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Debt Rattle October 5 2024

Oct 052024
 
 October 5, 2024  Posted by at 8:43 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  57 Responses »


Francisco Goya Witches’ Sabbath 1797-98

 

• Musk Says FEMA ‘Blocking’ Delivery Of More Starlinks In Devastated Areas (JTN)
• The Regime Wants Appalachia To Suffer (Bishop)
• October Surprise (Kunstler)
• The Reprehensible Audacity Of FEMA Being Broke (QTR)
• Elon Musk to Attend Trump Rally at Site of Attempted Assassination (ET)
• Donald Trump Takes His Biggest Lead Yet In Daily Mail Election Model (DM)
• Walz Makes the Case for the Most Anti-Free Speech Ticket in History (Turley)
• There Is Only One Important Decision Waiting to be Made (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Ukraine’s Mobilization Campaign ‘Gets Dirty’ – The Times (RT)
• They lie. They cheat. They steal. They bomb. And they spin (Pepe Escobar)
• Biden on Israel Response to Iranian Attack: ‘That’s Between Me and Them’ (Sp.)
• US, UK Digging Their Grave In Catastrophic War In The Middle East (SCF)
• US, Israel Reportedly Downplay Level of Destruction by Iran (Sp.)
• US Secret Service Struggling To Keep Staff – NYT (RT)
• New NATO Arctic Group is No Match for Russo-Chinese Cooperation (Sp.)

 

 

 

 

Alina: It’s called desperation

 

 

 

 

 

 


https://twitter.com/i/status/1841955852825063617

 

 

OMG

Line in the Sand

 

 

Assange

 

 

Presler

 

 

 

 

$42 billion, zero people connected. And then this.

• Musk Says FEMA ‘Blocking’ Delivery Of More Starlinks In Devastated Areas (JTN)

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk accused the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) of blocking the delivery of additional Starlink units to help residents in areas devastated by Hurricane Helene to stay connected to the Internet. “FEMA is not merely failing to adequately help people in trouble, but is actively blocking citizens who try to help!” Musk wrote Friday in a post on X which included the following note he received from a SpaceX engineer on the ground in North Carolina. “Hey Elon, update here on site of Asheville, NC. We have powered up two large operating bases for choppers to deliver goods into hands. We’ve deployed 300+ starlinks and outpour is it has saved many lives,” the engineer wrote.

“The big issue is FEMA is actively blocking shipments and seizing goods and services locally and locking them away to state they are their own. It’s very real and scary how much they have taken control to stop people helping. We are blocked now on the shipments of new starlinks coming in until we get an escort from the fire dept. but that may not be enough,” he added.

A text message Musk revealed in a second post said that the Federal Aviation Administration is throttling private flights in the North Carolina airspace which has made it harder to keep delivering more Starlink units and other emergency supplies. Former first daughter Ivanka Trump handed out Starlinks, hot meals and critical supplies in North Carolina on Wednesday. According to the texts from Musk’s team on the ground, FEMA showed up there and “starting blocking us.” The text message is consistent with comments made by Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg regarding “temporary flight restrictions” that have been imposed on private flights and drones over areas damaged by the storm.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1841946537170972786

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“The counties most impacted by the storm disproportionately vote in ways the current regime does not like.”

• The Regime Wants Appalachia To Suffer (Bishop)

Americans from Florida to North Carolina continue to deal with the devastating consequences of Hurricane Helene, now the deadliest hurricane to hit the US since Katrina. The stories emerging from the region are heart breaking. The economic damage to property and the infrastructure will take years to recover from. Large parts of the area will never return to what they were. Many Americans may be unaware of the extent of the damage. Unlike Hurricane Katrina, which received non-stop coverage on cable news for weeks, with primetime anchors like Anderson Cooper visiting on location covering stories of human tragedy and government incompetent, Helene’s aftermath has received far less coverage. It is on social media platforms like X where folks will find horrifying stories of the stench of death still strong in difficult to reach areas, the lack of government assistance for those in need, and the courage of private efforts serving the area.

Some of this is explained by the time period we are living in. Escalation in the Middle East. A national election is on the horizon. A court decision releasing documents that allows the salivating press to re-litigate the events of January 6th, 2020 yet again. What cannot be ignored, however, is the extent to which the open hostility to which the nation’s most powerful institutions have had to the sorts of people that are overwhelmingly impacted by this storm, predominantly white, working class, and politically conservative. This horrific natural disaster is a reminder of the extent to which the regime hates the people who live there.

This was true prior to Helene, where Washington policies have impoverished this areas with policies ranging from the national impact of inflation and financialization to more specific regional impacts stemming from regulatory policy with specific impacts on the region impacted. The immediate aftermath, however, demonstrates the extent to which state reaction to a disaster impedes voluntary efforts to quickly mobilize and assist those in need. A combination of heavy-handed federal and state action has attempted to undercut recovery efforts, from grounding private helicopters seeking to rescue stranded victims, to the demands of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to stop citizens from flying drones near impacted areas seeking to locate those in need of help. Given the logistical strains that even the best organized response to a severe crisis would create, the voluntary organization of local human resources on the ground is essential to meaningful and quick recovery. Here, the priority of government actors has been to elevate their control over the situation at the expense of these efforts.

The allocation of emergency resources itself is deserving of extended scrutiny as well. The victims of this tragedy, like all Americans, have their wealth extracted by Washington to fill the coffers of large federal agencies like FEMA. This same agency, whose nominal priority is to assist Americans in the case of emergency, are already pleading poverty. Of course, these same agencies oversaw the redirection of over a billion dollars in recent years to subsidize migration into the country. The priorities are clear, emergency funds take a back seat to a regime that cares more about new arrivals than the families who lived in this country for generations. This predatory relationship between the regime and its citizens is systemic. The priorities of Washington will always stand in conflict with the people of Appalachia.

DC sees no problem with ordering the Tennessee National Guard to the Middle East at a time when their fellow Tennesseans are facing their own crisis. This relationship is also bipartisan in nature. Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, who has become very rich off the backs of the people who elevated him to political power, ignoring the victims of Helene on social media, while very focused on Israel and Iran. The regime will always prioritize its own interests, including the interests of what it has identified as their special privileged classes, over the interests of its people. Changing this parasitic relationship requires more than a change of political party in the White House, but a determined effort by those who seek to represent the interests of these people to strike at the root of this relationship.

Unfortunately, while elections alone are not adequate to address the victimization of Appalachia, it is reasonable to consider what impact the specter of politics is having on their current neglect. The counties most impacted by the storm disproportionately vote in ways the current regime does not like. Would America’s federal government deliberately undermine recovery efforts to try to achieve its own desired political ends? Would the corporate press deliberately fail to cover the inadequacy of these efforts, hoping to prevent a candidate it fears doesn’t win? For those that understand the true nature of the state, the answer is an obvious one. Our prayers are with the victims of Hurricane Helene, that they receive the help they need as recovery efforts continue, that they have the ability to build back their communities strong, and that they will one day be free of a regime that cares so little for them.

JD

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“Tim Walz, Kamala Harris’s brand-new VP pick, is a fanatical far-left lunatic wearing the friendly armor of hapless, bloated oaf from the sticks” — Peachy Keenan

• October Surprise (Kunstler)

That same obvious void of conviction you see on Tim Walz’s labile face is on display with the feds’ response to mass tragedy in the Appalachian hurricane zone. It was a point in my book, The Long Emergency, that our national government would become increasingly impotent, ineffectual, and incompetent as conditions worsened — and now here it is. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), could not bestir itself to aid stricken citizens around the flood-ravaged region in North Carolina and Tennessee. Sec’y Mayorkas of Homeland Security said that FEMA was out of money which, in this season of political weirdness, is especially weird, seeing as how the nation’s fiscal year began Oct 1, and Congress’s continuing resolution for funding US agencies should assure that FEMA’s checkbook is full. What was up with that?

Well, everybody and his uncle has heard by now that FEMA (and many other agencies under Mayorkas’s DHS) commits tons of money to pamper the millions of mutts from foreign lands sneaking over the US border, with lots of assistance from NGO cut-outs funded by your tax dollars, who marshal groups of aliens south-of-the-border for the crossing, and then fly or bus them around our country for the special purpose of distributing them in swing voting districts to then coordinate with other NGOs devoted to registering non-citizens to vote in order to “harvest” their ballots. Quite an operation. Completely lawless and corrupt. And official! So, no aid for you, baskets of deplorables, shivering in the dark in your hills and hollows of Appalachia, your houses splintered, scant chattels lost, and your beloved hound-dogs carried away in the roaring torrents.

The money that might have helped you begin to recover from the complete devastation of your lives is paying for Guatemalans to bunk in the Roosevelt Hotel and order-in quesadillas and churros, and refill their government-issued debit cards so they can afford a few nice things as they wait for mysterious others to cast ballots in their names. This is the work of your Democratic Party, the party of chaos, party of the Woke mentally ill, party of wrecking the country, of America’s end times. And you’re going to vote for more of it? Of course not. And despite the attempts to knock him out of the arena with scores of utter bullshit lawfare cases, and efforts to shoot him dead, Mr. Trump keeps coming at them, an implacable, relentless force, the true Golden Golem conjured up by their catamite news media. Their inability to destroy him has wrecked their minds.

One surprising October surprise is advanced by whistleblower Mike McCormick on Substack (Midnight in the Laptop of Good and Evil). Mr. McCormick was White House stenographer under Presidents Bush II, Obama, and Trump. His job was to transcribe meetings, speeches, and interactions between major political figures. He was the proverbial fly-on-the-wall for years and years. He has seen and heard a lot and still hears a lot from people who know a lot. He says the Obama-Biden-Harris faction of the Deep State blob is anti-Israel and that Israel understands what this means. He says that Benjamin Netanyahu has told “Joe Biden” (or, let’s say, told errand-boys Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan) that if the blob engineers a phony victory for Kamala Harris, he will blow up the oil fields in Iran and the anti-Israel Democrats will have to pick up the pieces.

There it is, raw power politics, like so much meat on the table. “Joe Biden” cannot control Bibi. “Joe Biden” is too far gone and two weak, and Israel does not aim to let itself get wiped off the map, as Iran’s leadership never tires of saying. The blob, McCormick says, has to ask itself: does it help rig the election for Harris or stand down on all its ballot harvesting and other trickery and actually allow a real election to roll out? Surprise! Now, take your Kit-kat bar and go home.

