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Debt Rattle April 25 2024

Apr 252024
 
 April 25, 2024  Posted by at 8:47 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  40 Responses »


Amedeo Modigliani Nu allongé 1917

 

• US Sided With Evil And Fascism – Russian Envoy (RT)
• Alvin Bragg Has His Trump Trial, All He Needs Now Is A Crime (Turley)
• Romney and the Wrong Question (Turley)
• Musk Concurs That Civil War Looming In West (TASS)
• Musk Warns Australia Against ‘Controlling Entire Internet’ (Sp.)
• Mitch McConnell Blames Tucker Carlson For Delaying Ukraine Cash (RT)
• Future Of The World Will Be Decided In Ukraine – Lukashenko (RT)
• All Ukrainian Presidents Are Thieves – Lukashenko (RT)
• Poland Ready To Help Ukraine Hunt Down Military-Aged Men (RT)
• Ukraine Conflict ‘A Bonanza’ For US Military – NYT (RT)
• G7 Could Take 10 Years to Catch Up With Russian Nuclear Fuel Output (Sp.)
• European Bureaucrats Serve America’s Economic Interests (Dionísio)
• Iran’s Nuclear Plans Are Clear. Just Read Its Own Islamic Law (Juma)
• Why Iran Decided Not To Attack Israel Again (Gurevich)
• Netanyahu Should Resign – Nancy Pelosi (RT)
• Unconventional Russian Warfare Threatening British Grannies – Wallace (RT)

 

 

 

 

Trump immunity
https://twitter.com/i/status/1782847341952729139

 

 

Watters trial

 

 

Alina
https://twitter.com/i/status/1782784975521120376

 

 

Tucker Weak men

 

 

 

 

Julie Kelly


https://twitter.com/i/status/1783175943831367849

 

 

Arizona

 

 

mask
https://twitter.com/i/status/1783164740459762075

 

 

 

 

“..the US government has effectively been funneling billions of dollars into its own defense industry through the aid scheme..”

• US Sided With Evil And Fascism – Russian Envoy (RT)

The US government has made its choice in favor of war, siding with evil and supporting fascism, the Russian ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov has said, in comments on the latest massive American military aid package for Ukraine. On Wednesday, US President Joe Biden signed a long-stalled $95-billion foreign-aid package, including $61 billion for Ukraine. Biden said the US would start sending weapons and military equipment to Ukraine “in the next few hours.” Washington is balancing on the brink of a direct clash between nuclear powers, Ambassador Antonov told reporters following the news. The development strikes a severe blow to prospects for a hypothetical revival of Russian-American relations in the future, Antonov believes.

“For the sake of its greedy and insatiable defense industry, the [Biden] administration sacrifices the lives of ordinary people. With their decision, local politicians actually put an end to the fate of the entire state [of Ukraine], which is used as a ‘battering ram’ against Russia,” he stated. The high-ranking Russian diplomat accused the US administration of violating the UN Charter’s obligation to maintain ‘primary responsibility for international peace and security.’

“American aid will not save [Ukrainian President] Zelensky” he stressed, adding that any new weapons being sent by Washington to Kiev would be destroyed, and that the tasks and goals of Moscow’s military operation will be realized. The Kremlin has repeatedly warned that Washington’s lethal aid will not change the situation on the battlefield in Ukraine’s favor. According to Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, the US government has effectively been funneling billions of dollars into its own defense industry through the aid scheme.

Cheers

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“We’ve never seen a case like this one where a dead misdemeanor from 2016 could be revived as a felony just before the 2024 election..”

“Cohen will soon go on the stand and tell the jury it should send his former client to jail for following his legal advice.”

• Alvin Bragg Has His Trump Trial, All He Needs Now Is A Crime (Turley)

For many of us in the legal community, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against former President Donald Trump borders on the legally obscene: an openly political prosecution based on a theory even legal pundits dismiss. Yet Monday the prosecution seemed to actually make a case for obscenity. It wasn’t the gratuitous introduction of an uncharged alleged tryst with a former Playboy Bunny or expected details on the relationship with an ex-porn star. It was the criminal theory itself that seemed crafted around the obscenity stan- dard Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously described in 1984’s Jacobellis v. Ohio: “I shall not today attempt further to define [it]. . . . But I know it when I see it. The prosecution must show Trump falsified business records in “furtherance of another crime.” After months of confusion on just what crime underpinned the indictment, the prosecution offered a new theory so ambiguous and undefined, it would have made Justice Stewart blush.

Prosecutor Joshua Steinglass told the jury that in listing Stormy Daniels payments as a “legal expense,” Trump violated this New York law: “Any two or more persons who conspire to promote or prevent the election of any person to a public office by unlawful means and which conspiracy is acted upon by one or more of the parties thereto, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.” So Trump committed a crime by conspiring to unlawfully promote his own candidacy, by paying to quash a potentially embarrassing story and then reimbursing his lawyer Michael Cohen with other legal expenses. Confused? You are not alone. It’s not a crime to pay for the nondisclosure of an alleged affair. It’s also not a federal election offense (the other underlying crime Bragg alleges) to pay such money as a personal or legal expense. Federal law doesn’t treat it as a political contribution to yourself. Yet somehow the characterization of this payment as a legal expense is an illegal conspiracy to promote one’s own candidacy in New York.

In New York, prosecutors are expected to have extreme legal myopia: They can see no farther than Trump to the exclusion of any implication for the legal system or legal ethics. Of course, neither Bragg nor his office has ever seen this type of criminal case in any other defendant. Ever. We’ve never seen a case like this one where a dead misdemeanor from 2016 could be revived as a felony just before the 2024 election, The statute of limitations for this case’s misdemeanors, including falsifying payments, has expired. But Bragg (with the help of counsel and former top Biden Justice Department official Matthew Colangelo) zapped it back into life by alleging a federal election crime the Justice Department itself rejected as a basis for any criminal charge. It’s not clear Trump even knew how this money was characterized in records. He paid it to his lawyer, who had put together the settlement over the nondisclosure agreement.

Cohen will soon go on the stand and tell the jury it should send his former client to jail for following his legal advice. Besides running for president, Trump was married and had hosted a hit television show. There were ample reasons to secure an NDA to bury the story. Even if it was done with the election in mind, it is not unusual or illegal. There is generally no need to list such payments as a campaign contribution because the federal government doesn’t see them as a campaign contribution. It’s not even clear how this matter was supposed to be noted in records. What if the Trump employee put “legal settlement in personal matter” or “nuisance payment”? The crime itself may not be clear or even comprehensible. But the defendant’s identity could not be clearer, and the prosecutors are hoping the jury, like themselves, will look no further

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A case about nothing.

• Romney and the Wrong Question (Turley)

Yesterday, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) had a much covered interaction with CNN’s Manu Raju who asked him about Trump’s criminal trial and whether he was guilty of the underlying criminal conduct. Romney responded “I think everybody has made their own assessment of President Trump’s character, and so far as I know you don’t pay someone $130,000 not to have sex with you.” I have previously defended Romney in his votes on impeachment despite our disagreement on the constitutional standard. I also understand that he was making a more general comment on character. However, his response is precisely what Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is seeking from the jury: a verdict on Trump as a person rather than the underlying criminal allegations. Trump is currently facing 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree regarding payments made to Daniels during the 2016 presidential election.

As I discuss today in the New York Post, many of us (including liberal legal experts) still question whether there is any crime alleged by Bragg. Raju reasonably asked Romney for his own view. Romney is an interesting person to ask. He is not only a critic of the President from within his own party but he is a former businessman who has had to deal with complex reporting and business obligations. Romney’s response must be encouraging for Bragg. Rather than address the ambiguous criminal allegation, Romney suggested that Trump was guilty as charged in having a tryst with a former porn star. The defense is not contesting the payment and the fact of the affair is not central to the allegations. The question is whether the payments were unlawfully denoted as legal expenses with the intent to somehow steal the 2016 election.

It is not a crime to use a NDA or other means to quash an embarrassing story. Bill Clinton had a host of lawyers quashing allegations of affairs and sexual assaults throughout his presidency. He ran into trouble when he committed perjury in the effort to hide what Hillary Clinton called one of his “bimbo eruptions.” Moreover, denoting this as a legal expense, on the advice of counsel, is not necessarily wrong. It is not clear how it should have been to be denoted as, according to Bragg. A “nuisance payment”? The campaign of Hillary Clinton and its general counsel Marc Elias hid the funding of the Steele dossier as a legal expense and was fined by the government for doing so. They litigated the question and insisted that that is precisely what it was. Romney is precisely what Bragg is looking for in these jurors. Smart and savvy, he still viewed the question of the trial as whether Trump had an affair with Stormy Daniels.

If so, it was not a legal expense. Yet, quashing the story and avoiding any litigation was a legal matter with the eventual crafting of the NDA. There are a lot of motivations for NDAs of this kind. Trump was married. He was the host of a hit television show (with a clause on termination for scandalous conduct). And, yes, he was also seeking to be president. He wanted these stories killed and friends like David Pecker were helping in that effort. What those facts say about the former president’s “character” will remain a matter of public debate and, as Romney said, most long ago reached their own conclusions. Yet, it is the crime not the character of Trump that is at issue in Manhattan.

Alvin Bragg would like the trial to remain a verdict on character, which is why he started the trial discussing not the Daniels matter but an uncharged affair and settlement with a former Playboy bunny. It is why he fought hard (and succeeded) in being able to question Trump about past cases involving an alleged assault and fraudulent conduct. As legal experts continue this week to debate if there is even a crime alleged in the indictment, Bragg is making a case that Trump’s lack of character is beyond a reasonable doubt. To be fair, Romney was not giving a full interview on the case in his statement to CNN and may well have some reservations about the Bragg indictment. However, Bragg is likely hoping that “everybody has made their own assessment of President Trump,” including twelve jurors currently sitting in the Manhattan courtroom.

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“Musk said that migration issues in the US are threatening the very existence of the American state..”

• Musk Concurs That Civil War Looming In West (TASS)

US entrepreneur and one of the world’s wealthiest people Elon Musk has asserted that a civil war will break out in the West over the situation around migrants. “War will come whether we want it or not,” he wrote on the X social network commenting on remarks by Gad Saad, a Canadian professor of Lebanese origin, who insisted that “the path that the West is taking will result in civil war.” Saad said that Western countries are committing “civilizational suicide.” “Many Western men who are currently asleep at the wheel will wake up, and realize that they don’t like being pushed around in their homelands; they don’t like their women attacked; they don’t like their freedoms curtailed; they don’t like their faiths disrespected,” he noted. Earlier, Musk said that migration issues in the US are threatening the very existence of the American state. He also branded the US migration policy as insane because over the past three years it allowed more than 7 mln illegal migrants enter the country.

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Australia is just a little country. With little brains.

• Musk Warns Australia Against ‘Controlling Entire Internet’ (Sp.)

The X chief executive earlier denounced that a video of a stabbing attack on an orthodox bishop had been censored in Australia, with Canberra threatening X with a daily fine of $510,000 over the company’s reluctance to completely remove the footage. Elon Musk has made it clear he will not comply with Australia’s order to remove a video of a terror attack against a Sydney cleric from X (formerly Twitter). “Our concern is that if any country is allowed to censor content for all countries, which is what the Australian ‘eSafety Commissar’ is demanding, then what is to stop any country from controlling the entire Internet?” the tech billionaire tweeted. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO added that X has “already censored the content in question for Australia, pending legal appeal, and it is stored only on servers” in the US.

Per X, Canberra threatened it with a daily fine of $510,000 over the company’s unwillingness to remove the video across the globe. Musk’s remarks came after Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese slammed the X owner as an “arrogant billionaire who thinks he’s above the law, but also above common decency.” Speaking to broadcaster ABC, Albanese added that “the idea that someone would go to court for the right to put up violent content on a platform shows how out-of-touch Mr. Musk is.” This followed Australia’s eSafety Commission calling for X to completely remove the video from its platform for all users rather than just block the footage in the world’s sixth-largest country.

According to Australia’s eSafety commissioner, Julie Inman Grant, “Every minute counts, and the more this content is up there, the more it is reshared, the more the velocity and the virality continues and we need to stem that.”
In the video, Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel of the Assyrian Orthodox Church is seen being stabbed during a church service in the suburbs of Sydney that was being livestreamed on April 15. The non-fatal attack, which the authorities said was a terrorist act motivated by suspected religious extremism, quickly garnered multiple views online and reportedly led to protests near the crime scene.

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“I think the demonization of Ukraine began by Tucker Carlson..”

• Mitch McConnell Blames Tucker Carlson For Delaying Ukraine Cash (RT)

The top-ranking Republican in the US Senate, Mitch McConnell, has claimed Tucker Carlson’s interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin convinced too many “rank-and-file Republicans” that spending billions of taxpayer dollars on arming Kiev against Moscow was harming Americans and wrecking the economy. As a new multibillion-dollar US aid package to Ukraine was clearing the last procedural hurdles on Tuesday, Senate Minority Leader McConnell attempted to pin the blame for months of delays on former Fox News anchor Carlson and former President Donald Trump. “I think the demonization of Ukraine began by Tucker Carlson, who in my opinion ended up where he should have been all along, which was interviewing Vladimir Putin,” McConnell told a press briefing.

“He convinced a lot of rank-and-file Republicans that maybe this was a mistake,” he added, arguing that Trump’s “mixed views” on Ukraine aid further fueled confusion over the official narrative in Washington. “And then our nominee for president didn’t seem to want us to do anything at all,” McConnell claimed. “That took months to work our way through it.” Carlson recorded a lengthy interview with Putin in February, a first by a Western reporter since the conflict with Ukraine began. The pair discussed the ongoing hostilities and Moscow’s standoff with NATO. The exchange went viral globally, garnering over 200 million views on X (formerly Twitter) alone, yet critics accused Carlson of not being confrontational enough with the Russian leader. The American journalist argued that most Western media outlets lie to their audiences, mainly by omission, and that the point of his interview was “to have more information brought to the West so people could make their own decisions.”

“I reject the whole premise of the war in Ukraine from the American perspective,” Carlson said in February, looking back at his conversation with Putin. “There’s a war going on that is wrecking the US economy in a way and at a scale that people do not understand.” US President Joe Biden requested additional cash for Ukraine last October after burning through $113 billion in previously approved spending bills. However, the request had been stalled until this week due to opposition from Republican lawmakers, who argued that Biden was merely prolonging Kiev’s conflict with Russia while offering no clear strategy for victory or a peace agreement. Most Republicans voted against the aid bill on Saturday, but House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) overrode his own party by enabling a vote and pushing it through with unanimous Democrat support.

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“Everyone understands that today’s Ukraine is a military range, where the future of the world order is partially decided..”

• Future Of The World Will Be Decided In Ukraine – Lukashenko (RT)

The Ukraine conflict is among the major events that will determine the future of the world, and the West is emerging weaker from it, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko claimed on Wednesday. The leader of Belarus, a close Russian ally, addressed the situation in Ukraine during a keynote speech to the All-Belarusian People’s Assembly, a gathering of officials and public figures. He contrasted Kiev’s policies with those of Minsk, arguing that unlike its southern neighbor, his nation has preserved its independence under Western pressure. “Everyone understands that today’s Ukraine is a military range, where the future of the world order is partially decided. The largest nuclear powers indirectly, and now even directly, are waging a war on its territory,” Lukashenko stated.

“Meanwhile its authorities have sunk to the level of striking a bargain with the West to exchange weapons for the lives of Ukrainians. Watching this is painful,” he added. Kiev has miscalculated, Lukashenko argued, because “whoever is willing to serve a master for scraps will sooner or later lose.” Ukraine is risking its statehood after betraying its past and traditions, he also warned. The Belarusian leader described the entire conflict as the latest clash “between the West and the East,” and suggested that neither side has become stronger. The outcome of the confrontation “will not save the existing order,” Lukashenko further predicted. He urged the US and its allies to accept that their future role will be restricted as one of several centers of power that determine world affairs.

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“And they grew rich, but only very few, in the very ‘best’ traditions of Western European democracies..”

• All Ukrainian Presidents Are Thieves – Lukashenko (RT)

Ukraine has devolved into a Western-style oligarchy where all of its leaders are only interested in “plundering” the country and getting rich, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has claimed. The president made the remarks on Wednesday during an address to the All-Belarusian People’s Assembly, a gathering of high-profile officials and public figures. Lukashenko fired a broadside at the neighboring country, accusing its presidents and “oligarchs” of stealing Ukraine’s riches. The process began immediately after Ukraine became an independent state following the collapse of the Soviet Union and has worsened over time, Lukashenko argued. “Just think – a prosperous country. The land is fertile, half of the periodic table in its soil, two seas, mines, industrial giants. The people are creative, hard-working. Live, be happy and grow rich. And they grew rich, but only very few, in the very ‘best’ traditions of Western European democracies,” the Belarusian leader said.

Every Ukrainian president, from “the first to the last one,” has been “plundering and stealing,” Lukashenko asserted, claiming that this inevitably led to political infighting and enduring unrest. “The oligarchs and those in power have gathered all the resources under their control. The oligarchs, having received the wealth created by the people, wanted power. They went into politics and began to drag bandits and people into their squabbles. The Maidans have begun,” Lukashenko stated. Ukrainian leaders, however, have consistently blamed the internal turmoil they created on foreign powers, primarily Russia and to a lesser extent Belarus, Lukashenko alleged. “They created the necessary image of the enemy, ‘the culprit behind the hardships and poverty of the people’ – Russia, as well as us, Belarusians. We, you see, are now somehow to blame,” the leader said.

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Hunt Them Down

• Poland Ready To Help Ukraine Hunt Down Military-Aged Men (RT)

Polish Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz has said Warsaw is willing to “help” Kiev repatriate men of fighting age, an unspecified portion of some 950,000 Ukrainians granted temporary sanctuary in Poland. Earlier this week, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry banned all men between the ages of 18 and 60 from receiving or renewing their documents, including passports, at consular offices outside the country. The Polish defense chief told the Polsat broadcaster on Wednesday that he was “not surprised” and supports Kiev’s move. “The Ukrainian authorities are doing everything to provide new soldiers to the front, because the needs are huge,” Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said. The Polish official said that Warsaw had previously offered to help Kiev track down those who dodge their “civic duty,” but noted that “the form of assistance depends on the Ukrainian side.”

“I think that many of our compatriots were and are outraged when they see young Ukrainian men in cafes and hear about how much effort it takes us to help Ukraine,” he added. Kosiniak-Kamysz also echoed Kiev’s official narrative that Ukrainians who could not avoid the draft have “justified grievances against their peers who have scattered around the world.” Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba claimed on Tuesday that the decision to strip Ukrainian men of their rights was “fair” and in line with controversial military mobilization reforms, which President Vladimir Zelensky signed into law this month. Zelensky’s reforms, set to take effect next month, will lower the draft age from 27 to 25, tighten exemptions, and oblige all men, regardless of eligibility, to report to a conscription office to “update” their personal data. According to EU officials, an estimated 650,000 Ukrainian men of fighting age are living in the bloc. Kiev has identified that pool as a significant untapped source of manpower for the armed forces. However, asked in early April how many troops Kiev intended to mobilize, Zelensky dodged the question.

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“When new technology meets the brutality of old-fashioned trench warfare, the results are rarely what Pentagon planners expected..”

• Ukraine Conflict ‘A Bonanza’ For US Military – NYT (RT)

The US military is reportedly using the Ukraine conflict to test a new artificial intelligence technology that helps detect targets on the battlefield using drone footage, the New York Times reported on Tuesday. Dubbed Project Maven, research into the technology was initially picked up as a government contract by Google six years ago, according to the outlet. However, after pushback from engineers and employees, who did not want to take part in building an AI tool for military use, the tech giant stepped away from the project, which was picked up by other contractors. Now, the technology is being tested on the front line in Ukraine, the NYT claims, as Western and Ukrainian officers, along with some of Silicon Valley’s top military contractors, are “exploring new ways of finding and exploiting Russian vulnerabilities.”

