weeks to come.

But what must be understood is that no military on the planet had, previous to the war in Ukraine, consistently demonstrated the capability to do what Russia has been doing routinely for the past six months: imposing from the ground what amounts to a reasonable facsimile of a no-fly zone over those areas of the battlefield where it has chosen to mass its air defenses.

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“..Moscow had given assent to the International Atomic Energy Agency to visit the Zaporozhye NPP back in June, before the Ukrainian drone, artillery and rocket attacks began.”

Evidence Of Ukrainian Shelling Of Zaporozhye Provided To UN

Russia has submitted photographic evidence of Ukrainian attacks on the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant to the UN Security Council and the General Assembly, ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said on Tuesday. He also briefed the Security Council on the most recent attacks, some of which involved NATO-supplied weapons, and insisted that Russia does not use the site as a military base. “Despite the false statements of the Kiev regime and its backers, Russia has not placed heavy weapons on the territory of the ZNPP and does not use the station for military purposes,”Nebenzia said during the council’s emergency session on Tuesday afternoon. “The Russian Ministry of Defense is ready to provide the IAEA with high-resolution images, which show that weapons, especially heavy ones, are not placed on the territory of the station,” he added.

In addition to the photographic evidence of Ukrainian shelling of the plant, Nebenzia entered into the record a timeline of strikes, named the Ukrainian artillery unit involved, and specified which strikes featured M777 howitzers given to Ukraine by the Pentagon. “It seems that our colleagues exist in some kind of their own parallel reality, in which the Russian military shells the NPP it is protecting, using American systems at that,” Nebenzia said. Contrary to insinuations by Kiev and its Western backers, Nebenzia noted, Moscow had given assent to the International Atomic Energy Agency to visit the Zaporozhye NPP back in June, before the Ukrainian drone, artillery and rocket attacks began.

Nebenzia blamed the US and its allies for tolerating “criminal” behavior by Ukraine – from the shelling of the Zaporozhye NPP to the car bomb that killed Russian journalist Darya Dugina in Moscow over the weekend, and was cheered by some NATO officials he mentioned by name. The Zaporozhye plant is located in Energodar, a city in southern Ukraine under the control of Russian troops since March. The plant’s civilian staff continued operations unhindered until the artillery attacks began in July. Kiev has denied responsibility for the attacks and accused Russia of shelling the nuclear site to discredit Ukraine, but also of placing troops and heavy weapons inside the NPP’s perimeter and thus making it a legitimate target.

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Both Dugin and Dugina are being renounced in the western press as “ultra-nationalists”. Strange term. Sort of like “America First”.

In Memoriam: Daria Dugina (Batiushka)

The news of the Western-sponsored terrorist murder of Alexander Dugin’s daughter, Daria, has shocked us all. Of course, in one sense it is no different from all the other brutal murders carried out by drone by the Obama regime, or the CIA’s disposal of countless human-beings under their puppet regimes from the Philippines to Vietnam, from Italy to Latin America, from Greece to Africa, and in many other countries over the last three generations. Nevertheless, it concerns me more personally, as I know her father. I first met the Russian Eurasianist philosopher Alexander Dugin in London in 2005. He and I were two of the four speakers at an International Conference on the European Tradition.

My approach was spiritual and so politically neutral, his approach was that of a right-wing academic. But regardless of that, we were heading in the same direction and, all the more as I was the only Orthodox priest present, we sympathised. I was able to speak to him between talks and we had a photograph taken together. Alexander went on to become quite well-known on the academic and political philosophy circuits internationally. His influence on President Putin has been much exaggerated by the ignorant and hate-filled Western media which has decided (or rather been ordered) to cast him as ‘Putin’s adviser’, but that is another story. In fact, Alexander was a theoretician. However, as such his books, articles and talks were always stimulating and thought-provoking and will continue to be so.

It is my hope and prayer that the sacrifice of his daughter, Daria, which leaves him heart-broken, as it would any father, will not make him bitter. Rather it will inspire him to purify and refine his thought further, so that his influence through her will be ever greater. Below I attach the talk I gave that day, seventeen eventful years ago. I dedicate it to Daria.

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“The capability profile of the Bundeswehr (German military) can and should temporarily take a back seat to the sustainability of Ukraine in the current critical situation. Because Ukraine’s survival is in Germany’s security policy interest..”

German Military Stock At Its Limit After Supplying Ukraine – Der Spiegel (RT)

Germany cannot deliver more weapons to Ukraine without depleting its own stocks, its defense ministry has said. Despite the military reaching the “acceptable limit” of what it can send, Chancellor Olaf Scholz is under intense pressure to keep the arms flowing to Kiev. “We went to the acceptable limit when selling Bundeswehr stocks,” a spokesman for Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht told Der Spiegelon Monday, a day after the German news outlet published a guest article from lawmakers Kristian Klinck, Sara Nanni, and Alexander Mueller calling for Germany to up its weapons deliveries to Ukraine. “The capability profile of the Bundeswehr (German military) can and should temporarily take a back seat to the sustainability of Ukraine in the current critical situation. Because Ukraine’s survival is in Germany’s security policy interest,” the trio, who represent the three parties in Germany’s coalition government, wrote.

Since the beginning of Russia’s military operation in February, Chancellor Scholz has come under persistent criticism for his apparent reluctance to gift Ukraine with the weapons it has requested. While Berlin has sent artillery pieces, shoulder-fired rockets, and anti-aircraft tanks, Ukraine has asked for more air-defense systems and an artillery radar system, both of which have not yet been shipped. Germany’s military was in a severely depleted state long before February, with a 2019 report revealing that fewer than 20% of the country’s 68 Tiger combat helicopters and fewer than 30% of its 136 Eurofighter jets were operational. The report also found that ammunition stocks were low and soldiers were missing essential gear, including boots, clothing, and bedding.

Despite Scholz announcing an ambitious program of rearmament in March, and despite the fact that the Bundeswehr’s budget has increased from €37 billion ($36 billion) in 2017 to €50 billion ($49 billion) this year, the military has not yet remedied these deficiencies. As far back as March, Lambrecht was describing the Bundeswehr’s stocks as “exhausted,” and Scholz has also had to balance his stated desire to support Ukraine’s forces with his insistence that Germany shouldn’t send equipment powerful enough to escalate the conflict. The situation is further compounded by Germany’s promises to replenish the stocks of its allies, who are sending their own stocks of heavy weapons to Ukraine in exchange for replacement equipment from Germany.

Despite these limitations, Scholz recently insisted that Berlin supplies “a lot of weapons”to Kiev, and will continue to give Ukraine “what it needs for its defense.” Scholz made these comments after retired Bundeswehr general Klaus Wittmann accused him of a lack of “leadership” and of appearing “intimidated” by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

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“All you have to do is wake up in the morning and read the news, and you know it has gotten worse than the day before. That’s day after day.”

World in the Process of Bankrupting – Bill Holter (USAW)

Precious metals expert and financial writer Bill Holter says, “nothing is getting better” and points out the proof is everywhere that we are clearly headed for a financial calamity, the likes of which we have never seen before. Holter, who is also a precious metals broker, is seeing a big pick-up in business because big money is looking for a place to hide in the physical world. Holter explains, “We are getting more orders and larger orders. I think this is natural because I think people know something is wrong, and when something is wrong, you want to get defensive. I think people are finally making the connection the world is in the process of bankrupting, and you want your capital in something that cannot bankrupt. By definition, that is gold and silver.”

Holter says evil is trying to take over everywhere. Holter contends, “The consensus is the fact that we have a 2nd Amendment and we still have guns here is the only reason they have not snapped the trap shut yet. The United States is ‘the last bastion.’ Just look at Australia. Look at New Zealand. Look at Canada. Look at Britain. Can you have guns there? No, they have taken them away. What did they do? They forced the population into lockdown. They forced the population to get the jab. The result is you are going to see the West vastly depopulated and degraded in the next 1, 2 or 5 years. They have total control over their population. Whereas, that is not the case yet in the U.S.”

Holter has long said when the overloaded debt system breaks, it will break “fast and ugly.” “Credit will dry up overnight,” and “The world runs on credit,” according to Holter. His math shows a dark time ahead even for the prepared. Holter explains, “All you have to do is wake up in the morning and read the news, and you know it has gotten worse than the day before. That’s day after day. I have talked about ‘Mad Max’ for several years. When I first started talking about it, I got all kinds of grief, and they called me a nut case. It is certainly looking more and more now as the likely scenario. It just goes back to the West and, including China, it is not in the West, but it too is extremely levered (or indebted). When you over-lever a financial system, you over-lever an economy. At some point, the only thing that can happen is something bad. It’s either default or hyperinflation of the currency to pay the debt back. As far as timing, I would be shocked if we make it through the end of this year and people would still consider the system normal.”

When the system does break, that’s when it turns “ugly.” Holter explains, “As far as how are things going to work when this thing goes down? My question would be is anything going to work? Will your bank be open? Will your broker be open? Will there be a store open or a restaurant or any place to buy goods? That gets back to Jim Sinclair’s ‘Get out of the System’ (GOTS). Become your own central banker. Stock up on the things you think you are going to need. Is it going to last two weeks or two years? It could last two years. One thing for sure, our life in the United States is going to be drastically changed to a lower standard of living. . . . You are watching the breakdown in real time.”

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“Xi’s focus on ideology speaks much more to the resurrection of Mao’s legacy than to continuity with the Deng era.”

China’s Growth Sacrifice (Stephen S. Roach)

Since the days of Deng Xiaoping, economic growth has mattered more than anything for China’s leaders. The 10% annualized hyper-growth from 1980 to 2010 was widely seen as the antidote to the relative stasis of the Mao era, when the economy grew by only about 6%. But under President Xi Jinping, the pendulum has swung back, with 6.6% average growth from 2013 to 2021 much closer to the trajectory under Mao than under Deng. Some of the slowdown was inevitable, partly reflecting the law of large numbers: Small economies are better able to sustain rapid growth rates. As China’s economy grew – from 2% of world GDP in 1980 at the time of the Deng takeoff to 15% when Xi assumed power in 2012 – an arithmetic slowdown became only a matter of time. The surprise was that it took so long to occur.

It is possible to quantify the foregone Chinese output from the slowdown. Had annual real GDP growth remained on the 10% trajectory under Xi, rather than slowing by nearly 3.5 percentage points since 2012, the Chinese economy today would be a little more than 40% larger than it is. Yet the China slowdown is far more than an arithmetic event. Three powerful forces are also at work – a structural transformation of the economy, payback for past excesses, and a profound shift in the ideological underpinnings of Chinese governance. The structural explanation puts an optimistic spin on the slowdown by framing it as the byproduct of a strategy aimed to improve the quality of economic growth. By staying the course of hyper-growth for too long, China became increasingly afflicted with the “four uns” of former Premier Wen Jiabao – an economy that was unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated, and (ultimately) unsustainable. Rebalancing was the only way out – especially if it led to greener, consumer-led, and services-intensive growth that addressed the twin goals of balance and sustainability. If slower growth was the price, it was well worth paying it.

[..] My biggest mistake was to minimize the consequences of Xi Jinping Thought. Xi’s focus on ideology speaks much more to the resurrection of Mao’s legacy than to continuity with the Deng era. Under Xi, China’s new era is more about the supremacy of the Party, with an associated emphasis on power, control, and ideological constraints on the economy. Unlike the China of Mao, when there wasn’t much growth to sacrifice, there is far more at stake today for the world’s second-largest economy. With the upcoming 20th Party Congress likely to usher in an unprecedented third five-year term for Xi, there is good reason to believe that China’s growth sacrifice has only just begun.

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‘Wait. These are 20-year investments and Biden is saying that in 5 to 10 years these investments will go bad. So what should we do?’”

Biden’s War On Natural Gas Will Kill (Shellenberger)

Over the next several years, millions of people will die from hunger-related diseases, cold temperatures, and air pollution as a direct result of natural gas shortages. All of those deaths have been going down over the last several decades. But shortages of natural gas, gas-derived fertilizers, and electricity shortages will result a reversal of those trends. And the higher-than-normal death toll will continue so long as the world fails to produce sufficient natural gas to meet global demand. President Joe Biden could prevent a significant number of those deaths but his policies restricting natural gas production and exports will increase them. The U.S. is already the largest natural gas exporter in the world and it could produce and export far more.

The problem is that the Biden administration is refusing to grant permits for production, pipelines, and export terminals. And it is working through federal agencies to discourage private sector investment in natural gas. Biden administration officials point to rising liquified natural gas (LNG) exports to Europe, provisions in the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that tie renewable energy production to oil and gas production, and a permitting reform proposal proposed by Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV), which may pass Congress and be signed by Biden at the end of September, as proof that Biden increasing natural gas supplies.

But rising LNG exports are mostly the result of policies put in place before Biden took office, IRA increased the cost of natural gas leases on federal lands without requiring a significant expansion of them, and Manchin’s permitting reform proposal currently under consideration does not amend or update any of the statutes the Biden administration has put in place, which restrict natural gas production, transport, and export. A high-level Washington, D.C.-based lobbyist for the oil and gas industry told me that, as a direct result of Biden administration policies, private sector investment in LNG is being throttled. “The LNG industry is going to investors to invest in these facilities but investors are saying, ‘Wait. These are 20-year investments and Biden is saying that in 5 to 10 years these investments will go bad. So what should we do?’”

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“Meta could also still appeal a finalized Irish decision, which would again delay the need to trigger a Facebook and Instagram blackout in Europe.”

Norway Wants Facebook Fined For Illegal Data Transfers (Pol.eu)

Facebook owner Meta Platforms should be fined for continuing to shuttle Europeans’ personal information to the United States in violation of a landmark EU court ruling, Norway’s data protection authority has told its peer regulators. “There would be little or no incentive to act in accordance” with EU data transfer laws if regulators don’t impose a fine on the U.S. tech giant, Norway’s authority Datatilsynet said in a partially redacted document obtained by POLITICO under freedom of information laws. The authority is one of a handful of European regulators responding to the Irish Data Protection Commission’s draft decision from July that orders Meta’s to cease its use of a legal instrument called standard contractual clauses (SCCs) to transfer data across the Atlantic — everything from family pictures to payroll information.

The Irish draft decision implemented a 2020 court ruling in which the European Court of Justice nixed an EU-U.S. data transfer deal called Privacy Shield and tightened requirements to use other data transfer mechanisms like SCCs because they would expose Europeans to intrusive U.S. surveillance. “Based on the facts of the case, we do not see how [Meta] could have continued its personal data transfers following the Schrems II judgment had it acted in accordance with the GDPR,” the Norwegian objection reads. It said it thought Meta’s violation of EU data transfer rules is “particularly serious.” The Norwegian document suggests that the regulator wants to go further than the Irish Data Protection Commission, which in July decided to block Meta’s EU-U.S. data transfers but made no mention of a fine for the violations.

“While orders, limitations and bans generally seek to ensure that future data processing of personal data takes place in line with the GDPR, sanctions such as administrative fines are directed towards violations in the past and carry a punitive element,” it reads. Meta has repeatedly said that a decision blocking its transfers would force it to shutter its Facebook and Instagram offerings in Europe, but a final decision is months away. The Irish regulator is required to feed other European regulators’ comments, including Norway’s, into its decision, and may have to a trigger formal dispute resolution mechanism if it can’t resolve the objections, which would delay the process by at least another month. Meta could also still appeal a finalized Irish decision, which would again delay the need to trigger a Facebook and Instagram blackout in Europe.

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“The American people deserve transparency and accountability from the NIH regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, regardless of Dr. Fauci’s future employment plans..”

Rand Paul Lays Groundwork For Potential Fauci Probe (RT)

Fresh from vowing to investigate chief White House medical advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci for his role in the Covid-19 pandemic, Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) has demanded that President Joe Biden’s administration preserve documents and messages that could become evidence in the potential probe. Paul, who has sparred with Fauci in Senate hearings over government funding of potentially dangerous virus research, sent a letter to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) on Tuesday, calling for the Covid-19 czar’s documents and communications to be saved. The demand came one day after Fauci announced that, effective in December, he would step down as Biden’s chief medical advisor and as director of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

Navarro Fauci

“Fauci’s resignation will not prevent a full-throated investigation into the origins of the pandemic,” Paul said after the doctor’s announcement on Monday. That will include testimony under oath concerning discussions about the possible leak of Covid-19 from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, he said. The senator previously accused Fauci of directing public funding to gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab and lying about it under oath in congressional testimony. “Dr. Fauci misled the American people on public health guidance throughout the pandemic, lied to Congress under oath, and funneled tax dollars to fund dangerous research in communist China,” Paul told the Daily Caller on Tuesday.

However, Republicans will need to win back control of Congress in this year’s midterm elections to force such an investigation. Paul said in February that he would subpoena Fauci’s records if Republicans retake the Senate. In a CNN interview last month, Fauci said there was no reason for such a probe. “But if they want to, go ahead. My records are an open book.” Paul requested in Tuesday’s letter that the NIH preserve all documents, data and messages created by or shared with Fauci relating to Covid-19, including NIAID-funded research. “The American people deserve transparency and accountability from the NIH regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, regardless of Dr. Fauci’s future employment plans,” he said.

Other Republican lawmakers accused Fauci of timing his exit to just before a potentially GOP-controlled Congress starts work next January. “Dr. Fauci is conveniently resigning from his position in December, before House Republicans have an opportunity to hold him accountable for destroying our country over these past three years,” Representative Andy Biggs (R-Arizona) said on Monday. “This guy is a coward.” He added that Fauci will be held accountable whether or not he remains in public office.

Sen. John Kennedy Fauci

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“..rewarded executives cash bonuses up to $10 million to increase the number of daily users..”

Twitter Whistleblower: Company Hid “Extreme, Egregious, Deficiencies” (ZH)

Following the Washington Post’s story on the Twitter whistleblower complaint, Elon Musk’s legal team said they want to interview the former head of security Peiter Zatko. CNN’s Donnie O’Sullivan tweeted moments ago that Musk’s lawyer Alex Spiro wants to speak with the Twitter whistleblower: “We have already issued a subpoena for Mr. Zatko, and we found his exit and that of other key employees curious in light of what we have been finding.” One day after Elon Musk’s legal team subpoenaed former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey as part of an ongoing effort to fight a lawsuit by the social media company to force the billionaire to move forward with the $44 billion acquisition deal.

The Washington Post released a new report alleging executives deceived federal regulators and the company’s board about “extreme, egregious deficiencies” to combat hackers. WaPo cited a whistleblower complaint from the former head of security Peiter Zatko who said some of the company’s servers are running out-of-date software, and executives withheld critical information about data breaches. Bezo’s news outlet interviewed more than a dozen current and former employees about past deficiencies. The complaint was filed last month with the SEC, DoJ, and FTC. It said thousands of employees had access to core company software, which led to data breaches and hacks of high-profile users.

WaPo said the whistleblower document alleges executives prioritized user growth over reducing spam and rewarded executives cash bonuses up to $10 million to increase the number of daily users. The complaint noted Chief Executive Parag Agrawal was “lying” when he said in May the company was “strongly incentivized to detect and remove as much spam as we possibly can.” In a WaPo interview, Zatko said his decision to reveal Twitter’s failures to the public is an extension of his previous work exposing security flaws within the company.

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WEF crown prince.

Trudeau Building Huge New Facility For Ministry of Climate Change (TCS)

The Ministry of Environment & Climate Change Canada (ECCC) is building a new facility in Winnipeg that will be home to a firearms armoury, interrogation rooms, biological labs, media relations offices, “controlled quiet rooms,” and intelligence facilities. The plans, which were drawn up by a firm in Winnipeg, open a window into Trudeau’s future plans for Climate Enforcement. Down the hall from the proposed “Firearms Storage” rooms are several evidence rooms, interrogation suites, and adjacent recording rooms.According to a recently posted Indeed.com ad, the Ministry is searching to recruit a battalion of Climate “Pollution” Officers, a unit within the coldly named “Environmental Enforcement Directorate.”

If you emit too much carbon or use too much fertilizer, you may just be on the Climate Communists’ hit list. The entire facility that was leaked to The Counter Signal is sketched to be over 50,000 square feet, will house hundreds of ECCC staff, and will also be home to weather forecasting staff. The Impact Assessment Act (IAA), which was quietly passed in the final days of Trudeau’s majority government, grants sweeping power to Ministerial “Enforcement Officers.” But, until now, little has been explained about where and how Climate Police will be deployed. The IAA empowers agents of the Ministry of Climate Change to enter premises without a warrant to “verify compliance or prevent non-compliance with [the Act].


Trudeau’s Climate Police may enter any project location that affects the environment to take photographs, access computer systems and communication devices, and “direct any person to put any machinery, vehicle or equipment in the place into operation or to cease operating it.” Climate Police may also prohibit access to the location entirely. It seems to be no coincidence that this Climate Police armoury was placed in the heartland of agricultural production in Canada. This information comes just days after agents dispatched by ECCC were accused of trespassing on private land in Saskatchewan to collect Nitrogen samples, the newest target of Trudeau’s climate change agenda.