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“What FEMA being broke today means not just that we have pissed away the money that we could have allocated for it to non-U.S. citizens — it’s far more insulting than that.”

• The Reprehensible Audacity Of FEMA Being Broke (QTR)

After the devastating effects of Hurricane Helene, FEMA has all of a sudden come out and said it doesn’t have enough funds to make it through hurricane season. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas warned this week that FEMA is running low on funds. “We are meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have. We are expecting another hurricane hitting,” Mayorkas said. “FEMA does not have the funds to make it through the season.” While Mayorkas didn’t specify the exact funding needed, his comments reflect growing concerns from President Biden and lawmakers that a supplemental spending bill may be necessary this fall to support recovery efforts.

I’ve spent the last four years watching as millions of people have crossed unchecked through our southern border and have been treated like royalty by the Biden administration while everyday citizens struggle with rising prices, crumbling infrastructure, and the negative effects of suffocating regulation. I’ve also spent the last four years watching the United States dole out close to $50 billion in foreign aid, mainly to Ukraine to help it press on with a war that realistically it has little chance of winning, while shaking down waitstaff, Uber drivers and anybody using Venmo for purposes of more than $600 for tax receipts. And in my short time in the world of finance, I’ve seen enough omnibus spending bills—with funds allocated for things like border security in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia and Oman and family planning to halt population growth that “threatens biodiversity or endangered species”—to have developed a deep loathing for how our government and our Treasury manage finances.

So when sorry-ass Alejandro Mayorkas—who has sworn up and down for the last three years that there’s no crisis at the southern border while parts of the country have been overrun and overwhelmed by unchecked, undocumented, and sometimes criminal migrants—takes to publicly decrying that FEMA is out of money in the midst of one of the largest domestic disasters in the country’s history, it’s absolutely revolting to watch. Not only is it grotesque because of how we have squandered away hundreds of billions of dollars on things that everyday U.S. citizens are not going to see an impact from, but it’s even worse when examined under the umbrella of how we run monetary policy in this country. There once was a day when, if you needed to fund government entities, you actually had to have the revenue coming in from taxpayers because we couldn’t just print dollars ad infinitum anytime we wanted. Those were the days of sound money, and they are long gone.

What FEMA being broke today means not just that we have pissed away the money that we could have allocated for it to non-U.S. citizens — it’s far more insulting than that. It means that in a day and age where we can theoretically print endless fiat dollars and have an ‘infinite amount of cash’—an idea that I think is completely batshit insane, but our Fed governors don’t—that we still have not stocked the coffers of our domestic agencies with the bare minimum necessary for them to help the American people when they need to. In other words, if the money is all fake, and we can conjure up as much of it as we want without any consequences, as both political parties would have you believe over the last several decades, why should FEMA ever be asking for more money to help hurricane victims?

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The Trump team comes together one at a time: RFK Jr, Elon Musk, JD Vance, Vivek Ramaswamy, Tulsi Gabbard, Tucker Carlson, Mike Flynn, etc etc.

“The martyr lived. Last time America had a candidate this tough was Theodore Roosevelt..”

• Elon Musk to Attend Trump Rally at Site of Attempted Assassination (ET)

Elon Musk said on Oct. 3 that he will attend former President Donald Trump’s upcoming rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. “I will be there to support!” Musk wrote on X, the social media platform that he mostly owns. Trump has a rally scheduled for Saturday at the Butler Farm Show, where he was struck by a bullet during an event in July. Authorities say Thomas Crooks, who was shot dead by a U.S. Secret Service agent, attempted to assassinate Trump. About 30 minutes later, Musk shared video footage of Trump rising to his feet and holding a fist up after surviving the attempted assassination. Musk said he endorsed the former president. “I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery,” Musk wrote at the time. “The martyr lived. Last time America had a candidate this tough was Theodore Roosevelt,” he wrote in a follow-up post.

The business mogul, who is also CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, said in another post on Thursday that backing Trump has become “essential to saving America!” Musk’s posts frequently support Trump and Republicans while denigrating Vice President Kamala Harris and members of the Democratic Party. Trump welcomed Musk’s endorsement at the time and said in a September speech that, if elected, he would, on Musk’s advice, create a government efficiency commission tasked with improving government operations. The exact security protocols in place for Trump’s next Butler rally have not been disclosed but the U.S. Secret Service says it is prepared. A spokesman told The Epoch Times in an email that the agency has, since the attempted assassination attempt, “made comprehensive changes and enhancements to our communications capabilities, resourcing, and protective operations.” Trump, he said, is receiving heightened protection.

The agency has said previously that Trump is receiving the same level of protection as President Joe Biden and Harris in the wake of the assassination attempt by Crooks and another apparent attempt by a man at a golf course in Florida. “Regarding the October 5th event in Butler, PA, we are coordinating closely with the Pennsylvania State Police as well as local law enforcement in and around Butler Township. We are also leveraging other federal security resources to expand personnel and technology,” the spokesman said. “To maintain the integrity of our protective operations, we cannot go into the specifics regarding the security enhancements. Residents in the area should expect traffic delays and an increased presence of state, local, and federal law enforcement as part of our efforts to ensure a safe and secure event.”

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“..Trump moves out to a 13-point lead from just five points earlier in the week.”

• Donald Trump Takes His Biggest Lead Yet In Daily Mail Election Model (DM)

With a month to go until the only poll that matters, former President Donald Trump has roared back into a substantial lead in our election model. A slew of recent surveys has shown him with leads in key battleground states. And when the data are processed through our DailyMail.com/J.L. Partners model it shows the former president winning in 56.7 percent of the simulations. As ever, the road to the White House appears to run through Pennsylvania, with its 19 electoral college votes. For weeks it has been in ‘tossup’ territory. Now the model moves it to ‘lean Trump’ in what could be a decisive moment in the election race. Lose that state, and Vice President Kamala Harris would struggle to triumph even if she wins Michigan, Nevada, and Wisconsin. With fewer paths to electoral college victory, Harris wins in only 43.2 percent of the simulations. It means that, overall, Trump moves out to a 13-point lead from just five points earlier in the week.

To be clear, this is not like a poll lead. Instead, it shows the frequency with which Trump wins the electoral college when our model crunches through all the thousands of possible permutations of states using all the latest available data (along with decades worth of election results combined with economic data.) Until now his highest point was a 10-point advantage last month, but that number has waxed and waned with fresh inputs of data. And the race remains incredibly close. Harris is on course to win the popular vote (as Democrats have done in seven of the last eight elections.) Minnesota is looking safer than ever for her, solidifying her electoral college floor, and she is two points stronger in Michigan, where both she and Trump campaigned Thursday. But the latest model outcome shows a clear direction of travel, said Callum Hunter, data scientist with J.L. Partners.

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“Harris and Walz are the dream team for the anti-free speech movement.”

• Walz Makes the Case for the Most Anti-Free Speech Ticket in History (Turley)

In the vice presidential debate Tuesday, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz pulled the fire alarm. His opponent, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, cited the massive system of censorship supported by Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate. Walz proceeded to quote the line from a 1919 case in which Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said you do not have the right to falsely yell fire in a crowded theater. It is the favorite mantra of the anti-free speech movement. It also is fundamentally wrong. In my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss the justice’s line from his opinion in Schenck v. United States. Holmes wrote, “The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.” As I discuss in the book, the line was largely lifted from a brief in an earlier free speech case. It has since become the rationale for politicians and pundits seeking to curtail free speech in America.

For example, when I testified last year before Congress against a censorship system that has been described by one federal court as “similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth,’” Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., interjected with the fire-in-a-theater question to say such censorship is needed and constitutional. In other words, the internet is now a huge crowded theater and those with opposing views are shouting fire. Goldman and Walz both cited a case in which socialists Charles Schenck and Elizabeth Baer were arrested and convicted of violating the Espionage Act of 1917. Their “crime” was to pass out flyers in opposition to the military draft during World War I. Schenck and Baer called on their fellow citizens not to “submit to intimidation” and to “assert your rights.” They argued, “If you do not assert and support your rights, you are helping to deny or disparage rights which it is the solemn duty of all citizens and residents of the United States to retain.” They also described the military draft as “involuntary servitude.”

Holmes used his “fire in a theater” line to justify the abusive conviction and incarceration. At the House hearing, when I was trying to explain that the justice later walked away from the line and Schenck was effectively overturned in 1969 in Brandenburg v. Ohio, Goldman cut me off and said, “We don’t need a law class here.” In the vice presidential debate, Walz showed that he and other Democratic leaders most certainly do need a class in First Amendment law. As I have said, the Biden-Harris administration has proved to be the most anti-free speech administration in two centuries. You have to go back to John Adams’ administration to find the equal of this administration. Harris has been an outspoken champion of censorship in an administration that supports targeting disinformation, misinformation and “malinformation.” That last category was defined by the Biden administration as information “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.”

In the debate, Walz also returned to his favorite dismissal of censorship objections by saying that it is all just inflammatory rhetoric. Recently, Walz went on MSNBC to support censoring disinformation and declared, “There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech, and especially around our democracy.” That is entirely untrue and shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the right called “indispensable” by the Supreme Court. Even after some of us condemned his claim as ironically dangerous disinformation, Walz continues to repeat it. This is why, for the free speech community, the prospect of a Harris-Walz administration is chilling. Where President Joe Biden was viewed as supporting censorship out of political opportunism, Harris and Walz are viewed as true believers. We are living through the most dangerous anti-free speech movement in American history. We have never before faced the current alliance of government, corporate, academic and media forces aligned against free speech.

A Harris-Walz administration with a supportive Congress could make this right entirely dispensable. Others are laying the groundwork for precisely that moment. University of Michigan Law School professor and MSNBC legal analyst Barbara McQuade has said that free speech “can also be our Achilles’ heel.” Columbia law professor Tim Wu, a former Biden White House aide, wrote a New York Times op-ed with the headline, “The First Amendment Is Out of Control.” He told readers that free speech “now mostly protects corporate interests” and threatens “essential jobs of the state, such as protecting national security and the safety and privacy of its citizens.” Walz said in the debate that Vice President Harris is promoting the “politics of joy.” Indeed, the wrong people are perfectly ecstatic. Harris and Walz are the dream team for the anti-free speech movement.