So far, the results of the testing have reportedly been “mixed.” While Project Maven allows commanders to identify the movements of Russian forces and use AI algorithms to predict their next steps, it has apparently been “difficult” to bring “21st-century data into 19th-century trenches.” One of the main barriers, the Times said, is that due to restrictions imposed by US President Joe Biden, the US military can only provide Ukrainians with a “picture of the battlefield” without giving precise targeting details. It is also unclear if the new technology would even be able to change the course of the conflict, given Russia’s ability to quickly adapt to technologies being used by the Ukrainian side.

“When new technology meets the brutality of old-fashioned trench warfare, the results are rarely what Pentagon planners expected,” the outlet said. Nevertheless, the Ukraine conflict remains “a bonanza for the US military” in the minds of American officials, and a testing ground for rapidly evolving technologies. “At the end of the day this became our laboratory,” Lt. Gen. Christopher T. Donahue, who commands the US Army’s 18th Airborne Division, told the NYT. Russia, meanwhile, has repeatedly decried increasing US involvement in the conflict. Moscow describes it as a proxy war being waged by Washington and its partners, using Ukrainians as “cannon fodder” to further Western interests.

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“..it’s almost impossible to immediately make them as economically efficient as those in Russia. It had taken decades for Russia to set up its [nuclear fuel] production.”

• G7 Could Take 10 Years to Catch Up With Russian Nuclear Fuel Output (Sp.)

US President Joe Biden and his G7 have vowed to end imports of Russian nuclear fuel, but leading Western economies still lag behind Moscow in innovative atomic technologies, nuclear expert Valery Menshikov told Sputnik. The US Office of Nuclear Energy (NE) asserted in a recent press release that the Biden-Harris administration is doing whatever it takes to ensure the nation’s independence in terms of secure nuclear fuel supplies as well as to “re-establish US leadership in nuclear energy more broadly.” The agency stressed that President Joe Biden’s government is leading the “Sapporo 5” group, consisting of the US, the UK, France, Japan and Canada to support the growth of nuclear energy deployment around the world “free of Russian influence.” But the NE was forced to admit that Russia presently supplies around 44 percent of global uranium enrichment services and 20 to 30 percent of enriched uranium products used in the US and Europe.

To complicate matters further for the Sapporo 5, Russia is the only country selling high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU), which is indispensable for advanced nuclear reactors, on a commercial scale. President Joe Biden stated on April 19 that a US plant had managed to produce the first 200 lbs (90 kg) of HALEU and would make nearly a ton of the “powerful” nuclear fuel by the end of 2024. Given that in 2020 the US Department of Energy (DoE) projected that more than 40 metric tons of HALEU will be needed before the end of the decade to meet Washington’s pressing climate goals, those amounts are a drop in the ocean. “Undoubtedly, the speeches that Biden is now delivering are just another contribution to his collection of campaign promises. And since, the United States still depends on the supply of fresh enriched fuel for nuclear power plants, this task is one of the most important, including in political terms,” Valery Menshikov, member of the Public Council of Rosatom Corporation and member of the Council of the Center for Russian Environmental Policy, told Sputnik.

Russia maintains leadership in global uranium enrichment services, Sputnik’s commentator stressed, adding that neither US nor European scientists have been able to achieve enrichment capacities matching those of their Russian peers. Russian nuclear fuel is also comparatively cheaper, Menshikov pointed out. The expert recalled that the Russo-US nuclear fuel trade started immediately after the collapse of the USSR: the 1992 Megatons to Megawatts Program envisaged the recycling of weapons-grade uranium from dismantled Russian nuclear warheads into low-enriched uranium used to produce fuel for American nuclear power plants. Over the decades, Russia routinely delivered large volumes of enriched uranium to the US.

The expert expressed doubts that the US will be able to completely stop purchases of Russian nuclear fuel by 2028, as Biden has pledged. “The problem is that the process [of making nuclear fuel] is very complex,” Menshikov said. “The most important thing is that while it is possible to launch such productions, it’s almost impossible to immediately make them as economically efficient as those in Russia. It had taken decades for Russia to set up its [nuclear fuel] production.” When it comes to the European Union (EU), the situation is complicated by the fact that there are 19 Russia-designed reactors within the bloc. The list of countries which have Russian-made nuclear equipment includes Slovakia, Hungary, Finland, Bulgaria and the Czech Republic. Although some European countries, such as Finland, have recently halted cooperation with Russia, others — like Hungary — are proceeding with new projects.

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“What appears on the horizon, without any in-depth national discussion, after being approved by the Council and the European Parliament, is a global austerity package, on a European scale..”

• European Bureaucrats Serve America’s Economic Interests (Dionísio)

Once again, the European bureaucracy is living up to the saying that “what has born crooked, late or never is straightened out”. This is the case with the European Union, which was built as a political response to a reality that is no longer there — the socialist bloc — and which, when faced with the absence of its vital force, embarked on an erratic process of enlargement, aimed above all at provoking Russia, creating the conditions for NATO expansion and responding to the monopolies’ growing need for new markets and new sources of skilled and cheap labor, as is the case in Eastern Europe.

Within this framework and in response to the same needs, the EU is once again reissuing a recipe already widely known to the peoples of the South. While there is widespread recognition that the budgetary criteria contained in the Stability and Growth Pact constitute a stranglehold on public investment and is responsible for the short-term vision that has left the member states hostage to the financial authoritarianism of Brussels, at a time when the European bloc is losing more and more ground to the economies with which it has to compete, the unelected supranational power of the EU is once again proposing, this time to all Europeans, something that none of these peoples would ever vote for: austerity for the next four years (at least).

What appears on the horizon, without any in-depth national discussion, after being approved by the Council and the European Parliament, is a global austerity package, on a European scale, applicable to almost all the countries of the Union, which has been given the pompous name of “New Economic Governance Framework” and which is based on instruments such as the “Debt Sustainability Analysis” and “Specific Fiscal Plans” per member state, which will be developed within the framework of a 4-year adjustment period, which can be extended to 7. If the Stability Pact was not enough to bring most of the countries to austerity, this time EU autocracy is working to leave no one behind. Every country must bring to an end every evidence or memory that a social state has once worked with huge success.

That’s why we have to say that “it’s coming in handy”! At a time when countries should be investing absolutely decisively in industrialization, innovation and conquering a place at the top of the future technological chain, as China and Russia are doing and the US is going into brutal debt to do, what do the accountants in Brussels decide to do? Postpone the race, calling into question the targets they themselves have set for 2030 and 2050. Once again, the story of the well-behaved and thrifty countries versus those that don’t know how to govern themselves is being repeated. But this time, with the exception of five countries (Cyprus, Sweden, Estonia, Denmark and Ireland), all the others will have to tighten their belts and cut 100 billion from their public budgets right in the first year of adjustment. Incidentally, 100 billion is more or less what the EU has offered the Kiev regime to date (in January 2024 it was 85 billion euros according to the Kiel Institute). And any of those lucky countries is important for the financing of the pluriannual European budget.

Assuming that this mass economic destruction is the continuation of a process that began with subprime, from which European economies had to pay for the losses of American banks, and continued with the NATO/Russia conflict in Ukraine, which has not only deprived European countries of important production factors, at a low price and with guaranteed quality and quantity… How should the European Union act, especially knowing that in Biden’s USA, the implementation of Inflation Reduction Act is well underway, with a vast investment program in key technological areas such as electric vehicles, lithium batteries, photovoltaic panels and semiconductors?

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“..Iran’s nuclear doctrine is based on a fatwa (a ruling based on Islamic law) issued by the country’s Supreme Leader..”

• Iran’s Nuclear Plans Are Clear. Just Read Its Own Islamic Law (Juma)

In light of the direct conflict that broke out between Israel and Iran, rumors that the Islamic Republic could produce nuclear weapons began circulating again. In addition, just a few days ago Reuters and other media outlets quoted a senior commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) saying that Iran may review its nuclear doctrine following Israeli threats. The US, EU, and Israel have long feared that Iran may produce nuclear weapons, and have used this threat to justify their actions against the Islamic Republic. However, it is important to understand that Iran’s nuclear doctrine is based on a fatwa (a ruling based on Islamic law) issued by the country’s Supreme Leader. According to this fatwa, the production of nuclear weapons is a sin. However, Iran’s opponents do not believe in the sincerity of this ruling and, they suggest, it can be renounced at any time.

On April 17 and 18, the first Tehran International Conference on Disarmament and Non-Proliferation took place. The motto of this conference was “Nuclear energy for everyone, nuclear weapons for no one.” There, Ali Akbar Velayati, adviser to the Supreme Leader of Iran, read Ayatollah Khamenei’s message in front of officials and members of various international delegations and organizations. “All of you know that, in the absence of the Imam Mahdi, whose coming is expected by the Shiites, the Shiite legal system is based on the opinion of authoritative and highly competent experts in the field of Islamic law (which Iran’s decisions are based on). These religious scholars issue fatwas which clearly indicate whether any action is permissible or not. One [important] issue is the permissibility of the production and use of weapons of mass destruction (chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons) …”.

Ayatollah Khamenei had carefully analyzed the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons by the Americans in Japan as well as the use of chemical weapons against Iran during the Iran-Iraq war, and stated his position on this issue: “We believe that, besides nuclear weapons, other types of weapons of mass destruction, such as chemical and biological weapons, also pose a serious threat to humanity. The Iranian nation, which is itself a victim of chemical weapons, feels more than any other nation the danger that is caused by the production and stockpiling of such weapons, and is prepared to make use of all its facilities to counter such threats. We consider the use of such weapons as haraam [forbidden] and believe that it is everyone’s duty to make efforts to secure humanity against this great disaster.” In the period from 2010 to 2015, other religious authorities, such as ayatollahs Makarem Shirazi, Jafar Subhani, Noori-Hamedani, and Javadi Amoli, also issued fatwas that prohibited the production and use of weapons of mass destruction.

But can the issued fatwas be changed or canceled? Can Iran’s position in this regard change? From a theological point of view, certainly not. Islamic law states clear reasons for this. Nuclear weapons and the radiation which results from their use threaten the environment, causing the destruction of crops and the death of offspring. Verse 205 of Surah al-Baqarah says: “And when he goes away, he strives throughout the land to cause corruption therein and destroy crops and animals. And Allah does not like corruption.” The protection of the environment, the preservation of the life of living beings and plants is every Muslim’s obligation under Sharia, Islamic law. The production and stockpiling of nuclear weapons, even if they are never used, may endanger the lives of people on the planet as a result of human error. According to Islamic law, this is unacceptable. Islam believes that a victory must be achieved by reasonable, lawful, and humane means. As for the rules of warfare, Islam strictly prohibits the killing of civilians, women, children and the elderly, as well as attacks on civilian infrastructure.

Read more …

“..they prefer to pretend that they are fighting for peace. The very peace for which no stone should be left unturned on this planet. But that will come later..”

• Why Iran Decided Not To Attack Israel Again (Gurevich)

Iran has again threatened Israel with a harsh response to aggression. The army and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps will make those who cross red lines regret it, said the Deputy Chief of the Army for Coordination, Habibollah Sayyari.Meanwhile, Israel has refrained from speaking out against Tehran. Politicians have focused their rhetoric on Hamas. In particular, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has promised to increase military and political pressure on the Palestinian group in the near future in order to motivate it to release hostages, writes the Times of Israel. The good news is that there will be no Iran-Israel war. At least not at this stage. Tehran has chosen not to react vociferously to the Israeli air force’s retaliatory strike, dismissing all reports of the destruction of the radar protecting the Natanz nuclear centre as Zionist intrigues.

Well, the bottom line is that we have two air raids attributed to Israel and one very large Iranian strike. In the latter case, everything was official and the Islamic Republic can therefore claim an entry in the Guinness Book of Records with an article on the largest number of UAVs and ballistic missiles involved in a single offensive operation. Incidentally, we do not know what the real effect of the large-scale attack was. Iran, like Israel, is carefully hiding data on the damage. However, the political consequences of such events are far more important. And, as usual in the Middle East, a dozen seemingly unrelated problems have become intertwined. After the Iranian strike, for example, Western countries began to advise Israel not to react, and rumour has it that the Jewish State was negotiating for the right to launch a military operation in Rafah, the last Hamas stronghold in Gaza.

Then in the end, it could no longer remain patient and responded. The Iranians had options. The Ayatollahs could have said that Israel had again crossed all the red lines. This would have led to further escalation, but might have protected Hamas. But Iran, for its own reasons, ignored the Palestinians and reported through the press that nothing serious had happened. The reason for this peacefulness is probably that they saw a working alliance between Israel, Jordan and the Sunni monarchies of the Persian Gulf. This is precisely the nightmare that the Iranians have done their utmost to prevent. They even restored diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia in 2023. But apparently confrontation with the Shiites is more important to moderate Sunnis than dislike of the Jews.

According to military analysts, if the Israeli Air Force did attack Iranian air defences, it means that the Israelis probably flew over Jordan or the Arabian Peninsula to carry out the task, and it is unlikely that this was done without the consent of the Hashemite Kingdom or the Saudis. As a result, the military alliance is not only defensive, which means that virtually all of Iran’s proxies in the region, including Hezbollah, the Houthis and the Shia militias in Iraq and Syria, are at risk. For now, however, this is all a hypothetical picture. Its implementation requires the normalisation of Israel’s relations with Riyadh and, as part of the deal, the signing of a defence agreement with the US, as well as American-Israeli goodwill for the establishment of a nuclear capability in Saudi Arabia. And all this has to happen before the end of June. Otherwise, Washington will not be able to get the relevant decisions through Congress because of the upcoming election. Obviously, the Iranians believe that further escalation will only accelerate the process described above. That is why they prefer to pretend that they are fighting for peace. The very peace for which no stone should be left unturned on this planet. But that will come later.

Read more …

“..she doesn’t know whether the Israeli leader is “afraid of peace, incapable of peace, or just doesn’t want peace.”

• Netanyahu Should Resign – Nancy Pelosi (RT)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is an obstacle to peace in Gaza and “should resign” from his position, former US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said. She made the remarks on Monday in an interview with Irish public broadcaster Raidio Teilifis Eireann (RTE) during her visit to the country. Pelosi criticized the Israeli leader’s response to the October 7 Hamas attack which saw Palestinian militants kill over 1,100 people on Israeli territory and take around 250 hostages. The former House speaker cited the recent resignation of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) intelligence chief Major General Aharon Haliva over the failure to prevent the attack, before pointing the finger at Netanyahu.

“We recognize Israel’s right to protect itself. We reject the policy and the practice of Netanyahu – terrible. What could be worse than what he has done in response?” Pelosi told the outlet. “He should resign. He’s ultimately responsible,” she added. When asked if Netanyahu is a “block” to peace, Pelosi replied that “he has been for years,” adding that she doesn’t know whether the Israeli leader is “afraid of peace, incapable of peace, or just doesn’t want peace.” She went on to argue that Netanyahu been an “obstacle to the two-state solution, I emphasize the word, ‘solution.’”

Health authorities in Gaza have estimated that more than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed amid Israel’s siege of the enclave, which has included extensive bombardment as well as a ground incursion. Earlier this month, Pelosi joined more than 30 US Congress members who signed a letter urging President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken to halt weapons transfers to Israel. The change of tune in Washington, Israel’s key ally, followed the killing of six aid workers from the World Central Kitchen humanitarian organization. The IDF targeted the group’s convoy in what it claimed to be a tragic mistake, despite the food supply mission being closely coordinated with the military.

Read more …

Cyber crime is part of Russian warfare, apparently. Impoverishing grannies…

• Unconventional Russian Warfare Threatening British Grannies – Wallace (RT)

The UK is facing certain forms of “unconventional warfare” waged by its enemies, potentially including Moscow-backed online scams that target the elderly, former British Secretary of Defence Ben Wallace has claimed. The Conservative MP, who resigned from the cabinet last August, told Sky News on Wednesday that the world today reminded him of the interwar periods during the last century. The situation, Wallace explained, is similar to “the 1930s, but with an added challenge of terrorism and a challenge of unconventional warfare.” As examples of the latter, he cited “disinformation campaigns, the enemies in this country using cyber to divide us, to rob from us, to spy on us, and to create frictions in our society.”

When asked by host Kay Burley which nation posed the biggest threat to the UK, Wallace said it was Russia. ”Many of the big cyber-crime syndicates are based in Russia, curiously protected by the Russian state,” he claimed. “They are the ones robbing your granny and my parents with phishing emails. So, Russia is directly challenging us at all levels.” Earlier this month, British police reported busting a UK-founded international ring of scammers, which since 2021 alone has stolen from some 70,000 victims in the country. Thirty-seven people were arrested around the world in the LabHost case, the force reported. The statement didn’t mention Russia.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Climate Emergency

 

 

Wealth
https://twitter.com/i/status/1783136306400497981

 

 

Your value
https://twitter.com/i/status/1783165842433474992

 

 

 

 

Cub


https://twitter.com/i/status/1782896073578582350

 

 

Baby Hippo
https://twitter.com/i/status/1782886328171905240

 

 

Scratch

 

 

Healed

 

 

Adrenochrome

 

 

Robotina
https://twitter.com/i/status/1783391212558262482

 

 

Cabal full movie

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle April 4 2024

Apr 042024
 
 April 4, 2024  Posted by at 8:47 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  33 Responses »


Edward Hopper Rooms By The Sea 1951

 

• Deep State Goes After Trump and Musk’s Financial Assets-Who’s Next? (ET)
• Wife of Judge In Trump ‘Hush Money’ Trial Worked for AG Letitia James (ET)
• Trump Lawyers Reveal He Kept Classified Documents in Trump Tower (ET)
• Jack Smith Urges Federal Judge to Change Course in Trump Case (ET)
• In America the Legal Process Is the Punishment (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Zelensky Ignored Interview Requests – Tucker Carlson (RT)
• NATO Seeking To Insulate Kiev From Trump Pressure (RT)
• Ukraine Can’t Win On The Battlefield, Military Intel Admits (RT)
• Ukraine’s Starting to Get Dangerous (James Rickards)
• A New Russia Has Emerged (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Russia Is Undergoing A New, Invisible Revolution (Trenin)
• WaPo Report About Crocus City Hall Attack Is a “Hoax” – Zakharova (RT)
• Crocus Terror Attack Well-Organized, With Pre-Orchestrated Media Blitz (Sp.)
• Biden Calls For Swift Probe in Israel Attack on WCK Workers (Sp.)
• Scottish Minister Doubles Down on Anti-Free Speech Law (Turley)
• White House Flack Raises Legal Concerns Over Biden Corruption Scandal (Turley)

 

 

 

 

NATO

 

 

 

 

Sickos

 

 

 

 

Neilsen
https://twitter.com/i/status/1775307290289061994

 

 

2001

 

 

 

 

Let’s check our terminology. Is this the Deep State or just the Democratic party? Or is that now the same? And moreover:

“It is becoming difficult to argue that the U.S. judicial system has not become a political arm of the Democratic Party..”

“Nations are either based on the rule of law or the rules dictated by the powerful.”

• Deep State Goes After Trump and Musk’s Financial Assets-Who’s Next? (ET)

Is America as we know it over? Are we in the middle—or perhaps the end—of the transition from a national republic to a single-party regime that rules by fiat instead of law? If we look at what’s happening to two, high-profile cases, the answer is less than comforting. It is becoming difficult to argue that the U.S. judicial system has not become a political arm of the Democratic Party. Nations are either based on the rule of law or the rules dictated by the powerful. The former is meant to restrain, or better said, eliminate the possibility of the latter. But, as we’ve witnessed with the relentless political persecution of former President Donald Trump and, lately, of Elon Musk, laws only work when they’re fairly applied and enforced. Neither of those things are happening with President Trump or Mr. Musk. President Trump was found guilty of fraud by a left-wing judge who determined this without considering, or despite, mountains of evidence to the contrary.