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A one in 3 trillion chance, but still contested.

Study Links Genetic Code of Covids Spike Protein To Moderna Patent

• Genetic match discovered in Covid’s unique furin cleavage site on spike protein • Matched genetic sequence patented by Moderna for cancer research purposes • Researchers say one in 3 trillion chance Covid developed the code naturally • Critics of the study are sceptical of its author’s conclusions, suggesting that the sequence match is not as rare as has been claimed.


Fresh suspicion that Covid may have been tinkered with in a lab emerged today after scientists found genetic material owned by Moderna in the virus’s spike protein. They identified a tiny snippet of code that is identical to part of a gene patented by the vaccine maker three years before the pandemic. It was discovered in SARS-CoV-2’s unique furin cleavage site, the part that makes it so good at infecting people and separates it from other coronaviruses. The structure has been one of the focal points of debate about the virus’s origin, with some scientists claiming it could not have been acquired naturally. The international team of researchers suggest the virus may have mutated to have a furin cleavage site during experiments on human cells in a lab.

They claim there is a one-in-three-trillion chance Moderna’s sequence randomly appeared through natural evolution. But there is some debate about whether the match is as rare as the study claims, with other experts describing it as a ‘quirky’ coincidence rather than a ‘smoking gun’. In the latest study, published in Frontiers in Virology, researchers compared Covid’s makeup to millions of sequenced proteins on an online database. The virus is made up of 30,000 letters of genetic code that carry the information it needs to spread, known as nucleotides. It is the only coronavirus of its type to carry 12 unique letters that allow its spike protein to be activated by a common enzyme called furin, allowing it to spread between human cells with ease.


Analysis of the original Covid genome found the virus shares a sequence of 19 specific letters with a genetic section owned by Moderna, which has a total of 3,300 nucleotides. The US-based pharmaceutical firm filed the patent in February 2016 as part of its cancer research division, records show. The patented sequence is part of a gene called MSH3 that is known to affect how damaged cells repair themselves in the body.

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“One operator said they had been quoted a cost for their energy that was nearly six times higher than on their current contract..”

More Than 70% Of Pubs Do Not Expect To Survive Winter As Energy Costs Soar (G.)

Britain’s independent brewers have urged ministers to step in to save the sector, as research revealed more than 70% of pubs do not expect to survive the winter if nothing is done to ease energy costs. In a letter to the chancellor, Nadhim Zahawi, independent brewers on Tuesday called for immediate government intervention, warning a once thriving cottage industry was now facing “grave uncertainty”. They said the impact of surging energy bills was being compounded by a fall in sales as households seek to save money, shortages of equipment such as kegs, cans and CO2 gas, and a poor hop harvest pushing up prices. “We have entered one of the most challenging times for the brewing sector,” the Society of Independent Brewers said, in a letter also signed by the chair of the Campaign for Real Ale.


“Small brewers are reporting that their energy bills are doubling or trebling, putting their future ability to brew at risk”. The warning came as pub operators reported similar rises in energy costs, with reports that some suppliers are refusing to offer new contracts to the sector because they fear pubs may not be able to pay their bills. More than 35% of operators said they had seen their utility costs double, while 30% said their costs had tripled, according to a survey for the trade publication the Morning Advertiser. One operator said they had been quoted a cost for their energy that was nearly six times higher than on their current contract – with the price per unit shooting up from 14p to 83p. Almost three-quarters of respondents said they would not be able to afford the increases.

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Aug 222022
 
 August 22, 2022  Posted by at 8:10 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  63 Responses »


Edouard Vuillard The window 1894

 

‘Russophrenia’ From Supposedly Smart People In The West (Diesen)
Russian Ambassador: We Simply Have No Contact With Western Diplomats (Antiwar)
US And Its Allies Lack Self-awareness (Robert Bridge)
German Chancellor’s Ratings Hit New Low (RT)
Scholz Told Putin When Ukraine Could Join NATO (RT)
Scholz Promises Kiev More Weapons ‘Soon’ (RT)
China Is Preparing To Go To War (Chang)
Drought Causes Yangtze River To Dry Up, Sparking Shortage Of Hydropower (G.)
Britain Warned Of ‘Humanitarian Crisis’ (RT)
UK Energy Bills To Skyrocket (RT)
British Soldiers To Prepare For Fighting Russia (RT)
Saskatchewan Warns Trudeau’s Federal Nitrogen Agents Could Be Arrested (TCS)
Peter Strzok: Fired FBI Official Is Making the Case Against Himself (Turley)
No Evidence Of Political Motivation Behind Mar-a-Lago Raid – Liz Cheney (CNBC)
In FBI vs. Trump, The People Lose (Maté)

 

 

Biden rent

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tucker T celll damage
https://twitter.com/i/status/1561336135300706304

 

 


Swedish artist Karl Jilg shows how much public space we’ve surrendered to cars

 

 

 

 

“We have been moving slowly towards a major European war for 30 years and there are no good solutions anymore..”

‘Russophrenia’ From Supposedly Smart People In The West (Diesen)

The author and holocaust survivor, Victor Klemperer, identified two distinct styles of language that defined Hitler’s propaganda against the Jews: either “scornful derision” of the inferior race or “panic-stricken fear” of their threat to civilisation. Anti-Russian propaganda over the past centuries has similarly produced two contradictory positions – disdain for Russians as an uncivilised and backward people, and simultaneously an immeasurable threat looming over Europe. A state of affairs described by one writer as “Russophrenia: the idea that Russia is simultaneously about to fall apart, and also take over the world.” Russia is hopelessly inept and weak, yet it is also capable of subverting the democracies of the world and restoring a global empire.

Moscow is so impaired that the West does not need to acknowledge or accommodate its basic security interests, yet NATO’s 30 member states need ever-more weapons to defend against the dreaded Russians. Exaggerating the weakness or the strength of an adversary (or both) is a key component of propaganda, which carries with it the obvious risk of miscalculations, as the real capabilities of the opponent are not accurately assessed. The war in Ukraine is a good case study of this phenomenon. To encourage more NATO, more military spending and containment of Russia, it is commonly argued that we have underestimated the threat of the Russians. During the Cold War, it was falsely argued that the Soviets enjoyed a huge positive missile gap vis-à-vis the US, which incentivised further military spending in the US.

After the Cold War, NATO expansion and raison d’etre have continued to rely on an exaggerated Russian threat. To encourage a more forceful approach to Russia, it is now argued that we have overestimated Moscow’s strength. Case in point, an article by The Atlantic argues that “Ukraine Has Exposed Russia as a Not-So-Great Power”. It suggests that because the Russian army “has seized only 20 percent of Ukraine”, it is time to shed the illusion of Russia being a great power. This conclusion supports an even more hard-line position towards Russia as opposed to Kissinger’s argument that great powers must be accommodated for peace. In other words, more of the same policies that fuelled tensions and brought us to this horrific conflict. [..] We have been moving slowly towards a major European war for 30 years and there are no good solutions anymore. But an end to wishful thinking must be the beginning.

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“..the lack of contact between officials means there is no potential to end the war through talks.”

Russian Ambassador: We Simply Have No Contact With Western Diplomats (Antiwar)

In an interview with the Financial Times, a top Russian diplomat says there is no communication with Western diplomats at the UN. The complete freeze in contact led the Kremin to assess there is no possibility of a diplomatic solution to the war in Ukraine. Gennady Gatilov, Russia’s permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, told FT, “We do not have any contacts with the western delegations,” he said of his day-to-day work in Geneva. “On the protocol side we do not see each other … Privately we do not have any contacts, unfortunately … we simply do not talk to each other.” He said the lack of contact between officials means there is no potential to end the war through talks.

“Now, I do not see any possibility for diplomatic contacts. And the more the conflict goes on, the more difficult it will be to have a diplomatic solution,” Gatilov said. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has only spoken with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov once in the past six months. Gatilov said Western military support for Ukraine and preventing peace talks means the war will have a military end. “And so they [Kiev and its western supporters] will fight until the last Ukrainian,” he said. Lavrov said Ukraine made a workable proposal in March before Kiev broke off talks the following month. Multiple sources reported, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson visited Kiev as talks were progressing, discouraging Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky from engaging with the Kremlin.

Gatilov praised Turkey’s president Recep Tayyip Erdogan for attempting to facilitate a diplomatic end to the war in Ukraine. Ankara has hosted talks between Kiev and Moscow. Turkey and the UN were essential in crafting a deal that allows wheat to be exported through Black Sea ports. While Russia is happy with Turkey’s mediation efforts, FT reported two weeks ago that Western diplomats were concerned about Ankara’s ties with Moscow. On Saturday, deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo told Turkish Deputy Finance Minister Yunus Elitas that Russian companies and individuals are attempting to bypass Western sanctions in Turkey. Adeyemo warned the White House was attempting to enforce those sanctions.

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“.. Islamic State militants, who scattered their forces throughout the civilian population thereby turning civilians into ‘human shields’ – a technique now being employed by Ukraine.”

US And Its Allies Lack Self-awareness (Robert Bridge)

Efforts are underway in the US Senate to designate Russia a state sponsor of terrorism. Before going down that road, lawmakers may wish to consider some inconvenient facts. If Russia’s military operation in Ukraine is doing anything – aside from eradicating the resurgence of fascism on the European continent – it is revealing the shocking lack of self-awareness in Western capitals. Perennial American Russophobes from opposite sides of the political spectrum, Sen. Richard Blumenthal and Sen. Lindsey Graham, are now agitating members of Congress to include Russia in Washington’s list of ‘state sponsors of terrorism,’ which presently includes North Korea, Iran, Cuba and Syria. Meanwhile, the Baltic State of Lithuania signed off on its own legislation in May declaring Russia a ‘terrorist state.’

Yet Vilnius didn’t stop there, accusing Russia of carrying out ‘genocide’ on its neighbor’s territory. The resolution states that Russia is committing “genocide against the Ukrainian people,” while saying that the Russian military, like some kind of modern-day Huns, “deliberately and systematically target civilian targets…”. Consider how US-led coalition forces ‘liberated’ the Syrian city of Raqqa from Islamic State militants, who scattered their forces throughout the civilian population thereby turning civilians into ‘human shields’ – a technique now being employed by Ukraine. The US-led Coalition’s relentless four-month ‘precision’ bombardment against IS killed and injured thousands of civilians, while reducing homes, businesses and infrastructure to rubble. Surveying the damage on the ground, Amnesty International concluded that the US-led Coalition “launched strikes likely to cause excessive harm to civilians and failed to distinguish between military targets and civilians.”

The tragic irony of the situation, from Russia’s perspective, is that while Moscow is attempting to spare infrastructure and human lives, it is branded the ‘terrorist state,’ whereas Ukraine is granted hero status as it employs those same tactics that put civilian life at grave risk. Naturally, tragedies will occur and Russia, like any country that finds itself at war, will eventually be accused of killing innocent civilians. Yet these casualties are vastly exacerbated by the fighting techniques of the Ukrainian military, which, it should be emphasized, has been receiving its training from NATO forces since 2014. Time and again, when Russian troops enter a city, they find the enemy fortified behind civilian infrastructure, like hospitals, kindergartens and schools. This automatically turns the facility into a military target for Russian forces, which Ukraine then uses as ‘proof’ that Moscow is deliberately targeting civilians.

Read more …

Did Mutti pick this dude, for his lack of charisma?

German Chancellor’s Ratings Hit New Low (RT)

The approval rating of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has reached the lowest mark since he took office in December. Only 25% of the public is satisfied with the job he’s doing, a survey published by Bild on Sunday reveals. “It’s not working” for both Scholz and the ‘traffic light’ coalition government, the tabloid said as it shared the results of the poll, conducted by Germany’s INSA research institute. A mere 25% of those surveyed approve of the chancellor’s job, with 62% expressing disapproval. If an election were held right now, Scholz would only finish third with 18% of the vote. Economy Minister Robert Habeck of the Green Party and Friedrich Merz, who heads the opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU), are currently more popular, backed by 25% and 19% respectively, the poll shows.

The numbers for the ‘traffic light’ coalition, which unites the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Free Democratic Party (FDP), and the Greens, were as bad as those for Scholz. Only 27% told the pollsters they were happy with the government, while 65% said they have a negative view of its decisions. Scholz’s ratings have been on a steady decline since becoming chancellor eight months ago, Bild said. In March, when the conflict in Ukraine – in which Berlin sided with Kiev, supplying it with arms and slapping harsh sanctions on Moscow – had just started, he was backed by 46%, but in April, the number dropped to 38%.

Economic problems caused by the Covid-19 pandemic have been further exacerbated by the Western restrictions on Moscow and the subsequent decrease in Russian gas supplies to the EU. Despite being Europe’s top economy, Germany has been hit hard by soaring gas prices as it faces the risk of energy shortages this winter. On Sunday, the head of the German central bank warned that “an inflation rate of even 10% is possible in the autumn months,” something which has not been seen in the country for more than 70 years.

Read more …

Imagine you’re Putin and you have to listen to this:

“..Ukraine would have been blocked from joining NATO for 30 years..”

“..NATO was never a threat to Russia..”

Scholz Told Putin When Ukraine Could Join NATO (RT)

The German chancellor said he had sought to assure the Russian president that Ukraine would not join the bloc in the near future German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told Russian President Vladimir Putin that Ukraine would have been blocked from joining NATO for 30 years, in a bid to assure Moscow of the military bloc’s good intentions. Over the weekend, the German leader revealed some details of his talks with Putin before Russia began its military operation in Ukraine, adding that he now believes Russia sought to “conquer its neighboring country” all along. “NATO was never a threat to Russia,” Scholz said he told Putin. The chancellor did not specify which conversation he was referring to, though Scholz met Putin in Moscow in mid-February.


Speaking to journalists this weekend during an ‘open-doors day’ at the chancellor’s office, Scholz also denied that the military alliance had disregarded Russian security interests. When the two leaders spoke about the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO, Scholz assured Putin that “it will not happen in the next 30 years,” the chancellor revealed. Scholz also said that he would not abandon dialogue with Russia but struck a harsher tone when assessing Moscow’s motives. He particularly accused Putin of starting the conflict for “completely absurd” reasons. “This is a war that Putin, Russia, started, … clearly with the intention of conquering its neighboring country,” he told journalists, adding that he believes “that was the original goal” that Moscow had in its military campaign. The chancellor also recalled how Putin had “explained” to him that Ukraine and Belarus should not be “separate states.”

Read more …

Problem is, they don’t have them.

Scholz Promises Kiev More Weapons ‘Soon’ (RT)

Berlin supplies “a lot of weapons” to Kiev and will continue to provide Ukraine “with what it needs for its defense,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz said, in response to criticism from a former Bundeswehr general. Germany is currently “in the process of supplying the most modern and efficient equipment,” Scholz stressed during a traditional ‘open-doors day’ this weekend, citing recent multiple deliveries of self-propelled ‘Gepard’ anti-aircraft guns and PzH 2000 howitzers. The German leader claimed that his main focus remains on “ensuring that there is no escalation of the war,” when a retired Bundeswehr general Klaus Wittmann accused him of a lack of “leadership” and appearing “intimidated” by Russian President Vladimir Putin, as cited by the German news outlet NTV.


Even more weapons “will be there soon,”Scholz vowed, apparently referring to the long-promised deliveries of an Iris-T SLM anti-aircraft missile system and a Cobra artillery radar, but providing no clear timeline. Back in June, Berlin promised to send Kiev one Iris-T unit for free, but Ukraine wants at least a dozen and has offered to purchase the rest directly from the manufacturer, even though Germany’s armed forces reportedly do not have enough air-defense systems themselves. Kiev is expected to receive the first such system no earlier than November, according to previous reports. Last month, Germany also committed a Cobraartillery radar to Ukraine, reportedly set for delivery in September. According to German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht, Kiev has already signed the contract for the materials and troops should have starting training to operate “this highly complex system.”

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Centralizing decision making.

China Is Preparing To Go To War (Chang)

Last month, a Chinese entrepreneur making medical equipment for consumers told me that local officials had demanded he convert his production lines in China so that they could turn out items for the military. Communist Party cadres, he said, were issuing similar orders to other manufacturers. Moreover, Chinese academics privately say the ongoing expulsion of foreign colleagues from China’s universities appears to be a preparation for hostilities. The People’s Republic of China is preparing to go to war, and it is not trying to hide its efforts. Amendments to the National Defense Law, effective the first day of last year, transfer powers from civilian to military officials. In general, the amendments reduce the role of the central government’s State Council by shifting power to the CMC, the Communist Party’s Central Military Commission.

Specifically, the State Council will no longer supervise the mobilization of the People’s Liberation Army. As Zeng Zhiping of Soochow University told Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, “The CMC is now formally in charge of making national defense policy and principles, while the State Council becomes a mere implementing agency to provide support for the military.” In one sense, these amendments were window dressing. “Recent changes to China’s National Defense Law that diminish the power of the State Council are largely political posturing,” Richard Fisher of the Virginia-based International Assessment and Strategy Center told me soon after the amendments went into effect. “The Chinese Communist Party and particularly its subordinate CMC have always held supreme power over decisions regarding war and peace.”

Why then do we care about the National Defense Law amendments? The amendments, Fisher tells us, “point to China’s ambition to achieve ‘whole nation’ levels of military mobilization to fight wars and give the CMC formal power to control the future Chinese capabilities for global military intervention.” “The revised National Defense Law also embodies the concept that everyone should be involved in national defense,” reports the Communist Party’s Global Times, summarizing the words of an unnamed CMC official. “All national organizations, armed forces, political parties, civil groups, enterprises, social organizations, and other organizations should support and take part in the development of national defense, fulfill national defense duties, and carry out national defense missions according to the law.”

Read more …

Small impact for now.

Drought Causes Yangtze River To Dry Up, Sparking Shortage Of Hydropower (G.)

A record-breaking drought has caused some rivers in China – including parts of the Yangtze – to dry up, affecting hydropower, halting shipping, and forcing major companies to suspend operations. A nationwide drought alert was issued on Friday as a long-running and severe heatwave in China’s heavily populated south-west was forecast to continue well into September. The loss of water flow to China’s extensive hydropower system has sparked a “grave situation” in Sichuan, which gets more than 80% of its energy from hydropower. On Sunday the provincial government declared it was at the highest warning level of “particularly severe”, with water flow to Sichuan’s hydropower reservoirs dropping by half. The demand for electricity, meanwhile, has increased by 25% this summer, local media reported.

Last week the province suspended or limited power supply to thousands of factories and rationed public electricity usage due to the shortage. Toyota, Foxconn and Tesla are among companies reported to have temporarily suspended operations at some plants over the last fortnight. On Sunday the South China Morning Post reported plans to restart production this week had been postponed. The Yangtze is the world’s third largest river, providing drinking water to more than 400 million Chinese people, and is the most vital waterway to China’s economy. It is also crucial to the global supply chain, but this summer it has reached record-low water levels, with entire sections and dozens of tributaries drying up. Water flow on the Yangtze’s main trunk is more than 50% below the average of the last five years.

Shipping routes in the middle and lower sections of the river have also closed, the SCMP reported. Across the affected regions of China authorities are rushing to ensure water and power supply, as the region approaches harvest season for water-intensive crops like rice and soy. On Sunday authorities discharged 980m cubic meters of water from reservoirs in an effort to replenish lower levels of the river, state media said. The drought has affected at least 2.46 million people and 2.2m hectares of agricultural land in Sichuan, Hebei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui and Chongqing. More than 780,000 people have needed direct government support because of the drought, according to China’s ministry of emergency management.

Read more …

I’d venture it’s too late already.

Britain Warned Of ‘Humanitarian Crisis’ (RT)

The UK could face a “humanitarian crisis” involving ill health, excess deaths and rising inequality if the government does not take urgent action on rising energy bills, the National Health Service (NHS) Confederation warned on Friday. The organization wrote to the chancellor of the exchequer, claiming that failing to act would add more pressure on health services that were already strained. According to the NHS, if energy bills become unaffordable, the country’s health and social care system will be left to “pick up the pieces.” “The country is facing a humanitarian crisis. Many people could face the awful choice between skipping meals to heat their homes and having to live in cold, damp and very unpleasant conditions,” wrote the head of the NHS Nadhim Zahawi.


“This, in turn, could lead to outbreaks of illness and sickness around the country and widen health inequalities, worsen children’s life chances and leave an indelible scar on local communities.” The NHS highlighted that, in addition to causing more sickness, mass fuel poverty was also likely to “increase the already high number of annual deaths associated with cold homes.” It noted the situation could also affect mental health. “Health leaders are clear that unless urgent action is taken by the government, this will cause a public health emergency,” Zahawi stressed. The warning comes as energy bills for the average household in Britain are projected to rise to more than £4,200 ($4,960) per year from January 2023 after the next increase in the price cap. Last October, it was set at £1,400 ($1,653).

Read more …

Worse than Germany?!