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“The only relevant decision in the world at this time is whether Washington decides that Putin means what he says or that Putin is so averse to war that he will stand down..”

• There Is Only One Important Decision Waiting to be Made (Paul Craig Roberts)

Except for the neoconservatives whose agenda it is, I sometimes wonder if I am the only other person who understands what the Ukraine conflict is about. While we await Washington’s decision about firing missiles into Russia, I will explain how we reached the current crisis. In 2007 Washington declared war on Russia without announcing it. Putin provoked Washington’s secret declaration of war when he rejected Washington’s uni-polar hegemony at the Munich Security Conference. Washington’s first attack was a year later when, while Putin was distracted at the Beijing Olympics, Washington sent a US trained and equipped Georgian army into South Ossetia. The purpose was not to defeat Russia militarily. Instead, it was a calculated risk that Putin might stand down and to avoid a military conflict that the West could misrepresent as restoring the Soviet Empire, and allow the Russian protectorate to be absorbed into Georgia.

The American neoconservatives were gambling with lives not their own that Putin and thereby Russia would be weakened by giving in, thus opening more paths of aggression against Russia. The neoconservatives’ plot against Putin might have worked except the Georgian invaders killed Russian peace-keepers. In 2008 Putin was trying to resurrect Russian pride, which was lost with the Soviet collapse 1991, and could not turn his back on dead Russian soldiers in South Ossetia. He returned from China, sent in an army, and smashed the US trained and equipped Georgian army in 5 days.

All of Georgia, a province of the Soviet Union until 1991, was in Putin’s hands. The Western propaganda is that Putin is dangerous because he intends to recover the Soviet empire. Obviously, this is a lie, because Putin pulled the Russian army out and left Georgia an independent state. Following the US neoconservative’s failure in South Ossetia, which they mischaracterized as a “Russian invasion of Georgia,” the neoconservatives began pouring billions of dollars into Ukraine in order to create cadres, NGOs, and purchased politicians that would support the “Maidan Revolution,” which was Washington’s overthrow of the democratically elected government of Ukraine that was living in profitable peace with Russia.

Again Putin was inattentive, this time distracted by the Sochi Olympics, and this time he did nothing. It is unclear why Putin allowed Ukraine to become Washington’s puppet state hostile to Russia and a candidate for NATO. The neo-Nazi state that Washington created began a number of operations against the Russian population in Donbas. The use of the Russian language was banned. Russians were accosted and killed in the streets by bands of Stepan Bandera’s followers. (Bandara fought for Nazi Germany against Russia during World War II.) The Russian parts of Ukraine, Donbas and Crimea, which were separated from Russia by Lenin and Khrushchev, asked Putin to protect them by re-admitting them to Russia. Putin accepted Crimea’s request as the Russian Black Sea naval base is in Crimea, but Putin refused the requests from Donbas, which had formed into two independent republics to protect themselves from slaughter by the Ukrainian army.

Putin, always cautious, was advised that if he accepted Donbass he would give credence to Western propaganda that Russia was restoring the Soviet Empire. Nevertheless, Putin knew he had to do something to protect the Donbas Russians. He concocted the Minsk Agreement. The Minsk Agreement kept Donbas as part of Ukraine, but gave the territory some autonomy, such as its own police and courts, to prevent persecution by Washington’s puppet in Kiev. Kiev and the two Donbas republics signed the Minsk agreement, and Germany and France promised to enforce it. Believing that the West had integrity, Putin was taken for a ride. Both the German Chancellor and French President later publicly admitted that they deceived Putin for eight years while Washington built and equipped a strong Ukrainian Army capable of conquering the two break-away republics in Donbas.

When during December 2021 and February 2022 Putin and Lavrov’s efforts to secure a mutual defense agreement between Russia and the West were met with extremely cold shoulders from Washington, NATO, and the European Union, Putin was faced with a large Ukrainian army about to invade the Donbas republics. Putin’s false hopes and mistaken belief in the West’s integrity left him unprepared, but he was forced to intervene and Russia, due to unpreparedness was forced to rely on a small private military force, the Wagner Group. As Putin had not prepared for the obvious conflict staring him in the face, he limited his intervention to Donbas to clearing out the Ukrainian forces, not to quickly prevailing in the conflict. The long conflict has given the West two years and eight months to involve itself and widen the conflict. As Putin never enforced any of the announced red lines, he has no credibility in the West. Recently, the NATO Secretary-General said NATO does not pay any attention to Putin, because he talks but never does anything.

Consequently, the world has reached the precise point I said would be reached. Putin has backed up so much that he has no more room. His back is to the wall. NATO, the British Prime Minister, and the neoconservatives are lobbying Washington to give a green light to US/NATO firing missiles into Russia from Ukraine territory. Understand, Ukraine hasn’t the capability and satellite targeting systems to fire the missiles. A missile attack on Russia can no longer be characterized as a “proxy war.” Putin himself has made this clear. Putin said that missiles fired into Russia means the US and NATO are at war with Russia and that Russia reserves the right to respond with nuclear weapons. A crisis is upon us. The only relevant decision in the world at this time is whether Washington decides that Putin means what he says or that Putin is so averse to war that he will stand down from his threat in order to avoid a wider conflict involving nuclear weapons.

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“..efforts to boost conscription are becoming increasingly deceitful, coercive and violent..”

• Ukraine’s Mobilization Campaign ‘Gets Dirty’ – The Times (RT)

Ukraine’s mobilization campaign is falling far short of targets, while the effort remains marred by violence, mistrust and rampant corruption, The Times reported on Thursday, citing local officials. According to the paper, Kiev has so far called up about one million soldiers and plans to increase that number by another 200,000 by the end of the year, but that mark remains difficult to reach. Moreover, “efforts to boost conscription are becoming increasingly deceitful, coercive and violent,” the outlet noted, citing the example of an Odessa conscript who was technically exempt from the service due to a chronic kidney condition, but was lured to the conscription office and sent to a training base anyway. An unnamed conscription officer in Odessa told The Times that “we’re not mobilizing even 20% of what is required.”

He noted that there is little enthusiasm among potential soldiers to respond to the summons, while his department is plagued by corruption, mismanagement and disillusionment. The bribes, the officer, added, can reach thousands of dollars while staff shortage means that employees have to perform multiple duties at once, including patrolling the streets. In addition, employees are threatened with being sent to the front if they underperform. In other cases, many of those who answer the mobilization call are often found to be unfit for service due to serious health conditions, including tuberculosis, hepatitis or HIV, the Times’ source said. Meanwhile, a 47-year-old Ukrainian recalled that he was eager to be called up and go to the front early in the conflict, but was denied at the time, and now has no desire to do so.

“Our government doesn’t support soldiers. They don’t have proper equipment and are forgotten about if they get injured,” the man explained. Ukraine announced general mobilization in February 2022 shortly after the outbreak of hostilities, barring most men aged between 18 and 60 from leaving the country. This spring, faced with mounting losses, Kiev lowered the draft age from 27 to 25, and significantly tightened mobilization rules, obliging potential service members to report to conscription offices for “data validation,” which in practice often means a ticket to the front. “font-size:11px;color: #353535;”As Ukraine’s mobilization campaign intensified, so did draft evasion, filling social media with videos of recruiters trying to catch eligible men on the streets, in gyms, and in shopping malls, sometimes leading to clashes.

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“..the name of the (new, deadly) game is U.S./Israel vs. Russia/Iran..”

• They lie. They cheat. They steal. They bomb. And they spin (Pepe Escobar)

Hezbollah has a seriously though spell ahead. Resources – especially supply of weapons and military equipment, through Syria and by air from Iran to Lebanon – will become increasingly scarce. Compare it to Israel’s unlimited supply chain from Exceptionalistan – not to mention tons of money. Israel intel is far from shabby – as commandos went deep, in secret, into Hezbollah territory collecting info on the fortification network. When – in fact if – they reach populated areas in Southern Lebanon, then it will be bombing dementia plus heavy artillery against residential areas. That operation might well be called Gaza-on-the Litani. It will happen only if Hezbollah’s complex network in southern Lebanon is cracked – a major “if”. Jeffrey Sachs, for all his good intentions, went as far as he could to characterize Israelis as judeo supremacist extremist terrorists. Virtually the whole Global Majority is now aware of it.

What comes next in Talmudic-Zio-con planning may include a ghastly false flag, possibly after the U.S. presidential election, for instance on a NATO vessel or on U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf, to lock up the new administration into the long-planned U.S. war on Iran. Dick Cheney will have an orgasm – and croak.The BRICS summit in Kazan under the Russian presidency is less than three weeks away. In sharp contrast to genocide and serial wars in West Asia, Putin and Xi will be standing by the – open – door on behalf of BRICS+, welcoming scores of nations that are fleeing the collective West like the plague. Russia is now fully behind Iran – and as much as in floundering Ukraine, that means Russia at war with the U.S./Israel; after all the Pentagon is directly shooting down Iranian missiles, while Israel is the U.S.’s de facto pre-eminent state, fully, fiscally supported by U.S. taxpayers.

It gets trickier by the minute. Immediately after a very important meeting between Alexander Lavrentiev, Putin’s special envoy to Syria, and Ali Akbar Ahmadian, the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Tel Aviv went Full Dementia – what else – and targeted warehouses of Russian forces in Syria.There was a joint Russia-Syria air defense response. What that shows is the Talmudic psychos not only obsessed on breathing fire against the Axis of Resistance but now also going after Russian national interests. This can get very ugly for them in a flash – and is yet one more illustration that the name of the (new, deadly) game is U.S./Israel vs. Russia/Iran.

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He’s real important.

• Biden on Israel Response to Iranian Attack: ‘That’s Between Me and Them’ (Sp.)