The New York Attorney General Letitia James accused President Trump of over-valuing his real estate to obtain loans. Coincidentally, Ms. James ran for the office of attorney general in 2018 with the campaign pledge to go after Trump, showing clear political animus toward President Trump. What’s more, Judge Arthur Engoron has been accused by Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York of violating “political giving rules with financial contributions to Democrats as recently as 2018, and ignored a decision on the appropriate statute of limitations in the case,” according to NBC News. Ms. James prosecuted President Trump in a civil trial, which was by design; criminal court cases require a trial by jury and proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Somehow, Deutsche Bank was “defrauded” by President Trump into lending him hundreds of millions of dollars on a property, the value of which the bank determined by their own analysis. Talk about shifty business dealings.

Then, after a period of time, the former president had the audacity to sell the property at over $130 million profit and then pay the loan back, with interest. Despite all of this exculpatory evidence that showed no fraud and no money loss or any other determinable damages, the judge refused to allow President Trump to give his closing argument in his own defense and found him guilty of fraud, fined him $354 million plus interest, and forced him to forfeit the profit he made on the deal with Deutsche Bank. President Trump was also ordered to pay $111,000 per day in interest. The financial penalty is excessive under the Eighth Amendment, which disallows “excessive fines,” which is the case because it doesn’t reflect the value of the “damages,” which are nil, nor the profits he made. What’s more, President Trump is barred from doing business or getting loans in New York for three years, and two of his children are also barred from their executive roles in the Trump Organization for two years. All of this for paying back loans on properties that the bank made willingly, according to its own value assessments, and profited from.

Meanwhile, a Delaware judge voided Elon Musk’s $56 billion Tesla payout. The judge arbitrarily determined that the record-breaking compensation granted by the Tesla board was an “unfathomable sum” and was “unfair” to shareholders. The payout was the result of a 10-year pay plan that the board agreed to with Mr. Musk back in 2018. Mr. Musk is not only an entrepreneur extraordinaire, he’s also a fan of America and our constitutional right of free speech. He attracted the left’s wrath after acquiring Twitter (renamed X) and making it a bastion of free speech for conservatives who were formerly censored by Twitter and other social media outlets. In short, Mr. Musk single-handedly broke the stifling monopoly on speech and thought control the left had allegedly in close coordination with the federal government, prior to the acquisition.

The rationale for the judge’s unlawful decision was that the board was, in some way, “beholden” to Mr. Musk. Kathaleen McCormick of Delaware’s Court of Chancery speculated if the payout plan was necessary in order to keep Mr. Musk involved in Tesla and achieve the EV maker’s business goals. By that logic, the entire EV market is “beholden” to Mr. Musk since he is the single biggest influencer in the industry. There is no indication that the judge has a seat on the Tesla board or possesses expertise in the Tesla business model or investing strategies. So far, Mr. Musk’s response has been to begin moving his companies out of Delaware to the business-friendly states of Texas and Nevada.

Read more …

“He has to recuse himself now. There’s clearly at least an appearance of a conflict here. That’s enough in itself.”

• Wife of Judge In Trump ‘Hush Money’ Trial Worked for AG Letitia James (ET)

Lara Merchan, the wife of the judge presiding over former President Donald Trump’s “hush money” case in Manhattan, once worked for New York Attorney General Letitia James, who brought the massive $350 million civil fraud case against the former president, with the revelation reviving claims of bias and calls for the judge’s recusal. Records reviewed by The Epoch Times show that Ms. Merchan worked for 21 years as a Special Assistant to the AG in New York, including three years under Ms. James. She changed jobs over two years ago. Ms. James is a Democrat who fixated on President Trump as she campaigned for New York attorney general, calling him a “con man” and vowing to shine a “bright light into every dark corner of his real estate dealings.” She began investigating the former president soon after taking office, eventually suing him for allegedly misleading banks and others about the value of his assets.

Ms. James eventually won the case on Feb. 16, with New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron ordering President Trump and Trump Organization executives to pay $350 million in damages, and barring the former president from doing business in the state for three years. Judge Juan Merchan is presiding over a separate criminal trial involving President Trump in New York, in which the former president is accused of falsifying business records in order to conceal a $130,000 “hush money” payoff to an adult performer to stay quiet about their alleged affair. President Trump on his Truth Social platform accused Judge Merchan of bias and corruption, while labeling the case against him “election interference” and also demanding the judge’s recusal. The former president has also alleged that the judge’s daughter, Loren Merchan, has a partisan interest in the case because she leads a political marketing firm and has represented President Trump’s political opponents, receiving millions from them.

Judge Merchan imposed a gag order against President Trump in the case and, on April 1, expanded it to include family members of the judge and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. The judge wrote in the order that President Trump’s speech “injects fear in those assigned or called to participate in the proceedings that not only they, but their family members as well, as ‘fair game’ for Defendant’s vitriol.” Laura Loomer, an independent journalist and popular conservative commentator who on social media shared records that Judge Merchan’s wife worked for Ms. James, wrote in a post on X that this fact represents “another major conflict of interest!”

Various conservative accounts reacted to Ms. Loomer’s post, arguing that the revelation adds to evidence that the judge should recuse himself from the case. “And this is why they expanded the gag order on Trump,” Paul A. Szypula, a popular conservative commentator on X with over 140,000 followers, said in a post. “It’s even more obvious how biased Judge Merchan is. He has to recuse himself now. There’s clearly at least an appearance of a conflict here. That’s enough in itself.”

Read more …

“President Trump acted as an ‘original classification authority’ while he was President of the United States” to declassify the records..”

• Trump Lawyers Reveal He Kept Classified Documents in Trump Tower (ET)

Lawyers for former President Donald Trump revealed in new court filings that the former president kept classified materials at his Trump Tower in New York City and his estate in New Jersey. The former president kept the classified documents at those two locations as well as his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida while he was in office, and also during the months before he was inaugurated in 2017, the filings revealed. His lawyers were responding to a deadline to support U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s proposed jury instructions. “You may consider evidence that government officials discussed classified information with President Trump and provided classified briefings and documents to President Trump before and during his Presidency—including inside President Trump’s private offices and residences, such as at Bedminster, New Jersey, and Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach, Florida, as well as at Trump Tower in New York City,” they wrote to the judge.

President Trump, the GOP presumptive presidential nominee for 2024, is facing dozens of felony counts related to alleged mishandling of classified documents, according to an indictment. Part of his defense centers around how he personally designated presidential files as his personal items before he left the White House in early 2021. In Tuesday’s court filing, his attorneys said that jurors could be told that President Trump had the legal power as president to make those documents his personal belongings. “President Trump acted as an ‘original classification authority’ while he was President of the United States” to declassify the records, it said, adding that it “means that all classification decisions during his term as President were based on his authority, and that he also had absolute and unreviewable authority to declassify documents and information.”

There also is “evidence relating to former Presidents, Vice Presidents, and other public officials being authorized to possess documents containing classified information without criminal prosecution by the government after they left their positions,” his attorneys continued to say. “You heard evidence during the trial that President Trump exercised that authority, at times verbally and at times without using formal procedures, while he was President,” the proposed Trump jury instructions read. “I instruct you that those declassification decisions are examples of valid and legally appropriate uses of President Trump’s declassification authority while he was President of the United States.”

Read more …

“..the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the document you are considering is a ‘presidential record’ and not a ‘personal record.’”

• Jack Smith Urges Federal Judge to Change Course in Trump Case (ET)

The federal judge overseeing former President Donald Trump’s classified documents case in Florida needs to clarify recent instructions to parties so the government can seek a higher court ruling, special prosecutor Jack Smith said late April 2. In March, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who was appointed by President Trump, ordered prosecutors and the defendant’s lawyers to file proposals for jury instructions. The parties must offer “alternative draft text” that assumes two “competing scenarios” are “a correct formulation of the law to be issued to the jury,” she wrote. The scenarios are former presidents being able to retain personal records under the Presidential Records Act (PRA), and presidents being able to designate records as personal. But both scenarios rest on a “fundamentally flawed legal premise,” Mr. Smith and his team wrote in the new filing.

The distinction in the PRA between personal and presidential records is irrelevant because President Trump has been charged under the Espionage Act, prosecutors said. “Based on the current record, the PRA should not play any role at trial at all,” they wrote, urging Judge Cannon to “decide whether the unstated legal premise underlying the recent order does, in the Court’s view, represent ‘a correct formulation of the law.’” If Judge Cannon wrongly decides that it does, the filing states, then the government may seek intervention from a higher court. They cited a ruling by an appeals court in a separate case that concluded, “the adoption of a clearly erroneous jury instruction that entails a high probability of failure of a prosecution—a failure the government could not then seek to remedy by appeal or otherwise—constitutes the kind of extraordinary situation in which we are empowered to issue the writ of mandamus.”

A writ of mandamus is an order to a lower court. “The question of whether the PRA has an impact on the element of unauthorized possession … does not turn on any evidentiary issue, and it cannot be deferred,” prosecutors said. “It is purely a question of law that must be decided promptly. If the court were to defer a decision on that fundamental legal question it would inject substantial delay into the trial and, worse, prevent the government from seeking review before jeopardy attaches.” President Trump, charged with 32 counts of violating the Espionage Act for retaining what the government described as national defense documents and other sensitive materials after his presidency, has stated that under the PRA, he could designate even classified records as personal and retain them upon leaving office.

“There is no basis for the special counsel’s office, this court, or a jury to second-guess President Trump’s document-specific PRA categorizations,” his lawyers wrote in a separate filing on April 2. Proposed jury instructions from President Trump said that to establish unauthorized possession of the records in question, “the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the document you are considering is a ‘presidential record’ and not a ‘personal record.’”

Read more …

There’s Letitia James again. And New York State Supreme Court Judge Sabrina Kraus.

• In America the Legal Process Is the Punishment (Paul Craig Roberts)

The white-hating blacks to whom insouciant New Yorkers turned over the prosecutorial system have made it impossible to support the existence of, or advocacy for, a white ethnic nation. The First Amendment is also a victim of “black justice.” In New York today, speech is free only for sexual deviants and “preferred minorities.” Peter Brimelow, founder of VDARE and a former Forbes editor, writes: “I launched VDARE.com on Christmas Eve 1999. So it is perhaps appropriate that, on Good Friday 2024, the anniversary of Christ’s death, I must announce VDARE.com’s crucifixion by New York State’s communist Attorney General Letitia James.

On March 27 2024, in another of her lightning-fast NYAG James-compliant rulings, New York State Supreme Court Judge Sabrina Kraus held us in Contempt Of Court because we have not yet complied (because we were fighting it) with her January 23 2023 order that we meet NYAG James’ massive and crippling subpoena demands. Judge Kraus did modify her earlier order to reflect the intervention (much appreciated) of the Institute for Free Speech. So now we no longer have to reveal, explicitly, the names of our pseudonymous writers, some of whom would certainly be fired from their jobs if their identities leaked. But we are still required to review 40 gigabytes of emails, an enormous amount.

And of course these would in fact reveal the names of those pseudonymous writers, as well as our donors, privileged communications with lawyers etc. Judge Kraus has also now allowed us to redact these emails. But this is a huge task, which our lawyers estimate could cost as much as $150,000. An observer tells us this order is more typical of major corporate litigation, not a tiny charity. And, perversely, although Judge Kraus has now modified her January 23 2023 order, she is nevertheless now fining us $250 a day for not complying with it. We have fought NYAG Letitia James, at a cost of up to $1 million, for nearly three years. But now we are literally hanging on the cross. REMEMBER, VDARE.com HAS NOT BEEN CHARGED WITH ANYTHING—BECAUSE IT IS NOT GUILTY OF ANYTHING.

Read more …

“..invited House Speaker Mike Johnson to explain why he would want Congress to “fund a doomed war.” “Of course, he hasn’t responded,” the journalist said. “We also sent multiple requests to Zelensky himself for an interview to explain his position. Of course, he ignored that as well.”

• Zelensky Ignored Interview Requests – Tucker Carlson (RT)

American journalist and political commentator Tucker Carlson has said that Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky snubbed multiple invitations for an interview. Carlson had previously recorded a lengthy interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin, where they discussed the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and Russia’s standoff with NATO. The journalist revealed his attempts to contact Zelensky in a video on X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday. In a monologue before his interview with Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, Carlson said that he had invited House Speaker Mike Johnson to explain why he would want Congress to “fund a doomed war.” “Of course, he hasn’t responded,” the journalist said. “We also sent multiple requests to Zelensky himself for an interview to explain his position. Of course, he ignored that as well.”

The conservative commentator went on to argue that, no matter how much foreign money Kiev will receive, it cannot defeat Moscow on the battlefield, given Russia’s bigger population and industrial capacity. “It’s not working. Two years in, the war is still going,” Carlson told his viewers. “Ukraine can’t win. Everybody knows that around the world. People are very clear on that. There is not one informed person outside the United States who thinks that somehow Ukraine is going to beat Russia.” A vocal critic of Zelensky, Carlson has accused US news organizations of not being truthful about the origin and nature of the ongoing conflict. He stated that the media bias was one of the reasons he had sought an interview with Putin.

During a conversation in Moscow in February, Putin reflected on the centuries of shared history between Russia and Ukraine, and stressed that he has no intention of attacking NATO unless Russia is attacked first. Zelensky, however, dismissed Tucker’s interview with Putin as “more than two hours of bull***t.” The Ukrainian leadership has been increasingly pressuring the Western countries to provide more military aid in an effort to reverse the tide after a string of battlefield losses. Kiev has been particularly frustrated by House Republicans who refused to back President Joe Biden’s $61 billion aid package that has been stuck in Congress for several months.

Read more …

They’re afraid Trump will win. So they think up schemes he can’t stop.

• NATO Seeking To Insulate Kiev From Trump Pressure (RT)

NATO leaders are devising ways to limit Donald Trump’s potential leverage over Ukraine by ensuring the continued supply of arms to Kiev does not depend on Washington, according to Western media reports. Trump has suggested he would reassess aid to Ukraine, should he be reelected to the White House later this year. The plans are set to be discussed at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers in Brussels this week, sources have told news outlets including Politico, the Financial Times, and Euractiv. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for the November US presential election, has claimed on his campaign trail that he could end the Ukraine conflict in 24 hours by making phone calls to Kiev and Moscow. He has declined to explain the specifics of his scheme, but presumably intends to pressure both sides of the hostilities to force a compromise.

Ukraine has declared a full military victory as the only acceptable outcome, but its army is heavily dependent on Western aid. One of the proposed shifts in assistance to Kiev would affect the so-called Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which holds monthly meetings at the US Ramstein Air Base in Germany to coordinate weapons deliveries to Ukraine. It is currently led by Washington and includes non-NATO states that follow the US lead in the conflict. The idea is to formally incorporate the group into NATO structures, according to the reports. “There’s a feeling among, not the whole group but a part of the NATO group, that thinks it is better to institutionalize the process just in case of a Trump reelection,” Jim Townsend, a former Pentagon and NATO official, told Politico.

Outgoing NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has reportedly suggested the creation of a fund to pay for arms supplies over the next five years. Dubbed Mission for Ukraine, the war chest would amount to up to $100 billion or €100 billion ($108 billion), conflicting reports have said. In addition to “Trump-proofing” and entrenching arms deliveries, giving NATO a formal role would supposedly allow it to push Ukraine into implementing reforms required for its eventual accession to the bloc, according to justifications cited by Euractiv. Moscow considers the Ukraine conflict to be part of a US-led proxy war against Russia, in which Kiev and NATO serve as tools of American hegemony. The US-led bloc’s expansion in Europe and its intention to absorb Ukraine were among the key triggers of the hostilities, according to the Russian leadership.

Read more …

Luke Harding still works at the Guardian. What a disgrace.

• Ukraine Can’t Win On The Battlefield, Military Intel Admits (RT)

Kiev has no other option but to launch attacks inside Russia, including on oil infrastructure, as its army faces continued setbacks on the battlefield, The Guardian has reported, citing the leadership of Ukraine’s military intelligence service, GUR. Officers who spoke to the British newspaper’s Luke Harding were candid about Ukraine’s desperate military situation. Brigadier-General Dmitry Timkov said his country was like a patient on life support. ”We are attached to a drip. We have enough drugs to stay alive. But, if the West wants us to win, we need the full treatment,” he said, referring to dwindling military aid. Major General Vadim Skibitsky, the deputy head of GUR, said Kiev’s wished-for battlefield victory was impossible at the moment, which is why the agency had “no choice” but to launch strikes deep inside Russia. He described this as a “NATO-standard procedure, known as center of gravity, or COG.”

The concept was first developed by Carl von Clausewitz, the famous Prussian general and military theorist, and essentially refers to targets that have the most value for the enemy, physically or morally. The GUR officials that spoke with the outlet claimed credit for a recent string of Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian oil infrastructure. This contradicts public statements by the head of SBU, the Ukrainian civilian security agency, who said it was his agents who were responsible for the operations. Both branches have been overhauled in the years since the 2014 armed coup in Kiev with the CIA’s help, according to reports in the Western media. Both were allegedly involved in targeted assassinations of persons deemed to be enemies of Ukraine, since before the hostilities with Russia escalated in 2022.

The newspaper said GUR intends to launch a new major attack on the Crimean Bridge –and to disable it– “in the first half of 2024.” Ukraine has previously targeted the structure, twice in 2022 and 2023. The first plot involved a powerful bomb hidden in a truck, which killed the vehicle’s driver and four other civilians in nearby cars. Moscow said GUR masterminded this attack. The second strike involved naval kamikaze drones that SBU said were deployed by its agents. That bombing killed two civilians. Moscow has accused Kiev of engaging in terrorism as a method of war. The regime in Kiev has adopted the tactics, Russian officials are claiming, because it is unable to score victories on the battlefield.

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“Putin has absolutely no incentive to invade any of these nations, which are NATO members. What do they have that he wants?”

• Ukraine’s Starting to Get Dangerous (James Rickards)

A lot of people seem to have forgotten about the war in Ukraine. That’s a mistake. Russia is slowly but steadily defeating Ukraine, which is becoming increasingly obvious to everyone except the most anti-Russian diehards. That’s leading to desperation in elite Western circles determined to stop Russia one way or the other. In their minds, they simply can’t let Putin win. They think that if Putin wins in Ukraine, he’ll next move on to the Baltic states, Poland and elsewhere. You know the West is getting desperate based on recent threats by France’s Emmanuel Macron to send troops to Ukraine. The vice president of the Russia Duma, Pyotr Tolstoy (descendant of the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy), warned that French troops would be priority targets for Russian forces if they entered Ukraine.

Even though France would send troops independent of NATO, that puts us on a very dangerous path that ultimately leads to direct conflict between NATO and Russia. And that path ends in nuclear war ultimately. Tolstoy added that it would take “just two minutes to nuke Paris.” It’s not hard to envision how quickly things could escalate if France decided to send troops to Ukraine. Meanwhile, NATO is preparing to send F-16s to Ukraine. Airfields in Ukraine are highly vulnerable to Russian attack, especially since Ukraine’s air defenses are heavily depleted at this point and the Russian air force is becoming increasingly active in Ukraine. But if NATO allows the F-16s to be based on its own airbases, Putin has warned that these airfields would become a “legitimate target” if strikes against Russian forces were launched from them.

By the way, Russia has hypersonic missiles that NATO has no practical ability to shoot down, so these attacks would likely be successful. Of course, NATO would have to retaliate in kind. You can imagine where all this could lead. We’re already well along the escalation ladder. And the higher you go, the more face you stand to lose if you back down. I warned about that from the outset of the war. But the entire notion that Russia poses some existential threat to NATO or Europe is absurd. First off, the theory that Putin will invade other countries if he wins in Ukraine is nonsense. The Russian army lacks the men and materiel to occupy Ukraine while simultaneously invading other countries.