UK Energy Bills To Skyrocket (RT)

The average British household can expect to see annual energy bills soar to £6,000 (nearly $7,100) in 2023, according to the latest outlook issued by the UK independent energy consultancy Auxilione on Saturday. The analysts project that the price cap on bills, an officially set reference point, could reach £6,089 as soon as next April. The cap, which currently stands at £1,971, is expected to climb to £3,576 in October and £4,799 in January. Last October, it was set at £1,400 ($1,653). Earlier this month, the UK energy industry regulator Ofgem announced plans to adjust the cap quarterly rather than every six months due to the volatility in energy markets.


The latest figure represents a substantial increase to what was already a gloomy forecast made last week, when the consultancy projected annual average energy bills growing to more than £5,000 (nearly $6,100) next year. Auxilione expects bills to peak at over £6,000 in April before slowly decreasing in the second half of next year, eventually coming down to £5,160 in October. According to the latest poll by Opinium, about 40% of respondents said they would not be able to afford the rise in the cap due to be announced by the energy regulator Ofgem without falling behind on other essential bills.

Read more …

“We are the generation that must prepare the Army to fight in Europe once again.”

Maybe feed your people first?

British Soldiers To Prepare For Fighting Russia (RT)

The UK’s top ‘other ranks’ soldier has said that British troops must be ready to fight Russia, and should prepare their families for the prospect of an “extended” deployment. His advice comes after the UK’s new head of General Staff said that British forces must become capable of “defeating Russia in battle.” Writing for the latest issue of the British Army’s ‘Soldier’ magazine, Carney said that “the Army is shaping itself to meet the threat from Russia,”and “will be ready, with the right equipment, to play our part in deterring a future war in Europe.” “Deterring” in this case seemingly means deploying. “I want us all to check we are physically fit for operations. And it is also important we prepare loved ones and families, who often have the hardest role in our absence,”he continued.

“My ask is that you have discussions about a potential deployment with them now…we could be out of contact for extended periods on tour.” Carney’s warning does not signal an imminent change in the UK’s role in the conflict in Ukraine. However, a warning in June by Britain’s new chief of the General Staff, General Patrick Sanders, suggests that the Army views Russia as its next major opponent. “There is now a burning imperative to forge an Army capable of fighting alongside our allies and defeating Russia in battle,” Sanders wrote in a letter to his charges. “We are the generation that must prepare the Army to fight in Europe once again.”

The UK has given Ukraine £2.3 billion ($2.7 billion) in military aid since Russia’s military operation began in February. British forces are currently training Ukrainian recruits in the UK, and its intelligence agencies are allegedly sharing information with their Ukrainian counterparts. The UK is a member of the NATO alliance, and in the event that it became involved in open war with Russia, the bloc’s 29 other member states, including the US, would be obliged to enter the conflict.

Read more …

Private land.

Saskatchewan Warns Trudeau’s Federal Nitrogen Agents Could Be Arrested (TCS)

Saskatchewan Minister Jeremy Cockrill has sent a warning to the Trudeau government that officers sent by Ottawa will be arrested if they continue to trespass on farmland to test nitrogen levels. According to Cockrill, Trudeau’s government has been unlawfully sending federal employees onto Saskatchewan farmlands to test for nitrogen levels without the consent of landowners. In the letter, the Minister raised multiple complaints from Saskatchewan farmers that raised “serious concerns about Government of Canada employees, in clearly marked Government of Canada vehicles, trespassing on private lands.” The farmers reporting these trespasses made clear that these government agents did not request permission to access the land and were not in any other manner given consent to access it.

Minister Cockrill further pointed out to the Trudeau government that these actions constitute a breach of the Saskatchewan Trespass to Property Act, and warned that these actions could carry with them serious penalties, including fines of up to $200,000 and up to six months in prison. By sending this letter, the Saskatchewan government has provided a clear order to the Trudeau government to cease and desist with any unlawful trespasses and warned them that should it continue, their employees could face arrest and prosecution. What is more concerning to some than the actual trespass are the motivations of the federal agents. According to the land owners who confronted the federal agents trespassing on their land, they were told that the purpose of them being there was to test the water in the farmers’ dugouts to measure nitrate levels.

For those following recent news in the agricultural world, this is being seen as connected to the Trudeau government’s recently announced policy to reduce the use of fertilizer on Canadian farms by 30%. This policy has been widely criticized by farmers across the country and by provincial governments in the Western provinces. Some observers have said that there is reason to suspect that these actions are the first steps in replicating the attacks on farmers that have provoked widespread unrest in the Netherlands and other places in Europe. While the federal government has not yet confirmed it, there is speculation that the water sampling we now know is underway, will be used as baseline measurements to enforce reductions in fertilizer usage going forward.

Read more …

“After he was fired, the former special agent was given a lucrative book deal, lionized on the left, featured prominently as an expert by CNN, and given a teaching job at Georgetown.”

Peter Strzok: Fired FBI Official Is Making the Case Against Himself (Turley)

Peter Strzok is back in the news this week. Career colleagues at the Justice Department previously referred Strzok for possible criminal charges and he was fired for his bias and unprofessional conduct. However, Strzok was immediately embraced by many in the media and establishment for his anti-Trump sentiments. After he was fired, the former special agent was given a lucrative book deal, lionized on the left, featured prominently as an expert by CNN, and given a teaching job at Georgetown. It was an extraordinary recovery from a scandal where he showed flagrant bias, engaged in an affair with another married colleague at the FBI, and fought to continue to investigate Russian collusion claims despite early warnings over the questionable basis of the allegations pushed by the Clinton campaign. (Strzok’s colleague and former paramour, Lisa Page, was given a contract as a legal analyst with NBC and MSNBC).

Now, Strzok appears liberated in showing precisely the bias and unhinged hostility alleged by his critics. He has been in the news lashing out at Trump and trolling his objections to the raid on Mar-a-Lago. The seizure of Trump’s passports has raised more doubts about the seemingly unlimited scope of the search. One of the passports taken in the raid was Trump’s active diplomatic passport, according to an email from the Justice Department made public by Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich. The other two passports alleged were expired. Last week, Strzok was one of the first to jump on the bandwagon with CBS News anchor Norah O’Donnell, who blasted out a tweet claiming DOJ sources refuting Trump’s claim that the FBI took his passports.

The “CBS Evening News” anchor reported that the Department of Justice did not have Trump’s passports, tweeting, “According to a DOJ official, the FBI is NOT in possession of former President Trump’s passports.” In fact, the FBI did take the passports and had to later return them. The clear import of O’Donnell’s tweet was that Trump was lying. That was clearly the message received by various critics, including Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who is purportedly serving as an unbiased member of the January 6th committee. Kinzinger, R-Ill., wrote, “Lies lies lies and more lies.” Notably, Strzok was also among those eager to spread the O’Donnell report, tweeting, “And unsurprisingly, Trump’s statement turns out not to be true.” He later deleted it.

Read more …

None at all.

No Evidence Of Political Motivation Behind Mar-a-Lago Raid – Liz Cheney (CNBC)

Representative Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., told ABC News that there was no political motivation in carrying out an FBI search of former President Donald Trump’s resort home in Palm Beach, Florida. “I’ve seen no evidence that there was any political motivation,” Cheney told ABC News when asked about the Mar-a-Lago raid carried out by FBI agents. “I was ashamed to hear Republicans immediately and reflexively attack the FBI agents who executed the search warrant. I was disgusted when I learned that President Trump had released the names of the agents when he released the unredacted search warrant, and that has now caused violence,” Cheney said in the interview, which aired on Sunday. “This is a really dangerous moment,” she added.

On the heels of her congressional primary loss, Cheney also said that she will work with bipartisan political leaders to ensure that Trump never holds the nation’s highest office again. “I think, I think we have to make sure that he is not our nominee,” Cheney told ABC News. Cheney warned that Trump’s characterizations of U.S. elections as rigged is dangerous and disrupts the “fundamental function and principle at the center of our constitutional republic.” “There’s just simply no way that the nation and in my view, excuse that and put him in a position of power again,” Cheney said, referencing Trump’s 2020 presidential election loss and then the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

When asked about the Jan. 6 committee, which she serves as vice chair, Cheney declined to say whether Trump would be called to testify. “I don’t want to make any announcements about that this morning. I think it’s very important. As I said in the first hearing and the second hearing. His interactions with our committee will be under oath,” she said. Cheney noted that the committee has been in discussions with former Vice President Mike Pence’s legal counsel. “When the country has been through something as grave as this, everyone who has information has an obligation to step forward. So I would hope that he will do that,” Cheney said.

Read more …

“..an intra-elite, symbiotic feud that simultaneously boosts Trump among his base, and the national security state among his foes..”

In FBI vs. Trump, The People Lose (Maté)

For my money, the early beneficiary of the FBI’s espionage investigation of Donald Trump is Donald Trump. According to the Washington Post, “Trump has told advisers that in the nearly two years since leaving office, no issue had better galvanized Republican voters around him.” A Politico poll of Republican voters in the aftermath of the Mar-a-Lago raid gave Trump a 10-point boost over his closest possible primary rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Trump’s ensuing fundraising campaign has done even better, quickly topping $1 million on at least two days, a jump of at least 700%. Over the long run, it is difficult to form a conclusive judgment on Trump’s potential culpability in the absence of any confirmed detail about both the contents of the documents that Trump allegedly mishandled, and the evidence to support the Justice Department’s suspicions.

But if the last six years of routine Trump standoffs with the national security state are any guide, the walls are nowhere closer to closing in. Whatever your views on Trump, it is undeniable that the permanent military-intelligence bureaucracy in Washington does not see him as one of their own, and has gone to extraordinary lengths to target him when it sees fit. It is also undeniable that the national security state’s spats with Trump have distracted the public from vital issues that impact working people’s lives and the future of the planet. This includes, I have long argued, Trump’s most harmful policies as president, which were routinely overshadowed and even exacerbated by his standoffs with the “deep state.”

Accordingly, it is reasonable to expect that this latest “scandal” over the potential mishandling of classified documents will continue the trend that has defined the Trump era: an intra-elite, symbiotic feud that simultaneously boosts Trump among his base, and the national security state among his foes. Pundits and politicians are resoundingly confident that the FBI must have the goods on Trump to have taken the unprecedented step of searching the former president’s home. This argument can only be made by ignoring that the FBI and other intelligence agencies took far more unprecedented and consequential actions against Trump when he was president, on grounds that were not only baseless, but fraudulent.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Peptides

 

 

 

 

 

29/2 1956
https://twitter.com/i/status/1561098798268436480

 

 

 

 

Ode to Joy 2
https://twitter.com/i/status/1561070756343300096

 

 

 

 

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Aug 062022
 
 August 6, 2022  Posted by at 12:28 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  31 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Beach at Scheveningen in Stormy Weather 1882

 

 

It is very simple: if you’d ask most citizens of whichever EU country if they are willing to risk being unable to feed and heat their children in order to support Ukraine and Zelensky, they would say NO. Hell no! But that is what they’re all being pushed towards. Food prices look to at least double from here, after they’ve doubled once already, while energy prices are set to triple or worse. And there’s no logical reason for it.

This is not due to some inevitable market mechanism, it’s because the west decided to halt all Russian imports after the latter’s Special Military Operation in Ukraine. All western leaders found that reason enough to cut all, or nearly all, imports from Russia. Gas, oil, fertilizer, food. Essentials. They could have been sitting around a negotiating table, but chose not to. Which only works as long as things remain sort of affordable. And then, it does not.

Problem is, they had and have no alternative to the Russian supplies of these goods (and there’s many more). See, this is how we know they don’t make their own decisions. Those are made in Brussels and Davos, and then the “leaders” have to carry out the preconceived programs, and they will.

No elected official on his/her own would risk to destroy their own country’s energy or food safety, with elections coming up every few years. But their WEF/Davos connections have changed that “logic”. The WEF makes sure no western leader gets elected who is not a member of their club. There’s only one path to power these days.

 

But these people grossly underestimate the effect that hunger and cold -will- have on their citizens. The first signs of that are visible in the protests of truckers and farmers, but that’s just a start. You just wait till the cold sets in, and the running blackouts, and the hunger. Wait till people have to feed their kids scraps from a bare table in a cold dark home.

That’s when you will see who people really are. People in the west are overfed, and lazy, and not too sharp, but wait till their kids, and their families, are truly suffering. They’ve seen the example of the farmers and truckers. Wait for people to see the link between their own lives, and the farmers; then you will see who they really are.

“Leaders” like Trudeau and Rutte think they have this under control, that they can make the farmers do what their governments say they must, if need be with assistance from police or even the army. But you cannot send cops and soldiers against your farmers, because 1) they make your food, 2) the people support them, 3) they have a centuries-old democratic right to be farmers, and 4) they don’t take no sh*t for an answer.

This goes back 100s of years, much longer than the right of any politician to tell them what to do. The Dutch farmers on Friday told Rutte to prepare for the hardest actions yet, and they’re still not joking. My guess would be this time they will paralyze the country. Not because they are crazy; 10,000 of them would need to close shop if Rutte gets what he wants, and they won’t let that happen. Farmers will not idly stand by while their neighbor is forced out of business.

No, they are not crazy. They refuse to talk to Rutte, in a sign a of how much they trust him. He assigned a mediator, from his own political club, and all farmer org’s but one refused to talk to him too. The one that did, found the talk useless. Rutte wants the 10,000 scalps no matter what, but it’s just not going to happen. He is shown the limits of his power. Having been PM for 12 years, that’s a bit of a shock.

 

Obviously, this is all strongly connected to the past 2,5 years of measures and mandates and all. The political class got a taste of power that they did not have before, and got carried away. Well, they went too far this time. One telling number was that of US parents letting their youngest kids be vaxxed: what was it, 0.45%?! And 220 million adult Americans have either never been vaxxed or never boosted. No connection to the farmers? You wait and see.

The game is over. People’s patience with their politicians is ending. But the politicians themselves don’t see that; how could they when they censor all discontent and reports from doctors and scientists who don’t follow the “official” line? They’ve lost touch with the very world they’re supposed to represent. All they get to see is the info that is left after their own “norms” have censored the rest. They see only what they like to see.

 

In Europe, the Germans and Dutch will manage to be sort of OK, but only at the expense of poorer EU countries. And that won’t even be their main problem; that problem will be at home; their own farmers will come for them. And their poorest. Countries will leave the EU (and the euro). Hungary first to go?! In Greece, there’s already talk of rolling blackouts this winter, and they get most of their electricity from hydro. Italy is a shambles. How many present “leaders” will still be in place January 1 2023? How about June? After a winter of great discontent?

And they’re all telling you that “we” have to win in Ukraine first, and everything will be alright. But “we” have already lost in Ukraine, we did on February 24, and “we” should be talking to, and making peace with, Russia. Why are we not? Because we don’t want food and energy? The folks in Brussels and Davos will not be hungry and cold. But in other EU places they will be. And they will come to balance this thing out.

As for the US, I’m scared there too. Energy prices may not get as bad as in Europe, but food will be real bad (and how about housing?!). And there’s this fight between two factions going on, that starts to feel like what went on before the Civil War. I hope I’m wrong, but I feel it everywhere: Overreach.

 

 

 

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Jul 292022
 


Odilon Redon Sunset n.d.

 

Ukraine Shells Prison Holding POWs – Donbass Official (RT)
US Should Not Fund Ukrainian ‘Blacklist’ (Scott Ritter)
Provoking Beijing (MoA)
UK Official Says Nuclear War Threat Higher Than During the Cold War (Antiwar)
US GDP Drops 0.9 Percent In Second Quarter (PM)
‘Horror Chart’ Suggests Germany On Brink Of Huge Energy Crisis (RT)
Hanover Becomes First German City To Ban Hot Water In Public Buildings (DM)
EU Ban On Russian Gas ‘Impossible’ – Austria (RT)
EU Gas Solidarity Complicated By Lack Of Fuel Sharing Deals (R.)
Worst Is Yet To Come From Trudeau Liberals (Jordan Peterson)
Bill Barr To Merrick Garland: Appoint A Special Counsel Already (Fed.)
Joe Biden Met With 14 Of His Son’s Business Associates (RT)
They Can’t Let Him Back In (Michael Anton)

 

 

 

 

Never forget

 

 

 

 

Don’t miss O’Looney


https://twitter.com/i/status/1552438998009790465

 

 

Hesitancy

 

 

 

 

Breaking, not confirmed.

Ukraine Shells Prison Holding POWs – Donbass Official (RT)

Dozens were killed after Ukrainian forces struck a jail with POWs in Donbass, local official says Ukrainian troops shelled a prison housing POWs in Yelenovka early Friday morning, Donetsk People’s Republic Deputy Information Minister Daniil Bezsonov wrote on his Telegram channel. “There was a direct hit at a building with prisoners,” Bezsonov wrote. “The results as of now: 40 killed, 130 wounded.” The minister added that he believes Kiev used US-supplied HIMARS multiple rocket launchers for the attack. The facility reportedly housed Ukrainian fighters captured by Russian and allied forces during the siege of the Azovstal steel mill in the city of Mariupol.

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“Many on this list are citizens of the United States, some of whom, like me, have taken an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

US Should Not Fund Ukrainian ‘Blacklist’ (Scott Ritter)

Dear Senators Schumer and Gillibrand, and Congressman Tonko, My name is Scott Ritter. I am a New York State resident, currently residing in the Town of Bethlehem, in Albany County. My family and I have lived at our current address since July 2000. I am writing to you in your collective role as my elected representatives in the United States Congress, specifically regarding H.R. 7691, the Additional Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2022, which became Public Law 117-128 on May 21, 2022, which each of you voted in favor of. I draw your attention to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, specifically the following language: “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”

By enacting Public Law 117-128, you appear to have abrogated your Constitutional responsibilities in so far as you may have, in fact, made a law which both abridges the freedom of speech and a free press by enabling the Government of Ukraine, through the use of US taxpayer dollars appropriated under Public Law 117-128, to publish a “blacklist” singling out US citizens as “Russian propagandists” for exercising their Constitutional rights pertaining to free speech and a free press. The “blacklist” in question was published on July 14, 2022, by the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation, and consists of a list of politicians, academics, and activists who the Center claims promote “Russian propaganda.” Many on this list are citizens of the United States, some of whom, like me, have taken an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States.

While the specific criterion used by the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation for selecting persons for inclusion on this “blacklist” is not known, in my case the Ukrainian government appears to have taken umbrage against my articulation of Ukraine as a NATO base of operations, my analysis of the Bucha Massacre in early March which assigns responsibility to Ukrainian security services, and my description of the current Ukraine-Russian conflict as a “proxy conflict” being waged on behalf of the United States. Whether one agrees with my positions on these and other matters pertaining to Ukraine is not the point; by articulating my views, I am exercising my rights under the Constitution of the United States. While the Government of Ukraine is free to express its opinions regarding my viewpoints as it sees fit, the Government of the United States, by using funds appropriated by the United States Congress, should not facilitate the actions of the Government of Ukraine in this regard.

[..] As a constituent whose name has appeared on a so-called “blacklist” published by the Ukrainian Center for Countering Disinformation, my personal and professional life has been, and continues to be, detrimentally impacted by the chilling effect of being labeled a “Russian propagandist” for simply exercising the right to free speech guaranteed by the United States Constitution. Moreover, Ukraine has a history of converting “blacklists” of this nature into “kill lists”, where those who speak out against the policies of the Ukrainian government are being murdered or threatened with violence.

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Nancy missed the past 30 years.

Provoking Beijing (MoA)

Yves Smith is aghast about the U.S. eyepoking of China: “The neocons above all seem unable to process that the days of US hegemony are over. It boggles the mind that they are not just eyepoking but escalating greatly with China via the still-planned Pelosi visit to Taiwan in August. As we’ll explain, China is fully cognizant of the fact that Pelosi is number two in line after Harris should something happen to the increasingly addle-brained Biden. And they don’t buy for a second that Pelosi is operating without the explicit approval of the Administration. Note that it’s entirely possible that Pelosi revived her Taiwan trip plan (recall she put it off after coming down with Covid) all on her own. The Pentagon gave her a face-saving out by saying they didn’t recommend it. China, which is routinely screechy when it is upset about what it perceives to be foreign transgressions, has managed to find new registers in its objections the proposed Pelosi visit.”

Pelosi is not only number two in line but has been hostile to the Chinese government for more than 30 years. In 1991 she and two other members of Congress made a stunt on the Tiananmen square where two years before protests had taken place. The multiday protest in the square had ended peacefully. But outside of the square bloody riots took place over several days and nights during which hundreds of soldiers and rioters got killed. The protest and riots had been a U.S. instigated color revolution attempt with the father of the color revolution concept, Gene Sharp, being personally in the Beijing and consulting the protest leaders. After the attempt had failed the CIA organized the exit of hundreds of protest leaders and agents to Hong Kong where they formed the base for the 2020 color revolution attempt there. Lots of those ‘activists’ have now moved to Taiwan.