When asked for his opinion on how Israel should respond to the latest Iranian missile strike, US President Joe Biden said on Friday that it was between him and the Israelis. “That’s between me and them,” Biden told reporters. Israel has not yet determined how it will strike Iran but they should consider other options than targeting oil fields, President Biden noted. “The Israelis have not concluded … what they’re going to do in terms of the strike, that’s under discussion,” he said during the press briefing. “If I were in those shoes, I’d be thinking about other alternatives than striking oil fields.” Biden also elaborated that the United States is considering imposing sanctions on Iran “right now”, including on the country’s oil sector. “That’s under consideration right now, the whole thing,” he elaborated, adding that he will not discuss the issue further at present.

POTUS also noted that he does not know whether Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to influence the presidential election in the United States, adding that he is “not counting on that.” “Whether he’s trying to influence the election, I don’t know, but I’m not counting on that,” he told reporters during his first visit to the White House press briefing room. According to US media reports, Democrats, and in particular Senator Chris Murphy, have expressed their concerns that Netanyahu, with his harsh actions in the Middle East, is playing into the hands of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, as this gives the latter the opportunity to accuse Biden of failing to resolve the conflict in the Middle East.

“I certainly worry that Prime Minister Netanyahu is watching the American election as he makes decisions about his military campaigns in the north end of Gaza. I hope this is not true, but it is certainly a possibility that the Israeli government is not going to sign any diplomatic agreement prior to the American election, as a means potentially to try to influence the result,” CNN quoted Murphy as saying in an interview for CNN. The Biden administration has made several attempts to resolve the conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon through ceasefire agreements, which have so far failed.

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“An attack by Israel and the U.S. is reportedly imminent on Iran’s oil industrial facilities. Biden has the braindead temerity to call this intended U.S.-Israeli aggravation a “proportionate response..”

• US, UK Digging Their Grave In Catastrophic War In The Middle East (SCF)

The American and British leaders are fully backing Israel to escalate its criminal aggression in the Middle East. In so doing, Washington and London are being exposed for the arch-criminal regimes that they are. An all-out war against Iran is on the brink. The consequences will be abysmal, yet the U.S. and British rulers are shameless, reckless – and ultimately stupid – in their complicity. In a few days, on October 7, the Israeli regime will have conducted 12 months of non-stop genocidal destruction of Gaza. There is no sign of that monstrous war of extermination coming to an end. The Israeli regime is completely out of control, acting with impunity and shocking violation of all laws and moral norms. More than 41,000 Palestinian people have been killed. Some estimates put the real death toll at over 100,000 and even as high as 200,000.

This slaughter of women and children is supposed to be justified by the incursion of Palestinian militants on October 7 last year in which some 1,200 Israelis were killed – many of them by their own security forces using reckless firepower. The Hamas incursion was in response to years of inhumane, genocidal siege on the Gaza Strip by Israel. The actions of the Israeli regime are wholly indefensible. Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli leaders have gotten away with mass murder because of the diplomatic and – more importantly – military support from the United States, Britain and other Western states. The genocide in Gaza and the other Palestinian enclave of the West Bank has been infernally compounded by Israel’s expansion of aggression in the region. The past two weeks have seen Israeli forces indiscriminately bombing Beirut and other Lebanese civilian areas, causing 2,000 deaths and over one million people displaced from their homes.

The orgy of violence is engulfing the entire region. The Israeli regime is also bombing Syria, Iraq and Yemen, as well as Iran in assassination missions. Israel’s murderous conduct has been going on for decades – indeed for 76 years since its inception as an illegal colonial state in 1948, established by British and American machinations at the then newly formed United Nations. Invasions, annexations, air strikes, terrorism, assassinations, and much more are routine for the Western colonialist project known as Zionist Israel. But now the regime is spinning out of control in its bloodlust and psychopathic mania fostered by the impunity afforded by Western sponsors. This history of state terrorism has – and is – all fueled by Western imperialist powers who also believe in supremacy (euphemistically called exceptionalism) and privilege despite their disingenuous virtuous rhetoric to the contrary.

The Israeli regime and its fascist barbarism are a manifestation of the Western powers in their fundamental nature. The same nefarious violence and plunder was – and is – carried out in every corner of the planet that had the misfortune of Western encounter. Zionism is but a variant of Western imperialism. Iran hit back this week with a massive attack involving at least 200 missiles, including hypersonic missiles, raining down on Israeli targets. The response from Iran has been up to now incredibly restrained despite the relentless provocations and acts of war perpetrated by Israel. Even in the latest Iranian attacks, the targets were mainly military centers and aimed at avoiding civilian casualties. Yet immediately, the United States and Britain rushed to condemn Iran for “barbaric aggression” and perversely declared their support for Israel’s right to self-defense. Such a travesty of lies and distortion. The truth is, that Iran was finally acting in legitimate self-defense.

U.S. President Joe Biden is coordinating with Israel to conduct “severe repercussions” on Iran. An attack by Israel and the U.S. is reportedly imminent on Iran’s oil industrial facilities. Biden has the braindead temerity to call this intended U.S.-Israeli aggravation a “proportionate response”. Iran has warned the United States that its policy of unilateral restraint is now definitively over. Tehran has repeatedly said it does not want a regional war, but if Israel follows through on its latest threats of retaliation, then Iran will hit back with even greater force than already shown. Ominously, Iran said it will deploy “unconventional” tactics. This is taken to mean closing the vital oil trade route through the Strait of Hormuz. The Middle East is the source of a third of the world’s oil supply. If Iran shuts down the global oil supply then the world economy is heading for an unprecedented calamity. Already oil prices have begun to spike. If a war should engulf the region, the impact on the world economy will be catastrophic.

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“But, make no mistake, this genocide is absolutely only happening because the US is allowing it to happen.”

• US, Israel Reportedly Downplay Level of Destruction by Iran (Sp.)

At least two dozen long-range Iranian ballistic missiles were able to break through both Israeli and other Western air defenses on Tuesday night, the Washington Post reported. The missiles struck or landed near at least three military and intelligence installations, a review of videos and photos of the attack and its aftermath showed. “The findings raise questions about the full scope of the damage to Israeli military bases and suggest that Iran was more successful in evading Israel’s defenses than in April,” the report wrote. The Pentagon declined to comment on the report’s findings, the Post said. And the Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment, either. Phil Kelly, a political commentator and socialist activist based in Belfast joined Sputnik’s Political Misfits on Friday, and suggested that Western media is “struggling” to “give credence to Israeli propaganda”.

“…it’s interesting when the Washington Post […] newspaper, which is not a go-to read for me anymore, is starting to find itself struggling to give credence to Israeli propaganda and more and more things you’re starting to find that where the lurid kind of propaganda of the Israeli regime is just too much. It’s, the stenographers at the Washington Post and various Western media just struggle to bring themselves to go that far because of its ridiculousness,” Kelly explained. “It’s clear Israel was hit hard. The Iron Dome was not so secure that Iran made a point and will probably be forced to make further points, I would imagine, because Israel is hell-bent on escalation. It wants to drag other parties into this abyss with it,” he added.

Using commercial satellite imagery, researchers have identified more than 30 points where Iranian missiles may have impacted an air base in southern Israel, a report from NHPR (New Hampshire and NPR) revealed. The images showed damaged hangars, buildings, taxiways and a crater on one of the runways at Nevatim Airbase, the report writes. However, both Israel and the US have attempted to downplay the amount of damage that Israel has suffered: “This attack appears to have been defeated and ineffective,” said U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan. Sputnik’s Michelle Witte also noted that the US has a law that dates back to the 1990s which restricts the quality of commercial satellite imagery that US companies can sell if they depict Israel and Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. An unusually specific restriction, she added, that seems to give Israel a special level of protection other countries do not receive from the US.

“But, in terms of that special relationship, it shouldn’t shock anyone when you look at the Israeli lobby that basically owns [the US] political system. It would seem that it would go to these lengths to stop people looking under the rock that is Israel, stop people seeing the reality of the situation, whether it is how much damage they’ve sustained or the mass graves that they are filling with innocent civilians.” “…when Israel commits its crimes, when Israel commits its invasion, when Israel keeps bombing different sovereign countries, the response of the West is to help them cover it up, help them help their propaganda dominate, make sure it’s the Israeli narrative that we hear and do not allow people to see the truth of what is unfolding in this conflict. It should set alarm bells ringing,” the analyst added.

At least 215 people in the US are believed to be dead as a result of the recent storm, Hurricane Helene. In May, NOAA National Weather Service forecasters at the Climate Prediction Center predicted above-normal hurricane activity in the Atlantic basin this year. Despite their prediction, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced this week that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will not have enough funds to last the rest of the hurricane season. Yet, just a week ago, Israel announced that it had secured an $8.7 billion aid package from the US to support its military goals. “The reality is that most US politicians, when they talk about putting country before politics, they’re talking about Israel,” Kelly explained. “And that should really enrage ordinary US citizens who have struggled for a long time, seeing that their living standards drop and wondering why in hell your government is sending billions of dollars to a racist, colonial regime, a small regime in the Middle East, which is committing genocide…”

“…the myth of America, I think, is over. It was struggling long before it went all in on genocide Joe’s watch to push Europe into World War III and to facilitate [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu in the ethnic cleansing of Palestine. But the rest of the world sees the US for what it is, and that is why you’re seeing real concrete moves in the global side to disengage,” he added. “That the war in Ukraine was really a starting point for that, and it’s gained momentum because the US cannot be trusted.” “Europe’s starting to get a bit worried. Macron made a few noises about how Europe needs to keep an eye on the US – slow learner there, Mr. Macron. As Kissinger said, the US doesn’t have friends, it has interests. The world’s awakening to that,” the analyst said. “But, make no mistake, this genocide is absolutely only happening because the US is allowing it to happen.”

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Cute excuse for two murder attempts.

• US Secret Service Struggling To Keep Staff – NYT (RT)

The US Secret Service went into 2024 having lost almost a fifth of its veteran agents, with the rest overworked, underpaid, inadequately trained, and lacking the latest technology, the New York Times has reported. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned in July after an assassin nearly killed former President and current Republican candidate Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. “The service was not ready,” the Times noted on Thursday. The attempt on Trump’s life “revealed deep problems in the Secret Service,” from lack of technology to “failures in command” and communication. For instance, the Butler shooter scouted the venue with a drone, while the protective detail did not have one and their radios did not work properly.