This isn’t the Soviet Union with its massive tank armies poised to roll over Western Europe. And Soviet communism is long dead, so there’s no ideological basis for Russia to invade Europe. These days Russia is a conservative, Orthodox Christian nation. But more importantly, Putin has absolutely no incentive to invade any of these nations, which are NATO members. What do they have that he wants? All it would do is trigger Article 5 of the NATO Charter, which stipulates that an attack on one member is an attack on all, inviting a massive NATO response. At that point, you’re on the fast track to nuclear war. Putin is fully aware of that.

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“..It is difficult to believe that 20 years ago Russia looked to the West with hope..”

• A New Russia Has Emerged (Paul Craig Roberts)

Dmitry Trenin reports that Russia has come to its senses and, as I have long recommended, turned her back on the West, a morally debauched, socially dysfunctional, and politically disunited and disintegrating polity. For years Russia was handicapped by its pro-Western intellectuals, but the West’s demonization of Russia has forced them to change their spots or to leave. Free of the former influence of these Russian traitors, everyone of whom Stalin or Lenin would have shot, Russia has emerged as the leader of the world majority that is tired of Western bullying. The fools in Washington, instead of undermining Russia in the interest of US hegemony, have created their replacement by Russia as world leader.

The fools in Washington fail to comprehend that a country blinds itself when it curtails freedom of speech, discredits truth in the interest of self-serving agendas, and destroys the patriotism and security of its ethnic base. All across America and its empire everything is failing. Schools and universities are propaganda centers against white Americans, the military is a disunited tower of babel, massively expensive weapons systems are problem-plagued, the social and economic infrastructure is disintegrating, health care has been turned into a profit machine–at the public’s expense–for Big Pharma. Both water and food are polluted. Government bureaucracies have taken control over children away from parents. Economic opportunity is shrinking. Integrity cannot be found. People who insist on truth in place of propaganda are persecuted. It is difficult to believe that 20 years ago Russia looked to the West with hope.

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“In just two years, the European Union, which only recently accounted for 48% of foreign trade, is down to 20%, whereas Asia’s share has soared from 26% to 71%.”

• Russia Is Undergoing A New, Invisible Revolution (Trenin)

When President Vladimir Putin, back in February 2022, launched Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, he had specific, but limited objectives in mind. It was essentially about assuring Russia’s security vis-à-vis NATO. However, the drastic, expansive and well-coordinated Western reaction to Moscow’s moves – the torpedoing of the Russo-Ukrainian peace deal and the mounting escalation of the US-led bloc’s involvement in the conflict, including its role in deadly attacks inside Russia – have fundamentally changed our country’s attitude towards our former partners. We no longer hear talk about “grievances” and complaints about “failures in understanding.” The last two years have produced nothing less than a revolution in Moscow’s foreign policy, more radical and far-reaching than anything anticipated on the eve of the Ukraine intervention. Over the past 25 months, it has been quickly gaining in strength and profundity.

Russia’s international role, its position in the world, its goals and methods of reaching them, its basic worldview – all are changing. The national foreign policy concept, signed by Putin just a year ago, represents a major departure from its predecessors. It establishes the country’s identity in terms of it being a distinct civilization. In fact, it is the first official Russian document to do so. It also radically transforms the priorities of Moscow’s diplomacy, with the countries of the post-Soviet ‘near abroad” on top, followed by China and India, Asia and the Middle East, and Africa and Latin America. Western Europe and the United States rank next to last, just above the Antarctic.

Unlike in previous decade, when Russia’s “turn to the east” was first announced, these are not just words. Our trade partners, not just political interlocutors, have also switched places. In just two years, the European Union, which only recently accounted for 48% of foreign trade, is down to 20%, whereas Asia’s share has soared from 26% to 71%. Russia’s use of the US dollar has also plummeted, with increasingly more transactions being conducted in Chinese yuan and other non-Western currencies: such as the Indian rupee, the UAE dirham, as well as the instruments of our partners in the Eurasian Economic Union, and the ruble itself.

Russia has also ended its long and tiresome efforts to adapt to the US-led world order – something which it enthusiastically embraced in the early 1990s, grew disillusioned about in the following decade, and unsuccessfully tried to establish a modus vivendi with in the 2010s. Instead of surrendering to a post-Cold War set-up, in which it was left with no say, Russia has begun pushing back more and more against the hegemonic US-centered system. For the first time since the Bolshevik Revolution, albeit in a very different way from then, the country has de facto become a revolutionary power. While China still seeks to improve its position in the existing world order, Russia sees that state-of-affairs as being beyond repair, and is instead seeking to prepare for a new alternative arrangement.

For the time being, instead of the “one world” concept, which the Soviet Union even accepted in 1986, under Gorbachev, Moscow’s contemporary foreign policy has now split into two. For Russian policymakers, the post-2022 West has turned into a “house of adversaries,” while partners for Russia can only be found in the countries of the non-West, for whom we have coined a new description, “the World Majority.” The criterion for being included the group is simple: non-participation in the anti-Russia sanctions regime imposed by Washington and Brussels. This majority of over 100 nations is not considered a pool of allies: the depth and warmth of their relations with the Russia vary greatly, but these are the countries that Moscow can do business with.

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The West is pushing the narrative hard.

• WaPo Report About Crocus City Hall Attack Is a “Hoax” – Zakharova (RT)

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has rejected the Washington Post’s claim that the US alerted Russia that the Crocus City concert hall could be attacked by terrorists two weeks before the tragedy, calling it completely false. On Tuesday, the paper reported, citing unnamed US officials, that Russian authorities had received an alert with a “high degree of specificity” that the popular venue could be targeted by terrorists. According to the news outlet, the notice came one day before the US Embassy in Moscow warned Americans on March 7 to stay away from public gatherings for the following 48 hours because of the heightened threat. At a press briefing on Wednesday, Zakharova dismissed the report, noting that Moscow has grown “accustomed to American misinformation” as well as the Western media’s repeated attempts to retract their own assertions.

“I would really like… to receive factual material on this topic from the American side. That is, to whom and when did they give this information?” she added. In the aftermath of the Crocus City Hall massacre, the White House said that the US had shared data with Moscow about a potential terrorist attack. The head of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Sergey Naryshkin, has confirmed this, but noted that “the information was too general and did not allow us to fully identify those who participated in this terrible crime.” On March 22, a group of armed men stormed the venue, killing at least 144 people, including six children, and injuring over 500 others. The terrorist act was the deadliest on Russian soil since the early 2000s.

Russian law enforcement agencies arrested several suspects in the aftermath of the attack, including four suspected gunmen who were caught fleeing towards Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin has described the culprits as radical Islamists, saying that a “window” was arranged for them on the Ukrainian border. Moscow has suggested that the Ukrainian intelligence services may have been involved in the attack, a claim vehemently denied by Kiev. The US and its allies have insisted that the atrocity was orchestrated by Islamic State terrorists. Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has accused the West of obsessive attempts to clear Ukraine of any culpability. He also advised against jumping to conclusions before the investigation is over.

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“..We should also bear in mind that ISIS*, Al-Qaeda* and other terrorist organizations were created by Washington..”

• Crocus Terror Attack Well-Organized, With Pre-Orchestrated Media Blitz (Sp.)

The terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall was well organized, it was accompanied by extensive and pre-orchestrated media coverage in the West, Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev said on Wednesday. *”The terrorist attack was well organized and was accompanied by extensive, pre-orchestrated coverage by Western media in the right tone for them,” Patrushev said at the 19th annual meeting of security council heads of Shanghai Cooperation Organization member states.= On March 22, several armed men broke into Crocus City Hall and started shooting at people. They also started a fire in one of the auditoriums, which was full of people ahead of a concert. The attack left 695 casualties, including 144 dead, according to the latest data from the Russian Emergencies Ministry.

The Islamic State – Khorasan Province* (ISKP, also known as ISIS-K) terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the attack. The four main suspects in the case — all citizens of Tajikistan — tried to flee the scene in a car but were detained and charged with terrorism. Russian authorities believe their plan was to flee to Ukraine, where the masterminds of the attack had arranged a safe haven for them. An investigation is underway. “It is well known that the Kiev regime is not independent and is completely controlled by the United States. We should also bear in mind that ISIS*, Al-Qaeda* and other terrorist organizations were created by Washington,” Patrushev noted, commenting on the alleged role of ISIS* in the terrorist attack on Crocus in Moscow.

The reaction of Volodymyr Zelensky who said that the Russian authorities were responsible for the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack is inadequate, Patrushev pointed out. “The inadequate reaction of Zelensky, who accused the Russian authorities of organizing the terrorist attack, is also typical. At the same time, Slovakia directly says that the Kiev regime has been sheltering ISIS* militants on its territory for a long time and is using them for its own purposes,” Patrushev stressed. Immediately after the terrorist attack, phone calls from Ukraine to the Russian emergency services with false reports of mining of buildings began en masse, the official added.

Patrushev highlighted that terrorist groups are increasingly being used for geostrategic purposes, and they are given modern weapons and intelligence equipment, Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev said on Wednesday. “Terrorist groups are increasingly being used for geostrategic purposes. Terrorists are given modern weapons, advanced types of tracking and reconnaissance equipment are provided, and intelligence information is supplied,” Patrushev said at the 19th annual meeting of security council heads of Shanghai Cooperation Organization member states. The official called for resolutely and harshly condemning terrorism in all its manifestations and the actions of countries that support or condone it.

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“Israel has pledged to conduct a thorough investigation..” Pretending it was a accident…

• Biden Calls For Swift Probe in Israel Attack on WCK Workers (Sp.)

US President Joe Biden in a statement called for a swift probe into the incident that killed seven humanitarian workers from World Central Kitchen in Gaza. “Israel has pledged to conduct a thorough investigation into why the aid workers’ vehicles were hit by airstrikes. That investigation must be swift, it must bring accountability, and its findings must be made public. Even more tragically, this is not a stand-alone incident. This conflict has been one of the worst in recent memory in terms of how many aid workers have been killed,” said Biden in a White House release. The president added that Israel has not done enough to protect civilians and that the United States will continue its humanitarian efforts in Gaza while urging Israel to do more to facilitate the aid.

On Monday, WCK staff were traveling “in a deconflicted zone” in two armored cars branded with the organization’s logo, and a soft skin vehicle, the NGO said. The humanitarian convoy was attacked as it left the Deir al Balah warehouse, where the team had unloaded more than 100 tonnes of food aid brought to Gaza by sea. The organization said that its convoy had coordinated its movements with the IDF. The Israeli strike against the staff of the WCK killed seven employees from Australia, Poland, the United Kingdom and Palestine, as well as a dual citizen of the United States and Canada. The organization suspended its operations in the Gaza Strip after the deadly incident.

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“The rewrite of Braveheart is going to be a real disappointment..”

• Scottish Minister Doubles Down on Anti-Free Speech Law (Turley)

There is global criticism of the new anti-free speech law in Scotland, including a dare from author J.K. Rowling to arrest her for her criticism of transgender policies. The law is so bad that even the British Prime Minister, in a country widely denounced for attacks on free speech, has demurred from supporting the Scottish law. Now Humza Yousaf, first minister of Scotland, has doubled down in supporting the draconian law while misrepresenting its language. Yousaf bizarrely claimed that critics have ignored that the legal threshold of “the new offences is very, very high indeed. Your behaviour has to be threatening or abusive and intended to stir up hatred.” It is almost comical in its absurdity. No, a standard based on “stirring up hatred” is not very very high. Moreover, the showing can be based on a showing that stirring up hatred was “likely” rather than “intended.”

In signature form, Yousaf reportedly then lashed out at critics like Rowling and Joe Rogan as “right-wing actors” who have “[no] sympathy for the fact we are bringing in legislation that is clamping down on hatred.” He insisted that this is merely an extension of the fight against “disinformation.” The critics include virtually the entirety of the free speech community. Rowling’s objections to transgender policies are rooted in her feminist principles and the concern over the erasure of the gains of women generally.

By declaring opposing views as hateful, many on the left like Yousaf seek to shutdown any debate through a chilling effect on speech. Many do not want to face the cancel campaign or abuse directed against Rowling, who has the means and the following to weather this storm. The Scottish law is a disgrace to the nation, which once distinguished itself in the Scottish Enlightenment as a haven for free thought. The rewrite of Braveheart is going to be a real disappointment when Wallace asks what Scots will do without their freedom and Yousef steps forward to accuse him of “disinformation” and delivers him over to the English:

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“.. it is the type of posting that one would expect from the DNC, not the WHC.”

• White House Flack Raises Legal Concerns Over Biden Corruption Scandal (Turley)

In a city of flacks, Ian Sams is prototypical. Quotable, punchy, and fast on social media, he stays ahead of the news cycle. Those traits are greatly valued by clients in this city where losing control of a narrative can allow a controversy to metastasize into a full fledge scandal. What is different is the client. Sams, a well–known Democratic operative, is not working for a Democratic campaign, but a Democratic president and speaks for the White House Counsel. That position continues to raise eyebrows, as it did this week when Sams issued insulting and taunting postings after the House Oversight Committee asked the President to answer ten questions from its impeachment inquiry. Sams posted images of signs mocking the inquiry next to his title reading “White House spokesman for oversight and investigations. Deputy Assistant to the President & Senior Advisor to WH Counsel’s Office.”

The White House Counsel’s office has historically avoided engaging in political spin and attacks. It prides itself on representing the office of the Presidency, not the president as a person. President Biden has personal counsel to look after his interests as an individual. What is striking is that his personal counsel has shown far more circumspection and restraint in responding to such inquiries. Sams has been previously questioned by the White House press corp over the accuracy of his statements and that fact that he is routinely cited as speaking for White House Counsel’s office on a variety of legal questions, but lacks any law degree. He was also the subject of a complaint from the head of White House press corps over his giving them “marching orders” on how to control the allegations against the President.

[..] I have previously raised concerns over the role of Sams in the impeachment inquiry. In my testimony in the first Biden impeachment hearing, I noted that the Biden White House was approaching a dangerous line in pushing false claims on the corruption scandal, including repeating President Biden’s past denials that he never spoke to his son or had knowledge of his son’s foreign dealings. It can lead to the same blurred lines that led to not just the impeachment articles but the criminal charges in the Nixon Administration. Those concerns became magnified this month when the House send the ten questions to the President to address glaring contradictions in his past public statements. Sams immediately responded on behalf of the White House Counsel:

“LOL. Comer knows 20+ witnesses have testified that POTUS did nothing wrong. He knows that the hundreds of thousands of pages of records he’s received have refuted his false allegations. This is a sad stunt at the end of a dead impeachment. Call it a day, pal.” Again, it is the type of posting that one would expect from the DNC, not the WHC. Yet, Siskel clearly approves of this type of taunting, sarcastic response from an office that has fought to maintain its image of professionalism and prudence. Sams, not Siskel, is now the face of the White House Counsel’s office. That is certainly welcomed by the Biden campaign, but it is often difficult to distinguish postings between the two operations. With an impeachment inquiry in the field, that aggressive media role can produce more than favorable media articles. It can become the basis for actual impeachment articles.

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Whacker
https://twitter.com/i/status/1775532073593528558

 

 

 

 

Wild crazy

 

 

Frens
https://twitter.com/i/status/1775572374248689794

 

 

Otter

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle February 28 2024

Feb 282024
 
 February 28, 2024  Posted by at 9:58 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  40 Responses »


Paul Gauguin Yellow haystacks (Golden harvest) 1889

 

• Ukraine Conflict Weakening US – Tucker Carlson (RT)
• Tucker Carlson Makes Shocking Revelation About Moscow Trip (RT)
• Navalny Organization Splits Into Whites And Reds (Helmer)
• Big Four Leave Oval Office Without Plan to Avert Shutdown (Sp.)
• US Border A Bigger Priority Than Ukraine – Speaker Johnson (RT)
• US House Panels Subpoena AG on Biden’s Mishandling of Classified Docs (Sp.)
• How Russia Could Hit Back If West Seizes Assets (Sp.)
• Ukraine Set to Lose More Territory in 1-2 Months Without US Support – WH (Sp.)
• Catastrophic Scenario If NATO Troops Deploy To Ukraine – Russian Senator (RT)
• Trump Plans To ‘Reform’ CIA and FBI – Politico (RT)
• Former NY Times Editor Blasts the “Gray Lady” for Bias and Activism (Turley)
• Putin’s Reasons (Vasco)
• Macron’s Bid to Undermine NATO and the EU Hit the Bullseye (Jay)
• Leaked Gaza Ceasefire Proposal US ‘Psychological Warfare’: Hamas (Cradle)
• The Death of Justice in the Western World (Paul Craig Roberts)

 

 

 

 

Trump ad
https://twitter.com/i/status/1762535418661154964

 

 

 

 

 

 

Poso
https://twitter.com/i/status/1762677522922086625

 

 

Biden

 

 

 

 

 

 

“..the world is “resetting to the great disadvantage of the US..”

• Ukraine Conflict Weakening US – Tucker Carlson (RT)

Most Americans naively believe that Ukraine could defeat Russia because the media has told them so, independent journalist Tucker Carlson said on Tuesday. What the US has done has harmed both Ukrainians and Americans, he added. Carlson spent eight days in Moscow earlier this month and interviewed Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 8. He looked back at that conversation during a three-hour podcast hosted by Lex Fridman. “I reject the whole premise of the war in Ukraine from the American perspective,” Carlson added. “There’s a war going on that is wrecking the US economy in a way and at a scale that people do not understand.” The current policy of the American government is only accelerating the demise of the dollar and the world is “resetting to the great disadvantage of the US,” Carlson said.

According to him, for the past two years the US media have insisted that Kiev can win – and it took an encounter with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, last August, to jolt him into reality. “It doesn’t even matter what I want to happen… that’s a distortion of what is happening,” Carlson told Fridman. Russia has 100 million more people and more industry “than all of NATO combined,” he added. Carlson revealed that he feels “sorry” for Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, because “ he’s caught between these forces that are bigger than he is.” A “victory” for Kiev would be to not get obliterated, he added, and that almost happened in March 2022 when Zelensky almost made peace with Russia. Then the US dispatched British PM Boris Johnson to stop it, Carlson noted.

The US journalist again confirmed that Johnson demanded $1 million to do an interview, calling the former PM a “sad, rapacious fraud.” The point of interviewing Putin wasn’t to show the world how smart or good Tucker Carlson was, but “to have more information brought to the West so people could make their own decisions about whether this is a good idea,” he told Fridman, referring to the Ukraine conflict. Every Western journalist so far has tried to make an encounter with Putin about themselves, which Carlson described as “the most tiresome, fruitless kind of interview.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1762599403548803265

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“If you have a media establishment that acts as employees of the national security state, you don’t have a free country. And that’s where we are..”

• Tucker Carlson Makes Shocking Revelation About Moscow Trip (RT)

Tucker Carlson said on Tuesday that US spies had monitored him while he was in Russia earlier this month, and leaked to a ‘friendly’ outlet that he had met with Edward Snowden. This is despite the American journalist’s claim that he had tried to keep his meeting with the NSA whistleblower a secret. Carlson went to Russia to interview President Vladimir Putin. During his eight days in Moscow, he also met with Snowden – and US spies found out about it, he told podcaser Lex Fridman in the course of a three-hour conversation. “I was being intensely surveilled by the US government,” Carlson told Fridman, noting that US spies had thwarted his plans to interview Putin in 2021 and that he received confirmation that he was being intensely monitored ahead of his Moscow trip. “Then, I’m over there, and of course I want to see Snowden, whom I admire.”