In 1991 Pelosi and two congressmen unfolded a banner on Tianamen in front of the international media that said: “To those who died for democracy in China.” Police immediately intervened and ended the stunt. The stunt had a positive echo in U.S. media (Note: The video title says it is 1989 but the announcer says it is two years later). Pelosi may think she can recreate another positive media echo by traveling to Taiwan. But the China of 2022 is no longer the China of 1991. It is now the world’s biggest economy and its military force rivals the one the U.S. has. It no longer condones eyepoking and ‘human rights’ stunts. It knows a U.S. provocation when it sees one. In the 1950s and 60s the U.S. financed terrorism in Tibet. In 1989 it coached and financed a bloody color revolution attempt in Beijing. In the 1990s it brought Islamist terrorism to Xinjiang. In this century the U.S. instigated several periods of riots in Hong Kong.

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“..during the Cold War, there was an “understanding of the Soviet doctrine and capabilities — and vice versa” because they kept more negotiation channels open.”

UK Official Says Nuclear War Threat Higher Than During the Cold War (Antiwar)

British National Security Advisor Stephen Lovegrove warned on Thursday that there is a greater risk of nuclear war today than there was during the Cold War due to a lack of communication channels. “The Cold War’s two monolithic blocks of the USSR (Soviet Union) and NATO — though not without alarming bumps — were able to reach a shared understanding of doctrine that is today absent,” Lovegrove said. He said during the Cold War, there was an “understanding of the Soviet doctrine and capabilities — and vice versa” because they kept more negotiation channels open. “This gave us both a higher level of confidence that we would not miscalculate our way into nuclear war,” Lovegrove said.

“Today we do not have the same foundations with others who may threaten us in future — particularly with China,” he said. Today, there is only one remaining nuclear arms control treaty between the US and Russia, the New START, which limits the deployment of nuclear warheads, bombers, submarines, and missiles. Since Russia invaded Ukraine, the US has abandoned diplomacy with Moscow, and US officials have said they can’t imagine negotiating a replacement of New START before it expires in 2026. The US has no nuclear arms control treaties with China, which has a vastly smaller arsenal than the US or Russia. Current estimates put Beijing’s arsenal at around 350 warheads, while the US has 5,550 and Russia has about 6,200.

During the Trump administration, the US tried to get Beijing to take part in trilateral arms control talks with Moscow and Washington. But China has little interest in such talks while its arsenal is so much smaller. If the US were serious about getting China involved, it would need to work with Russia to significantly reduce its stockpiles. Besides the lack of communication, the risk of nuclear war is significantly higher today because the US is funding a war on Russia’s border and helping Ukraine with intelligence to carry out attacks on Russian forces. The US is also stoking tensions with China by deploying more military forces in the South China Sea and increasing support for Taiwan.

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What Is A Woman? – Part 2

US GDP Drops 0.9 Percent In Second Quarter (PM)

The Bureau of Economic Analysis has released their report on the second quarter GDP. “Real gross domestic product (GDP) decreased at an annual rate of 0.9 percent in the second quarter of 2022, according to the ‘advance’ estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the first quarter, real GDP decreased 1.6 percent.” By standard definitions, two consecutive quarters of declining GDP growth indicates that a nation is in an economic recession. President Joe Biden said on Monday that the US is not facing a recession. “We’re not going to be in a recession, in my view,” Biden said. “The unemployment rate is still one of the lowest we’ve had in history. It’s in the 3.6 percent area. We still find ourselves with people investing.”

“The decrease in real GDP reflected decreases in private inventory investment, residential fixed investment, federal government spending, state and local government spending, and nonresidential fixed investment that were partly offset by increases in exports and personal consumption expenditures (PCE). Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased,” the BEA reports. The White House last week adjusted the definition of recession to distinctly not mean that two consecutive quarters of declining GDP growth is a recession. “While some maintain that two consecutive quarters of falling real GDP constitute a recession, that is neither the official definition nor the way economists evaluate the state of the business cycle,” the White House wrote.


“Instead, both official determinations of recessions and economists’ assessment of economic activity are based on a holistic look at the data—including the labor market, consumer and business spending, industrial production, and incomes. Based on these data, it is unlikely that the decline in GDP in the first quarter of this year—even if followed by another GDP decline in the second quarter—indicates a recession,” the White House said.

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Zschaepitz : “This horror chart suggests that #Germany is heading for a huge energy crisis. Not only are gas prices near record highs, but electricity prices in particular are signaling stress.”

‘Horror Chart’ Suggests Germany On Brink Of Huge Energy Crisis (RT)

Germany is heading for a “huge energy crisis,” a senior editor at one of the country’s most influential newspapers, Die Welt, warned on Wednesday. “Not only [are] gas prices near record highs, but electricity prices in particular are signaling stress,” Holger Zschaepitz, a senior editor on the daily’s economic and financial desk, wrote on Twitter. In what he called a “horror chart” that he posted with his tweet, Zschaepitz showed that the price of electricity had reached almost €400 per megawatt hour on the energy exchange, or €0.40 per kilowatt-hour. If consumer prices reflected such market rates, Germans would be paying around €0.80 per kilowatt-hour rather than the current €0.30, including taxes and fees. However, such a sharp increase would be socially explosive, Zschaepitz suggests.

Meanwhile, in such a case energy companies would no longer be able to produce competitively, he adds. Electricity prices in Germany are influenced by the price of natural gas, which is the source of 15% of the country’s electricity, according to official statistics. Gas prices have nearly quadrupled this year, primarily due to shrinking flow from Russia, the continent’s major supplier. The price crunch has already led to a partial nationalization of one of Germany’s largest energy supply companies. The German government announced last week it would acquire a 30% stake in Uniper after the company asked for a bailout, citing “extreme financial pressure” caused by the reduced Russian natural gas deliveries.

The curtailment of gas flows meant that rather than being able to fully rely on its long-term contracts at a fixed price, Uniper has recently been forced to buy gas on the spot market at a much higher price to make up for shortages. According to a recent report by Bloomberg, European energy firms are racking up debt to cover the soaring costs, with their liabilities having reportedly reached over $1.7 trillion.

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Shoot. Foot.

Hanover Becomes First German City To Ban Hot Water In Public Buildings (DM)

The Germany city of Hanover has become the first big city in Europe to ban hot water and central heating in public buildings in response to Vladimir Putin’s weaponizing of gas supplies. The drastic step comes as Germans have been told to expect sky high electricity bills and sweeping gas rationing measures that will affect their day-to-day lives. In a sign of things to come, Hanover, the capital of Lower Saxony in the north west of the country, will cut off the hot water in public buildings, swimming pools, sports halls and gyms. Other desperate gas-saving measures include switching off public fountains and blacking out night-time lights on major buildings such as the town hall and museums. The city’s mayor, Belit Onay, spoke of an ‘imminent gas shortage’ that meant they had to reduce the city’s energy consumption by 15 per cent.


The plans call for shutting off heating within public buildings between April and September each year, and thermostats set at just 20C (68F) for the rest of the year, although there will be some exemptions. There will also be a ban on portable air conditioners, heaters and radiators among the general populace as the average German begins to pay a price for standing up to the Russian dictator. The panic among European states – especially Germany – will likely come as music to Putin’s ears, as he is seen to be cutting energy supplies in retaliation for countries that have supported Ukraine after he invaded the country. Germany, like most of Europe, has been enjoying a hot summer which should soften the blow of the cold showers, but public officials are introducing the measures now in fear of what awaits them when the season turns.

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“..the German industry also depends on it, and if it collapses, the Austrian industry will also collapse, and we will face mass unemployment..”

EU Ban On Russian Gas ‘Impossible’ – Austria (RT)

The European Union cannot ban Russian natural gas, as the step would harm EU members more than Russia, Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer warned on Thursday, as cited by Austrian media outlets. Chancellor Nehammer made the comments during a visit to Vienna by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. “Sanctions must hit those against whom they are directed more, but not harm those who decide them,” Nehammer told the Austria Press Agency. A ban on gas supplies from Russia – an idea that has been circulating within the EU since Moscow started its military operation in Ukraine – would lead to a domino effect in Europe, the Austrian chancellor suggested.

“Austria’s position is that an embargo on gas is impossible. Not only because Austria depends on Russian gas, the German industry also depends on it, and if it collapses, the Austrian industry will also collapse, and we will face mass unemployment,” Nehammer said, as cited by Lenta.ru. Viktor Orban criticized the gas rationing plan approved by the EU – which aims to reduce gas consumption within the bloc by 15% from August to March next year – earlier this week. According to the Hungarian PM, the mandatory rationing of natural gas is “the first sign of a war economy,” and warned of a possible recession and unemployment in Europe.

Europe has seen reduced gas flow from Russia – a major supplier – due to technical issues at a major pipeline. Nord Stream 1 is currently operating at 20% capacity. The reduction comes as the continent is trying to top up its gas reserves ahead of the heating season. The EU pledged earlier this year to end the bloc’s reliance on Russian energy. A partial embargo on oil was agreed upon, but several rounds of sanctions have not included similar restrictions on Russian natural gas.

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The EU is made up of bureaucrats, so of course pratical things do not get done.

EU Gas Solidarity Complicated By Lack Of Fuel Sharing Deals (R.)

The European Union clinched a deal this week to cope with a gas supply crisis, but to make it work member states need to establish bilateral pacts to share gas and, right now, most have no such agreement in place. Only six such deals have been secured, leaving most of the EU’s 27 countries without firm terms on how and when they would share gas in a supply crunch, or the financial compensation they would give or get for doing so. “[Bilateral deals] are really … the only thing that will hold at the end of the day if there is a real supply crisis,” Christian Egenhofer, associate senior research fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies, said. “They organise the legal stuff, the compensation, the financial but also the infrastructure constraints,” he said.

Fearing Russia may completely halt gas flows, EU countries agreed on Tuesday to curb their gas use by 15% over winter, to fill storage and free up fuel to share around in a supply crisis. But it is up to individual countries to sort out how that sharing of fuel will happen in practice. EU laws oblige member states to send gas to a neighboring state whose households or essential services like hospitals face a severe shortage. To make that happen, governments arrange bilateral deals. However, just eight countries are covered by the six agreements so far – including between Germany and Austria, Estonia and Latvia, and Italy and Slovenia. “This is not sufficient,” EU energy policy chief Kadri Simson said last month, urging countries to arrange more.

A handful of countries are negotiating new two-way agreements, government officials said. A German-Czech deal is due to be signed by winter, and Germany is working on further agreements with Poland and Italy, its economy ministry said. But some countries heavily reliant on Russian gas – such as landlocked Hungary, which opposed this week’s deal – have none. Italy and France are the EU’s biggest gas users after economic powerhouse Germany. Italy has just one bilateral deal on emergency gas sharing and France has none. A senior Italian official said the country was negotiating a deal with Greece on gas storage.

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“I simply cannot believe that this absolute failure of economic policy is now being trumpeted as a positive accomplishment.

Worst Is Yet To Come From Trudeau Liberals (Jordan Peterson)

I have had the great privilege of travelling to 40 American cities in just about as many states and to 15 European countries in the last four months, in the waning days of the great COVID panic, and I have learned many things about our great and self-conscious nation. First: I have not travelled anywhere else where the citizens and the government are more neurotically “concerned” about the pandemic. It may have escaped Canadians’ notice, but virtually nowhere else in the developed world is it now required to wear a mask, as is still mandatory in many of Canada’s airports and on flights out of our benighted country. There is absolutely no excuse for this, except the punitive self-righteousness of the Trudeau Liberals.

What else might you expect, however, from a government that also includes Chrystia Freeland, a deputy prime minister who has bragged about her colleagues’ appalling economic performance, claiming that it is actually good for Canadians to empty their wallets at the gas pumps, because of its implications in fighting the “climate emergency.” I simply cannot believe that this absolute failure of economic policy is now being trumpeted as a positive accomplishment. Here’s a hint for you saintly progressives: if you cared about the poor (the real poor, not the hypothetical poor you are hypothetically saving in the future), you would seek to drive down the cost of energy — energy that is precisely equivalent to work and, therefore, to the wealth that ameliorates poverty.

Second: it is almost impossible to overstate the degree to which Canada’s international reputation has been damaged by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The Americans I have talked to (including people very well-placed politically on the Democratic and Republican fronts alike) listen in disbelief when I recount the claim brought forth by the Trudeau Liberals: that the trucker Freedom Convoy was financed by Americans hell-bent on bringing about a Jan. 6-style insurrection in Ottawa. Who would benefit from that, even in principle? Even if the Americans (Republican MAGA-types, say) cared about us — which they don’t — why in the world would they want to destabilize Canadian democracy? What’s the motive, to justify the crime? There is none. Even the American Democrats think that idea is insane.

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Barr 180º.

Bill Barr To Merrick Garland: Appoint A Special Counsel Already (Fed.)

Recent developments warrant the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden, former Attorney General William Barr says. “[I]ntervening events, especially recent reports about FBI whistleblowers and the possible reach of the investigation, warrant adding the protections of special counsel status to assure that key decisions are made independently without political ‘favor,’” Barr told The Federalist. President Joe Biden’s son Hunter has been under federal investigation since 2018 for issues related to his foreign business practices, including obtaining investments and board positions from politically compromised figures in communist China and other trouble spots. Multiple U.S. attorney’s offices were tasked with components of the investigation, with the Delaware office being the lead.

Hunter Biden’s problems became much more public with the news that he had left a laptop full of incriminating information at a computer repair store in Delaware. That news was then suppressed by Democrat-allied intelligence officials falsely claiming it was Russian disinformation. This week, multiple FBI whistleblowers, including those in senior positions, accused FBI headquarters of “improperly discredit[ing] and falsely claim[ing] that derogatory information about Biden’s activities was disinformation, causing investigative activity and sourcing to be shut down,” according to a Monday letter from Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. That fact, as well as concern over the investigation’s complexity and scope, convinced the former attorney general of the need for a special counsel.

By highlighting the apparent breadth of the still-pending investigation into Hunter Biden’s affairs, Barr’s comments confirm concerns of three insiders, reported by The Federalist on Wednesday, that “the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office investigating Hunter Biden lacks the wherewithal and resources to adequately probe the dubious financial dealings of the Biden family and their business partners.” Barr’s view that a special counsel is now warranted to continue the investigation into Hunter Biden’s business dealings represents a change from the position he took in December 2020.

During a December 21, 2020 press conference, when asked whether he agreed with Republicans that a special counsel was needed to handle the Biden investigation, Barr negated the idea. “I think it’s being handled responsibly and professionally currently within the department, and to this point I have seen no reason to appoint a special counsel, and I have no plan to do so before I leave,” the outgoing attorney general told reporters.

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Get that counsel.

Joe Biden Met With 14 Of His Son’s Business Associates (RT)

Despite repeated denials that he ever spoke to his son Hunter about the latter’s overseas business dealings, Fox News reported on Thursday that President Joe Biden met with at least 14 of Hunter’s business associates from the US, Mexico, Ukraine, China and Kazakhstan. Abandoned in a Delaware computer repair shop some time before the 2020 election and unearthed by the New York Post, Hunter’s laptop contained presumed evidence of numerous foreign deals in which businessmen offered tens of millions of dollars for introductions to Joe Biden, as well as graphic proof of Hunter’s drug use and dalliances with prostitutes.

“I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,” Biden insisted in 2019. When last month Britain’s Daily Mail published a 2018 voicemail featuring Biden speaking to Hunter about a deal with Chinese oil firm CEFC, the official line remained the same, with White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre saying that “what the president said still stands.” Fox News’ latest report casts serious doubt on Biden’s denial. According to the news site, Joe Biden met with Mexican businessmen Miguel Aleman Velasco and Miguel Aleman Magnani in 2014, giving the pair a tour of the White House. A year later, Biden reportedly spoke by video with Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim and all three Mexicans – whom Hunter was doing business with or in negotiations with at the time – visited them at the vice presidential residence in Washington DC.

In a text message found on the laptop, Hunter told his business partner, Jeff Cooper, that he had spoken to his father about the deal involving Slim. Joe Biden also reportedly met with former Colombian President Andres Pastrana Arango and Eric Schwerin, another of Hunter’s business partners, in 2012, before dining with Arango and Juan Esteban Orduz, a Colombian businessman, later that same day. Files from the laptop show that during a single dinner in 2015, Joe Biden met with Hunter’s business associates from Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Russia, including an executive from Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian energy company that paid Hunter a reported $50,000 per month from 2014 to 2018 to sit on its board. The following day, the Burisma executive emailed Hunter, thanking him for “giving an opportunity to meet your father.”

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Anton is a former Trump WH adviser.

They Can’t Let Him Back In (Michael Anton)

Why? They say Jan. 6. But their determination began much earlier. And just what is so terrible about Trump anyway? I get many of his critics’ points, I really do. I hear them all the time from my mother. But even if we were to stipulate them all, do Trump’s faults really warrant tearing the country apart by shutting out half of it from the political process? Love him or hate him, during Trump’s presidency, the economy was strong, markets were up, inflation was under control, gas prices were low, illegal border crossings were down, crime was lower, trade deals were renegotiated, ISIS was defeated, NATO allies were stepping up, and China was stepping back (a little). Deny all that if you want to. The point here is that something like 100 million Americans believe it, strongly, and are bewildered and angered by elite hatred for the man they think delivered it.

Nor was Trump’s record all that radical—much less so than that of Joe Biden, who is using school-lunch funding to push gender ideology on poor kids, to cite but one example. Trump’s core agenda—border protection, trade balance, foreign restraint—was quite moderate, both intrinsically and in comparison to past Republican and Democratic precedent. And that’s before we even get to the fact that Trump neglected much of his own agenda in favor of the old Chamber of Commerce, fusionist, Reaganite, Conservatism, Inc., agenda. Corporate tax cuts, deregulation, and bombing Syria: These are all things Trump’s base doesn’t want, but the oligarchs desperately do, which Trump gave them. And still they try to destroy him.

Again, why? I think it’s because, while Trump’s core MAGA agenda is decidedly not outside the historic bipartisan mainstream, it is well outside the present regime’s core interests. Our rulers’ wealth and power rise with open borders, trade giveaways, and endless war. Trump, at least in principle, and often in practice, threatens all three. The old America—the one in which Republicans cared about the heartland and weren’t solely valets to corporate power, Democrats were pro-worker and anti-war, and Bill Clinton and The New York Times could advocate border security—is in the process of being replaced, if it hasn’t already been, by one in which there is only one acceptable opinion on not just these, but all other issues.

Anti-Trump hysteria is in the final analysis not about Trump. The regime can’t allow Trump to be president not because of who he is (although that grates), but because of who his followers are. That class—Angelo Codevilla’s “country class”—must not be allowed representation by candidates who might implement their preferences, which also, and above all, must not be allowed. The rubes have no legitimate standing to affect the outcome of any political process, because of who they are, but mostly because of what they want. Complaints about the nature of Trump are just proxies for objections to the nature of his base. It doesn’t help stabilize our already twitchy situation that those who bleat the loudest about democracy are also audibly and visibly determined to deny a real choice to half the country. “No matter how you vote, you will not get X”—whether X is a candidate or a policy—is guaranteed to increase discontent with the present regime.

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Bear

 

 

 

 

Gerry Ritz

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

Jul 132022
 


Pablo Picasso Guernica [Study] 1937

 

The Judgement of the Nations (Batiushka)
No, Iran Will Not Deliver Armed Drones To Russia (MoA)
Joe Biden’s Oil Gamble Set to Backfire as Saudi Arabia Sticks With Russia (NW)
The World Braces For Europe’s July 22 “Doomsday” (ZH)
Washington Isn’t Ready for Higher Interest Rates (NR)
Democrats Defend Trump Officials’ COVID-19 Response (NW)
Covid Booster Significantly Delays End Of Infection (INN)
FDA Colluded With Moderna to Bypass COVID Vaccine Safety Standards (CHD)
The Serious Adverse Events of mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine Trials (Demasi)
Cassidy Hutchinson Begged Trump Officials For ‘Financial Assistance’ (DC)
The Ex-CIA Agents Deciding Facebook’s Content Policy (MacLeod)
Someone Tell The PM The World Needs More Fertilizer, Not Less (TSun)
DUCK AND COVER 2.0: Prepare for a Nuclear Attack (Celente)

 

 

 

 

I simply don’t understand this anymore.

Hawley – Khiara M. Bridges, Professor Of Law, UC Berkeley School of Law, Berkeley, CA
https://twitter.com/i/status/1546892242899668992

 

 

 

 

State secrets on the table.

Bolton – Jake Tapper: “One doesn’t have to be brilliant to attempt a coup.”
John Bolton: “I disagree with that. As somebody who has helped plan coup d’etat, not here, but other places, it takes a lot of work.”
https://twitter.com/i/status/1546963273408565249

 

 

PaxVax
https://twitter.com/i/status/1546900583919095810

 

 

 

 

“Russia knew that in order to win a war, you have to win the peace afterwards.”