The biggest problem, however, has been “an exodus of the best-trained people,” the Times reported, citing current and former agency employees. At least 1,400 of 7,800 Secret Service employees left in the fiscal years 2022 and 2023, the biggest loss in two decades. While the agency has expanded its workforce to 8,100 – the highest level ever – by this summer, this was still short of the numbers it said it needed. There were concerns about the fitness of new hires and the problems with how to train them and where. The main training facility is so “decrepit” that it often floods in heavy rains, according to the Times. The agency has resorted to using a scale model of the White House built in Atlanta by filmmaker Tyler Perry, because Congress would not authorize funds to build their own.

The chief reason most veterans quoted for leaving was “crushing amounts of overtime work,” sometimes for no pay, because of a federal salary cap. In a survey conducted by a federal police association 68 of the 153 agents who responded said they had “maxed out” on their overtime last year, missing as much as $30,000 in pay. “You ride your horse until it dies, and then you eat it,” Jonathan Wackrow, who left the Secret Service after 14 years, told the Times about management’s view of their workforce. Another former agent, Louis Fitzig, claimed that “nepotism, favoritism, [and] corruption” are part of the agency’s culture. Meanwhile, a scheme to make up the attrition by rehiring recently retired agents backfired spectacularly as agents rushed to retire early, so they could get both a pension and a salary, while not serving in the field where bodies were needed the most.

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“..they are all are NATO allies now after Finland and Sweden’s admission to the military bloc. “There are no neutral countries in the North any more..”

• New NATO Arctic Group is No Match for Russo-Chinese Cooperation (Sp.)

The Western Arctic states are planning to coordinate on defense, intelligence and cyber activities, as they are all are NATO allies now after Finland and Sweden’s admission to the military bloc. “There are no neutral countries in the North any more,” Mikael Valtersson, former Swedish Air Defense officer told Sputnik, commenting on Canada’s push to form a security group to counter Russia and China in the Arctic. Earlier this week, Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly told Bloomberg News that Canada and its allies need an “Arctic security dialogue” to discuss defense matters in light of Russia and China’s growing activities in the region. Russia, an Arctic state, maintains security cooperation with China in its territorial waters. It was reported on October 2 that patrol ships of the China Coast Guard entered the waters of the Arctic Ocean for joint patrols with coast guard vessels of the Russian FSB Border Service. Valtersson expects the new “security dialogue” to work closely with NATO.

“It might develop into an evolved Arctic military command within NATO and also a political body where politicians co-ordinate their actions before meetings in the Arctic Council,” Valtersson said. The pundit warned that NATO’s potential build-up in the region could “increase the risk for both an arms race in the Arctic and incidents in the region.” But Valtersson believes that the creation of the new Arctic body would neither upset the established balance of power in the Arctic nor endanger Russia’s positions in the region. “The Nordic countries and Canada are too small to challenge Russia, and even more a Russian-Chinese cooperation,” he said. “The US has a lot of other interests in the world and will not focus on the Arctic in the way Russia already does, and should increase doing.”

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EVs

 

 

Elon 21 years ago

 

 

IgG4

 

 

Potoo

 

 

P&K

 

 

Soul

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle September 4 2024

Sep 042024
 
 September 4, 2024  Posted by at 8:27 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  64 Responses »


René Magritte Memory of a Journey 1955

 

• Musk ‘Can’t Wait’ To Be Part Of Trump’s Team (RT)
• Robert Reich Calls for Arrest of Elon Musk for Resisting Censorship (Turley)
• Musk Threatens To Go After Brazilian Government Assets (RT)
• Brazilians to be Fined $9000 a Day for Receiving News from X (Turley)
• Why Did Zuckerberg Choose Now to Confess? (Tucker)
• Can They Really Reinvent Kamala Harris in 70 Days? (Victor Davis Hanson)
• Harris’ So-Called ‘Surge’ Is Thanks To Oversampling: Pollsters (ZH)
• Kamala Harris Will Not Bring Prices Down. Her Plan Needs Inflation (Lacalle)
• Durov ‘Too Free’ For The West – Lavrov (RT)
• ‘Developing in All Directions’: Putin Praises Russia-Mongolia Relations (Sp.)
• Mongolia Told ICC To Get Lost With Putin Warrant – Medvedev (RT)
• Mongolia Explains Why It Didn’t Arrest Putin (RT)
• Serious International Crimes to Be Brought to Justice – Moscow (Sp.)
• Netanyahu Refuses Surrender to Israeli Protesters Demanding Hostage Deal (Sp.)
• Epstein Client List ‘Will Be’ Made Public – Trump (RT)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reagan

 

 

51 days

 

 

Kash Patel
https://twitter.com/i/status/1830814009420918825

 

 

Sen. Kennedy

 

 

Kamala ad

 

 

But nobody knows Kamala

 

 

O’Leary CNN
https://twitter.com/i/status/1830841829987860546

 

 

Tucker WWII

 

 

 

 

“There is a lot of waste and needless regulation in government that needs to go..”

• Musk ‘Can’t Wait’ To Be Part Of Trump’s Team (RT)

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has said he is eager to join Donald Trump’s team if he wins the presidential election in November. According to the Washington Post, Trump is planning to establish a special commission to review the work of federal agencies and is considering Musk for a role on this team. The outlet reported on Monday that the former president and his team had been discussing the initiative behind closed doors in recent weeks. The commission would reportedly be led by prominent business executives, whose task would be to “comb through the government books to identify thousands of programs to cut,” according to the Washington Post.

While Trump has previously dismissed the idea of having Musk join his cabinet due to his sprawling business empire, he said the tech tycoon was a “very smart guy” and could be a helpful consultant to the federal government and provide “some very good ideas.” Trump has also praised Musk for the cost-cutting measures that he implemented after acquiring Twitter (now X) in 2022. Following the takeover, Musk infamously laid off some 6,000 workers, or nearly 80% of the platform’s workforce. Responding to the Washington Post’s claims that he is being considered for the auditing commission, Musk wrote on X on Tuesday that he “can’t wait.” “There is a lot of waste and needless regulation in government that needs to go,” the billionaire said.

Previously, Musk has written that he is “fully” endorsing Trump in the upcoming election and that he is “willing to serve” under the former president if he secures a second term in office. In a post on X last month, the billionaire also shared an AI-generated image of himself standing behind a lectern labeled ‘Department of Government Efficiency’ with the acronym DOGE, referring to the meme-based DOGE coin cryptocurrency, which Musk has personally backed in the past. Last week, Musk also warned that the US was on a “fast lane to bankruptcy” due to government overspending, saying that this is causing rampant inflation in the country. The billionaire also shared a forecast suggesting that the US budget deficit could increase from $1.8 trillion to almost $16.3 trillion over the next ten years at the current rate of spending.

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“..despite their critical role in various national security efforts, including the possible rescue of the stranded two astronauts currently in space. None of that matters to Reich..”

• Robert Reich Calls for Arrest of Elon Musk for Resisting Censorship (Turley)

We have previously discussed the anti-free speech views of Clinton’s former Labor Secretary, Robert Reich, who has tried to sell citizens on the perfectly Orwellian view that more freedom means tyranny when it comes to the freedom of expression. He also demanded that former president Donald Trump be banned from ballots as a “traitor” — all in the name of protecting democracy from itself. Last week, Reich wrote a column declaring Elon Musk “out of control” in his refusal to censor citizens and appeared to call for his arrest. Reich has long been a prominent voice in the anti-free speech movement discussed in my recent book, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage. Indeed, he has given a voice to the rage in calling for others to be silenced or arrested. Elon Musk has long been the primary target of Reich and his allies after dismantling the censorship system at Twitter, now X.

Reich called Musk’s purchase of Twitter with a pledge to reduce censorship to be “dangerous nonsense.” Notably, Reich’s friend, Hillary Clinton, was one of the first to call for a crackdown on Musk after his purchase of Twitter. Hillary Clinton and other Democratic figures turned to Europe and called upon them to use their Digital Services Act to force censorship against Americans. Reich has always shown a chilling fluidity in how free speech is protected and argued that public interest should be able to trump the right of any citizens in espousing views that he believes are dangerous. In denouncing Musk, Reich encouraged a campaign to counter his efforts to resist censorship. He wrote that Musk “may be the richest man in the world. He may own one of the world’s most influential social media platforms. But that doesn’t mean we’re powerless to stop him.”

Like Hillary Clinton, Reich is calling on foreign governments and censors to silence American citizens including Musk: “Regulators around the world should threaten Musk with arrest if he doesn’t stop disseminating lies and hate on X.” He even appears willing to undermine national security programs to stop unfettered free speech. He called for the U.S. government to cut off contracts with his companies despite their critical role in various national security efforts, including the possible rescue of the stranded two astronauts currently in space. None of that matters to Reich who appears to view free speech as a greater threat to our nation: “Why is the US government allowing Musk’s satellites and rocket launchers to become crucial to the nation’s security when he’s shown utter disregard for the public interest?

Why give Musk more economic power when he repeatedly abuses it and demonstrates contempt for the public good?” Reich’s call to regulate speech in the public interest is the Siren’s Call of every authoritarian regime in history. He will presumably tell us what speech is no longer tolerable for public policy reasons. Our “Indispensable Right” will, according to Reich, be safely in the hands of the European censors who can protect us from errant and dangerous thoughts. As he explained earlier, “the kinds of things that we do about this is, focus less on thinking about free speech, but thinking about how the times have changed.” In this way, speech regulations can keep us “moving towards how we recommend content and … how we direct people’s attention is leading to a healthy public conversation that is most participatory.” The “healthy public conversation” with Robert Reich increasingly appears to be his talking and the rest of us listening.

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“Unless the Brazilian government returns the illegally seized property of X and SpaceX..”

• Musk Threatens To Go After Brazilian Government Assets (RT)

Tech mogul Elon Musk has vowed to seek the seizure Brazilian government assets in the US, if Brazil does not return property belonging to his companies X (formerly Twitter) and Space X. Last week, the Supreme Court of Brazil ordered the operations of X to be “immediately suspended” and threatened a fine of 50,000 Brazilian reals ($8,874) per day against anyone trying to sidestep the ban on accessing the platform using a VPN. The judge gave Google and Apple five days to remove X from their app stores. The ruling was upheld Monday by a panel of federal supreme court justices. The court also froze the accounts of satellite internet provider Starlink, a subsidiary of Musk’s SpaceX, to ensure the payment of fines imposed for failing to appoint a new legal representative for X in Brazil.