Snowden allegedly accepted Carlson’s invitation to have dinner at the Four Seasons Hotel, but declined the interview as well as a photo request, saying that it would be better to tell no one. “I didn’t tell anybody,” Carlson told Fridman, however the meeting was leaked. “Semafor runs this piece – reporting information they got from the US intel agencies, leaking against me, using my money, in my name, in a supposedly free country – they run this piece saying I met with Snowden, like it was a crime or something.” “If you have a media establishment that acts as employees of the national security state, you don’t have a free country. And that’s where we are,” Carlson added. Carlson revealed that he did not fear getting arrested in Russia at any point, but was warned by his lawyers that the US might arrest him depending on the content of the Putin interview.

“I felt not one twinge of concern for the 8 days that I was there,” he told Fridman about being in Moscow. Before he left for Russia, his team of attorneys counseled him to “not do this… A lot will depend on the questions you ask of Putin. If you’re seen as too nice to him you could be arrested when you come back,” Carlson quoted the lead lawyer as saying, to which he said he replied, “You’re describing a fascist country, OK?”

In 2013, Snowden revealed that the NSA was systematically engaged in mass illegal spying on American citizens. Fearing for his safety, he fled to Hong Kong with the intent to reach Ecuador, which did not have an extradition treaty with the US, but was stopped during a layover in Moscow after Washington canceled his passport. Russia ended up granting him asylum and reportedly, eventual citizenship. One of the founders of Semafor, the outlet to which Carlson claims US spies leaked his dinner with Snowden, is Ben Smith, a former editor-in-chief of the now defunct BuzzFeed newsroom. In 2017, Smith notoriously published the ‘Steele Dossier,’ a sham document leaked by US spies to discredit incoming President Donald Trump.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1762572926295929019

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“The Reds are holding the evidence that Navalny was not murdered and that everything the Whites are saying is false.”

• Navalny Organization Splits Into Whites And Reds (Helmer)

Alexei Navalny’s organization outside Russia is now repudiating Lyudmila Navalnaya, Navalny’s mother, for having accepted the medical evidence and official certification that the cause of his death was an embolism, or blood clot, which stopped his heart. On Monday, several days after the release of the post-mortem documents and of Navalny’s body to his mother’s custody, Maria Pevchikh, Navalny’s script writer, and Kira Yarmysh, Navalny’s press secretary, have repeated their allegations that Navalny had been murdered. In their revised version of the story on Monday, Pevchikh claimed in a self-produced video that “on February 16, 2024, Vladimir Putin killed Alexei Navalny”. Reuters, the New York-based news agency, reported Pevchikh’s claim, adding that “Maria Pevchikh, who is based outside Russia, did not present documentary evidence for her assertion.” The New York Times amplified Pevchikh’s allegations, but omitted the Reuters qualifier.

The newspaper did not report attempting to make contact with Lyudmila Navalnaya but added this innuendo: “it remained unclear whether his family would seek to conduct an independent autopsy before his burial.” “Alexei Navalny could be sitting in this seat right now, right today,” Pevchikh broadcast. “That’s not a figure of speech, it could and should have happened…Navalny was supposed to be free in the coming days.” Pevchikh then recited details of a purported exchange of Russian spies in prison outside Russia in exchange for Navalny and Americans in Russian prisons. The NATO-funded Bellingcat organization was involved, Pevchikh said. “Investigator Hristo Grozev helped us devise and implement this plan.” Negotiations took place with American and German officials, she said, but “they did nothing.”

She then said: “Roman Abramovich was the one who delivered the proposal to swap Navalny to Putin. As an informal negotiator communicating with American and European officials, and at the same time representing Putin; an unofficial channel of communication with the Kremlin.” Pevchikh claims she asked Abramovich for details of what had been told to Putin and what the president replied. “Unfortunately”, Pevchikh said, “Abramovich did not answer these questions but he did not deny anything either.” Yarmysh followed Pevchikh with a 3-line tweet: “We know why Alexei was killed right now. He should have been exchanged literally these days. An offer was made to Putin.”

The evidence of prisoner swaps between the US, Germany, and Russia is no news and corroborated officially, although the identities of the swap candidates keep changing, as do the names of the reported go-betweens. Abramovich’s role as the intermediary in the abortive Istanbul negotiations between Russian and Ukrainian officials of March 2022 has not been followed with any report of subsequent intermediation by Abramovich, except to save himself from sanctions. All that is missing from the new Pevchikh-Yarmysh announcements is the medical evidence of the cause of Navalny’s death. That is being closely held by Navalny’s mother, and she is in charge of the arrangements for his funeral.

In her latest tweet, Yarmysh implies this too is no longer under the outside organization’s control, as it proposes an alternative, parallel ceremony. “We are looking for a hall for a public farewell to Alexei,” Yarmysh said yesterday. “Time: end of this work week. If you have suitable premises, please contact us.” Pevchikh is based in London; Yarmysh left Russia in 2021 and is also abroad. They are the Whites now. The Reds, Navalny’s mother and Anatoly Navalny, his father, remain in Moscow. The Reds are holding the evidence that Navalny was not murdered and that everything the Whites are saying is false.

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Kamala is part of the “Big Four”? Get serious.

• Big Four Leave Oval Office Without Plan to Avert Shutdown (Sp.)

US President Joe Biden summoned four congressional leaders on Tuesday in an effort to avoid a government shutdown that is predicted to occur on March 8, including: Vice President Kamala Harris, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and House Speaker Mike Johnson. US legislators must come up with a spending plan that both sides of the aisle can agree on, in order to avoid the shutdown. At the beginning of the year, the short-term continuing resolution (CR) established a phased, two-step deadline to fund the government, which extended funding through March 1 for about 20% of the federal government that is responsible for military construction, as well as the departments of veterans affairs, agriculture, housing and urban development, transportation and energy. The remaining 80% of the government is funded until March 8.

Aquiles Larrea, the CEO of Larrea Wealth Management, spoke to Sputnik’s The Final Countdown on Tuesday, and sounded hopeful congressional leaders still have enough time to avoid a shutdown, but stressed that time is slipping away. “I think that the appearance of having to try to do something, getting something done with the congressional leadership is very important at this point, especially since we’ve gone past a few stopgap measures at this point. But I think, we’re not going to have any choice but to put another one in there unless we can get people to agree overnight,” said Larrea. “Let’s just say, in a perfect world, that the Congress agrees overnight, the Senate has to look over the bill over the weekend and hopefully before the March 8th deadline comes to some accord. That way they can get it to the president, but that time is quickly slipping away. So, something the president has probably taken it upon himself, whether it’s appearance, whether it be true, whether it be magic to come out and say, ‘guys, let’s do something, let’s figure this out, we have to agree on something,’” he continued. “The only wild card in the bunch right now is the caucus within the House Republican Party.”

Sputnik’s Angie Wong commented on what she views as political posturing by the four congressional leaders and Biden, noting that the US president plans to go to the southern border ahead of the potential shutdown. Former President Donald Trump will also visit the border on Thursday. US Democrats have been fighting for more money to fund Ukraine and Israel, while Republicans have been working to send money to the US-Mexico border, because they believe that will help secure it. Wong then asked Larrea why Biden had not issued an executive order to close the US-Mexico border. “I think he’s trying to give Congress a fair chance to come up with some solutions because just the president invoking an executive order seems more tyrannical than anything. You know, ‘oh, this guy, he just came in, he did this,’. I think it gives plenty to chew on opponents to say, ‘well, he had to do this because it was out of control,’ and it won’t be a positive thing,” Larrea explained.

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“..get it done” and “do the right thing,” adding that “history is looking over your shoulder.”

• US Border A Bigger Priority Than Ukraine – Speaker Johnson (RT)

Congress will not pass a new aid package for Ukraine without reforms to US immigration policy, House Speaker Mike Johnson has said, arguing that America’s own security takes priority over Kiev’s conflict with Russia. Speaking after a contentious meeting with President Joe Biden and congressional leaders earlier on Tuesday, Johnson insisted that House Republicans would not budge on the foreign aid if Democrats did not compromise on the border. GOP lawmakers are “actively pursuing and investigating all the various options” for the Ukraine legislation, but “The first priority of the country is our border and making sure it’s secure,” Johnson told reporters.

The Republican speaker has faced increased pressure from congressional Democrats, the White House and even fellow GOP members in the Senate over the aid bill, with President Biden warning that the “consequences of inaction every day in Ukraine are dire” ahead of his meeting with Johnson. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who attended the sit-down with Biden, also said he urged Johnson to “get it done” and “do the right thing,” adding that “history is looking over your shoulder.” He described the discussion around the Ukraine bill as “intense,” stating “Everyone in that room was telling Speaker Johnson how vital” the military assistance was.

While the Senate previously passed a $95 billion aid package – including $60 billion for Kiev in addition to funding for Israel and Taiwan – House Republicans have refused to back companion legislation unless it includes significant reforms at the US-Mexico border. Citing a surge in illegal immigration since Biden took office in 2021, Johnson called the situation a “catastrophe” and stressed that the White House could “take executive authority right now, today, to change that.” Ukrainian officials have repeatedly urged for additional aid, as US assistance has waned following a lackluster summer counteroffensive. President Vladimir Zelensky made his latest appeal last week during a meeting with Schumer and other Democrats, where he reportedly warned that Kiev would “surely lose the war” without further cash injections from Washington.

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“..provide all documents on Special Counsel Robert Hur’s investigation of President Joe Biden’s “willful” mishandling of classified information..”

• US House Panels Subpoena AG on Biden’s Mishandling of Classified Docs (Sp.)

The chairmen of the House Judiciary Committee and Oversight Committee on Tuesday issued a subpoena demanding that US Attorney General Merrick Garland provide all documents on Special Counsel Robert Hur’s investigation of President Joe Biden’s “willful” mishandling of classified information. According to the cover letter accompanying the subpoena and signed by Congressmen James Comer and Jim Jordan respectively, the US Justice Department to date has not provided either records related to Hur’s investigation or a deadline when it expects to produce all of the requested material. The initial request to provide the documents was made on February 12, according to the letter. The Judiciary and Oversight Committees are leading an investigation into business dealings and other activities of the Biden family to determine whether there are sufficient grounds to draft articles of impeachment against Biden.

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“We have more than 50 decently-sized American firms alone working here, and plenty of European companies..”

• How Russia Could Hit Back If West Seizes Assets (Sp.)

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has called on nations of the Western “coalition” against Moscow to “find a way to unlock the value of [Russia’s] immobilized assets to support Ukraine’s continued resistance and long-term reconstruction.” “I believe there is a strong international law, economic and moral case for moving forward. This would be a decisive response to Russia’s unprecedented threat to global stability,” Yellen said at a meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors in Sao Paulo, Brazil on Tuesday. Tackling the question of the potential threats to the dollar’s status as the de facto world reserve currency that such an unprecedented move would entail, Yellen said that it it’s “extremely unlikely” that the greenback would be negatively affected. “Realistically there are not alternatives to the dollar, euro and yen,” she assured.

Yellen is the latest senior Western official to propose moving forward with the seizure of Russian assets as Western countries’ own desire to continue fueling the Ukrainian proxy war against Russia falters. Earlier this month, the European Union adopted a law allowing Brussels to bank windfall profits from Russian assets trapped in European banks and use them in Ukraine, a move characterized by Moscow as blatant “theft” which will be met with legal action. Russian officials and independent economic observers alike have warned of the possible consequences stemming from what Yellen is proposing, with Russian finance minister Anton Siluanov saying Moscow has the means to issue a “symmetrical” response to this form of Western financial aggression. “We have no fewer frozen [assets than Western countries],” Siluanov said in an interview with Sputnik on Monday. “Any actions taken against our assets would receive a symmetrical response.”

“Russia has already taken conservatorship of assets of a number of foreign companies which refused to operate in Russia,” Dr. Andrei Kolganov, a professor of economics at Moscow State University and chief researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Economics, told Sputnik, commenting on the folly of the West’s asset seizure plans. This instrument was already used against foreign investors with an ownership stake in the Baltika Beer Company, as well as the assets of Finnish energy concern Fortum, the professor noted. “So in principle, the mechanism for the confiscation of foreign assets has already been worked out. Moving from conservatorship to confiscation is, in principle, a fairly simple technical procedure. The amount of assets that are ‘frozen’ on the territory of the Russian Federation, or which may be frozen, is now estimated at approximately $288 billion,” Kolganov explained.

In other words, the professor said, Russia has control over a big chunk of Western assets which, if the US and its allies proceed with confiscation, “will not escape to the West, but will work here in Russia, because we are talking about investment, first and foremost, in the manufacturing sector.” From there, these assets could become the property of the Russian state, or be transferred to Russian private owners and continue to work as before. Confiscation of assets of Western companies in Russia would seriously impact their respective bottom lines, meaning they could try to put pressure on governments, both in their home countries and in Russia, to try to avoid having their capital seized. “We have a lot of foreign companies working in Russia, including those from so-called unfriendly countries. We have more than 50 decently-sized American firms alone working here, and plenty of European companies,” Dr. Georgy Ostapkovich, director of the Center for Market Research at the Institute of Statistical Research and Economics of Knowledge at Russia’s Higher School of Economics, told Sputnik.

Kolganov says that as unpleasant as a seizure of Russia’s assets abroad might be it would not serve to tank the country’s economy, with Moscow able to continue its international payments using its sizable and healthy foreign exchange earnings after reorienting its trade toward developing countries. The money frozen in Western banks constitutes reserves, which “were not actively used for international trade and international payments” anyway, the professor explained. “For private businesses, the confiscation of assets would create a pretty big hole in their earnings and budgets. Therefore, it would be a rather sensitive measure if Russia had to resort to it in response to the confiscation of its assets,” the economist added. Dr. Ostapkovich emphasizes that Moscow will have to be strategic and precise in the foreign assets it may choose to seize, to avoid the risk of friendly countries and companies doing business in Russia feeling threatened.

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Kiev.

• Ukraine Set to Lose More Territory in 1-2 Months Without US Support – WH (Sp.)

Ukraine is on track to lose additional territories in the coming months due to a lack of military support from the US, White House National Security Communications adviser John Kirby said on Tuesday. “If they continue to get no support from the US, in a month or two, it is very likely that the Russians will achieve more territorial gains and have more success against Ukrainian frontlines in terms of just territory gain,” Kirby told reporters He pointed out that such a situation could happen in eastern Ukraine, but also potentially in the south of the country. Kirby stressed that the situation on the ground is dire. US President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that the need to provide additional support to Ukraine is urgent. Russia has repeatedly warned NATO countries that arms supplies to Ukraine would be considered legitimate targets. Moscow has accused NATO countries of “playing with fire” by arming Ukraine, emphasizing that such actions hinder the possibility of Russia-Ukraine negotiations.

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“This is the line beyond which it’s no longer just NATO’s involvement in the war..”

• Catastrophic Scenario If NATO Troops Deploy To Ukraine – Russian Senator (RT)

The potential deployment of NATO troops to Ukraine will lead to a “catastrophic scenario,” and could be interpreted as a “declaration of war” on Moscow, top Russian senator Konstantin Kosachev has said.The Vice Speaker of Russia’s upper chamber, the Federation Council, offered his take on remarks by French President Emmanuel Macron on the possibility of sending troops in a Telegram post on Tuesday. The approach exhibited by the French leader carries a risk of the situation devolving into a “catastrophic scenario,” Kosachev warned, stating that the move would not be tolerated by the Kremlin. “This is the line beyond which it’s no longer just NATO’s involvement in the war – this has been happening for a long time, but can be interpreted as the alliance entering direct hostilities, or even as a declaration of war,” Kosachev wrote.

The senator’s comments echoed a statement made by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who said the move would make a direct collision between the US-led bloc and Moscow not only “possible,” but actually “inevitable.” The idea of sending ground forces to Ukraine was raised by Macron on Monday while he was speaking to reporters after a meeting of European leaders in Paris. The president suggested that any scenario, including sending in troops, could not be ruled out, arguing that the West should stop at nothing to prevent Russia from prevailing over Ukraine. “In terms of dynamics, we cannot exclude anything. We will do everything necessary to prevent Russia from winning this war,” he stated, while admitting that there was no consensus among NATO members on the troop issue.

The remarks prompted NATO allies to publicly reject the suggestion, with the bloc’s leadership insisting no preparations to send forces to Ukraine actually exist. Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg stated there were “no plans for NATO combat troops on the ground in Ukraine,” and several members of the alliance, including the US, offered separate statements denying any such intent.

Putin NATO
https://twitter.com/i/status/1762445822137127039

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“There are thousands of people busting their ass, often in dangerous places, sacrificing a lot for the country. And to have their work just dismissed by a commander in chief, is really just discouraging..”

• Trump Plans To ‘Reform’ CIA and FBI – Politico (RT)

Former US President Donald Trump is “likely” to launch sweeping reforms of the US intelligence community if he is re-elected in November, prompting concerns from the agencies that once baselessly accused him of ties to Russia. Politico interviewed 18 intelligence officials – including several former Trump appointees who later came out as his outspoken critics – in an article published on Monday, warning that the possible purge could “undermine the credibility of American intelligence.” “Trump intends to go after the intelligence community,” said one former senior intelligence official. “He started that process before and he’s going to do it again. Part of that process is to root out people and to punish people.” The new president would replace “people perceived as hostile to his political agenda with inexperienced loyalists,” Politico summarized the claim by Trump critics.

The two people specifically named were former acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Richard Grenell and aide Kash Patel, who played a key role in declassifying materials about the origins of ‘Russiagate’. Politico acknowledged that Trump’s hostility to the intelligence community was related to the infamous document claiming that Russia “interfered” in the 2016 election against Hillary Clinton. It quoted former FBI official Andrew McCabe defending the inclusion of the so-called Steele Dossier – produced by a former British spy paid by the Clinton campaign via cut-outs – in the appendix as merely due diligence. Though the FBI quickly found out that the dossier was false and who funded it, they continued to use it to spy on Trump’s campaign and presidency.

When Trump challenged the intelligence assessment – authored not by all 17 agencies, but a hand-picked group of Obama administration loyalists – at the July 2018 summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the spies felt that “never before had a commander in chief so publicly delegitimized their work.” Trump’s DNI Dan Coats told Politico that this prompted him to offer his resignation in February 2019 – which was eventually accepted that August. Other Trump appointees turned critics interviewed in the article were former National Security Advisor John Bolton and Fiona Hill, a top Russia adviser on the National Security Council – and witness against Trump at his Ukraine impeachment trial. “He wants to weaponize the intelligence community,” lamented Hill. “If he guts the intel on one thing, he’ll be partially blinding us.”

Several unnamed officials said Trump’s possible purges could jeopardize “sources and methods” used by US spies and undermine the trust American allies have in Washington, which the Biden administration has tried so hard to rebuild. Back in December, a diplomat from an unnamed NATO member country described Trump getting re-elected and actually purging the US administrative apparatus as a “doomsday option.” Others worried that appointments of “controversial” figures could lead competent junior officials and staff to resign. “There are thousands of people busting their ass, often in dangerous places, sacrificing a lot for the country. And to have their work just dismissed by a commander in chief, is really just discouraging,” Jon Darby, former director of operations at the National Security Agency (NSA), told Politico.

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“The state of Israel makes me very uncomfortable,” a colleague once told me. This was something I was used to hearing from young progressives on college campuses, but not at work.”

• Former NY Times Editor Blasts the “Gray Lady” for Bias and Activism (Turley)

Former New York Times editor Adam Rubenstein has a lengthy essay at The Atlantic that pulls back the curtain on the newspaper and its alleged bias in its coverage. The essay follows similar pieces from former editors and writers that range from Bari Weiss to Rubenstein’s former colleague James Bennet. The essay describes a similar work environment where even his passing reference to liking Chik-Fil-A sandwiches led to a condemnation of shocked colleagues. An opinion-section editor, Rubenstein was involved in the controversy over publishing Sen. Tom Cotton’s (R., Ark.) op-ed where he argued for the possible use of national guard to quell violent riots around the White House. It was one of the lowest points in the history of modern American journalism. Cotton was calling for the use of the troops to restore order in Washington after days of rioting around the White House.