The Judgement of the Nations (Batiushka)

Originally, this was not a war, but a limited Operation, still involving a small proportion of the Russian Armed Forces. Had Russia wanted to occupy the Ukraine with massive military violence, in German, with a ‘Blitzkrieg’, in American, with ‘shock and awe’, with hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of victims, all could have been done in a couple of weeks. However, this is not Hollywood. That was not the aim. The clear aim was to free the Russian part of the Ukraine and to demilitarise and denazify the rest, so it would no longer present a threat to the Russian World. Obviously, doing this meant not just winning the genodical war which the backers of the Kiev regime had begun in 2014, but also doing it, causing the smallest number of victims among the Russian and Allied military and Ukrainian civilians as possible, and at the same time doing the least amount of damage to civilian infrastructure as possible.

Pictures showing huge damage to civilian infrastructure, especially in Mariupol and Donetsk, show above all the enormous amount of damage done by NATO-backed Kiev regime bombardments over the last eight years. It was clear to Russian military and political planners that the Operation would take at least months, perhaps years, as the whole of the Kiev Armed Forces had been digging in here for eight years. Russia knew that in order to win a war, you have to win the peace afterwards. It was no good doing like the Americans did in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, destroying infrastructure, making the people hate you and then, once you realise that you have lost, running away, leaving chaos and misery.

The Russian authorities also knew that since NATO had already de facto declared war on Russia in 2014, the Operation to liberate the Ukraine through denazification and demilitarisation would further activate their war effort and provoke many more ‘sanctions’. Now that the Operation has become a NATO war against Russia, much as expected, it is all the more difficult to forecast the future. Many missed the point. The Special Military Operation is not where it is at. The Ukraine is only the location, the battlefield, and the Kiev junta are only the actors on the stage, puppets. This is not primarily a battle of the military and their technologies, although they are very important, this is above all a battle of world views and ensuing realities. This battle is political and economic, spiritual and moral. Why else did the Johnson regime ban the Russian Orthodox Patriarch from visiting the UK?

Here we understand President Putin’s words of 7 July 2022 before Russian parliamentarians that Russia ‘has not even started anything in earnest in the Ukraine yet’, that the military operation in the Ukraine signifies ‘a cardinal break with the US world order, the beginning of the transition from the liberal globalism of US egocentricity to the reality of a multipolar world….the march of history is unstoppable and the attempts of the West to foist its New World Order on the world are doomed to failure’.

Putin – Multipolar world

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Of course not. Just a stupid attempt to implicate more of America’s perceived enemies.

No, Iran Will Not Deliver Armed Drones To Russia (MoA)

In March this year we were treated to an onslaught of obviously false claims that China would deliver weapons to Russia for the fight in Ukraine. “Russia seeks military equipment and aid from China, U.S. officials say – Washington Post – March 13, 2022 “Russia has turned to China for military equipment and aid in the weeks since it began its invasion of Ukraine, U.S. officials familiar with the matter told The Washington Post. The development comes as White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan plans to travel to Rome on Monday to meet with his Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi. “We are communicating directly, privately to Beijing, that there will absolutely be consequences for large-scale sanctions, evasion efforts or support to Russia to backfill them,” Sullivan told CNN.

Russia is an exporter of military weapons and China is one of its biggest customers. There is nothing in the Chinese arsenals that Russia can not and does not produce itself. The claim was false from the get go but Sullivan, the mediocre National Security Advisor of the Biden regime, planted it to put pressure on China. It of course did not work. China denied that it had received any request from Russia or that it was in any way willing to ever fulfill one if it would come: No Chinese weapons have been seen in Ukraine. Now an equally stupid claim was launched by the very same liar who launched the fake Chinese weapons claim.

“White House: Iran set to deliver armed drones to Russia” – AP – Jul 7, 2022 “The White House on Monday said it believes Russia is turning to Iran to provide it with “hundreds” of unmanned aerial vehicles, including weapons-capable drones, for use in its ongoing war in Ukraine. U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said it was unclear whether Iran had already provided any of the unmanned systems to Russia, but said the U.S. has “information” that indicates Iran is preparing to train Russian forces to use them as soon as this month.” “Our information indicates that the Iranian government is preparing to provide Russia with up to several hundred UAVs, including weapons-capable UAVs on an expedited timeline,” he told reporters Monday.”

Russia has for some time build mass production facilities for its own drones. A decade ago, the Russian Armed Forces possessed fewer than 200 UAVs, and now this figure stands at over 2000, and each year is replenished by 300. Furthermore, the Russian defence industry is conducting R&D on the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in UAVs, with the ambition of enabling them to perform as unified “swarms of drones” in combat zones. Sources claim that this was already tested in 2020, during the Kavkaz-2020 military exercise. Russia has absolutely no need to buy drones from Iran. Besides that it is dubious that Iran would be able to deliver some and certainly not ‘several hundreds’.

The Washington Post notes the weird timing of Sullivan’s claims thereby hinting that it was made for purely political purposes which have nothing to do with Russia: “The revelation comes as President Biden prepares to depart for the Middle East, where he is expected to confer with key allies on a unified regional policy toward Iran. Tensions between Washington and Tehran have been further strained in recent weeks, amid faltering nuclear talks and an uptick in rocket and drone attacks on U.S. military installations in the Middle East, conducted by militia groups armed and funded by Iran.” The whole issues is just a talking point designed to put Iran and Russia into the same ‘baddies’ binder for Biden’s talks in the Middle East. The countries there may not like Iran but they will certainly not allow for a condemnation of Russia. The whole idea is, as many others Sullivan had, stupid to begin with.

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Saudi’s No 1 is not the same as America’s.

Joe Biden’s Oil Gamble Set to Backfire as Saudi Arabia Sticks With Russia (NW)

President Joe Biden’s attempt to lower rising oil prices by convincing Saudi Arabia to increase production looks set to fail as Saudi officials have indicated the country is not willing to abandon its oil production alliance with Russia, which Washington has claimed is part of the reason for sky-high fuel costs. Biden will begin his Middle East trip this week in his first trip to the region since taking office, starting in Israel and the occupied West Bank. He will end his trip in Saudi Arabia. Biden has said that the trip will advance American interests by focusing on the global trade and supply chains the U.S. relies on. Many countries in the West, including the U.S., want Saudi Arabia to produce more oil to help mitigate the growing global energy crisis that was ignited by the Ukraine war.

More production will also punish Russia, a major oil exporter, by bringing global prices down. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal on Sunday, U.S. officials said Biden will discuss Saudi Arabia’s human rights record during the trip. The paper reported that Saudi officials are not likely to make any human rights concessions nor will they be willing to abandon an oil-production partnership with Russia. Saudi Arabia has been looking to secure an oil alliance with Russia for decades but has to walk a tightrope to do this while improving strained relations with the U.S. over its human rights record. Washington and Riyadh have expressed different ideas about what the priorities will be during Biden’s visit. The Biden administration said that the summit of the Arab nations will take center stage, as the president will meet multiple heads of state from the region during the summit.

However, according to the Wall Street Journal, Saudi officials said the meeting between Biden and Saudi King Salman and his leadership team, which includes his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, will feature “substantial exchanges between Prince Mohammed and the president on a range of topics and [Saudi officials] have described the summit as peripheral.” The crown prince is considered a pariah by many in Washington after U.S. intelligence agencies concluded in February 2021 that the 36-year-old future king approved the 2018 murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

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“European stocks plunging 20%. Junk credit spreads widening past 2020 crisis levels. The euro sinking to just 90 cents, before a full-blown recession slams the world’s 2nd biggest economy.”

The World Braces For Europe’s July 22 “Doomsday” (ZH)

Two weeks ago, when previewing the scheduled 10-day shutdown of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline – which supplies the bulk of European nat gas usage courtesy of Russia – for maintenance, we quoted from DB FX strategist George Saravelos that if the gas shutoff is not resolved in coming weeks this would lead to a broadening out of energy disruption with material upfront effects on economic growth, and of course much higher inflation, or as he puts it, “beyond the market’s worries about slower global growth in recent months, what is unfolding in Europe in recent days is a fresh big negative supply shock.” As such, DB’s Jim Reid said that July 22, the day gas is supposed to come back online, could be the most important day of the year:

“while we all spend most of our market time thinking about the Fed and a recession, I suspect what happens to Russian gas in H2 is potentially an even bigger story. Of course by July 22nd parts may have be found and the supply might start to normalize. Anyone who tells you they know what is going to happen here is guessing but as minimum it should be a huge focal point for everyone in markets.” Fast forward to today when, one day after the start of the scheduled 10-day shutdown period which has already sent flows through to NS 1 pipeline to basically zero… … and the market is now focusing on the worst case scenario: what happens if Russia cuts off all gas on July 22, the day even Bloomberg has now dubbed Europe’s “doomsday scenario.”

Here is a sample of what Wall Street expects to happen then: European stocks plunging 20%. Junk credit spreads widening past 2020 crisis levels. The euro sinking to just 90 cents, before a full-blown recession slams the world’s 2nd biggest economy. And all this power in the palm of Putin’s hand, almost as if he knew precisely how much leverage he had back in February while Europe was – as always – completely clueless. So to help Europe’s braindead bureaucrats, where energy policies have been dictated by a petulant Scandianvian teenager and a bunch of German “greens”, strategists across Wall Street have tried to put numbers on a scenario that would be unthinkable in normal times. The caveat of course is that there are so many variables, such as the length of any shutdown, the extent of supply cuts, and how far countries would go to ration energy, that anyone’s prediction is a guess at best. Even so, the scenarios are catastrophic.

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“Washington was already projected to add $100 trillion in baseline deficits over the next three decades due primarily to Social Security and Medicare shortfalls. ”

Washington Isn’t Ready for Higher Interest Rates (NR)

Congress and the White House are not prepared for a world with higher interest rates, and there’s no backup plan. Weary families have already seen soaring inflation reduce their real wages by 3 percent over the past year. The Federal Reserve and market forces will likely defeat inflation within a reasonable time frame. But the resulting higher interest rates will cost Washington — and taxpayers — for many years to come. Any family shopping for a new home is already feeling the interest-rate crunch. Since last year, the average mortgage rate on a conventional fixed-rate loan has jumped from 2.6 percent to 5.8 percent, pushing up the monthly payment on a median-priced home from $1,289 to $1,877. Interest rates on car loans and small-business loans have jumped as well.

Rates are likely to continue rising. The Federal Reserve has quickly hiked the federal funds rate from 0.25 to 1.75 percent, yet will likely have to go higher to crush inflation. And once inflation is defeated, a more vigilant Fed is unlikely to drop rates back within the 0–2.5 percent range that has prevailed over the past 14 years. Investors will likely demand many years of higher interest rates and an inflation risk premium to avoid getting burned again. Such a scenario helped drive up 1980s interest rates in response to 1970s inflation. Other factors that may drive up interest rates for years to come include a long-awaited productivity surge (which would increase borrowing by making capital investments more profitable, and families more willing to borrow against future wealth), global investors chasing stronger returns in faster-developing economies, and baby boomers finally spending down their decades of retirement savings.

The colossal national-debt surge projected by the Congressional Budget Office would add approximately three percentage points to interest rates over three decades. Washington, perched for now on top of a mountain of debt, can ill afford higher interest rates. For the past few years, short-sighted lawmakers, economists, and columnists have demanded that Congress take advantage of low interest rates by engaging in a massive borrowing spree. Indeed, President Biden’s enormous spending agenda was often justified by the low interest rates on government borrowing. This case never made sense for two reasons. First, Washington was already projected to add $100 trillion in baseline deficits over the next three decades due primarily to Social Security and Medicare shortfalls.

Even with low rates, interest costs were projected by the CBO to become the most expensive item in the federal budget and consume half of all tax revenues within a few decades. Additional borrowing would deepen the hole. Second, Washington never locked in the recent low interest rates. In fact, the average maturity on the federal debt has fallen to 62 months. If interest rates rise at any point in the future, nearly the entire escalating national debt would roll over into those rates within a decade. Consequently, continued federal borrowing means gambling America’s economic future on the hope that interest rates never rise again. And there is no backup plan if rates do rise.

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Martin Kulldorff and Jay Bhattacharya

Democrats Defend Trump Officials’ COVID-19 Response (NW)

With more than one million reported COVID-19 deaths and enormous collateral damage to public health, education, and the economy, our pandemic response was a disaster. Yet some House Democrats are now defending the Trump administration officials responsible for initiating those misguided policies. Two Trump-appointed officials—former CDC director Robert Redfield and White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx—formally directed the federal response from the start of the pandemic through January 2021. They adopted lockdowns, including school and business closures, as the centerpiece of the national coronavirus response. In a recent report, Democrats on the Congressional Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis defended these Trump officials. In doing so, they reiterated the misunderstandings underpinning the Birx-Redfield-Fauci strategy.

The Trump officials made two fundamental mistakes. First, they failed to prioritize protecting older Americans from a disease that had an infection fatality rate more than a thousand times higher for the elderly than for the young, leading to many unnecessary deaths. Unlike Ebola, but similar to influenza and previously circulating coronaviruses, it was never possible to suppress COVID-19 to achieve “zero COVID.” Many countries tried, but not one succeeded. Lockdowns only prolonged the pandemic. Despite harsh government lockdowns, extensive contact tracing, and constant anxiety-inducing warnings, most Americans got infected. Inevitably so. With their singular focus on COVID suppression, Birx, Redfield, and Anthony Fauci failed to implement measures to protect older, high-risk Americans. They praised governors who ordered hospitals to discharge COVID-infected patients to nursing homes, where they infected other residents.

Excess staff rotation spread the virus both within and between nursing homes. Instead of implementing daily testing at nursing homes, Birx, Redfield, and Fauci used limited resources to test asymptomatic children and students. It was only when Dr. Scott Atlas arrived at the White House in July 2020 that the government made more tests available to nursing homes. When enough people recover from COVID, the country reaches herd immunity. After that, the disease becomes endemic, like other coronaviruses that cause occasional colds. Since the Birx-Redfield-Fauci strategy led to mass infection and eventual herd immunity, it is curious that congressional Democrats now claim these Trump officials were opposed to a “herd immunity strategy.” The truth, now obvious to all, is that all COVID strategies lead to herd immunity. That is how pandemics end.

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Because it compromises the immune system.

Covid Booster Significantly Delays End Of Infection (INN)

A new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) has demonstrated that people who are triple-vaccinated (boosted) against COVID recover significantly more slowly from COVID infection and remain contagious for longer than people who are not vaccinated at all. The study did not deal with the severity of illness with or without a vaccine. Researchers swabbed infected people and cultured the swabs, repeating the process for over two weeks until viral replication was not observed. At five days post-infection, less than 25 percent of unvaccinated people were still contagious, whereas around 70 percent of boosted people were still carrying viable virus particles. For those partially vaccinated, around 50 percent were still contagious at this point.


Even more strikingly, at ten days post-infection, one-third of boosted people (31 percent) were found to still be carrying live, culturable virus. By contrast, just six percent of unvaccinated people were still contagious at day 10. In other words, people who have received a booster shot are five times more likely still to be contagious at ten days post-infection than are unvaccinated people. The findings go a long way to explaining why Paxlovid, Pfizer’s anti-viral medication, is often not effective for people who have been vaccinated against COVID, with many experiencing a recurrence of symptoms along with a positive COVID test after completing the five-day regimen (as recently occurred with quadruple-vaccinated Dr. Anthony Fauci). This phenomenon is known as COVID rebound.

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“Moderna claims the active substance — mRNA in Spikevax — does not need to be studied for toxicity and can be replaced with any other mRNA without further testing.”

FDA Colluded With Moderna to Bypass COVID Vaccine Safety Standards (CHD)

According to an ex-pharmaceutical industry and biotech executive, documents obtained from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine suggest the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Moderna colluded to bypass regulatory and scientific standards used to ensure products are safe. Alexandra Latypova has spent 25 years in pharmaceutical research and development working with more than 60 companies worldwide to submit data to the FDA on hundreds of clinical trials. After analyzing 699 pages of studies and test results “supposedly used by the FDA to clear Moderna’s mRNA platform-based mRNA-1273, or Spikevax,” Latypova told The Defender she believes U.S. health agencies are lying to the public on behalf of vaccine manufacturers.

“It is evident that the FDA and NIH [National Institutes of Health] colluded with Moderna to subvert the regulatory and scientific standards of drug safety testing,” Latypova said. “They accepted fraudulent test designs, substitutions of test articles, glaring omissions and whitewashing of serious signs of health damage by the product, then lied to the public on behalf of the manufacturers.” In an op-ed on Trial Site News, Latypova disclosed the following findings:

  1. Moderna’s nonclinical summary contains mostly irrelevant materials.
  2. Moderna claims the active substance — mRNA in Spikevax — does not need to be studied for toxicity and can be replaced with any other mRNA without further testing.
  3. Moderna’s nonclinical program consisted of irrelevant studies of unapproved mRNAs and only one non-GLP [Good Laboratory Practice] toxicology study of mRNA-1273 — the active substance in Spikevax.
  4. There are two separate investigational new drug numbers for mRNA-1273. One is held by Moderna, the other by the Division of Microbiology and Infectious Diseases within the NIH, representing a “serious conflict of interest.”
  5. The FDA failed to question Moderna’s “scientifically dishonest studies” dismissing an “extremely significant risk” of vaccine-induced antibody-enhanced disease.
  6. The FDA and Moderna lied about reproductive toxicology studies in public disclosures and product labeling.

“Moderna’s documents are poorly and often incompetently written — with numerous hypothetical statements unsupported by any data, proposed theories, and admission of using unvalidated assays and repetitive paragraphs throughout,” Latypova wrote. “Quite shockingly, this represents the entire safety toxicology assessment for an extremely novel product that has gotten injected into millions of arms worldwide.”

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“Trials” in this case doesn’t mean what it usually does. There have been either no “trials” or one very big one.

The Serious Adverse Events of mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine Trials (Demasi)

In December 2020, the US FDA authorised the Moderna and Pfizer mRNA covid-19 vaccines, claiming “the benefits outweighed the harms.” Now, a group of international researchers has gone back to re-analyse the original trial data upon which that claim was made. A pre-print study (not yet peer-reviewed) by Fraiman and colleagues contradicts the FDA’s claim that the benefits outweigh the harms of the mRNA vaccines. In fact, the authors conclude that the vaccines are associated with an “increased risk of serious adverse events” that surpass the “risk reduction for covid-19 hospitalisation” relative to the placebo group. The conclusion is provocative. While some have criticised the study for fuelling ‘anti-vax’ sentiment, many have welcomed the independent scrutiny of the trial data.

The researchers focused on analysing serious adverse events — specifically, they narrowed it to serious adverse events of “special interest” which were derived from a predefined list by the Brighton Collaboration, an established framework for vaccine safety used for over two decades. The advantage of this method is that it removes adverse events that are unlikely to be vaccine-related such as gunshot wounds and car accidents, thereby removing ‘noise’ from the analysis. They also pooled the trial data for the two mRNA vaccines which increased the sample size and achieved higher confidence in the results (more precision). The upshot of the analysis was that mRNA vaccines were associated with an absolute risk increase of serious adverse events of 12.5 per 10,000 vaccinated people (95% CI 2.1 to 22.9) over placebo.

Put another way, 1 in 800 people experienced a serious adverse event following either one of the mRNA vaccines (95% CI: 437 to 4762). “That is very high for a vaccine. No other vaccine on the market comes close,” says Martin Kulldorff, professor of medicine at Harvard (on leave) and former CDC vaccine safety committee member who was not involved in the study. Kulldorff says the closest any other vaccine on the US market comes to this is the MMRV vaccine which is no longer recommended for 1-yr-olds because they found the excess risk of febrile seizures was 1 in 2300 compared to separate MMR and Varicella vaccines (no excess risk in 5-yr olds). The Fraiman study found that coagulation disorders and cardiovascular problems were driving most of the serious adverse event in the trials, which seems to corroborate reports in the pharmacovigilance databases.

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“Every conversation that she described that she had with people from McCarthy to Ratcliffe to Cipollone never happened..”

Cassidy Hutchinson Begged Trump Officials For ‘Financial Assistance’ (DC)

The Jan. 6 Committee’s key witness, Cassidy Hutchinson, asked former Senior Trump officials for financial assistance and legal help in February after she was subpoenaed by the committee, according to an email obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller. [..] “I was subpoenaed by the 1/6 Committee on November 9, 2020, but was not formally served until Wednesday, January 26, 2021. I’ve had difficulty securing a legal team, and was hoping you may be able to put me in contact with any fundraising organizations and/or attorneys that are involved in this process,” Hutchinson said in the email to the former senior Trump official. “My aunt and uncle applied to refinance their house to loosen up some money since I don’t have much immediate family, but they weren’t approved,” Hutchinson said in a separate email.

Multiple senior Trump officials and a person with first-hand knowledge told the Daily Caller that former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows would not answer Hutchinson’s calls after she was subpoenaed. A Meadows spokesperson confirmed those claims to the Daily Caller, saying Meadows didn’t return those calls to avoid the appearance of improperly influencing any testimony. [..] “Cassidy Hutchinson reached out to various people in Trump world asking for both financial assistance and help finding a lawyer. She told us she was in significant financial distress, had no family that could help, and couldn’t even afford food. She also told us Mark Meadows wouldn’t return her calls. To our knowledge, she spoke with multiple lawyers and chose Stefan Passantino to represent her,” a person with first-hand knowledge told the Daily Caller.