“Unless the Brazilian government returns the illegally seized property of X and SpaceX, we will seek reciprocal seizure of government assets too,” Musk wrote on his social media platform. “Hope Lula enjoys flying commercial,” the billionaire added, referring to Brazilian President Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva. Musk was responding to a tweet of a news report about the US government’s confiscation of a jet allegedly used by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, claiming it violated Washington’s sanctions against Caracas. The fierce dispute between the Brazilian authorities and the US entrepreneur began in April, when Brazilian Supreme Court judge Alexandre de Moraes ordered X to delete the accounts belonging to several supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro, calling them “digital militants” who spread “disinformation” about himself and the court.

The billionaire rejected the demand, highlighting that to comply with the order would violate Brazilian laws. Musk announced plans to suspend operations in the country, citing what he called censorship orders that his company refused to comply with. Commenting on the seizure of Starlink’s accounts, Musk objected to the “absolutely illegal action” taken without any due process, pointing out that X and SpaceX are “two completely different companies with different shareholders.” He also pledged to provide free internet access to the company’s Brazilian customers while the accounts remain blocked. On Monday, Reuters reported a senior state official as saying that Brazilian telecommunications regulator Anatel could introduce sanctions against Starlink, which is currently the only company that refused to comply with the ruling to shut down X. Anatel has warned that the company’s license for operating in the country could be revoked.

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Brazil’s no. 1 news source.

• Brazilians to be Fined $9000 a Day for Receiving News from X (Turley)

Brazil has not just banned X (formerly Twitter) from the entire country, but citizens will now be fined $9000 a day (more than the average salary in the country) for using VPNs to access the platform. X is the main source of news for Brazilians, who will now be left with government-approved sources or face financial ruin in seeking unfettered information. The Guardian is reporting that the confiscatory fines are part of a comprehensive crackdown on efforts to get news through X, including ordering all Apple stores to remove X from new phones. The move puts Brazil with China in the effort to create a wall of censorship between citizens and unregulated information. For the anti-free speech movement, Brazil is a key testing ground for where the movement is heading next. European censors are arresting CEOs like Pavel Durov while threatening Elon Musk.

However, it is Brazil that foreshadows the brave new world of censorship where entire nations will block access to sites committed to free speech values or unfettered news. If successful, the Brazilian model is likely to be replicated by other countries. The reason is that censorship is not working. As discussed in my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” we have never seen the current alliance of government, corporate, academic, and media interest against free speech. Yet, citizens are not buying it. Despite unrelenting attacks and demonizing media coverage, citizens are still using X and resisting censorship. That was certainly the case in Brazil where citizens preferred X to regulated news sources. The solution is now to threaten citizens with utter ruin if they seek unfettered news.

The question is whether Brazil’s leftist government can get away with this. The conflict began with demands to censor supporters of the conservative former president Jair Bolsonaro. When X refused the sweeping demands for censorship, including the demand to name of a legal representative who could be arrested for refusing to censor users, the courts moved toward this national ban. The man behind the effort is Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who has aggressively used censorship to combat anything that he or the government deems “fake news” or disinformation. With socialist president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, they are the dream team of the anti-free speech movement. The question is whether Brazil will become a nightmare for free speech around the world as other nations seek to force citizens to read and hear news from approved, state-monitored sites.

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Because he thinks Trump will win.

• Why Did Zuckerberg Choose Now to Confess? (Tucker)

On many subjects important to public life today, vast numbers of people know the truth, and yet the official channels of information sharing are reluctant to admit it. The Fed admits no fault in inflation and neither do most members of Congress. The food companies don’t admit the harm of the mainstream American diet. The pharmaceutical companies are loath to admit any injury. Media companies deny any bias. So on it goes. And yet everyone else does know, already and more and more so. This is why the admission of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg was so startling. It’s not what he admitted. We already knew what he revealed. What’s new is that he admitted it. We are simply used to living in a world swimming in lies. It rattles us when a major figure tells us what is true or even partially or slightly true. We almost cannot believe it, and we wonder what the motivation might be.

In his letter to Congressional investigators, he flat-out said what everyone else has been saying for years now. “In 2021, senior officials from the Biden Administration, including the White House, repeatedly pressured our teams for months to censor certain COVID-19 content, including humor and satire, and expressed a lot of frustration with our teams when we didn’t agree….I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it. I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today. Like I said to our teams at the time, I feel strongly that we should not compromise our content standards due to pressure from any Administration in either direction – and we’re ready to push back if something like this happens again.”

A few clarifications. The censorship began much earlier than that, from March 2020 at the very least if not earlier. We all experienced it, almost immediately following lockdowns. After a few weeks, using that platform to get the word out proved impossible. Facebook once made a mistake and let my piece on Woodstock and the 1969 flu go through but they would never make that mistake again. For the most part, every single opponent of the terrible policies was deplatformed at all levels. The implications are far more significant than the bloodless letter of Zuckerberg suggests. People consistently underestimate the power that Facebook has over the public mind. This was especially true in the 2020 and 2022 election cycles. The difference in having an article unthrottled much less amplified by Facebook in these years was in the millionfold. When my article went through, I experienced a level of traffic that I had never seen in my career. It was mind-boggling.

When the article was shut down some two weeks later – after focused troll accounts alerted Facebook that the algorithms had made a mistake – traffic fell to the usual trickle. Again, in my entire career of closely following internet traffic patterns, I had never seen anything like this. Facebook as an information source offers power like we’ve never seen before, especially because so many people, especially among the voting public, believe that the information they are seeing is from their friends and family and sources they trust. The experience of Facebook and other platforms framed the reality that people believed existed outside of themselves. Every dissident, and every normal person who had some sense that something odd was going on, was made to feel like some sort of crazy cretin who held nutty and probably dangerous views that were completely out of touch with the mainstream.

What does it mean that Zuckerberg now openly admits that he excluded from view anything that contradicted government wishes? It means that any opinions on lockdowns, masks, or vaccine mandates – and all that is associated with that including church and school closures plus vaccine harms – were not part of the public debate. We had lived through and were living through the most significant far-reaching attacks on our rights and liberties in our lifetimes, or, arguably, on the history record in terms of scale and reach, and it was not part of any serious public debate. Zuckerberg played an enormous role in this. People like me had come to believe that average people were simply cowards or stupid not to object. Now we know that this might not have been true at all! The people who objected were simply silenced!

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“Harris is not so much a flip-flopper as a padder, who supports anything, without any worry about framing each new position by renouncing her original and opposite one.”

• Can They Really Reinvent Kamala Harris in 70 Days? (Victor Davis Hanson)

Harris’s well-funded 2019 campaign quickly blew up early. Indeed, she never entered much less won a single primary–and captured no delegates through voting. In the frenzy following George Floyd’s death, and the mayhem and nationwide rioting and violence of late spring and summer, panicked 2020 nominee Joe Biden announced in advance he would select a diversity candidate as a running mate. And in no time, and under increasing pressure to trump his braggadocious promise, he boxed himself in by assuring his handlers that his running mate would be preselected as a black woman. Given there were then no black female governors and only two black women in the Senate, Kamala Harris was a choice of last resort—even though, as a candidate and competitor of Joe Biden, she had condemned him before a nationwide audience as a veritable racist who had habitually cozied up to segregationists.

When she labels her own running mate a racist it becomes hard to take her charges of racism against Trump seriously. As vice president, Harris predictably proved inept. In a variety of tasks as “border czar” and point woman on space exploration, she proved not merely clueless but embarrassingly so—sappy, cackling, and variously labeled by ex-staff and Democratic insiders as “out of her league” and “way over her head.” Her chief role was to break a sometimes 50/50 deadlocked Senate and therefore, in every one of those votes, owns the passage of hard-left legislation that often turned disastrous. As Biden’s cognitive decline accelerated at a geometric rate, a widely derided Harris was seen by the Bidens as Joe’s Spiro Agnew insurance policy: a vice president so bumbling and unimaginable as a future president that if Biden only breathed, he would be still judged preferable to the travesty of a Harris succession.

Biden utterly imploded on June 13 during a stress-test national debate. His collapse ended the 42-month-long charade that he was “fit as a fiddle.” In 24 hours, Biden was transmogrified by his handlers from an Arnold Schwarzenegger-like health nut to physically and mentally unable to continue as the Democratic nominee. Left unsaid was that his diving polls, not his debility, doomed Biden. Otherwise, he would have survived his latest public humiliation had his approval ratings been respectable. Harris’s race, gender, and status as vice president made it impossible not to anoint her as the new Democratic candidate.

Her machinations to preempt any challengers were achieved almost instantaneously in the same anti-democratic fashion as the removal of Biden himself from the ticket. In the way of the current Democrats, whatever the billionaire donor class and the DEI apparat decide is reified almost instantly by fiat. We now suffer a zombie presidency for the next five months. Biden’s own party insists that he is too enfeebled to campaign as a nominee but not too demented to serve as president. Weirder still, a presidential candidate, who has never in her life won a primary and just days ago was written off by her own party as linguistically challenged, is being reinvented in 70 days as the second coming of Barack Obama.

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Is this how Hillary got that 97% likelihood to win in 2016?

• Harris’ So-Called ‘Surge’ Is Thanks To Oversampling: Pollsters (ZH)

As we’ve been highlighting since 2016, polls are not to be trusted thanks to various ‘tricks of the trade’ – most commonly, oversampling. Last month we noted how the founder of the main outside spending group backing Kamala Harris for president says their own internal opinion polling is “much less rosy” than public polls. “Our numbers are much less rosy than what you’re seeing in the public,” said Future Forward super PAC president Chauncey McLean said during a Monday event hosted by the University of Chicago Institute of Politics. Now, the Washington Times reports that some pollsters are even sounding the alarm over Vice President Kamala Harris’ so-called ‘surge’ in the polls – which Harris pulled ahead in after replacing President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee on July 21.