While Congress would “call in the troops” six months later to quell the rioting at the Capitol on January 6th, New York Times reporters and columnists called the column historically inaccurate and politically inciteful. Reporters insisted that Cotton was even endangering them by suggesting the use of troops and insisted that the newspaper cannot feature people who advocate political violence. One year later, the New York Times published a column by an academic who had previously declared that there is nothing wrong with murdering conservatives and Republicans. Rubenstein noted: “On January 6, 2021, few people at The New York Times remarked on the fact that liberals were cheering on the deployment of National Guardsmen to stop rioting at the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., the very thing Tom Cotton had advocated.” Instead, he describes an environment in which the staff routinely rejected conservative viewpoints, subjected conservatives to added demands and editing, and faced staff opposition to working on such pieces. He noted:

“Being a conservative—or at least being considered one—at the Times was a strange experience. I often found myself asking questions like “Doesn’t all of this talk of ‘voter suppression’ on the left sound similar to charges of ‘voter fraud’ on the right?” only to realize how unwelcome such questions were. By asking, I’d revealed that I wasn’t on the same team as my colleagues, that I didn’t accept as an article of faith the liberal premise that voter suppression was a grave threat to liberal democracy while voter fraud was entirely fake news. Or take the Hunter Biden laptop story: Was it truly “unsubstantiated,” as the paper kept saying? At the time, it had been substantiated, however unusually, by Rudy Giuliani. Many of my colleagues were clearly worried that lending credence to the laptop story could hurt the electoral prospects of Joe Biden and the Democrats. But starting from a place of party politics and assessing how a particular story could affect an election isn’t journalism. Nor is a vague unease with difficult subjects. “The state of Israel makes me very uncomfortable,” a colleague once told me. This was something I was used to hearing from young progressives on college campuses, but not at work.”

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“Let us analyze the history of relations between the so-called “West” and Russia over the last 30 years and we will see that, in fact, Russia was forced to defend itself against a war that was already underway against it..”

• Putin’s Reasons (Vasco)

This February 24th marked two years since the beginning of Russia’s intervention in the war in Ukraine. All major Western media — monopolized by billionaires who use the press to maintain their domination — call the Special Military Operation, the official name of the Russian campaign, “war”. With this, they propagate the idea that it was Russia that started the war. A lie that (purposefully) covers up the guilt, not only of the government that is today headed by Vladimir Zelensky, but, mainly, of the great Western powers. The propaganda disseminated by this gigantic press monopoly attempts to brainwash ordinary citizens, accusing evil Russia of invading defenseless Ukraine in a criminal war of conquest. The truth is that the war started not two years ago, but ten years ago! And the one who started it was not Russia, but Ukraine itself. Russia was not even directly involved in the conflict. Those who played a fundamental role in the outbreak of this war were precisely those who accuse Russia today.

Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, in his interview with American reporter Tucker Carlson, recapped the dramatic events that led to the war. Let us analyze the history of relations between the so-called “West” and Russia over the last 30 years and we will see that, in fact, Russia was forced to defend itself against a war that was already underway against it. The dismantling of the Soviet Union weakened Russia as never before in history. Practically overnight, the peripheral territories that had belonged to it for centuries became independent. The great objective of the imperialist powers since the beginning of the 20th century had been achieved. The wave of separations also encouraged two wars in Chechnya in the 90s and 2000s, at the same time that the neoliberal shock policy was devastating its economy. In addition to having lost much of the territory of the former Soviet Union, Russia saw these new countries being completely dominated by imperialism.

In 2004, a “color revolution”, known as the Orange Revolution, prevented the election of a neutral president in Ukraine to ensure a U.S. puppet — Viktor Yushchenko — in power. In 2008, it was Georgia’s turn to be captured by Western nations, which made Russia outline its first response to this suffocation that they sought to impose on it, in what became known as the Ossetian War. All of Russia’s former allies were being wiped off the map. The NATO bombings in Libya, with the execution of Muammar Gaddafi, in 2011, once and for all raised the alarm for Moscow. When the United States, England and France tried to do the same in Syria, soon after, Putin learned the Libyan lesson and vetoed in the UN Security Council an identical operation to overthrow the regime of Bashar al-Assad, in addition to supporting it militarily.

The last straw for the Russians was the second coup in Ukraine, which began at the end of 2013. Viktor Yanukovych, who had been prevented from being elected in 2004, was in power. He conducted a friendly policy with Moscow, although he was hesitant and negotiated with the European Union. However, in the end, he did not adhere to the latter, preferring the greater advantages that his country would have by maintaining privileged relations with its sister nation. The EU and the U.S. did not accept this modest demonstration of sovereignty by Ukraine and used, as in 2004, NGOs paid by George Soros and the CIA to execute a new “color revolution” in Kiev. This time, however, avowedly neo-Nazi groups were the shock troops of the demonstrations on Maidan Square.

The result of the coup d’état, consolidated at the beginning of 2014, was not just the fall of a government that was in dialogue with Russia to replace it with one aligned with the West. It was more than that: a regime came to power supported by the same fascist organizations that led the Maidan. Ukrainian fascism has always been strongly anti-Russian and its influence on the new regime led to the persecution of all Ukrainians of Russian origin — who represent the majority of the population in around 40% of the country’s territory. The regions of Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea, where 75% of voters had elected Yanukovych in 2010 and were of Russian origin, were the most persecuted and rebelled. Crimea held a referendum where the overwhelming majority of the population chose to reincorporate into Russia (to which it had always belonged), resulting in an annexation carried out shortly thereafter by the Russian Federation.

Putin, however, did not do the same in Donetsk and Lugansk. The people of these two regions declared independence from Ukraine and formed two self-styled people’s republics. Armed with arms, they resisted the military invasion ordered by the new Kiev authorities, spearheaded by fascist paramilitary militias such as the infamous Azov, Aidar and Right Sector battalions. This was the true beginning of the current war in Ukraine, which, until the beginning of the Russian intervention, had claimed the lives of more than 14,000 people — most of them killed by the invading Ukrainian forces.

Kujat

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“Was all this part of Rutte’s plan to put himself as the main candidate for Biden to support?”

• Macron’s Bid to Undermine NATO and the EU Hit the Bullseye (Jay)

A recent meeting of over 20 EU member states in Paris, organised by French President Emmanuel Macron raised eyebrows for many reasons. True, he managed to cajole these EU countries to agree to sending more money to Ukraine but many will ask whether Macron’s meddling comes with a much higher price. It is hardly a secret that he wants to create a fast track EU, which is made up of most EU countries – which excludes those who block big decisions like Hungary – who think of an EU which is stronger, which has its own army and can think independently of NATO. Last year he even went as far as organising a conference where all EU member states were invited, as well as the UK and Turkey, to test the waters as to the creation of a new, in formal EU-NATO pillar.

And now it is happening. Macron just recently held a meeting in Paris which agreed a higher level of funding to Ukraine with talks of even boots on the ground in Ukraine. The problem of course for NATO is that it has an identity crisis as more and more Americans and Europeans see it as a defence organisation which can only threaten and escalate in the Ukraine war – while being the leader of a proxy operation where not one NATO soldier can ever get killed – while not actually going the full nine yards. For over three years, with the war in Ukraine specifically going badly for the West in the last year, NATO’s role becomes compromised and more opaque. The very fact that Macron took this recent initiative is testimony to this and Biden is surely worried about NATO’s role now, as he throws his weight behind the Dutch Prime Minister’s bid to take over its helm.

The transition though from the bumbling, buffoonish Jens Stoltenberg to Mark Rutte will be seamless if it happens at all. Rutte will need to convince all 31 members of NATO and there are questions whether Hungary and Turkey will back the Dutchman’s bid to run the outfit. European nations might want a new face, a fresh voice and might push for a woman to run NATO, throwing their weight behind Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas. The point about Rutte is that he is a keen advocate of much bigger military spending which will be welcomed by Trump if he were to win the U.S. elections this year, just a matter of days after the NATO boss will take office. Rutte has really stepped up to the mark when it comes to sending military hardware to the Ukrainians.

The long-serving Dutch prime minister and one of Europe’s longest-serving leaders, he has already committed to send Ukraine 24 of its F-16 fighters — the most of any country — and is helping train Ukrainian pilots. The Dutch military has also sent tanks, artillery systems, ammunition and Patriot air defence systems to Kiev over the past two years. According to Politico, the government itself has also pledged another $2.1 billion in military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine over the coming year. Was all this part of Rutte’s plan to put himself as the main candidate for Biden to support?

NATO

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“..a US and Israeli attempt to give the public an illusion that Hamas had approved of them..”

• Leaked Gaza Ceasefire Proposal US ‘Psychological Warfare’: Hamas (Cradle)

Hamas official Ahmad Abdul Hadi stated on 27 February that a leaked proposal for a ceasefire deal in Gaza is part of a “psychological warfare” campaign being carried out by the US. Details of the alleged proposal were leaked to Reuters on Monday, the same day US President Joe Biden said he hoped a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas could be reached by 4 March. “My national security adviser tells me that they’re close. They’re close. They’re not done yet. My hope is by next Monday we’ll have a ceasefire,” Biden claimed during an appearance on a late-night US talk show. But Abdul Hadi, the Hamas representative in Lebanon, stated that the resistance movement is not satisfied with the proposal and will not compromise on any of its demands, particularly “on a ceasefire and reaching an honorable, serious deal.”

Hamas is seeking a permanent end to the war and the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. Israel is seeking the release of the 136 captives held by Hamas in Gaza and a temporary ceasefire that would allow it to resume the war after a pause. “We are open to any ideas posed by mediators but are also keen on preserving our key demands,” Abdul Hadi told Al-Mayadeen, adding that Israel is “seeking to hold Hamas accountable for any later failures in talks, planning to use this as an excuse to pave the way for the invasion of Rafah.” He said the leaks were not part of the Paris negotiations but a US and Israeli attempt to give the public an illusion that Hamas had approved of them. He reiterated that “everything being shared is not serious, but a ploy to maneuver and press on the Resistance.”

The proposal leaked to Reuters outlined plans for a 40-day truce during which Hamas would free around 40 captives – including female soldiers, those under 19 or over 50 years old, and the sick – in return for about 400 Palestinians held captive in Israel. Israel would withdraw its troops from populated areas of Gaza. Displaced Gaza residents, excluding men of fighting age, would be permitted to return to their homes. Israel would be required to allow additional humanitarian aid to enter Gaza, as hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in the strip are on the verge of starvation. Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) also responded to leaked Paris proposal. “The leaks are an attempt to pressure the Palestinians and incite them against the resistance. They are pushing for a ceasefire before Ramadan in anticipation of what might happen in Al-Quds. The enemy believes that it can deceive the resistance with different methods in order to achieve a victory it has failed to achieve on the ground,” PIJ Political Bureau member Ihsan Ataya told Al-Mayadeen.

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“That is what the Assange case is about. Justice along with truth is being eliminated from the Western world.”

• The Death of Justice in the Western World (Paul Craig Roberts)

British courts have cooperated with Washington’s police state for years by keeping Julian Assange in captivity while pretending to give him every benefit of the doubt in the extradition case. Of course, the law is clear that he should not be turned over to revengeful Washington, but Britain is not independent of Washington and is merely going through motions that keep Assange in captivity. It seems clear that Washington and London are conspiring to break the spirit of those Americans and British who still hope that their governments are capable of delivering justice. A demoralized people are easier coerced into tyranny, which is where the entirety of the Western world is headed. So much is already lost. One would have thought that the US and British media would have been fierce in Assange’s defense if only in order to protect its power to hold government accountable and to protect itself.

After all, the New York Times and The Guardian and other news organizations published the documents that Wikileaks released, for which Assange is in captivity. Yet until recently when the New York Times, Guardian, and a few other news organizations made a weak request that the extradition case against Assange be dropped, the US and British media were faithful carriers of the official narrative that Assange was a rapist, a Russian spy, and a hacker of US national security secrets, such as Washington’s hidden war crimes and deceit of its allies. Washington is after Assange for more than revenge. They are teaching journalists a lesson that they are no longer allowed to hold government accountable when the government commits crimes. In other words, the criminalization of government is being institutionalized. That is what the Assange case is about. Justice along with truth is being eliminated from the Western world.

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Plimer

 

 

 

 

Bender

 

 

Cats toasters

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle February 15 2024

Feb 152024
 
 February 15, 2024  Posted by at 9:40 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  53 Responses »


Jean-Michel Basquiat Irony of the Negro Policeman 1981

 

• US Spies Behind ‘Russiagate’ Conspiracy (RT)
• Part 2: US Government Hides Documents That Incriminate Intel Community (Public)
• Biden’s Dual ‘Big Guy’, Memory Scandals Will End His Presidency (Sp.)
• Biden Must Be Removed – West Virginia AG (Sp.)
• Biden Associates Testify on the Influence Peddling of President, Family (Turley)
• Speaker Requested Meeting With Biden About Border, White House Rejected (Sp.)
• Supreme Court Orders Special Counsel To Respond To Trump Immunity Appeal (ZH)
• 2024: The Year America Ceases to Exist (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Tucker Carlson ‘Is Dangerous’ – Putin (RT)
• Old Sick Men Control US Nuclear Chain Of Command – Moscow (RT)
• The World’s Gyre (Alastair Crooke)
• Russia and Hamas: a Strategic Alliance Of Convenience (Sweidan)
• Houthis Claim to Have Stopped Ship Traffic to Israeli Ports (Sp.)
• ‘No One Left to Have Children’ (Sp.)
• West Used Ukraine as ‘Guinea Pig for Human Testing’ After 2014 Coup (Sp.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ron Paul

 

 

 

 

Dugin Pepe
https://twitter.com/i/status/1757773972618223949

 

 

Rickards gold

 

 


Kim Dotcom: Zelenskyy released a helpful guide on who to follow if you want to learn the truth about the failing US proxy war in Ukraine. He calls it pro-Russian disinformation but he’s just angry that these experts constantly reveal the truth about how badly Ukraine and the West are losing.

 

 

Elon

 

 

 

 

This is an existential threat to the US. If this cannot be solved according to the law(s), the Union will dissolve.

Start with Obama, he is behind it all. But he hardly gets mentioned.

• US Spies Behind ‘Russiagate’ Conspiracy (RT)

The US intelligence community inappropriately used foreign allies to target Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign to set up the ‘Russiagate’ conspiracy ahead of the 2016 election, according to a trio of investigative journalists. Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi and Alex Gutentag – of ‘Twitter Files’ fame – published the first part of an investigation on Tuesday, in which they claim the so-called ‘Five Eyes’ were operationalized against Trump staffers, citing anonymous sources close to the House Intelligence Committee. According to their report, President Barack Obama’s CIA Director, John Brennan, had sent America’s partners – the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand – a list of 26 Trump associates to target with data collection, misinformation and manipulation. The Russiagate conspiracy involved multiple failures across western media networks to critically assess US intelligence claims that Russia had interfered in the 2016 US presidential election.

A 2018 Pulitzer prize was awarded to Washington Post and New York Times journalists for their reporting on what was later to exposed as a false story. “They were making contacts and bumping Trump people going back to March 2016,” said a committee source. “They were sending people around the UK, Australia, Italy — the Mossad in Italy. MI6 was working at an intelligence school they had set up,” the journalists claim. Officially, the FBI only started looking into the Trump campaign that summer, after an Australian diplomat reportedly overheard an aide mention Russia. If confirmed, these findings would demonstrate that the US intelligence community had worked for months before that to set up just such a pretext. In a statement to the investigative journalists, the FBI said it had made “missteps” in the 2016 and 2017 investigation of the Trump campaign, but has since implemented reforms to prevent it from happening again.

“The allegations that GCHQ was asked to conduct ‘wiretapping’ against the then president-elect are nonsense,” a spokesman for the British surveillance agency said. “They are utterly ridiculous and should be ignored.” Shellenberger, Taibbi and Gutentag said they had never asked the GCHQ about “wiretapping.” According to Shellenberger, there is a “10-inch binder” containing previously unknown documents about the intelligence community’s surveillance of the Trump campaign. The 45th US president had ordered these documents declassified, but they went missing instead. In a Fox News appearance on Tuesday evening, Shellenberger suggested the FBI’s August 2022 raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort may have been related to the missing binder.

After the US intelligence community created a pretext for investigating Trump for ‘ties to Russia,’ they spied on his campaign – and then his presidency – using a falsely obtained FISA warrant. The warrant was based on the ‘Steele dossier,’ a file compiled by a British spy in the pay of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, through several intermediaries. The FBI knew the dossier was false as early as January 2017, but continued using the FISA warrant for almost a year thereafter. The FBI lawyer who altered evidence to obtain the warrant, Kevin Clinesmith, ended up sentenced to probation and his law license has since been restored.

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“He was very concerned about having it and taking it with him because it was the road map” of Russiagate..”

• Part 2: US Government Hides Documents That Incriminate Intel Community (Public)

Part 2: U.S. Government Is Hiding Documents That Incriminate Intelligence Community For Illegal Spying And Election Interference, Say Sources. Authored by Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag via Public substack,

Former CIA Director Gina Haspel blocked the release of “binder” with evidence that may identify her role in the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.

Last December 15th, as Americans decorated trees, lit Menorahs, and prepared to tune out for winter holidays, CNN ran an extraordinary article titled, “The mystery of the missing binder: How a collection of raw Russian intelligence disappeared under Trump.” Co-authored by Natasha Bertrand, the gargantuan expose claimed a mysterious “binder” of “highly classified information related to Russian election interference” went “missing” in the chaotic waning days of Donald Trump’s presidency in January 2021, raising concerns that some of America’s most “closely guarded national security secrets… could be exposed.” CNN and its intelligence sources meant “exposure” in a bad way. Sources have told Public and Racket, however, that the secrets officials worry might be “exposed” are ones that would implicate them in widespread abuses of intelligence authority dating back to the 2015-2016 election season.

“I would call [the binder] Trump’s insurance policy,” said someone knowledgeable about the case. “He was very concerned about having it and taking it with him because it was the road map” of Russiagate. Transgressions range from Justice Department surveillance of domestic political targets without probable cause to the improper unmasking of a pre-election conversation between a Trump official and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to WMD-style manipulation of intelligence for public reports on alleged Russian “influence activities.” The CNN report claimed intelligence officials were concerned about the disclosure of “sources and methods that informed the U.S. government’s assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to help Trump win the 2016 election.” They should be concerned.

The story of how a team “hand-picked” by CIA Director John Brennan relied on “cooked intelligence” to craft that January 6th, 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment is the subject of tomorrow’s story, the last in this three-part series. Corruption, not tradecraft, is what officials are desperate to keep secret. The ”missing binder” story has several variants. Sources offer differing answers on the question of whether anything of consequence is missing. They give mixed accounts of Trump’s frantic last efforts to declassify Russia-related material. But nearly everyone Public and Racket spoke to agreed that the tale obscured a broader and more important story. Dating back to the release of the so-called “Nunes memo” in 2018 exposing the corruption of the FISA application process, senior intelligence officials, including Trump’s CIA Director, Gina Haspel, have repeatedly blocked attempts to declassify information about the Trump-Russia investigation.

They had good reason to obstruct the release of these documents. The documents in question are said to contain information about the legal justification for those investigations, or more specifically, the lack of justification, among other things. Should more of that information be made public, it might implicate a long list of officials in serious abuses. Questions like these may be answered if the 10-inch thick binder of sensitive documents about the origins of the Russia probe is made public. Fear for reputations and careers, not national security, is what has intelligence officials panicked. [..] Investigators wanted to declassify their findings before Trump left office, but the CIA “would not cooperate.” Investigators, a source told Public and Racket, “created a binder that blew up the assessment but couldn’t get it out because the CIA controlled it.”

Gorka

Obama

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“It’s election interference from one side that has been covered up and promoted as some kind of search for justice,” Kavanaugh asserted. “Now you have that side actually trying to prevent the same candidate […] from running again, and they get away with it.”