The person with first-hand knowledge also said that Trump officials were sympathetic because of her age and lack of employment and said at her request, Trump’s PAC agreed to help her financially and, at her request, suggested attorneys she could interview. The person also said Hutchinson made derogatory comments about the Jan. 6 committee to multiple people in Trump world. A former senior Trump official also mentioned Meadows not returning Hutchinson’s calls and said she reached out to Trump’s circle and asked for help. “She reached out to Trump world and was like, ‘Hey. The committee reached out to me. I really need help.’ She didn’t have a job. She didn’t have money to pay a lawyer. Trump has been trying to be really helpful, especially with young people who weren’t like bad actors on J6, like get you a lawyer. Pay for it. Meadows wasn’t returning her phone calls and like her circle of people, weren’t, like, helpful,” a former senior Trump official told the Caller.

[..] “She was in a horrible, she was in horrible shape financially. She had no employment prospects because like, you know, coming out of the Trump White House election wasn’t exactly, you know, a great line on the resume. And she was desperate,” the other Trump official told the Caller. “Every conversation that she described that she had with people from McCarthy to Ratcliffe to Cipollone never happened,” the official added. Another former senior Trump official told the Caller that Hutchinson was supposed to go work for Trump in Palm Beach, Florida, after leaving the White House and was stunned by Hutchinson’s testimony in front of the committee.

“She made it sound like all these people, I mean, I was in that West Wing, that these people basically were reporting to her and she was giving Meadows advice. And I’m like, What? I was there … But here’s the part that I do know firsthand she was supposed to take a job in Palm Beach,” the former senior Trump official said. “All I know. She was thrilled to go down there. Thrilled. Thrilled. This is after January 20!” the former official continued.

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“Facebook, in short, is utterly swarming with spooks.”

The Ex-CIA Agents Deciding Facebook’s Content Policy (MacLeod)

It is an uncomfortable job for anyone trying to draw the line between “harmful content and protecting freedom of speech. It’s a balance”, Aaron says. In this official Facebook video, Aaron identifies himself as the manager of “the team that writes the rules for Facebook”, determining “what is acceptable and what is not.” Thus, he and his team effectively decide what content the platform’s 2.9 billion active users see and what they don’t see. Aaron is being interviewed in a bright warehouse-turned-studio. He is wearing a purple sweater and blue jeans. He comes across as a very likable, smiley person. It is not an easy job, of course, but someone has to make those calls. “Transparency is incredibly important in the work that I do,” he says.

Aaron is CIA. Or at least he was until July 2019, when he left his job as a senior analytic manager at the agency to become senior product policy manager for misinformation at Meta, the company that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. In his 15-year career, Aaron Berman rose to become a highly influential part of the CIA. For years, he prepared and edited the president of the United States’ daily brief, “wr[iting] and overs[eeing] intelligence analysis to enable the President and senior U.S. officials to make decisions on the most critical national security issues,” especially on “the impact of influence operations on social movements, security, and democracy,” his LinkedIn profile reads. None of this is mentioned in the Facebook video.

Berman’s case is far from unique, however. Studying Meta’s reports, as well as employment websites and databases, MintPress has found that Facebook has recruited dozens of individuals from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), as well as many more from other agencies like the FBI and Department of Defense (DoD). These hires are primarily in highly politically sensitive sectors such as trust, security and content moderation, to the point where some might feel it becomes difficult to see where the U.S. national security state ends and Facebook begins. In previous investigations, this author has detailed how TikTok is flooded with NATO officials, how former FBI agents abound at Twitter, and how Reddit is led by a former war planner for the NATO think tank, the Atlantic Council. But the sheer scale of infiltration of Facebook blows these away. Facebook, in short, is utterly swarming with spooks.

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WEF-coordinated between several countries.

The discussion is priceless.

Someone Tell The PM The World Needs More Fertilizer, Not Less (TSun)

The Trudeau government’s plan to reduce the use of fertilizers in Canada in the name of fighting climate change is the kind of thinking that globally applied, will lead to skyrocketing food prices and famine.It is another example of how Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s mantra that the world must move ever faster away from the use of fossil fuels is increasingly becoming disconnected from reality because of rapidly changing global events.The problem right now is that the world needs more fertilizer, not less, for the same reason it needs more fossil fuel energy, not less.The severe shortage of both is happening for the same reasons — supply chain disruptions as countries try to recover economically from the COVID-19 pandemic, along with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine.

Just as Russia is a major supplier of natural gas and oil to Europe, it is also the world’s largest producer of fertilizer. A global shortage of fertilizer — exacerbated by economic sanctions against Russian fertilizer and Russian export restrictions on fertilizer — is already contributing to higher prices, not just for the fertilizer needed by farmers to grow crops, but for the prices consumers pay for food at the grocery store. At least that’s the case in developed countries like Canada.For developing countries, it raises the spectre of famine. The real “green revolution” in agriculture, which started in the 1960s by making food production increasingly more efficient — in large part due to fertilizers — is literally keeping billions of people around the world alive today.

A global shortage of fertilizer, unless it is meaningfully addressed, will do the opposite over time.Enter the Trudeau government with a policy of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from fertilizers in Canada to 30% below 2020 levels by 2030. That’s an absurdly short time frame which is just as unrealistic as his target of reducing Canada’s greenhouse emissions to 40%-45% below 2005 levels by 2030 and to net zero by 2050. The Liberals, as well as the Conservatives, have never hit a single emission reduction target they’ve set over the past 34 years, and the reason is they set targets which are technologically unfeasible over and over again.

‘Nobody believes you’: Poilievre grills Trudeau as he testifies over WE Charity controversy

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This crazy video feels like a sign of these crazy times.

DUCK AND COVER 2.0: Prepare for a Nuclear Attack (Celente)

The Ukraine War continues to escalate and America and NATO have vowed to do whatever it takes to defeat Russia. As we have forecast, the longer the war drags on, and the more weapons of death that are sent to Ukraine to keep bloodying the killing fields, the hotter it’s going to get, even to the point where there will be a nuclear exchange. Now the message being broadcast via the mainstream media is that the worst is yet to come, and they are warning the people, as they were during the Cold War, to “Duck and Cover.” Yesterday, New York City released a public service announcement warning the people that a nuclear bomb can be dropped and gave them idiotic and moronic instructions on what to do to save their lives after the bomb was dropped.


Assuming that they did not burn or melt in the initial blast, the New York City Emergency Management Department gave New Yorkers a three-step plan reminiscent of the duck-and-cover stupidity they sold the people at the height of the Cold War. The biggest takeaway: you really have to be a stupid dumbbell to swallow the crap from this shit show production. The short video, which looks like it was filmed on a Hollywood set, takes place on a partially bombed city street with a scene with damage that looks more Sesame Street than a nuclear apocalypse. Dressed in black, the presenter is the culturally perfect presenter in America’s dead-woke society. The actor playing the government mouthpiece role appears calm, almost like a flight attendant pointing to emergency exits on a plane and the only indication that something is amiss is the faint sound of sirens going on in the background.

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Led by Donkeys

 

 

 

 

Mahathir
https://twitter.com/i/status/1546003810253803521

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Apr 132022
 
 April 13, 2022  Posted by at 8:04 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  63 Responses »


Margaret Bourke-White Coney Island 1952

 

CIA Admits Feeding Americans False Info About Ukraine (Ron Paul)
The West Cannot Isolate Russia, Putin Warns (F.)
China’s Jan-March Overall Trade With Russia Rises 28% (R.)
The Defense Industry’s Ukraine Pundits (Lever)
Top American Golfer Recently Underwent Surgery For Blood Clot In Her Left Arm (GW)
Bitcoin Fans Are Psychopaths Who Don’t Care About Anyone, Study Shows (NYP)
California Now Leads The Country In Illiteracy (CJ)
At Least 20 Federal ‘Assets’ Embedded at Capitol on Jan. 6 (ET)
Covering for the Big Guy (Dinesh D’Souza)
Canada’s Next PM (Bexte)
Rebel News Founder Speaks After Trudeau Denies Them Journalism ‘License’ (Fox)
Trudeau Considers Trucker Tax (TCS)
Twitter ‘A Sh*t Show’ For Employees Since Elon Musk Took Major Stake (NYP)
Elon Musk Accused Of Breaking Law While Buying Twitter Stock (AP)
Elon Musk’s Vision For The Internet Is Dangerous Nonsense (Robert Reich)

 

 

 

 

“Americans are directly in charge of the war on the ground.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

” Isn’t it ironic that the CIA itself has done more than the Russians to undermine Americans’ faith in the media..”

CIA Admits Feeding Americans False Info About Ukraine (Ron Paul)

Late last year, a Gallup poll showed that Americans’ trust in the mainstream media has fallen to its second lowest level on record. Only seven percent of Americans responded that they have a “great deal” of trust in the media. That loss of trust has been well-earned by the mainstream media, and it explains the massive growth of independent media and alternative voices on social media. The response to the rise of independent media voices has been a rush to “cancel” any voice outside the accepted mainstream narrative. Citizens of the Soviet Union would read manipulated media like Pravda not because the regime reported facts, but because truth was hidden between the lines of what was reported and what was not reported. That seems to be where we are in the US today.

Last week an extraordinary article appeared in, of all places, NBC News, reporting that the US intelligence community is knowingly feeding information it does not believe accurate to the US mainstream media for the American audience to consume. In other words, the article reports that the US “deep state” admits to being actively engaged in lying to the American people in the hopes that it can manipulate public opinion According to the NBC News article, “multiple US officials acknowledged that the US has used information as a weapon even when confidence in the accuracy of the information wasn’t high. Sometimes it has used low-confidence intelligence for deterrent effect…” Readers will recall the shocking headlines that Russia was prepared to use chemical weapons in Ukraine, that China would be providing military equipment to Russia, that Russian President Putin was being fed misinformation by his advisors, and more.

All of these were churned out by the CIA to be repeated in the American media even though they were known to be false. It was all about, as one intelligence officer said in the article, “trying to get inside Putin’s head.” That may have been the goal, but what the CIA actually did was get inside America’s head with false information meant to shape public perception of the conflict. They lied to propagandize us in favor of the Biden Administration’s narrative. Those pushing the “Russiagate” hoax through the Trump years claimed that the goal of “Russian disinformation” was to undermine Americans’ trust in our government, media, and other institutions. Isn’t it ironic that the CIA itself has done more than the Russians to undermine Americans’ faith in the media by feeding false stories to establish a particular narrative among the American people?

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“It is practically “impossible to severely isolate anyone in the modern world,” let alone a country as “vast” as Russia..”

“..reiterating unproven claims the West has fostered a neo-Nazi, anti-Russian state on its doorstep..”

The West Cannot Isolate Russia, Putin Warns (F.)

Russian President Vladimir Putin toured a spaceport in the far east of Russia on Tuesday with Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, defending Russia’s “clear and noble” goals in Ukraine and pointing to the country’s prior achievements in space as proof Western efforts to isolate Moscow will fail. It is practically “impossible to severely isolate anyone in the modern world,” let alone a country as “vast” as Russia, Putin said, according to Reuters, citing Russian state television. Even the “total” sanctions and “complete” isolation of the Soviet Union did not stop it from beating the West into space, Putin said, adding that Russia does not “intend to be isolated.”

Putin said Russia would never again depend on the West and doubled down on the main goal of what the Kremlin calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine, which is to “help people in the Donbas,” the primarily Russian-speaking region in eastern Ukraine, and ensure Russia’s security, according to the New York Times. He said Russia made the “right decision” and “didn’t have a choice” but to invade Ukraine, reiterating unproven claims the West has fostered a neo-Nazi, anti-Russian state on its doorstep. Putin was touring the Vostochny spaceport with Belarusian ally Lukashenko, who reportedly asked why everyone is “getting so worried about these sanctions.” The pair celebrated Cosmonaut’s Day—a celebration of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin carrying out the first human spaceflight in 1961—and announced a joint project to guarantee both countries independent access to space.

Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine six weeks ago, Western countries have imposed a series of increasingly harsh sanctions and restrictions against Russian businesses, industry, and key members of Putin’s inner circle. Many businesses have elected to withdraw from Russia as well. The sanctions have had a dramatic impact on the Russian economy and the World Bank estimates its economy will be around 11% smaller at the end of 2022 (it estimates Ukraine’s will fall around 45%). Despite the Russian downturn, critics, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, argue that sanctions are too weak and Europe’s continued purchasing of Russian oil and gas amounts to giving Russia “permission to attack.” Increasing indications of Russian war crimes in Ukraine, such as signs of executed civilians in Bucha, have added to pressure to up sanctions.

Pence Putin
https://twitter.com/i/status/1514060795079966728

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What isolation looks like.

China’s Jan-March Overall Trade With Russia Rises 28% (R.)

China’s overall trade with Russia rose to 243.03 billion yuan ($38.18 billion) in January-March, a Chinese customs spokesman said on Wednesday, up 27.8 percent from a year earlier. China’s total trade with Ukraine climbed to 29.6 billion yuan in the first quarter, customs spokesman Li Kuiwen said at a press conference, up 10.6 percent. China’s trade with both Russia and Ukraine has maintained an uptrend, Li said, adding that China’s economic and trade cooperation with other countries including Russia and Ukraine will remain normal. China’s overall trade with Russia reached 190.12 billion yuan in January-March 2021, while its trade with Ukraine stood at 26.77 billion yuan, according to previous customs data.

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Maybe step 1 is to stop calling it the *Defense* industry?

The Defense Industry’s Ukraine Pundits (Lever)

Last week, CNN brought on former U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta for his fourth recent appearance to talk, once again, about Russian President Vladimir Putin’s deadly invasion of Ukraine. “I think we need to understand that there is only one thing that Putin understands, and that’s force,” said Panetta on Newsroom. The former CIA director added: “I think the United States has to provide whatever weapons are necessary to the Ukrainians, so that they can hit back, and hit back now.” At no time did Panetta nor CNN mention that he’s a senior counselor at Beacon Global Strategies, a defense industry consulting firm that has reportedly represented weapons manufacturer Raytheon. The firm doesn’t disclose its clients, but Raytheon and the defense industry generally stand to benefit from the conflict in Ukraine.

The episode is part of a broader pattern and practice: Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, cable news networks have routinely called on defense officials-turned-consultants to offer analysis and help the American public make sense of the crisis. Often, these analysts have used their TV time to call for greater U.S. involvement and bolder moves that could ratchet up tensions between two nuclear-armed superpowers. The networks have consistently failed to disclose these analysts’ day jobs, describing them instead by only their former high-ranking military or government roles — leaving viewers in the dark about the analysts’ financial ties to defense contractors that stand to profit from increased or prolonged conflict.

During its Ukraine coverage, MSNBC even failed to include disclosures when the network invited on former Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, who serves on the board of directors at Lockheed Martin, the world’s biggest defense contractor. When asked about this matter, Johnson told The Lever, “I have no comment.” Corporate media’s lack of transparency about these consultants is deeply troubling, said Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen. “This type of revolving-door behavior should be prohibited for military officials to serve in a private capacity representing military contractors,” Holman told The Lever. “If not prohibited, it should be disclosed to everyone so when they’re going on television trying to affect Biden’s policy on whatever war they have in mind, they ought to be straightforward.”

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Probably nothing. Golfers get blood clots all the time.

Top American Golfer Recently Underwent Surgery For Blood Clot In Her Left Arm (GW)

Nelly Korda announced Friday on social media that she recently underwent surgery for a blood clot in a subclavian vein in her left arm. “I am pleased to report the procedure went well and the doctors were happy with the outcome,” Korda wrote. “I am now home recovering and preparing to start rehab. I am looking forward to getting back to 100 percent so I can begin practicing.” Korda, the No. 2-ranked player in the world, first posted about the blood clot on March 13 and withdrew from the next two events in California, including the Chevron Championship, the season’s first major. “I want to thank everyone for the overwhelming support and messages I have received the last few weeks,” Korda posted. “Your kind words have helped me get through this challenging and scary time.”

Korda last teed it up on the LPGA in early February at the LPGA Drive On Championship. She has finished T-15, T-20, and T-4 in three starts this season. In 2021, Korda won four times on the LPGA as well as Olympic gold in Tokyo and was named Female Player of the Year by the Golf Writers Association of America. She was honored by the GWAA on Wednesday night at the organization’s annual dinner near Augusta. Korda also revealed that she had tested positive for COVID-19 in the second week of January, which “kept her off her feet for some time” before the LPGA season started.

McCullough: permanent DNA alteration
https://twitter.com/i/status/1512916014882828292

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“A team of experts..”

Bitcoin Fans Are Psychopaths Who Don’t Care About Anyone, Study Shows (NYP)

The average Bitcoin investor is a calculating psychopath with an inflated ego, according to scientists. A team of experts recently surveyed more than 500 people to uncover the personality traits that are most common among crypto nuts. They identified that many investors exhibit signs of the “dark tetrad”, a group of four unsavory traits made up of narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy and sadism. In plain English, that means dark tetrads have an inflated sense of self-importance and derive pleasure from the pain of others. They also find it difficult to empathize with others and are sly and manipulative.


Scientists at Queensland University of Technology described their findings in research published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences earlier this month. They asked 566 people to complete personality surveys as well as answers questions about their attitudes to crypto. Of the participants, one in four reported that they owned crypto and two-thirds showed an interest in crypto investing. All four dark tetrad traits correlated with an affinity for investing, each for their own reasons. According to the researchers, dark tetrads are partly drawn to crypto because they are prepared to take risks. Digital assets such as Bitcoin are infamously volatile and the feast-or-famine nature of investing is particularly enticing to some.

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3rd world.

California Now Leads The Country In Illiteracy (CJ)

With California’s porous southern border, soaring taxes, and ongoing flow of overbearing and occasionally bizarre regulations (one law targets cow flatulence, for example), state residents could use a break from bad news. Unfortunately, that doesn’t appear to be happening anytime soon. According to a recent report, California now leads the country in illiteracy. In fact, 23.1 percent of Californians over age 15 cannot read this sentence. While the problem has many causes, much of the blame falls on the state’s failing public schools. The 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress found that just 30 percent of California eighth-graders are proficient in reading. And those numbers reflect results gathered before the Covid-19 lockdowns.

Voters’ attitudes toward California’s government-run schools have tumbled accordingly. A new poll from UC–Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies reveals that just 35 percent of the state’s voters gave public schools in their local district a grade of A or B, down from 55 percent in 2011. At the other end of the spectrum, 25 percent now give their local public schools a D or an F, up 15 percentage points from 2011. The poll included responses from 800 California voters, with 50 percent identifying as Democrats, 26 percent as Republicans, and 24 percent as independents. It’s hardly a surprise, then, that public school enrollment is sinking. In 2018–2019, the system lost about 23,000 students, but between the 2019–2020 and 2020–2021 terms, California public schools saw more than 160,000 students leave—a sevenfold increase.

In Los Angeles, defections are accelerating. Whereas L.A. Unified schools were home to 737,000 students 20 years ago, the district is now forecasting a 25,000-student drop by the fall, which would bring their attendance number below the 400,000 mark. As the Los Angeles Times reports, the district’s “American Rescue Plan” funding will soon run out: “From July forward, the district is projected to spend about $1 billion more than it will take in over a two-year period. The district also must wrestle with underfunded retiree health benefits.” Additionally, the district’s contract with United Teachers Los Angeles runs out at the end of the school year, and the union will demand the sun and the moon for the next contract.

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“One agent was even recorded stating, ‘We don’t know what we are looking for yet.’ They should look for a copy of the Constitution and read it.”

At Least 20 Federal ‘Assets’ Embedded at Capitol on Jan. 6 (ET)

At least 20 FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives “assets” were embedded around the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, a defense attorney wrote in a court filing on April 12. The disclosure was made in a motion seeking to dismiss seditious conspiracy and obstruction charges against 10 Oath Keepers defendants in one of the most prominent Jan. 6 criminal cases. David W. Fischer, attorney for Thomas E. Caldwell of Berryville, Virginia, filed a 41-page motion to dismiss four counts on behalf of all Oath Keepers case defendants before U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta in Washington, D.C. Caldwell is charged in the indictment, but is not a member of the Oath Keepers, he told The Epoch Times in March.

“At least 20 FBI and ATF assets were embedded around the Capitol on J6,” read a footnote on Page 6 of the motion. No other details were provided in the document. The footnote said defense attorneys “combed through a mountain of discovery,” including FBI form 302 summaries of interviews conducted by FBI agents. In addition to the information about law-enforcement assets on the ground at the Capitol, the footnote says, the Oath Keepers “were being monitored and recorded prior to J6.” Poring over evidence turned over in discovery by prosecutors in two major Oath Keepers cases has “not found one iota of proof” that defendants “had any plan, intention, design, or scheme to specifically enter the Capitol Building on J6,” the motion said.