Since the switch, Harris is leading Trump nationally by nearly 2 percentage points and is either leading or tied with him in all seven battleground states. However, Republican analysts argue that these polling numbers may not accurately reflect voter sentiment due to biased polling methodology. Critics point out that many polls have been sampling a disproportionately smaller share of Republican voters compared to exit poll data from the 2020 presidential election. The result, they say, is a misleading “phantom advantage” for Ms. Harris. According to them, this skewed sampling could be a strategic move to boost enthusiasm and fundraising for Ms. Harris’ campaign. Trump campaign strategist Jim McLaughlin echoed this sentiment, stating, “They undersample Republicans” intentionally “to tamp down support and donations for Trump.” He added that the polls are part of a larger effort to create a narrative that favors Harris.

Trump has openly criticized the poll results. “It’s fake news,” Trump declared during a rally in Michigan. “They can make those polls sing.” Harris’ recent poll numbers have indeed helped fuel excitement among her supporters, as evidenced by her campaign’s announcement of a $540 million fundraising haul in July, more than four times what Mr. Trump raised in the same period. Still, the growing skepticism over the legitimacy of the polls has prompted some to question whether the surge in support is as real as it appears.

Recent polls that show a Harris lead, such as the Suffolk University/USA Today poll, included more respondents identifying as Democrats (37.1%) than Republicans (33.8%). The poll found Ms. Harris leading Trump by 5 percentage points, a significant turnaround from earlier in the year when Trump was ahead by 4 points vs. Biden. Similarly, a Yahoo News/YouGov poll released on August 27 found Ms. Harris ahead of Mr. Trump by 1 percentage point, with Democrats making up 33% of respondents compared to only 29% for Republicans. The discrepancy in party sampling is causing concern among poll watchers. Data from the 2020 exit polls showed a nearly equal split, with 36% identifying as Republican and 37% as Democrat. Yet, recent polls seem to favor Democrats disproportionately, leading to claims of deliberate skewing.

Mr. Trump’s pollster, Tony Fabrizio, has argued that these polls are designed to suppress support for Mr. Trump. In a memo, he stated, “Once again, we see a series of public surveys released with the clear intent and purpose of depressing support for President Trump.” Pollsters like Don Levy of the New York Times/Siena Poll counter that these claims lack substance. They argue that any gaps between recalled 2020 vote and actual 2020 results are not evidence of intentional bias but may reflect the complexity of polling dynamics, including response bias where Democrats are more likely to participate in polls. Despite these excuses, the controversy surrounding these polls has left many wondering about the true state of the race. Polling analysis site FiveThirtyEight shows Ms. Harris’ approval rating ticking up to 42.3%, up from 37.1% in early July. Yet, doubts persist over how she has managed to rise in the polls without significantly improving her historically low job approval ratings.

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“Inflation is the way in which the government tricks citizens into believing that administrations can provide for anything..”

• Kamala Harris Will Not Bring Prices Down. Her Plan Needs Inflation (Lacalle)

In a recent interview with CNN, Kamala Harris said that Bidenomics is working and that she is “proud of bringing inflation down.” However, the Bureau of Labor Statistics published the latest CPI at 2.9%, despite annual inflation being 1.4% when she took office. Inflation is a disguised tax and accumulated inflation since January 2021, when the Biden-Harris administration started, has increased more than 20%. Of course, Democrats blame inflation on the war, the pandemic, and the science-fantasy concept of “supply chain disruptions.” No one believed it, because most commodities have declined and supply tensions disappeared back to normality, but prices continued to rise. As a result, Harris invented the concept of greedy grocery stores and evil corporations to blame for inflation and justify price controls.

Is it not ironic? She blames grocery stores and corporations for inflation, but when price inflation drops, she proudly takes credit. The reality is that the Kamala Harris plan, like all interventionist governments, creates and strives for inflation. Inflation is a hidden tax. Governments love it and perpetuate it by printing money through deficit spending and imposing regulations that harm trade, competition, and technological creative destruction. Big government is big inflation. Inflation is the way in which the government tricks citizens into believing that administrations can provide for anything. It disguises the accumulated debt, quietly transfers wealth from the private sector to the government and condemns citizens to being dependent hostages of government subsidies. It is the only way in which they can continue to spend a constantly depreciated currency and present themselves as the solution.

Furthermore, it is the perfect excuse to blame businesses and anyone else who sells in the currency that the government creates. Kamala Harris will do nothing to cut inflation because she wants inflation to disguise the monster deficit and debt accumulation. In the latest figures, the deficit has soared to $1.5 trillion in the first ten months of the fiscal year. Public debt has soared to $35 trillion, and in the administration’s own forecasts, they will add a $16.3 trillion deficit from 2025 to 2034. It is worse. The previously mentioned figure does not include the $2 trillion in additional debt coming from Kamala’s economic plan.

Harris is aware that her proposals to impose an unrealized capital gains tax, an economic aberration, and other tax hikes will not generate the $2 trillion in additional taxes she seeks. So, she needs the Fed to monetize as much as possible, eroding the US dollar’s purchasing power and making all Americans poorer in the process, only to blame corporations and grocery stores later. Furthermore, it is a way to present the government as the solution to the problem they create, promising the lunacy of price controls and enormous subsidies in a constantly depreciated currency.

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“..too slow [to react to] or did not listen at all to Western advice about the so-called moderation of his brainchild..”

• Durov ‘Too Free’ For The West – Lavrov (RT)

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov is facing charges in France because he refused to moderate his platform in accordance with Western demands, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has claimed. Durov was arrested after landing in Paris in late August and charged with multiple offenses, including complicity in “administering an online platform” used by criminal groups to conduct illicit activities, and refusing to cooperate with investigators. The Russian tech entrepreneur, who also has citizenship of France, the UAE, and Saint Kitts and Nevis, was released on €5 million ($5.55 million) bail last week. He is banned from leaving the country while the case against him is ongoing. During a meeting with students and educators at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations on Monday, Lavrov suggested that Durov is being persecuted because he “turned out to be too free.”

The Telegram CEO was “too slow [to react to] or did not listen at all to Western advice about the so-called moderation of his brainchild,” he said. Durov is not the only tech entrepreneur to face such pressure from Washington and its allies, the minister stressed, noting how the head of Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, Mark Zuckerberg “had been summoned to the US Senate and agreed to cooperate, as he himself admitted.” “The West does not pull any punches when dealing with other large platforms either,” he added. What the US and the EU are now doing to Durov is “analogous to their actions related to the abuse of globalization,” Lavrov noted. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said over the weekend that Moscow also had issues with the Telegram CEO in the past, but – unlike Paris – never tried to arrest him.

Holding Durov accountable for crimes committed by other people using his app is the same as arresting the heads of French automobile makers Renault or Citroen because “terrorists also use cars,” Peskov argued. Durov, who was born in St. Petersburg, formally left Russia in 2014 after law enforcement agencies accused him of refusing to grant investigators access to the communications of terrorism suspects. The dispute was settled in 2020 when the Russian telecoms regulator announced that it had no further issues with Telegram. In an interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson in April, Durov insisted that he has repeatedly refused to provide user data to any authorities, including US intelligence services, or to install a surveillance “backdoor” in the app, which has almost a billion monthly users.

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“..last year, 90% of gasoline and diesel fuel entered the Mongolian market from Russia..”

• ‘Developing in All Directions’: Putin Praises Russia-Mongolia Relations (Sp.)

On Monday, Putin arrived in Mongolia for an official visit, during which he is anticipated to participate in celebrations marking the 85th anniversary of the joint victory of Soviet and Mongolian armed forces at the Khalkh River. “Indeed, relations between Russia and Mongolia are developing in all directions,” Putin said at a meeting with Mongolian President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh. Putin underscored the effective work in humanitarian areas, in particular in the field of education. “Today, during the course of our work, we will certainly return to the main areas of our cooperation in the economy,” Putin noted. Russia and Mongolia contribute to Asia’s security by cooperating along military-technical lines, as well as countering terrorism, Putin said. “When considering issues of military-technical and anti-terrorist cooperation, it was noted that Russian-Mongolian cooperation in these areas contributes to ensuring security in Asia,” Putin said after talks with Mongolian President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh.

Moscow is open to implementing peaceful nuclear energy projects with the East Asian country, Putin said. “We are also open to implementing joint peaceful nuclear energy projects based on the most modern Russian technologies, including the use of small-module reactors,” Putin told reporters following the talks with Mongolian President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh. Russia sees prospects for cooperation with Mongolia in the gas sector, President Putin said. “We see good prospects for cooperation in the gas sector,” Putin said after talks with his Mongolian counterpart, adding that the possibility of Russian gas supplies to Mongolian consumers is under consideration. Russia has consistently responded to Mongolia’s requests to meet its growing demand for fuel and lubricants, including on preferential terms, the president said, adding that Russia will also continue to supply Mongolia with electricity.

“Our country has long and reliably provided the Mongolian economy with the energy resources it needs. Thus, last year, 90% of gasoline and diesel fuel entered the Mongolian market from Russia,” he added. Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday that he had exchanged views on current international and regional issues at talks with Mongolian President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh. Moscow and Ulaanbaatar have paid special attention to advancing trade and investment ties during the talks in the Mongolian capital, Putin added.

“Special attention was paid to building up mutually beneficial trade and investment ties. Russia is one of Mongolia’s main foreign economic partners,” Putin said after talks with Mongolian President Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh. Commercial settlements between Russia and Mongolia are almost entirely carried out in currencies other than the dollar and euro, the president added. In turn, the President of Mongolia thanked Putin for the visit, which coincides with a year of significant celebrations for both nations. This year marks the 85th anniversary of their joint victory at the Khalkhin Gol River and the 50th anniversary of the founding of Erdenet.

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“..go do to themselves something that Russians and Mongols found a word for together, back in the 13th century” and get lost..”

• Mongolia Told ICC To Get Lost With Putin Warrant – Medvedev (RT)

The International Criminal Court’s (ICC) arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin turned out to be a meaningless scrap of paper, his predecessor Dmitry Medvedev has said. His comments came after Putin arrived in Mongolia, an ICC member state, without facing any obstacles. Writing on Telegram on Tuesday, Medvedev, who now serves as Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council, mocked the Western reaction to Putin’s visit to Ulaanbaatar. “The servile European Union has reportedly expressed ‘concern’ to Mongolia over the visit of Russian President Vladimir Putin,” he said. However, the Asian country “has just told the ICC and Eurodegenerates to go do to themselves something that Russians and Mongols found a word for together, back in the 13th century” and get lost, Medvedev suggested.