• Biden’s Dual ‘Big Guy’, Memory Scandals Will End His Presidency (Sp.)

On Tuesday, Hunter Biden’s ex-business associate Tony Bobulinski testified to Congress that US President Joe Biden is “the Big Guy” who was mentioned in an email that discussed “remuneration packages” for six people as part of a business deal with a Chinese energy company. The email included a line that said “10 held by H for the big guy?” According to US media, citing people familiar with the testimony, Bobulinski also said that he “personally met” Joe Biden in 2017 during the Milken Conference, just days before the email was sent. It has long been suspected that President Biden was “the big guy” referred to in the email, but Bobulinski’s testimony adds further evidence to back up that presumption. The elder Biden has repeatedly insisted that he did not discuss business with his son or his associates.

“It’s hard to fathom who the big guy could be but Joe Biden. So we’ve known about this,” independent journalist Dr. Jim Kavanaugh told Sputnik’s The Critical Hour on Wednesday. “[Bobulinski] confirms that the big guy is Biden, which means […] [Joe] Biden was getting paid from his son’s activities with [these Chinese businesses].” This, combined with the President’s cognitive problems that have become “impossible to deny” will cause him to step aside before this November’s Presidential elections. “He’s not going to be the Democratic nominee,” Kavanaugh asserted, adding that the only question left is “How much longer is he going to last as president?” Kavanaugh noted that Bobulinski’s testimony validates the IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, who claimed that politics caused the FBI to slowwalk the investigation into Hunter Biden. “It’s a mess,” he said. “But I don’t know where the Democrats think they can go with this, and how they think they can hang on.”

The election season with Biden will be a “fun ride” Kavanaugh said “trying to keep Biden out of the public spotlight enough so he won’t make a fool of himself, but in the public spotlight enough to make it seem like he’s still running the show,” adding that all the while Democratic leadership will be “trying to figure out what they’re going to go and with whom they’re going to replace him with.” Kavanaugh also discussed reports from independent journalists Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger that the CIA allegedly used foreign intelligence agencies to illegally spy on people working for the Donald Trump 2016 Presidential campaign. “It’s election interference from one side that has been covered up and promoted as some kind of search for justice,” Kavanaugh asserted. “Now you have that side actually trying to prevent the same candidate […] from running again, and they get away with it.”

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“..A recent poll by NBC revealed that only 28% of registered voters have a positive opinion of Harris..”

• Biden Must Be Removed – West Virginia AG (Sp.)

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey has called on US Vice President Kamala Harris to declare Joe Biden physically unable to perform his duties as president. The demand was issued in a letter sent to Harris on Tuesday. Last week, a report by US Department of Justice special counsel Robert Hur described the 81-year-old president as an “elderly man with poor memory,” although he advised against prosecuting Biden over the mishandling of classified documents. Morrisey has now called on Harris to invoke the 25th Amendment against Biden and take over his role, arguing that Hur’s report “paints a clear picture of a President who is not up for the job” and stressing that his “cognitive decline is of great concern to Americans, especially during these times that our nation is falling crisis after crisis both here and abroad.”

“We need a president who is mentally fit,” the attorney general wrote, noting that over the past few months alone, Biden has repeatedly mixed up world leaders and political figures and has appeared to have difficulty speaking on basic issues. The 25th Amendment, adopted in 1965 following the assassination of President John. F. Kennedy, clarifies the succession in the event of the US leader’s sudden death or resignation, and allows the vice president to assume their responsibilities. Under Section 4 of the amendment, the vice president and the cabinet are also allowed to remove the president if he is deemed physically incapable of performing his duties but refuses to leave office. That power has thus far never been used.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal published on Monday, Harris stated she is “ready to serve” and replace Biden if necessary, adding that she does not need to convince anyone of her ability to lead the country. A recent poll by NBC revealed that only 28% of registered voters have a positive opinion of Harris, compared to 53% with a negative view. Biden has vehemently denied concerns over his mental and physical health, and issued an angry rebuke of Hur’s description of him. “I am an elderly man and I know what I am doing,” Biden insisted at a press conference last week. Shortly afterwards during the same conference, he confused Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi with the leader of Mexico. The president’s age has become a major concern among voters ahead of this year’s presidential election. According to ABC News/Ipsos poll published on Monday, as many as 86% of US voters believe that Biden is too elderly to serve another term in office.

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“Neither Hunter nor James Biden have demonstrated any particular skill beyond an absence of inhibition and an abundance of appetite. What they have is “an interesting name,” and in Washington, that is enough.”

• Biden Associates Testify on the Influence Peddling of President, Family (Turley)

“An interesting name.” Those three words by Biden family associate Rob Walker could well be the epitaph for Hunter Biden and his uncle James Biden. Walker was explaining why Hunter was repeatedly pushed forward as the face of their pitches to the Chinese and other countries. In his interview with House investigators, Walker struggled to protect President Biden while confirming critical aspects of earlier testimony from associates such as Devon Archer that they were selling the “Biden brand.” That brand included Uncle James Biden, whom Walker described as “a snake.” Walker and his associates had a letter to the Chinese come from Hunter because that is what he thought the Chinese expected. He admitted that the Chinese were led to believe that they all worked for Hunter Biden. After all, he “had an interesting last name that would probably get people in the door.”

That “interesting name” is how a Beltway bandit avoids saying “influence peddler.” You are peddling the name — an effort that is reinforced when you repeatedly produce Joe Biden on speakerphone or he drops by lunches. It’s also the same name dropped when Hunter wanted to make sure the Chinese paid up, as revealed in the infamous WhatsApp message: “I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight. And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.”

Yet whenever questions turned to the most incriminating messages, Walker shrugged. When asked about a reference to “the big guy” receiving 10% of a deal (an apparent reference to Joe Biden), Walker declined to say who the big guy was. When he was asked about Hunter’s repeated references to his father and calling his father “my chairman,” Walker insisted that “I don’t think that Hunter was healthy at the time.” Likewise, when Hunter says his father “vetoed the deal” on a proposed SinoHawk deal structure, Walker again said Hunter was not well. So Hunter was a legitimate businessman “with an interesting name” all the way up to the point that he made admissions on alleged influence peddling. He was then interesting but unhealthy.

Walker repeatedly emphasized that Joe Biden was not a direct part of these deals. While that is a political defense, however, it is not a legal one. As I have previously written, federal courts have long treated payments to family members as evidence of bribery and corruption. Indeed, I was lead counsel in the last judicial impeachment trial in the Senate, when Democratic senators voted to convict a judge on payments and gifts going to the children of a judge. Neither Hunter nor James Biden have demonstrated any particular skill beyond an absence of inhibition and an abundance of appetite. What they have is “an interesting name,” and in Washington, that is enough.

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“.. Johnson said he will continue to insist on a meeting, adding that it is a “problem” if the Speaker of the House cannot sit down with the president.”

• Speaker Requested Meeting With Biden About Border, White House Rejected (Sp.)

US House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Wednesday that he has requested a meeting with President Joe Biden about border security, but that the White House has rejected his request. “I’ve been requesting a meeting with the president for weeks now, a month. I’ve been asking to sit down with the president to talk about the border and talk about national security, and that meeting has not been granted,” Johnson said during a press conference. Johnson said he will continue to insist on a meeting, adding that it is a “problem” if the Speaker of the House cannot sit down with the president.

House Republicans will insist on addressing the United States’ border security before sending aid to foreign countries, Johnson said. Earlier this week, Johnson said that he has no plans to bring a $95 billion supplemental funding bill passed by the US Senate to the House floor. The bill provides approximately $60 billion for Ukraine and $14 billion for Israel. However, a congressional source told Sputnik on Tuesday that House lawmakers may divide the legislation into separate portions in an effort to pass the measures.

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“..in 1982, the Supreme Court held in Nixon vs. Fitzgerald that the president has “absolute immunity” from civil liability which extends to the “outer perimeter” of his official duties..”

• Supreme Court Orders Special Counsel To Respond To Trump Immunity Appeal (ZH)

US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has ordered the Department of Justice to respond to former President Trump’s claim that he has presidential immunity in his ongoing Jan. 6 election case in Washington D.C. The move comes after the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit rejected Trump’s attempt to overturn Judge Tanya Chutkan’s refusal to dismiss the case based on Trump’s immunity claim – and less than a week after the Supreme Court heard Trump’s appeal to the Colorado Supreme Court, which ruled that he was disqualified from appearing on the state’s ballot. Roberts gave Special Counsel Jack Smith until Feb. 20 to respond, pointing to a broader urgency for the Court to address relatively untested legal issues that could have a significant impact on the 2024 presidential election.

“[A] panel of the D.C. Circuit has, in an extraordinarily fast manner, issued a decision on President Trump’s claim of immunity and ordered the mandate returned to the district court to proceed with President Trump’s criminal trial in four business days, unless this Court intervenes (as it should),” reads Trump’s Feb. 12 filing, requesting that the appellate court’s decision be stayed. Jack Smith, meanwhile, has asked the Supreme Court to skip appellate proceedings and fast-track the case, claiming that “only” the Supreme Court could “definitively resolve” the immunity claims, The Epoch Times reports. President Trump is asking for the Supreme Court to halt the appellate decision because it incorrectly ruled that presidential immunity didn’t apply to Mr. Smith’s prosecution of him.

His attorney, D. John Sauer, had argued in January that the Constitution required presidents first face impeachment and trial by Congress before they could be criminally prosecuted within Article III courts. A three-judge panel on the D.C. Circuit unanimously rejected his arguments, stating that” ‘[c]oncerns of public policy, especially as illuminated by our history and the structure of our government’ compel the rejection of his claim of immunity in this case.” The judges also ruled that “any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as President no longer protects him against this prosecution.”

The issue of presidential immunity is a relatively untested area of law – however in 1982, the Supreme Court held in Nixon vs. Fitzgerald that the president has “absolute immunity” from civil liability which extends to the “outer perimeter” of his official duties. The appellate court, however, held that Trump exceeded these bounds. “Former President Trump’s claimed immunity would have us extend the framework for Presidential civil immunity to criminal cases and decide for the first time that a former President is categorically immune from federal criminal prosecution for any act conceivably within the outer perimeter of his executive responsibility,” reads the lower court’s opinion.

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“..a border conflict and possible “civil war” threat that justifies martial law and the suspension of the presidential election..”

• 2024: The Year America Ceases to Exist (Paul Craig Roberts)

In 234 years of American history, no president has been criminally prosecuted. The entire world knows that the felony and civil charges against Trump are fabricated and concocted. It is obvious that the Democrat Party uses law as a weapon against political opponents just as Stalin did. Democrats are the worst and most dangerous enemy the Constitution and American citizens have ever had. The Democrats , focused on maintaining and expanding their one-party state, have a problem. Biden’s own Justice (sic) Department has ruled Biden mentally unfit to stand trial for compromising US security by having possession of unauthorized national security documents and leaving US national security documents in unsecured locations. So how can Biden be allowed to run for president if he is mentally incompetent to stand for trial for a felony because of mental incapacity?

As I have written on this website and said in interviews, one way out for the Democrats, America’s worst enemies who are legitimizing sexual perversion, maintaining open borders so Americans can be over-run with taxpayer supported immigrant-invaders, and maintaining hostility toward Russia, China, and Iran, thus inviting America’s destruction, is to replace Biden with Hillary. The other way, and perhaps both will be used together, is for the White House puppet of the ruling elite to orchestrate with the World Economic Forum member, the Governor of Texas, a border conflict and possible “civil war” threat that justifies martial law and the suspension of the presidential election. It doesn’t take much intelligence to see that both outcomes are already being set in place. Everywhere in the white Western world we see that the white governments discriminate against white citizens in favor of the Ukrainian refugees and third world immigrant invaders.

I learned today that the living standard in Ireland of the Ukrainian refugees and immigrant-invaders, paid for by the Irish people is higher than the average living standard of Irish citizens. Irish farmers are faced with a wipeout of their assets as the government intends to destroy one million sheep and 200,000 cows to please the global warming agenda. Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians is not the only genocide being committed today. The white governments of the Western countries are committing genocide against their own white citizens. The United States, Europe, Canada have open borders not for white people but for people of color who are outside the Western tradition. Try bringing in a European girlfriend, and you will see that immigration is not for white people. Every Western government is busy at work erasing white civilization. These governments are our deadly enemies. But the indoctrinated populace will never see it.

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“While the US has tried to accuse Assange of revealing state secrets, which is more difficult to pin on Carlson, “anything is possible in today’s US, Putin said..”

• Tucker Carlson ‘Is Dangerous’ – Putin (RT)

Russian President Vladimir Putin admitted on Wednesday that X host Tucker Carlson caught him by surprise during their interview last week. The final interview was two hours long and has been seen by hundreds of millions of people. Before it, Carlson was criticized for speaking to Putin at all – and afterwards, for not asking the Russian president certain things. “I think your Carlson – I say yours, since he’s a member of your profession – is a dangerous man,” Putin told journalist Pavel Zarubin on the sidelines of the Future Technologies Forum in Moscow. “I thought he would be aggressive, ask me sharp questions. I was not just ready for that, I wanted that, so I could give equally sharp answers,” Putin explained. “But he chose a different tactic.” Carlson ended up patiently sitting through Putin’s lengthy digression into history and “did not give me an occasion to do something I had prepared for,” Putin said.

“Frankly speaking, I did not get the full satisfaction from this interview.” Commenting on reactions to the interview from the West, Putin said it was a good thing that the leaders there watched and listened to what he had to say – but bad that they felt the need to twist his words. Asked if Carlson could face reprisals in the West, the Russian president pointed out that WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange “still sits” in a British prison. While the US has tried to accuse Assange of revealing state secrets, which is more difficult to pin on Carlson, “anything is possible in today’s US,” Putin said. While this kind of persecution would certainly be a bad thing for Carlson himself, it would be good for the world, because it would reveal the true face of the “liberal-democratic dictatorship” embodied by the ruling class in the US, the president concluded.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1758007262139048402

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“..diminished faculties in advancing age.”

• Old Sick Men Control US Nuclear Chain Of Command – Moscow (RT)

A high-ranking official in Russia’s Security Council has voiced alarm over the risk of a nuclear “catastrophe” arising from the Pentagon chief’s health problems and the declining faculties of US President Joe Biden, warning of a possible “management mistake” by America’s leadership. Speaking to the Izvestiya newspaper for an interview published on Wednesday, Russian Security Council Deputy Secretary Mikhail Popov said Washington’s political instability could trigger an accidental escalation. ”In the overall difficult and nervous internal political situation in the US that has emerged recently, the price of a management mistake, committed by the national leaders, either deliberately or involuntarily, has increased significantly,” he said. “And there won’t be much distance to a global catastrophe.”

Popov stressed that he was not referring to “a banana republic,” but rather “a state that has nuclear weapons and constantly claims to be the world hegemon.” He added that US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s cancer diagnosis and Biden’s old age “have raised questions about the global security system” and the US chain of command, asking “How is the decision to use nuclear weapons generally made in the United States?” “The secretary of defense is not there, and no one knows where he is or who is replacing him. The press writes that some of his responsibilities were assigned to Deputy Minister Kathleen Hicks. But she was on vacation in Puerto Rico at the time,” he said. The official went on to observe an episode during the Cold War, when a US Air Force major was dismissed for questioning how he could know whether a nuclear launch order “came from a sane president,” as the commander in chief is responsible for employing America’s nuclear arsenal.

Austin’s prostate cancer diagnosis came as a surprise not only to the US public, but to Biden himself, with the Pentagon chief acknowledging that his team did not inform the White House of the news. He has since been re-hospitalized with a bladder issue, for which he was reportedly treated with undisclosed “non-surgical procedures.” As the oldest president in US history at 81, Biden’s fitness is among the most pressing issues for American voters as they look ahead to the 2024 election. In a recent NBC News poll, 76% of respondents voiced major or moderate concerns over the president’s “mental and physical health,” while even special counsel Robert Hur – who was tapped to probe alleged mishandling of classified documents by Biden – concluded that the president has “diminished faculties in advancing age.”

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“..How to maintain special rights for Jews on territory in which there is an approximately equal number of non-Jews?”

• The World’s Gyre (Alastair Crooke)

The wrongheadedness of U.S. policy is astonishing – and now has claimed the most central tenet in the ‘Biden strategy’ for resolving the crisis in Gaza. The ‘dangle’ of Saudi normalisation with Israel was viewed in the West as the pivot – around which Netanyahu would either be forced to give up on his maximalist security control from the River to the Sea mantra, or see himself pushed aside by a rival for whom the ‘normalisation bait’ held the allure of likely victory in the next Israeli elections. Biden’s spokesperson was flagrant in this respect: “[We] … are having discussions with Israel and Saudi Arabia … about trying to move forward with a normalization arrangement between Israel and Saudi Arabia. So those discussions are ongoing as well. We certainly received positive feedback from both sides that they’re willing to continue to have those discussions”.

The Saudi Government – possibly angry at the U.S. recourse to such deceptive language – duly kicked the plank out from beneath the Biden platform: It issued a written statement confirming unequivocally that: “there will be no diplomatic relations with Israel unless an independent Palestinian state is recognized on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and that the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip stops – and all Israeli occupation forces are withdraw from the Gaza Strip”. The Kingdom stands by the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, in other words. Of course, no Israeli could campaign on that platform in Israeli elections! Recall how Tom Friedman set out how the ‘Biden Doctrine’ was supposed to fit together as a interlinked whole: First, through taking a “strong and resolute stand on Iran” the U.S. would signal to “our Arab and Muslim allies, that it needs to take on Iran in a more aggressive manner … that we can no longer allow Iran to try to drive us out of the region; Israel into extinction and our Arab allies into intimidation by acting through proxies — Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Shiite militias in Iraq — while Tehran blithely sits back and pays no price”.

The second strand was the Saudi dangle that would inevitably pave the path into the (third) element which was the “building of a credible legitimate Palestinian Authority as … a good neighbour to Israel …”. This “bold U.S. commitment to a Palestinian state would give us [Team Biden] legitimacy to act against Iran”, Friedman foresaw. Let us be plain: this trifecta of policies, rather than gel into a single doctrine, are falling like dominoes. Their collapse owes to one thing: The original decision to back Israel’s use of overwhelming violence across Gaza’s civil society – ostensibly to defeat Hamas. It has turned the region and much of the World against the U.S. and Europe. How did this happen? Because nothing changed by way of U.S. policies. It was the same old western bromides from decades ago: financial threats, bombing and violence. And the insistence on one mandatory ‘stand with Israel’ narrative (with no discussion). The rest of the world has grown tired of it; even defiant towards it.

So to put it bluntly: Israel has now come face-to-face with the (self-destructive) inconsistency within Zionism: How to maintain special rights for Jews on territory in which there is an approximately equal number of non-Jews? The old answer has been discredited. The Israeli Right argues that Israel then must go for broke: All or nothing. Take the risk of wider war (in which Israel, may or may not, be ‘victorious’); tell Arabs to move elsewhere; or abandon Zionism and themselves move on. The Biden Administration, rather than help Israel look truth in the eye, has discarded the task of obliging Israel to face up to the contradictions in Zionism, in favour of restoring the broken status quo ante. Some 75 years after the founding of the Israeli state, as former Israeli negotiator, Daniel Levy, has. noted: ‘[We are back to] “the “banal debate” between the U.S. and Israel over “whether the bantustan shall be repackaged and marketed as a ‘state’”. Could it have been different? Probably not. The reaction comes from deep in Biden’s nature.

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“The Russian leadership considers the current conflict to be as much Washington’s battle as Tel Aviv’s..”