Since the first arrests of Jan. 6 defendants in early 2021, there has been extensive speculation and questions from attorneys, defendants, case observers, and members of Congress about the role law enforcement played that day. During a Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing on Jan. 11, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) grilled top FBI officials on the subject. “How many FBI agents or confidential informants actively participated in the events of Jan. 6?” Cruz asked Jill Sanborn, executive assistant director of the FBI’s national security branch. “Sir, I’m sure you can appreciate that I can’t go into the specifics of sources and methods,” Sanborn said. Cruz replied, “Did any FBI agents or confidential informants actively participate in the events of Jan. 6, yes or no?” “Sir, I can’t answer that,” Sanborn said. “Did any FBI agents or confidential informants commit crimes of violence on Jan. 6?” Cruz asked. “I can’t answer that, sir,” Sanborn replied.

Jeremy M. Brown, an Oath Keepers member from Florida who was charged with two Jan. 6-related counts but is not part of either major Oath Keepers conspiracy case, told The Epoch Times earlier this year that the FBI unsuccessfully tried to recruit him in 2020 to spy on the group. Brown said the same agents who later arrested him for alleged Jan. 6 crimes tried to recruit him on Dec. 11, 2020, to become a confidential informant. He refused. He was arrested on Sept. 30, 2021, when dozens of federal agents swarmed his Florida property. “When asked by me and my girlfriend to produce the warrants at the time of arrest, they refused to produce them,” Brown said. “One agent was even recorded stating, ‘We don’t know what we are looking for yet.’ They should look for a copy of the Constitution and read it.”

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“This is a Joe Biden scandal, not a Hunter Biden scandal.”

Covering for the Big Guy (Dinesh D’Souza)

This has all the persuasive power of saying that Don Corleone knew nothing about his family’s activities and played no part in them whatever. It makes no sense. And Joe Biden’s direct involvement in his son’s activities has now been confirmed with a new email that has emerged. The email involves a college recommendation that Joe Biden wrote for a Chinese businessman who was partners with Hunter Biden. Jonathan Li is the CEO of a company BHR that entered into a joint venture with Hunter Biden’s company Rosemont Seneca. Hunter also held a 10 percent stake in BHR. In 2017, Li sent an email to Hunter Biden and his business associates Devon Archer and Jim Bulger.

“Gentlemen,” he wrote, “Please find the attached resume of my son, Chris Li. He is applying [to] the following colleges for this year.” Li listed Brown University, Cornell University, and New York University. He also attached an “updated version” of his son’s resume. So then what happened? Let’s follow the email trail. “Let’s see how we can be helpful here to Chris,” Bulger responded to Hunter and the gang. A few weeks later, on Feb. 18, 2017, Eric Schwerin, president of Rosemont Seneca, replied to Li. “Jonathan,” he wrote, “Hunter asked me to send you a copy of the recommendation letter that he asked his father to write on behalf of Christopher for Brown University.” In other words, Joe Biden wrote the letter.

Is it reasonable, at this point, to continue to say Joe Biden told the truth when he said he had nothing to do with his son’s business? Is it believable that he was never in on the deals, or stood to benefit from them? No, it’s not. On the contrary, it seems that Hunter Biden was Joe Biden’s frontman. This is a Joe Biden scandal, not a Hunter Biden scandal. If the circuitous family racket can be likened to the coils of a snake, Joe Biden is the head of the snake.

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I understand he’s a good speaker.

Canada’s Next PM (Bexte)

Conservative leadership candidate Pierre Poilievre has drawn a massive crowd to his campaign rally in Calgary, Alberta. According to organizers, over 7,000 RSVP’d to the event, and more are coming. The hype is real, and traffic jams have built up along the road to the rally. “People haven’t felt so free in this country, have they,” Poilievre began. “Whether it’s the fourteen-year-old girl suffering depression after separation from her sport[s] and social activities for two long years; whether it’s the waitress who mortgaged her house to start a business only to have it locked down again and again until she couldn’t open it up anymore; whether it is the hard-working trucker who delivered the goods and services that we need —” The rally erupted at the mention of truckers, all but drowning out Poilievre as he continued praising their gusto and disparaging Trudeau for his tyrannical response.


Indeed, it appears that after years of ‘Red Erin’ O’Toole, Calgarians and Canadians more generally are ready for a Conservative leader who will end Trudeau’s carbon tax, denounce the WEF, and defund the CBC. Speaking of Justin Trudeau, just yesterday, he managed to draw a crowd, too… A crowd of protesters honking and telling him he’s a disgrace to Canada. This most recent barrage of boos and honks occurred while entering Victoria City Hall to speak with Mayor Lisa Helps. This visit would have been innocuous for most leaders, but merely his presence draws a crowd of disdain. It’s gotten so bad that he’s taken to hiding his itinerary to avoid protests. The contrast couldn’t be starker. Poilievre is being celebrated across the country, while Trudeau slithers in through back doors even while abroad. Assuming he keeps up the momentum, Poilievre might just be the first opponent capable of dethroning Trudeau since he was elected PM.

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“A panel of five people in secret: We don’t even know what they said or did or what they looked at. And they claim that only one percent of our stories are news..”

Rebel News Founder Speaks After Trudeau Denies Them Journalism ‘License’ (Fox)

Rebel News founder Ezra Levant sounded off Tuesday after the Trudeau administration denied his outlet what he described as a newly-conceived “license” to fully practice journalism. Levant told “Tucker Carlson Tonight” that, if the Liberal Party leader’s behavior during the Ottawa trucker protests is any indicator, he is working hard to punish critics and upturn their lives. He noted how Prime Minister Justin Trudeau previously slammed his agency when a reporter from it asked a question during a press availability while the politician was running for reelection in 2021. At the time, Trudeau claimed Rebel News was engaging in “disinformation on the science around vaccines” and made a point to declare he could not bring himself to describe them as a “media organization.”


“It’s not yet illegal to do journalism without that license, it’s a government license called the Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization License. A government panel reviews you. They spent one year reviewing Rebel News, looking through more than 100 of our stories,” Levant told host Tucker Carlson. “A panel of five people in secret: We don’t even know what they said or did or what they looked at. And they claim that only one percent of our stories are news, so we don’t get the license.” Levant went on to describe what that means for his organization, versus mainstream outlets like CBC. Trudeau plans to “compel” Big Tech to down-rank non-licensed journalists and change the Income Tax Act to punish them, Levant said. “We’re not banned yet, although we are banned from government events, as you said earlier. But I’m worried that he’s done all this in two years. The worst is yet to come. He may well ban us yet,” he concluded.

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What a surprise….

Trudeau Considers Trucker Tax (TCS)

After re-raising the carbon tax on April 1, Trudeau is considering yet another carbon-based tax that specifically targets your everyday trucker. If passed, owners of Ford F-150s will pay a $1,000 tax, while those who own a Ram 3500 heavy-duty pickup trucks will have to dish out $4,000. The tax comes as part of Canada’s 2030 Emissions Reduction Plan, in which the government claims it’s “making it easier for Canadians to switch to electric vehicles.” Part of this plan includes taxing truck owners so much that they can’t afford to own one anymore. Page 192 of the report states that the government will:

“Broaden Canada’s existing Green Levy (Excise Tax) for Fuel Inefficient Vehicles to include additional ICE vehicle types, such as pickup trucks. A sliding scale for the implementation of this Green Levy should be developed based on the emissions produced from different vehicles. Revenue from a broadened Green Levy could increase available funding for ZEV incentives for individuals and organizations without limiting the fleet size and while encouraging smaller vehicles of all fuel types. Carefully consider the impacts on and supports for low-income households and other vulnerable populations when exploring changes to the Green Levy and ZEV incentives.”

That’s right. It appears Trudeau is freezing out truck owners again. First, their bank accounts, now their savings. This shouldn’t surprise people at this point. After all, Trudeau isn’t shy when it comes to coercing Canadians. He imposed draconian federal mandates that are still in place despite what the data says and has kept the travel ban on the unvaccinated even as the rest of the world opens up. Now, he’s targeting truckers by legally requiring them to comply with his environmental activism. And he’s comfortable doing this despite a bleeding economy, unreasonable carbon taxes, and record-high inflation.

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Twitter’s been ‘A Sh*t Show’ for much longer..

Wokist traumas: “..a scheduled “day of rest” for company employees..”.

Twitter ‘A Sh*t Show’ For Employees Since Elon Musk Took Major Stake (NYP)

Elon Musk’s looming battle with Twitter’s board is a source of major anxiety for company employees – many of whom are reportedly worried that billionaire’s campaign to force changes is just beginning. Musk’s surprise rejection of a Twitter board seat emerged ahead of a scheduled “day of rest” for company employees, according to a report. Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal broke the news on his account the previous night, describing Musk’s decision as “for the best” even as he warned workers they would face “distractions ahead,” Bloomberg reported late Monday. The uncertainty left Twitter workers feeling “super stressed” about the future, with employees reportedly “working together to help each other get through the week.”

The report cited interviews with Twitter employees who asked not to be identified while discussing the company’s inner workings. Several employees told the outlet that Twitter’s internal environment was a “s–t-show” after Musk’s deal with the board fell through. One Twitter employee griped that Musk was likely ‘just getting started” with pushing for change at the company – a development the worker described as “unfortunate,” according to Bloomberg. Musk has emerged as a vocal critic of Twitter’s business practices, taking particular umbrage with the platform’s content moderation policies. He’s also the company’s largest individual shareholder after acquiring a 9% stake earlier this month.

Under the terms of his initial agreement with Twitter, Musk would have received a board seat through at least 2024 and would be barred from acquiring more than 14.9% of the company. Without that deal in place, Musk is free to acquire a larger stake in the company and push for greater influence over its operations. Musk updated an SEC filing on his Twitter holdings with language that suggests he plans to stay active in the company’s dealings, despite his expanding business empire that includes Tesla and SpaceX.

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Can a investor be compelled to lose money? Musk disclosed his stake when he was done buying. If he had disclosed it before, it would have cost him 100s of millions.

“The lawsuit alleges that by March 14, Musk’s stake in Twitter had reached a 5% threshold that required him to publicly disclose his holdings under U.S. securities law by March 24. Musk didn’t make the required disclosure until April 4.”

“..depriving investors who sold shares before Musk’s improperly delayed disclosure [of] the chance to realize significant gains..”

The gains they could only have realized because Musk was buying…

Elon Musk Accused Of Breaking Law While Buying Twitter Stock (AP)

Elon Musk’s huge Twitter investment took a new twist Tuesday with the filing of a lawsuit alleging that the colorful billionaire illegally delayed disclosing his stake in the social media company so he could buy more shares at lower prices. The complaint in New York federal court accuses Musk of violating a regulatory deadline to reveal he had accumulated a stake of at least 5%. Instead, according to the complaint, Musk didn’t disclose his position in Twitter until he’d almost doubled his stake to more than 9%. That strategy, the lawsuit alleges, hurt less wealthy investors who sold shares in the San Francisco company in the nearly two weeks before Musk acknowledged holding a major stake.

Musk’s regulatory filings show that he bought a little more than 620,000 shares at $36.83 apiece on Jan. 31 and then continued to accumulate more shares on nearly every single trading day through April 1. Musk, best known as CEO of the electric car maker Tesla, held 73.1 million Twitter shares as of the most recent count Monday. That represents a 9.1% stake in Twitter. The lawsuit alleges that by March 14, Musk’s stake in Twitter had reached a 5% threshold that required him to publicly disclose his holdings under U.S. securities law by March 24. Musk didn t make the required disclosure until April 4.

That revelation caused Twitter’s stock to soar 27% from its April 1 close to nearly $50 by the end of April 4’s trading, depriving investors who sold shares before Musk’s improperly delayed disclosure the chance to realize significant gains, according to the lawsuit filed on behalf of an investor named Marc Bain Rasella. Musk, meanwhile, was able to continue to buy shares that traded in prices ranging from $37.69 to $40.96. The lawsuit is seeking to be certified as a class action representing Twitter shareholders who sold shares between March 24 and April 4, a process that could take a year or more.

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Washed up Robert Reich has it figured out: Elon Musk is Putin. And Trump. “.. the dream of every dictator, strongman, demagogue and modern-day robber baron on Earth..”

Some people really don’t like free speech…

Elon Musk’s Vision For The Internet Is Dangerous Nonsense (Robert Reich)

The Securities and Exchange Commission went after Musk after he tweeted that he had funding to take Tesla private, a clear violation of the law. Musk paid a fine and agreed to let lawyers vet future sensitive tweets, but he has tried to reverse this requirement. He has also been openly contemptuous of the SEC, tweeting at one point that the “E” stands for “Elon’s”. (You can guess what the “S” and “C” stand for.) By the way, how does the SEC go after Musk’s ability to tweet now that he owns Twitter? Billionaires like Musk have shown time and again they consider themselves above the law. And to a large extent, they are.

Musk has enough wealth that legal penalties are no more than slaps on his wrist, and enough power to control one of the most important ways the public now receives news. Think about it: after years of posting tweets that skirt the law, Musk was given a seat on Twitter’s board (and is probably now negotiating for even more clout). Musk says he wants to “free” the internet. But what he really aims to do is make it even less accountable than it is now, when it’s often impossible to discover who is making the decisions about how algorithms are designed, who is filling social media with lies, who’s poisoning our minds with pseudo-science and propaganda, and who’s deciding which versions of events go viral and which stay under wraps.

Make no mistake: this is not about freedom. It’s about power. In Musk’s vision of Twitter and the internet, he’d be the wizard behind the curtain – projecting on the world’s screen a fake image of a brave new world empowering everyone. In reality, that world would be dominated by the richest and most powerful people in the world, who wouldn’t be accountable to anyone for facts, truth, science or the common good. That’s Musk’s dream. And Trump’s. And Putin’s. And the dream of every dictator, strongman, demagogue and modern-day robber baron on Earth. For the rest of us, it would be a brave new nightmare.

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George Webb Rotterdam

 

 

 

 

Athens strike

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

Mar 312022
 


Pablo Picasso Visage 1928

 

US Dollar Hegemony Ended Abruptly Last Wednesday – Michael Huddson (PR)
Mariupol Will Become A Key Hub Of Eurasian Integration (Escobar)
Lavrov: Russia, China Moving Towards Multipolar ‘Fair World Order’ (ZH)
Ukrainian Forces Want to Surrender, Azov Forces Shoot At Them (DE)
“Regime Change” Doesn’t Work, You Morons (Taibbi)
FEC Fines DNC and Clinton For Trump Dossier Hoax (WE)
Hunter Biden’s Role In Ukrainian Biolabs Raises Serious Questions (Blaze)
WaPo, Like New York Times, Finally Admits Hunter Biden Laptop Is Real (NYP)
New York Times – a Bastion of Censorship and Corruption (CHD)
Trudeau Gives Himself A Raise The Same Day As Carbon Tax Hike (Bexte)
Media Freedom Report Shakes Greece’s Conservative Government (EurActiv)
Triple Vaccinated Down To The Last 20% Of Their Immune Systems (DE)

 

 

The tweet that got Nick Hudson banned. The narrative still can’t tolerate dissent. It’s too feeble.

 

 

Maajid Nawaz CBDC

 

 

 

 

The very moment Russia’s reserves were stolen.

US Dollar Hegemony Ended Abruptly Last Wednesday – Michael Huddson (PR)

Well, what happened was that, as I’ve described in Super Imperialism, when the United States went off gold, foreign central banks didn’t have anything to buy with their dollars that were flowing into their countries – again, mainly from the US military deficit but also from the investment takeovers. And they found that these dollars came in, the only thing they could do would be to recycle them to the United States. And what do central banks hold? They don’t buy property, usually, back then they didn’t. They buy Treasury bonds. And so, the United States would be spending dollars abroad and foreign central banks didn’t really have anything to do but send it right back to buy treasury bonds to finance not only the balance of payments deficit, but also the budget deficit that was largely military in character. So, dollar hegemony was the system where foreign central banks keep their monetary and international savings reserves in dollars and the dollars are used to finance the military bases around the world, almost eight hundred military bases surrounding them. So, basically central banks have to keep their savings by weaponizing them, by militarizing them, by lending them to the United States, to keep spending abroad.

This gave America a free ride. Imagine if you went to the grocery store and you just paid by giving them an IOU. And then the next week you want to buy more groceries and you give them another IOU. And they say, wait a minute, you have an IOU before and you say, well just use the IOU to pay the milk company that delivers, or the farmers that deliver. You can use this as your money and just you’ll as a customer, keep writing IOU’s and you never have to pay anything because your IOU is other people’s money. Well, that’s what dollar hegemony was, and it was a free ride. And it all ended last Wednesday when the United States grabbed Russia’s reserves having grabbed Afghanistan’s foreign reserves and Venezuela’s foreign reserves and those of other countries.

And all of a sudden, this means that other countries can no longer safely hold their reserves by sending their money back, depositing them in US banks or buying US Treasury Securities, or having other US investments because they could simply be grabbed as happened to Russia. So, all of a sudden this last week, you’re seeing the world economy fracture into two parts, a dollarized part and other countries that do not follow the neoliberal policies that the United States insists that its allies follow. We’re seeing the birth of a new dual World economy. MF: Wow, there’s a lot to unpack there. So, are we seeing then other countries starting to disinvest in US dollars? You’ve written about how the treasury bonds that these central banks buy up have been basically funding our domestic economy. Are they starting to shed those bonds or what’s happening?

MH: No, they haven’t been funding our domestic economy because the Federal Reserve can create its own money to fund the domestic economy. We don’t need to borrow from foreign countries to fund our economy. We can print it ourselves. What the dollar hegemony does is fund the balance of payments deficit. It funds our spending in other economies, our spending abroad. It doesn’t help our economy, but it does help us get a free ride from other countries. The more dollars we spend in making a military base, all these military expenditures get turned over to the local Central Bank that turns and sends them back to the Federal Reserve or deposits them in US bank accounts. So, it’s the international free ride we get, not a domestic free ride.

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Even in the hands of Ukraine oligarchs? Hard to imagine by now.

Mariupol Will Become A Key Hub Of Eurasian Integration (Escobar)

Mariupol, the strategic Sea of Azov port, remains in the eye of the storm in Ukraine. The NATO narrative is that Azovstal – one of Europe’s biggest iron and steel works – was nearly destroyed by the Russian Army and its allied Donetsk forces who “lay siege” to Mariupol. The true story is that the neo-Nazi Azov batallion took scores of Mariupol civilians as human shields since the start of the Russian military operation in Ukraine, and retreated to Azovstal as a last stand. After an ultimatum delivered last week, they are now being completely exterminated by the Russian and Donetsk forces and Chechen Spetsnaz. Azovstal, part of the Metinvest group controlled by Ukraine’s wealthiest oligarch, Rinat Akhmetov, is indeed one of the biggest metallurgic plants in Europe, self-described as a “high-performance integrated metallurgical enterprise that produces coke and sinter, steel as well as high-quality rolled products, bars and shapes.”

Amidst a flurry of testimonials detailing the horrors inflicted by the Azov neo-Nazis on Mariupol’s civilian population, a way more auspicious, invisible story bodes well for the immediate future. Russia is the world’s fifth largest steel producer, apart from holding huge iron and coal deposits. Mariupol – a steel Mecca – used to source coal from Donbass, but under de facto neo-Nazi rule since the 2014 Maidan events, was turned into an importer. Iron, for instance, started to be supplied from Krivbas in Ukraine, over 200 kilometers away. After Donetsk solidifies itself as an independent republic or, via referendum, chooses to become part of the Russian Federation, this situation is bound to change.

Azovstal is invested in a broad product line of very useful stuff: structural steel, rail for railroads, hardened steel for chains, mining equipment, rolled steel used in factory apparatus, trucks and railroad cars. Parts of the factory complex are quite modern while some, decades old, are badly in need of upgrading, which Russian industry can certainly provide. Strategically, this is a huge complex, right at the Sea of Azov, which is now, for all practical purposes, incorporated into the Donetsk People’s Republic, and close to the Black Sea. That implies a short trip to the Eastern Mediterranean, including many potential customers in West Asia. And crossing Suez and reaching the Indian Ocean, are customers all across South and Southeast Asia.

So the Donetsk People’s Republic, possibly part of the future Novorossiya, and even part of Russia, will be in control of a lot of steel-making capacity for southern Europe, West Asia, and beyond. One of the inevitable consequences is that it will be able to supply a real freight railroad construction boom in Russia, China and the Central Asian ‘stans.’ Railroad construction happens to be the privileged connectivity mode for Beijing’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). And, crucially, of the increasingly turbo-charged International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC). So, mid-term, Mariupol should expect to become one of the key hubs of a boom in north-south routes – INSTC across Russia and linking with the ‘stans’ – as well as major BRI upgrades east-west and sub-BRI corridors.

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“..shortly before the meetings – which Lavrov will attend – to discuss ways to help Afghanistan. Both the US and the Taliban are expected to be in attendance..”