The ex-president went on to argue that the ICC – which he labeled a “half-baked ‘court’” – should be afraid of “a scenario where some madman tries to carry out their illegal arrest warrant. […] In that case, their lives would be worth no more than the piece of paper on which this shitty statute is written,” he warned. In March 2023, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Putin and Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova for allegedly participating in unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia. Moscow does not recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction and declared the order null and void. Russia says that Ukrainian children were evacuated for safety reasons, and that they can be returned to their parents or guardians upon request.

Putin’s visit to Mongolia was his first foreign trip to a country that recognizes the ICC statute. Ahead of the trip, the court’s spokesman, Fadi el-Abdallah, said that the country had to cooperate with the ICC on the detention, adding that failure to do so could trigger an “appropriate” response from the body. However, the Rome Statute, under which the ICC operates, provides for exemptions if an arrest would “breach a treaty obligation” with another country or violate the “diplomatic immunity of a person or property of a third state.” Before Putin landed in Ulaanbaatar, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov allayed fears of a potential attempt to arrest the Russian leader. “We have excellent relations with our friends from Mongolia,” he said, noting that Moscow “has no concerns” about the ICC warrant.

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“Mongolia has always maintained a policy of neutrality in all its diplomatic relations..”

• Mongolia Explains Why It Didn’t Arrest Putin (RT)

Mongolia is dependent on its neighbors for energy and maintains a policy of neutrality, a government spokesperson has said, responding to demands to detain Russian President Vladimir Putin on a “war crimes warrant.” The International Criminal Court (ICC), Ukraine and the EU have all called on Ulaanbaatar to arrest the Russian leader, citing a 2023 warrant for “forcible deportations” of Ukrainian children. Although Mongolia is a signatory party to the ICC, it did not do so. “Mongolia imports 95% of its petroleum products and over 20% of electricity from our immediate neighborhood, which have previously suffered interruption for technical reasons. This supply is critical to ensure our existence and that of our people,” a government spokesperson told Politico EU via email on Tuesday. “Mongolia has always maintained a policy of neutrality in all its diplomatic relations, as demonstrated in our statements of record to date,” the spokesperson added.

Putin traveled to Mongolia at the invitation of his counterpart, Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh, and met with top officials in Ulaanbaatar to discuss the two countries’ strategic partnership. The Russian president also attended the ceremony marking the 85th anniversary of the Battle of Khalkhin Gol, a decisive victory of Soviet and Mongolian forces over the Imperial Japanese Army that secured the USSR’s eastern flank for most of WWII. During their meeting Putin invited his Mongolian counterpart, Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh, to the BRICS summit in the Russian city of Kazan next month. Khurelsukh has accepted the invitation. By refusing to arrest Putin, Mongolia has chosen to share “responsibility for his war crimes,” Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman Georgy Tykhy said on social media, adding that Kiev “will work with partners to ensure that this has consequences for Ulaanbaatar.”

Mongolia is landlocked between Russia to the north and China to the south, and has maintained good relations with both Moscow and Beijing. Ulaanbaatar also signed the Rome Statute and joined the ICC in 2002, and one of its judges was appointed to the court earlier this year. While the court could formally condemn Mongolia for failing to enforce its writ, it lacks authority to impose penalties such as fines or sanctions. Russia has said it considers the ICC’s warrant null and void, since it is not a party to the Rome Statute. Moscow has also rejected the accusations as absurd, pointing out that evacuating civilians from a combat zone, where they faced imminent danger from Ukrainian artillery and drone strikes, was not a crime.

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“The reputation of both the Kiev regime and the ICC is well known. Neither of them are independent and have anything to do with law or justice..”

• Serious International Crimes to Be Brought to Justice – Moscow (Sp.)

“Ukrainian criminals guilty of serious international crimes against their own and Russian citizens, as well as their henchmen, will be brought to justice and will be punished as they deserve to be,” Zakharova said.
Kiev wants to withdraw its citizens from the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC), but keep criminal prosecution of foreign citizens, Maria Zakharova said. “In fact, they want to withdraw their citizens from the jurisdiction of even this court, which is as loyal to them as possible, but at the same time reserve the right to criminal prosecution in The Hague of citizens of other countries on charges made up by Kiev itself,” Zakharova said.
Kiev’s words on the ratification of the Rome Statute with conditions shows its true attitude to international humanitarian law, the diplomat added.

“Such a step cannot be regarded otherwise than as an undisguised intention to give their military carte blanche to commit serious war crimes,” Zakharova added. Neither Ukraine nor the International Criminal Court have anything to do with law and justice, Zakharova said. “The reputation of both the Kiev regime and the ICC is well known. Neither of them are independent and have anything to do with law or justice,” Zakharova said. On August 24, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a law to ratify the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the ICC. Ukraine will not recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction over its citizens for seven years after the adoption of the draft law.

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Netanyahu is not Israel. Trump should learn that too.

• Netanyahu Refuses Surrender to Israeli Protesters Demanding Hostage Deal (Sp.)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a defiant late-night speech amid mass protests in Tel Aviv Monday, rejecting pressure from the Israeli public to secure a deal to return hostages and bring about a ceasefire in Gaza. “I will not surrender to the pressure,” said Netanyahu during the unusual press conference one day after a general strike shut down much of the country. “No one is more committed to freeing the hostages than me. But no one will preach to me,” he added, insisting there were “certain things we won’t compromise on” in negotiations with Hamas. Key to the controversy is the question of who will maintain control over the so-called Philadelphi corridor, a narrow strip of land separating the Gaza Strip’s southern portion from Egypt. The corridor has been jointly controlled by Egypt and Palestinian authorities since Israel’s military disengagement from Gaza in 2005, with the terms of 1978’s Camp David Accords granting Egypt control of the Rafah border crossing that falls within the route.

But the IDF has seized control of both the Philadelphi corridor and the Rafah border crossing in recent months, insisting that Israeli authority over both is necessary for security reasons. That stance has proven to be a poison pill in ongoing negotiations with Hamas as Netanyahu refuses to compromise on his establishment of a “buffer zone” along the Gazan side of the route. “This corridor is essential for our existence,” Netanyahu said Monday. “For this reason Hamas is insisting on it. And for the same reason I’m insisting on it.” The Israeli leader claimed weapons are smuggled into Gaza over the 8.7 mile border, allowing Hamas to maintain its armed resistance. Netanyahu has controversially allowed money and resources from Iran and Qatar to reach Hamas in an effort to strengthen the group and maintain Gaza’s political separation from the West Bank, which is overseen by the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority.

“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support the bolstering of Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” said Netanyahu during a meeting with members of his Likud party in 2019, making explicit the symbiotic relationship between the armed group and the hardline Israeli prime minister. “This is part of our strategy to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.” US President Joe Biden has at times appeared flustered by Netanyahu’s intransigence amid months of unfruitful peace talks between Israel and Hamas, while Israeli military officials have publicly rebuked the prime minister for his effective sabotage of a hostage deal. Critics have claimed Netanyahu is merely stalling for time, working to prolong hostilities in Gaza in an effort to maintain his grip on power. The Israeli leader faces prosecution on corruption charges if he is forced to step down from his position.

Observers have speculated Netanyahu is attempting to “run out the clock” until November elections in the United States, after which Donald Trump’s possible return to the White House would provide him with more latitude in solving the Palestinian question. Provocative attacks on leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah on foreign soil have led to speculation the prime minister is seeking to provoke a regional conflict during which the US would presumably come to Israel’s support. Netanyahu has long attempted to goad the United States into a war against Iran, traditionally Israel’s most powerful and influential critic in the region. About 101 Israeli captives are thought to remain in Gaza after Hamas’ surprise operation on October 7, during which several dozen hostages were taken back to the Palestinian territory. Meanwhile Israel continues to hold more than 3,600 Palestinians, many of them children, in so-called administrative detention without charge. Recent polling reveals Netanyahu enjoys the approval of about 29% of the Israeli public.

Israel
https://twitter.com/i/status/1830799717300871552

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He can give this to Bobby Kennedy, along with the JFK files.

• Epstein Client List ‘Will Be’ Made Public – Trump (RT)

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has suggested that the “black book” with deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s client list would be made public should he be elected president. Epstein worked as a financier and socialized with the rich and famous for years, introducing them to dozens of young women – some of whom were underage at the time – and flying them to his private island in the Caribbean on the jet dubbed the ‘Lolita Express’. “I never went to his island, fortunately. But a lot of people did,” Trump said in an interview with the Lex Fridman podcast, published on Tuesday. “It’s very interesting, isn’t it? Probably will be, by the way,” Trump told Fridman, after the host said it was “very strange” that the list of people who traveled to Little St. James has never been made public.

Trump compared the Epstein disclosures to declassifying the last remaining documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and said he would “certainly take a look at it” and would “be inclined to” release the client list. Trump has previously said that as president (2017-2021) he tried to release the Kennedy files, only for the US intelligence community to persuade him at the last moment that this would somehow be damaging. He has since made a promise to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to declassify the documents about his uncle’s assassination, after the former Democrat endorsed him last month. Revelations that Epstein lured young women – many below the legal age of consent – and pimped them out to powerful and prominent acquaintances were instrumental in the financier’s arrest in 2019.

FBI searches of his New York residence and Caribbean island reportedly came up with videos potentially containing compromising material on his “guests.” That evidence remained under lock and key even after Epstein died in his Manhattan cell in August 2019, officially due to suicide. Epstein’s sometime girlfriend and accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, was arrested in 2020. She wound up convicted of child sex trafficking and sentenced to 20 years behind bars. While the public found out some of the names of the trafficked teens, the names of people they were trafficked to have remained a secret.

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RFK kid

 

 

Tiger mom

 

 

Baby elephant sleep

 

 

Ball
https://twitter.com/i/status/1831004843927867832

 

 

Grandma
https://twitter.com/i/status/1830927268547276820

 

 

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