Lavrov: Russia, China Moving Towards Multipolar ‘Fair World Order’ (ZH)

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov met with his Chinese counterpart on Wednesday, where he said the two are carving a path towards a ‘fairer world order.’ The meeting between Lavrov and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, marks the first visit to a key ally since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine on February 24, according to The Economic Times. The two countries will work to achieve “a multipolar, fair, and democratic world order,” Lavrov said, speaking from the Chinese city of Tunxi located in the eastern inland Anhui Province. In a video released by the Russian foreign ministry ahead of a meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Lavrov said the world was “living through a very serious stage in the history of international relations”.


At the end of this reshaping of global relations “we, together with you, and with our sympathisers will move towards a multipolar, just, democratic world order”, Lavrov said. -Economic Times” Lavrov and Yi were seen on Chinese state TV in face masks bumping elbows in front of their national flags shortly before the meetings – which Lavrov will attend – to discuss ways to help Afghanistan. Both the US and the Taliban are expected to be in attendance. US officials have grown frustrated with Beijing’s refusal to condemn the invasion of Ukraine, and have accused China of signalling a “willingness” to provide both economic and military aid to Russia. According to Russia’s state-owned TASS news agency, Wang said that despite “new challenges” to relations between China and Russia, “the will of both sides to develop bilateral relations has become even stronger.” Earlier this month Wang said that China’s relationship with Russia is “one of the most crucial bilateral relationships in the world,” and is “ironclad.”

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“..Because the Ukrainian forces kind of wanted to give up, SMS messages come that say that ‘you can give up and nothing will happen to you’. So, they want to surrender, and Azov starts shooting at them..”

Ukrainian Forces Want to Surrender, Azov Forces Shoot At Them (DE)

US Navy veteran and independent journalist, Patrick Lancaster, has been making regular reports from Ukraine since the beginning of the crisis. His reports reveal that what is happening on the ground is not what Western corporate media would have you believe. “Over the 8 years of the Ukraine War I made more video reports in anti-Ukraine Government (Donetsk People’s Republic) controlled territory than any other western journalist,” he says. In his report on Friday, Lancaster interviewed residents of the ethnic Greek village of Sartana, one of the villages surrounding Mariupol, Ukraine. “This is right on, what you could say is the frontline now. Nobody knows exactly where the frontline starts and ends at this point there’s just so much information and [ ] minute by minute the lines are changing,” Lancaster said.

Eight years ago, a referendum was held and “mostly people asked for Russian language. But they decided to Ukrainise us, so that everybody speaks Ukrainian … It was forbidden to speak Russian in the store. There was some tension. Employees paid fines for not saying ‘Good afternoon’ in Ukrainian in stores,” one resident explained. “Today I’m trying to find guys from Mariupol to find out how things are there. My parents stayed there. But they say that everything is very sad. Today I heard another story that the Ukrainian armed forces started shootings with Azov. Because the Ukrainian forces kind of wanted to give up, SMS messages come that say that ‘you can give up and nothing will happen to you’. So, they want to surrender, and Azov starts shooting at them. And they [Ukrainian forces and Azov] are at war with each other.” another resident said.


Earlier this month members of the Azov Battalion, a self-declared neo-Nazi former paramilitary group that is now a unit of the National Guard of Ukraine, bombed the village most likely aiming for a church. Village residents also believe it was Azov who bombed the school. “Ukrainians say it’s only Russia who shoots now. – They always say so. It’s their policy. A dirty policy,” the second resident said. Other interviewees explained that Ukrainians bombed Mariupol to create a panic: “So that people leave, and they use them as a human shield. And now all people are there. And they’re holding them at gunpoint, don’t let them go. Literally shoot them if they run away,” they said.

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Hmmm. Feels a bit like Matt lost his grip on the material.

“Regime Change” Doesn’t Work, You Morons (Taibbi)

Not long ago, candidate Joe Biden’s most troubling behavioral tendency was the surprise outburst of belligerence. Campaigning, he’d challenge questioners to push-up contests, jam fingers in the sternums even of supporters, and plunge into rambling monologues about leg hairs and chain-fights. Now, the president’s face is often a mask of terror, like a man unsure of how he came to be standing in the middle of an intersection. Mental cars racing past, he met the press Monday, to clarify a statement made last week about Vladimir Putin: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” Many interpreted this as a call for regime change. Not at all, Biden said, reading from a large-print cheat sheet — this reportedly happened — that reminded him to say he was merely expressing “moral outrage,” and “not articulating a change in policy.”

When he ran out of pre-prepared remarks, he drifted back to danger, saying: “It’s more an aspiration than anything. He shouldn’t be in power.” The AP writeup offered help: “He said he was expressing an ‘aspiration’ rather than a goal of American foreign policy.” (I’m sure nuclear-armed Putin appreciated the semantic difference). When Biden moved more toward candor, saying he made “no apologies” for his remarks, another reporter quickly tried to guide him back to a safe harbor: Q: Your personal feelings, sir? Your personal feelings? THE PRESIDENT: Personal. My personal feelings. Biden even offered his Princess Bride/Vizzini-esque analysis that “the last thing I want to do is engage in a land war… with Russia”:

Although administration mouthpieces Tony Blinken and Jen Psaki scrambled to reassure a nervous world that the U.S. is not intent on “doing regime change” in Russia, officials everywhere have been telling reporters the opposite on background. This cat was out of the bag weeks ago. As Joe Lauria at Consortium points out, Biden was asked on February 24th, at the start of the invasion, what sanctions would accomplish if they hadn’t prevented war. His answer: No one expected the sanctions to prevent anything from happening. That has to sh- — this is going to take time. And we have to show resolve, so he knows what’s coming and so the people of Russia know what he’s brought on them. That’s what this is all about. Biden said virtually the same thing in Brussels last week:

“Sanctions never deter… The maintenance of sanctions, the increasing the pain … we will sustain what we’re doing not just next month, the following month, but for the remainder of this entire year. That’s what will stop him.” We heard this more explicitly from Boris Johnson on March 1st, “The measures we are introducing, that large parts of the world are introducing, are to bring down the Putin regime,” Johnson said. Lauria points out this was two days after British Armed Forces Minister James Heappey wrote in the Telegraph that “His failure must be complete… the Russian people empowered to see how little he cares for them. In showing them that, Putin’s days as President will surely be numbered… He’ll lose power and he won’t get to choose his successor.”

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The price?

“..it fined Clinton’s treasurer $8,000 and the DNC’s treasurer $105,000..”

FEC Fines DNC and Clinton For Trump Dossier Hoax (WE)

The Federal Election Commission has fined the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign for lying about the funding of the infamous, and discredited, Russian “dossier” used in a smear attempt against Donald Trump weeks before he shocked the world with his 2016 presidential victory. The election agency said that Clinton and the DNC violated strict rules on describing expenditures of payments funneled to the opposition research firm Fusion GPS through their law firm. A combined $1,024,407.97 was paid by the treasurers of the DNC and Clinton campaign to law firm Perkins Coie for Fusion GPS’s information, and the party and campaign hid the reason, claiming it was for legal services, not opposition research.

Instead, the DNC’s $849,407.97 and the Clinton campaign’s $175,000 covered Fusion GPS’s opposition research on the dossier, a basis for the so-called “Russia hoax” that dogged Trump’s first term. The memo said that the Clinton campaign and DNC argued that they were correct in describing their payment as for “legal advice and services” because it was Perkins Coie that hired Fusion GPS. But the agency said the law is clear and was violated. It added that neither the campaign nor the party conceded to lying but won’t contest the finding. “Solely for the purpose of settling this matter expeditiously and to avoid further legal costs, respondent[s] does not concede, but will not further contest the commission’s finding of probable cause to proceed” with the probe, said the FEC.

The FEC, in a memo to the Coolidge Reagan Foundation, which filed its complaint over three years ago, said it fined Clinton’s treasurer $8,000 and the DNC’s treasurer $105,000. The memo, shared with Secrets, is to be made public in a month. Dan Backer, who brought the complaint on behalf of the foundation, which focuses on free speech and the First Amendment, told Secrets, “This may well be the first time that Hillary Clinton — one of the most evidently corrupt politicians in American history — has actually been held legally accountable, and I’m proud to have forced the FEC to do their job for once. The Coolidge Reagan Foundation proved that with pluck and grit, Americans who stand with integrity can stand up to the Clinton machine and other corrupt political elites.”

[..] Backer, with Washington’s Chalmers & Adams law firm, held out hope for further action against the former first lady. He said, “Hillary Clinton and her cronies willfully engaged in the greatest political fraud in history — destroying our nation’s faith in the electoral process, and it’s high time they were held accountable. I hope this is only the beginning.”

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Hunter and Fauci and Peter Daszak. Fine friends.

Hunter Biden’s Role In Ukrainian Biolabs Raises Serious Questions (Blaze)

Recent emails unearthed by the U.K. Daily Mail and the National Pulse reveal that during the last decade, Hunter Biden seemed to have a keen interest in pathogen research in Ukraine and using it as a tool for geopolitical affairs in that country. It just so happens to be that a pathogen connected to gain-of-function research destroyed the world, and then the next “big current thing” on the geopolitical stage was none other than Ukraine. Shouldn’t the American people get some answers as to why our government was so heavily involved – via the vice president’s son – in both pathogen research and Ukraine and to make sure Ukraine is not Wuhan 2.0?

Earlier this month, I detailed the known connections between biotech firm Metabiota Inc., responsible for the pathogen research in Ukraine, the DOD, and EcoHealth Alliance, along with the Wuhan lab most likely responsible for the leak of SARS-CoV-2. I also noted that Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners (RSTP), a subsidiary of the Hunter Biden and Christopher Heinz-founded Rosemont Capital, gave Metabiota, a company accused of dangerous lab protocols during the African Ebola pandemic, its first infusion of cash a decade ago. Now, new emails from Hunter’s laptop demonstrate that his involvement in Metabiota and pathogen research in Ukraine was much deeper than just an initial investment.

[..] After receiving 18.4 million from the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) between February 2014 and November 2016, with $307,091 earmarked for “Ukraine research projects,” “Metabiota has worked in Ukraine for Black & Veatch, a US defense contractor with deep ties to military intelligence agencies, which built secure labs in Ukraine that analyzed killer diseases and bioweapons,” according to the Daily Mail. “It raises the question, what is the real purpose of this venture? It’s very odd,” said former senior CIA officer Sam Faddis in an interview with the Daily Mail. “His father was the Vice President of the United States and in charge of relations with Ukraine. So why was Hunter not only on the board of a suspect Ukrainian gas firm, but also hooked them up with a company working on bioweapons research?”

Biden was so involved in Metabiota that one email written that same month in 2014 reveals that he and his business partner Eric Schwerin discussed subletting their office space to the San-Francisco-based biotech firm. So, what exactly were they working on? Last week, the National Pulse reported that a feature in the Science and Technology Center in Ukraine’s 2016 Annual Report recounts an October 2016 meeting involving U.S. military officials and their Ukrainian counterparts together with Black & Veatch and Metabiota staff to discuss the lab work. The discussion centered around “existing frameworks, regulatory coordination, and ongoing cooperative projects in research, surveillance and diagnostics of a number of dangerous zoonotic diseases, such as avian influenza, leptospirosis, Crimea Congo hemorrhagic fever, and brucellosis.”

Gaetz and Nadler?!

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WaPo and NYT will still be considered serious media. Wanna bet? They have nothing to lose.

WaPo, Like New York Times, Finally Admits Hunter Biden Laptop Is Real (NYP)

The Washington Post on Wednesday became the second major news outlet to reverse course and admit that emails from the infamous Hunter Biden laptop are authentic — nine months after it obtained them and a year and a half after the New York Post first reported on them. The paper said two security experts used cryptographic signatures from Google and other technology companies to validate nearly 22,000 emails from 2009 to 2019, including messages related to Hunter Biden’s controversial overseas business dealings. Some verified emails involved a deal President Biden’s son pursued with the CEFC China Energy conglomerate for which he was paid nearly $5 million, according to the Washington Post. Other verified emails related to his work for the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings, for which Hunter Biden was paid as much as $83,333 or a month, or $1 million a year.

In October 2020, the New York Post exclusively revealed the existence of Hunter Biden’s emails after being given a copy of the hard drive from a damaged MacBook Pro laptop that the owner of a repair shop in the Biden family’s hometown of Wilmington, Del., said was dropped off in April 2019 and never retrieved. Following the expose, the Washington Post’s “Fact Checker” feature said the paper “has not been able to verify or authenticate these emails” and said there were “fears that the emails could be part of a broader disinformation campaign” by Russia. Washington Post op-eds also called the emails “unverified” and said they “have never been authenticated,” and a news analysis dismissed the New York Post’s reporting as “sketchy.”

On Wednesday, the Washington Post said it was given a copy of the hard drive in June by Republican activist Jack Maxey, who previously worked as a researcher for the “War Room” podcast run by Steve Bannon, a former adviser to ex-President Donald Trump. The paper said it spent months reviewing the data and making two copies of the hard drive so they could be analyzed by Matt Green, a Johns Hopkins University security researcher, and Jake Williams, a forensics expert and former National Security Agency operative. Both experts concluded that the verified emails carried cryptographic signatures that would be hard to fake, even for the best computer hackers. Earlier this month, the New York Times said it had obtained emails that appeared to have come from the laptop and which were authenticated by people familiar with them and the federal tax probe of Hunter Biden that he publicly acknowledged in December 2020.


The Times buried its verification of the emails in the 24th paragraph of a 38-paragraph story that said Hunter Biden had paid off a significant tax debt to the IRS, potentially making it harder for prosecutors to win a conviction or a long sentence against him for tax fraud. US Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) — who, with Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), has been investigating Hunter Biden’s overseas business deals — responded by accusing the Gray Lady of “finally, quietly, covering its tracks.” “I am just amazed that the New York Times just now came to the conclusion that the Hunter Biden laptop was genuine,” Johnson told WABC 770 AM’s “The Cats Roundtable” last week.

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Yes, this.

New York Times – a Bastion of Censorship and Corruption (CHD)

In a bold, but clearly disingenuous, statement from its famed editorial board, “a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate, and certain longstanding values,” The New York Times issued a cautionary statement: “For all the tolerance and enlightenment that modern society claims, Americans are losing hold of a fundamental right as citizens of a free country: the right to speak their minds and voice their opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned.” The editorial board pounded the point home: “People should be able to put forward viewpoints, ask questions and make mistakes, and take unpopular but good-faith positions on issues that society is still working through — all without fearing cancellation …. Freedom of speech requires not just a commitment to openness and tolerance in the abstract. It demands conscientiousness…

“We believe it isn’t enough for Americans to just believe in the rights of others to speak freely; they should also find ways to actively support and protect those rights.” Of course, The New York Times should be leading by example. In fact, it has not supported free speech, protected the First Amendment, or allowed honest debate. It has not allowed competing perspectives about the most important issues of the day. Instead, it has been a mouthpiece for greedy corporations and corrupt government officials. In support of the newspaper’s interests, and at the expense of the interests of American citizens, The New York Times censored Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s latest book, “The Real Anthony Fauci,” in every conceivable way.

It ranked the book No. 7 on its non-fiction bestseller list even though the book outsold any other book in America that week by thousands of copies. Then it refused to allow Skyhorse Publishing to place an advertisement for the book because its censorship division, ironically called “Standards Management,” decided the book itself constituted misinformation — despite the paper’s stated policy that “Standards” only looks into whether an ad itself is “non-defamatory and accurate.” The New York Times followed up with a scathing hit piece targeting Kennedy as “a leading voice in the campaign to discredit coronavirus vaccines and other measures being advanced by the Biden White House to battle a pandemic that was … killing close to 1,900 people a day.”

The Times accused Kennedy of circulating “false information” — without indicating what that information was or explaining why it was false — and of comparing the government pandemic response to the Holocaust, even though he didn’t do that. Finally, The New York Times refused to review “The Real Anthony Fauci” or so much as comment on its historic grassroots success, even though it’s become a cult classic, selling more than 1 million copies in just four months, and launching a worldwide movement against government corruption and corporate greed. “Despite all the lying, or maybe in reaction to it,” Tucker Carlson told me, “Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is becoming a legitimate folk hero.”

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Not much left of that country.

Trudeau Gives Himself A Raise The Same Day As Carbon Tax Hike (Bexte)

PM Justin Trudeau is giving himself and every MP a raise on April 1 — the same day he’s set to hike the carbon tax, leaving gas even less affordable. As of April 1, Trudeau’s estimated salary will be $379,404, a $21,604 pay increase. Simultaneously, Ministers will see their salaries rise by an additional $15,865, while backbenchers and senators will be receiving a $10,802 pay hike — more than enough to keep politicians comfortable as inflation skyrockets. Of course, the vast majority of Canadians are totally against this — but it will happen anyway. According to a Canadian Taxpayers Federation Leger poll, 79 per cent of Canadians (nearly 8-in-10) are opposed to MPs receiving a third pay raise since the pandemic started.


“It’s wrong for politicians to pocket bigger paycheques while the people they represent suffer through a pandemic, pay cuts, job and business losses,” said Federal Director of the CTF Franco Terrazzano. “It shouldn’t be rocket science for MPs to do the right thing and stop taking bigger salaries during the pandemic.” He further calls the pay raise a “slap in the face” to all the Canadians who’ve struggled throughout the pandemic. Of course, politicians aren’t the only government employees to receive raises throughout the pandemic. As the Western Standard reported in January, 528, 347 federal and provincial government employees received raises since the pandemic began, all while restrictions were decimating small businesses. “We’ve seen a tale of two pandemics: one full of private sector pain and the other full of financial gain for bureaucrats and politicians,” Terrazzano said at the time.

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But where in Europe is there media freedom?

Media Freedom Report Shakes Greece’s Conservative Government (EurActiv)

Six international organisations for the freedom of the press have published a report accusing Greece’s ruling New Democracy party (EPP) of trying to control media. While the report raises the alarm over a “systemic press freedom crisis”, the government replies that people are still free to opt on what media to follow. In an interview with EURACTIV last week, Pavol Szalai, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) Head of EU/Balkans Desk, said, “The situation of press freedom in Greece is becoming comparable to the one in Hungary”. “We can see a deliberate political will to reduce press freedom. And at the same time, there are other dangerous situations linked to organised crime, which is probably behind the murder of Georges Karaivaz, who is one of the two EU journalists murdered last year”, he added.

The report was drafted following a December 2021 visit to the country. The Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR) report noted that the systemic crisis affecting press freedom in Greece has been exacerbated by the New Democracy government’s attempts to “control the message” and minimise critical and dissenting voices. “Newspapers and individual journalists that are ideologically on the side of the opposition or take a neutral stance are singled out by the government for unequal treatment that undermines their journalistic activities. This has been further compounded by a lack of transparency around the allocation of state advertising and its distribution based on established partisan lines,” the report added. The report also says journalists covering migration issues such as pushbacks is becoming “increasingly difficult”.


“The press freedom violations faced by journalists doing so are linked to the government’s restrictive migration policy and an unwillingness to accept public scrutiny of it leading to obstructions to reporting such as arbitrary arrest and detention, restriction of access, surveillance and harassment”. Without replying to any element of the report, New Democracy issued a statement saying the freedom of the press in Greece is institutionally guaranteed. “Every citizen can be freely informed, at any time, through the media of his choice”, the conservative party said. “The report highlights how Greece is becoming a problematic country on issues of press freedom and democracy,” main opposition leader and former PM Alexis Tsipras tweeted.

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When will this be the front page headline everywhere?

Triple Vaccinated Down To The Last 20% Of Their Immune Systems (DE)

According to the latest UK Government figures, most triple vaccinated people in England have now lost 80% of their immune system capability compared to the natural immune system capability of unvaccinated people, meaning they are now down to the last 20% of their immune system for fighting viruses, bacteria, disease and cancer. But this disaster isn’t only occurring in the UK. Official Government of Canada data shows that on average, triple vaccinated Canadians have now lost 75% of their immune system capability compared to the natural immune system capability of unvaccinated Canadians. Meaning they are now down to the last 25% of their immune system for fighting viruses, bacteria, disease and cancer.

And the picture is also the same in New Zealand, with official Government data showing that on average, fully vaccinated people in New Zealand have lost 74% of their immune system capability. In short, because authorities in the UK, Canada and New Zealand have done such a good job at collating and publishing data on Covid-19 by vaccination status, they have exposed the fact that the triple vaccinated population are rapidly developing some new form of Covid-19 vaccine induced Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS). The body’s immune system primarily defends one’s body against infections like bacteria, viruses and parasites. There are two broad categories of immune deficiency: those that one is born with, and those that are acquired after birth .


Immune deficiency syndrome refers to a broad range of medical disorders that prevent your body from protecting itself from illnesses such as viruses and bacteria. There are a number of different types of congenital and acquired immune deficiency syndromes that can impact the body in a variety of ways. Secondary (acquired) immune problems can result from many causes, including viral infections, malnutrition, metabolic disorders (like kidney disease), and cancer treatments or other medications. Unfortunately, official data from around the world now strongly suggests the Covid-19 vaccines should be added to the list of causes of acquired immune deficiency syndrome.

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Alec Antic: Three Minutes of Truth Bombs

 

 

 

 

 

 

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