• Russia and Hamas: a Strategic Alliance Of Convenience (Sweidan)

Hamas has asked Moscow to act as guarantor to a Gaza ceasefire. Growing Russian ties with West Asia’s resistance actors should be no surprise; within the context of the global power standoff, they share common enemies. In the past few years, Russia’s expanding ties with the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas have contributed to the growing list of issues that muddy relations between Moscow and Tel Aviv. After Hamas’ 27 October visit to Moscow following the Al-Aqsa Flood operation, Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared the trip “sends a message of legitimizing terrorism against the Israelis.” Yet Hamas officials have continued to flock to the Russian capital, most recently in late January. Since the onset of Israel’s brutal military assault on Gaza, Russia’s official stance has been closer to the Palestinian position, evident by Moscow’s various UN Security Council activities: calling for a ceasefire, statements by Russian officials criticizing Israeli criminality, repeat meetings with Hamas in Moscow, and the country’s official media’s focus on human rights violation in the Gaza Strip.

Despite the long-term collaborative nature of Russo-Israeli relations, the Ukraine war has rejigged Moscow’s geopolitical calculations significantly. Today, Russia views the Gaza war and its regional implications from the perspective of its competition with the US and, therefore, considers Israel a critical tool of American influence in West Asia. The Russian leadership considers the current conflict to be as much Washington’s battle as Tel Aviv’s – a weakened Israel would mean the further disintegration of US power projection from the Levant to the Persian Gulf, a strategic Russian objective. Although Tel Aviv and Moscow still retain common interests of value to both, it is the US–Russian strategic competition that currently holds the most sway over the Kremlin’s decision-making.

This can be seen in a flurry of harshly worded Russian statements criticizing Washington’s role in prolonging and exacerbating the Gaza war. Russian President Vladimir Putin voiced the sentiments of most West Asians when he declared: “Many people would agree that this is a vivid example of the failure of US policy in the Middle East.” His Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov went the extra mile: The United States bears primary responsibility for this dramatic and dangerous crisis, since it has sought for many years to monopolize the settlement process and ignore relevant Security Council resolutions, and has now obstructed efforts to reach an appropriate solution.

There is no doubt that the events of the past two years in Ukraine played a major role in calibrating the Russian response to Gaza. During his recent interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson, Putin spent an inordinate amount of time unraveling the historical context behind Ukraine’s existence as a state, before boldly declaring: “Ukraine is an artificial state created at Stalin’s will and did not exist before 1922.” Of course, the Russian president understands that his invocation of Ukraine’s weak historical justification for statehood allows him to adopt the same context-rich approach when discussing protracted conflicts in other regions. His history-based formula for tackling the root of conflict applies equally to the establishment of the Israeli state against the objections of Palestinians and their neighboring nations, which likely will play a role in Putin’s position on how to move forward with the Palestine–Israel problem.

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“It is a great victory and a real achievement, as well as proof of the effectiveness of Yemen’s maritime operations..”

• Houthis Claim to Have Stopped Ship Traffic to Israeli Ports (Sp.)

Naval forces of the Ansar Allah movement, also known as the Houthis, have prevented the passage through the Gulf of Aden of all ships that have been heading to Israeli ports recently, the movement’s leader Abdul Malik al-Houthi said on Tuesday. “Operations of Yemen’s naval forces have resulted in a great victory – a complete halt to the passage of Israeli-affiliated ships to Israeli ports. During these weeks, not a single ship related to the Israeli enemy has been able to pass through the Gulf of Aden. It is a great victory and a real achievement, as well as proof of the effectiveness of Yemen’s maritime operations,” the leader said in a video message aired by the Al-Masirah broadcaster.

The Houthi movement, which controls large parts of northern and western Yemen, vowed in November 2023 to attack any ships associated with Israel until it halts military actions in the Gaza Strip. This led US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin to announce the creation of a multinational operation to secure navigation in the Red Sea. US and UK forces later launched major strikes against Houthi positions in a bid to degrade the rebels’ ability to target commercial vessels.

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“Syrsky […] is stripping troops from every other front, pulling the very last strategic reserves from the country..”

• ‘No One Left to Have Children’ (Sp.)

Ukraine cannot afford to lose more young people to the frontlines, otherwise, there won’t be enough to have children and replenish the population, international relations and security analyst Mark Sleboda told Sputnik’s Fault Lines on Tuesday. While discussing the state of the Ukrainian frontline and the mass conscription law being considered by the country’s Parliament, Sleboda explained that Ukraine already had a declining population before NATO’s proxy war launched in the country. “Once you got into the ’90s and particularly the mid-’90s, people were not having children. The result of that is a demographic narrowing at the lower age group,” Sleboda explained. “There are four times as many people in the 35 to 45 age bracket, [and more in] the 45 to 55 age bracket, than in the 18 to 30 age bracket,” the analyst clarified.

There are roughly 3.5 times more Ukrainians in the 35-55 age groups combined than the 18-30 age group and 2.3 times more in the 35-45 group alone, according to the CIA data. Additionally, the number of 18 and 19-year-olds were estimated as 2/5 of the 15-19 group in that calculation. “[Ukraine] can literally not afford to lose any more young people because then there will be no one left to have children,” Sleboda stated. “And I hate to tell you, large numbers of their women went to Europe and are going to have European babies and are not coming back,” he noted, adding that it was “a bit distasteful” but “true.”

Nonetheless, Ukraine has to go forward with the mass conscription plan if it wants to replace its massive losses, particularly in Avdeyevka, according to the analyst. “However bad you think [Avdeyevka] is, it’s much worse,” Sleboda emphasized, saying that newly-appointed Ukrainian Commander-in-Chief Alexander Syrsky is repeating Ukraine’s failed strategy in Artemovsk (Bakhmut) and is doubling down on the increasingly encircled city. “Syrsky […] is stripping troops from every other front, pulling the very last strategic reserves from the country […] and is sending them into Avdeyevka, which means it’s not just about keeping the troops that are there, it is about throwing, at least I would say 10,000, reinforcements into the situation.

Sleboda noted that even without the latest conscription law being adopted, Ukraine is already forcing men to the front, focusing on the villages in Western Ukraine. “The conscription has focused on small villages rather than Kiev and other big cities to try to limit the potential for political protests,” he explained. “That is why you’re starting to see videos now of locals, even in West Ukraine, trying to fight in the streets [against] the conscription officials.” Earlier this week, videos appeared on Telegram showing villagers in a town in the Odessa region fighting against conscription officers.

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Biolabs.

• West Used Ukraine as ‘Guinea Pig for Human Testing’ After 2014 Coup (Sp.)

Sputnik has obtained a trove of documents indicating that rheumatological drugs had been allegedly tested for several years on psychiatric patients of a hospital in the city of Mariupol at the request of major Western pharmaceutical corporations and with the assistance of Ukrainian officials. The documents contain information pertaining to such companies as Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Celltrion, Novatris International AG, Merck KGaA, and a branch of Samsung that produces medical equipment. The tests were carried out while the Kiev regime held Mariupol until May 2022, when Russia took over the city. Patients of the Mariupol hospital’s psychiatric ward were most likely used as vulnerable “guinea pigs” in experiments that would not have been permitted in the countries where these pharmaceutical firms are located, William Jones, a former White House correspondent for Executive Intelligence Review and a non-resident fellow of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China, told Sputnik.

“It has generally been a practice to use some of the developing countries which don’t have such rigorous controls for these types of experiments,” Jones noted, hinting at Ukraine. After the 2014 Maidan coup in Kiev, the country “effectively became a ‘guinea pig’ for whatever experiments the forces of the Western elites had in store for them, as we see most dramatically in the way in which the ‘nation’ of Ukraine is being whittled down to nothing for the sake of NATO’s surrogate war against Russia,” according to the expert. He also touched upon the issue of “the extensive network of biological labs that have been set up in Ukraine over the twenty years, largely with the help, and no doubt at the behest, of the United States,” something that Jones recalled had repeatedly been pointed out by Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, the head of the biological and chemical warfare department of the Russian Defense Ministry.

“Given the present situation in Ukraine with the growing understanding that Ukraine – or NATO – cannot ‘win’ this conflict using conventional weapons, as well as the determination of NATO not to accept a peaceful resolution unless Russia is soundly defeated, it could well lead to the utilization of some form of biological warfare on the part of NATO to ‘even the playing field’,” Jones warned. In the spring of 2022, Russia’s Radiological, Chemical, and Biological Defense Troops brought to light the alarming scope of US military-biological activities taking place at numerous locations in Ukraine. These investigations revealed the collaboration between Washington and Kiev in researching and handling various highly dangerous pathogens. Subsequently, several of these findings have been independently corroborated.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Assange

 

 

Hero

 

 

Sledding
https://twitter.com/i/status/1757732842862211297

 

 

Dragonfly

 

 

Boop
https://twitter.com/i/status/1757800859466191280

 

 

Bird spikes

 

 

Monkey parrot

 

 

Live action Simpsons

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle February 13 2024

Feb 132024
 
 February 13, 2024  Posted by at 9:45 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  79 Responses »


Giorgione The Tempest1508

 

• I Am Ready To Lead America – Kamala Harris (RT)
• What is the Democrats’ Playbook? (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Too Old For The Court, But Not For The White House (Tony Cox)
• Over 80% of US Citizens Deem Biden Too Old for Another Presidential Term (Sp.)
• ‘Ground is Shifting Under Biden’s Feet’ After Hur Report (Sp.)
• Trump Asks Supreme Court To Intervene In Immunity Appeal (ZH)
• Ukraine Aid Bill Is A Trump Impeachment ‘Time Bomb’ – US Senator (RT)
• Western Diplomacy ‘Primitive’ – Moscow (RT)
• Tucker Carlson Reviews Putin Interview And Reveals What ‘Radicalized’ Him (RT)
• Putin Wants To End Ukraine Conflict – Tucker Carlson (RT)
• Putin and Trump Seen as ‘Threat’ by Davos Globalists (Sp.)
• “Vladimir Putin Will Not Lose This War” (ZH)
• Fani Willis Could Be Disqualified, Judge Says (ET)
• Israel’s Ever-widening War (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Descent into Madness: Dostoevsky and the End of the West (Boyd)
• The Crisis at The New York Times (Patrick Lawrence)

 

 

 

 

KJP

 

 

 

 

Campaign ad wars
https://twitter.com/i/status/1756754032108900694

 

 

Musk

 

 

 

 

Ritter Larry

 

 

 

 

Bring it on!

• I Am Ready To Lead America – Kamala Harris (RT)

Vice President Kamala Harris is ready to replace President Joe Biden if necessary, she told the Wall Street Journal, amid growing concerns about his advanced age and apparent memory problems. The remarks by Harris were first reported by the WSJ on Monday, a week after the VP had made them to the daily during a flight on Air Force Two. Harris was asked whether concerns over Biden’s memory meant she must convince the public she was ready to serve. “I am ready to serve. There’s no question about that,” Harris stated boldly, brushing off the suggestion she actually needs to convince voters of anything. Anyone who sees her doing her job, “walks away fully aware of my capacity to lead,” she claimed.

Despite showing confidence about her leadership skills, Harris might still need to convince some voters, given her plummeting approval ratings. According to a fresh poll by NBC, the VP’s rating reached a new low, with a combined 53% of registered voters viewing her negatively. A vast majority of those holding such an opinion of her – some 42% of all the respondents interviewed during the poll – said they were actually “very negative” about the VP. At the same time, only a combined 28% of them held a positive view of Harris.

The remarks by Harris, despite being publicized only now, came ahead of a bombshell report compiled by US special counsel Robert Hur on Biden’s handling of classified documents, which only reinforced concerns over the president’s health. The Hur report described Biden as an “elderly man with a poor memory” and noted that the president had exhibited “diminished faculties” in public. The assessment prompted strong denial from the US administration, with Biden staging an extraordinary press conference to assure the public his memory was just fine and to angrily deny any suggestions to the contrary. During the event, however, the president managed to erroneously call his Egyptian counterpart Abdel Fattah el-Sisi the leader of Mexico while discussing the situation in Gaza.

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“..As Kamala is not a viable candidate, she in turn would have to be moved aside. Her resignation would follow her choice of Hillary Clinton as her vice president..”

• What is the Democrats’ Playbook? (Paul Craig Roberts)

I raised this question in a column or an interview as polls revealed declining public confidence even among Democrats that Biden was fit to serve a second term. I suggested that one possibility would be that a deal would be worked whereby Biden would be moved aside, Kamala would become President, choose Hillary as her Vice President and then resign, having been promised a cabinet or judicial appointment. This would place in the White House a candidate that Democrats and the presstitutes claim won the 2016 election before Putin allegedly stole the election for Trump by hacking Hillary’s email. Evidence that something of this sort might be in the works emerges from the way Biden’s Justice (sic) Department cleared Biden of charges of possession of classified documents more serious than those for which President Trump is being prosecuted.

Biden was vice president with no power to declassify documents. Moreover, unlike Trump’s documents, which were stored in a secured room in a house in which US Secret Agents were present, Biden’s were scattered about in various insecure locations, including in the trunk of his Corvette in a garage. Special Counsel Robert Hur cleared Biden from prosecution by finding that Biden was not mentally competent to stand trial. So how is Biden mentally competent to be President of the United States and to have the nuclear briefcase in his hands? This is the Democrats’ dilemma. If Biden is judged capable of continuing as President, Robert Hur’s report comes across as more double standards in which a Democrat president is cleared of charges while a Republican is prosecuted for the same offense. The Democrats might bank on the presstitutes obfuscating the matter, but even insouciant Americans are likely to notice.

The rest of the world will conclude that Putin was correct when he said he doubted the president was the one really in charge. As Kamala is not a viable candidate, she in turn would have to be moved aside. Her resignation would follow her choice of Hillary Clinton as her vice president. Under the 25th Amendment, when a vice president ascends to the presidency, the vacant office of vice president is filled by the president nominating a candidate, who is then confirmed by the House and Senate. As the Senate is under Democrat control, and as the House Republicans are filled with Rinos who would confirm Hillary, it is an easily done deal. Trump himself might prefer the rematch in order to demonstrate a second victory over Hillary, one that the Democrats and media whores can’t again assign to Putin. Anyhow, this is my take for now. I will stick with it unless counter-evidence emerges.

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“In a nutshell: It’s about who you are, not whether you broke the law..”

• Too Old For The Court, But Not For The White House (Tony Cox)

A US prosecutor’s report rationalizing why President Joe Biden won’t face justice for his mishandling of classified documents contained an excuse that ought to trigger some major soul-searching about the state of America’s leadership and how it got there. It won’t. Instead, in a nation where gaslighting and thick-faced contempt take the place of serious political discussion, Americans are expected to accept that Biden shouldn’t be prosecuted partly because he’s a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” If that explanation – proffered in a report released on Thursday by US Department of Justice (DOJ) special counsel Robert Hur – isn’t absurd enough, citizens are also told to accept that the same guy who’s too addled for a jury to convict him is perfectly competent to serve as president and commander-in-chief.

The whole episode says a lot about how unjust, corrupted and broken Washington has become. For starters it comes at the same time Biden’s DOJ is prosecuting his chief political rival, ex-President Donald Trump, for mishandling classified documents. For another, as in the case of former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, a prominent Democrat is being let off the hook for exposing state secrets despite investigators admitting that they found evidence of criminal conduct. This isn’t a minor violation of protocol, either. Hur found evidence that Biden “willfully retained and disclosed” classified materials from his two terms as vice president. As pictures included in Hur’s 345-page report showed, the documents were stashed in multiple locations, including cardboard boxes stacked in the garage of one of Biden’s homes. The special counsel also found that Biden’s conduct “presented serious risks to national security, given the vulnerability of sensitive information to loss or compromise to America’s adversaries.”

The mishandled documents contained information “implicating sensitive intelligence sources and methods,” including White House deliberations on the US occupation of Afghanistan. Biden’s defenders argue that his case wasn’t as bad as Trump’s because unlike Bad Orange Man, the president cooperated with investigators and surrendered his documents when they were discovered. That’s both unmitigating and untrue. Being cooperative after committing a criminal offense doesn’t make one less guilty of the crime. Moreover, Hur found a recorded conversation with the ghostwriter of Biden’s memoirs in which the former VP said he had “just found all this classified stuff downstairs.” That was in 2017, five years before one of Biden’s lawyers reported the discovery of classified materials at his think-tank office in Washington.

Incidentally, Biden’s ghostwriter deleted some of his recordings after learning of the special counsel’s investigation, but unlike the resort employees who allegedly helped hide Trump’s documents, he won’t be prosecuted. Another key difference in the cases was that Trump retained documents from his time as president and therefore had the authority to declassify such materials. Biden had no such power as vice president at the time his state secrets were retained. On the other hand, some of Trump’s charges concern alleged obstruction of justice, which could apply even if he were exonerated for keeping sensitive documents. The more preposterous wrinkle in the case is Hur’s commentary about Biden’s mental state, as well as the White House’s reaction. During interviews with investigators, the president couldn’t even remember such details as when he served as VP and roughly when his son Beau died, the special counsel said. The recorded 2017 conversations with the ghostwriter were “painfully slow, with Mr. Biden struggling to remember events and straining at times to read and relay his own notebook entries.” Biden displayed “diminished faculties and faulty memory.”

At 81, Biden is already the oldest president in US history. “Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt,” Hur said. “It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him – by then a former president well into his 80s – of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.” In a nutshell: It’s about who you are, not whether you broke the law. Never mind that crimes were probably committed, and that national security was jeopardized, Biden’s DOJ concluded. The president is so scatterbrained and demonstrably old that jurors wouldn’t feel comfortable sending him to prison. But like the FBI’s then-director, James Comey, said in sparing Clinton prosecution in 2016, a criminal indictment wouldn’t be the “appropriate” remedy for this particular wrongdoing. Biden, who has been getting away with serious misconduct since he plagiarized his work as a college student nearly 60 years ago, will face no consequences.

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“..considered by 86% of Americans too old to serve another presidential term..”

• Over 80% of US Citizens Deem Biden Too Old for Another Presidential Term (Sp.)

The incumbent 81-year-old US President, Joe Biden, is considered by 86% of Americans too old to serve another presidential term, a fresh ABC News/Ipsos poll showed. That includes 59% of the people polled who said that both Biden, 81, and the 77-year-old former US president, Donald Trump, are too old to be the head of state and 27% who said that it was exclusively Biden who is too old for the second term in the White House. As for Trump, 62% think that he is too old for the job. That includes 3% who think that only the Republican front-runner is too old. Only 11% of the respondents said neither of the presidents, Biden and Trump, was too old to go for another term. The poll was conducted from February 9-10 among 528 adult US citizens with a margin of sampling error of 4.5%. Biden is the oldest sitting US president. If he wins the election in 2024, he will be 82 when he takes office, and 86 when he completes his second term.

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“..the idea of calling on Kamala Harris to take over makes a great deal of sense because her poll ratings are abysmal..”

• ‘Ground is Shifting Under Biden’s Feet’ After Hur Report (Sp.)

Last week, special counsel Robert Hur released a bombshell report, declining to press charges against US President Joe Biden partially because his report said, the president would appear to the jury as an “elderly man with a poor memory” and therefore would have trouble convincing the jury of his intent. The report also noted that he forgot when his term as Vice President ended and started, and couldn’t remember what year his son died. Biden attempted to quell concerns about his age by calling a press conference addressing the report but proceeded to confuse Mexico and Egypt while speaking to reporters. While Democratic leaders and administration officials were quick to defend the President, the cracks have started to show. Independent journalist and author Dan Lazare told Sputnik’s The Final Countdown on Monday that the “Biden administration is in real trouble,” and that “the ground is shifting beneath Biden’s feet.”

On Monday, Vice President Kamala Harris told a US media outlet she is “ready to serve” while slamming the report as “wrong” and “politically motivated.” Earlier in the week, former First Lady and 2016 democratic nominee Hillary Clinton admitted that Biden’s age is an issue. Finally, the New York Times editorial board released its opinion that Biden “needs to do more to show the public that he is capable of holding office until age 86” when his potential second term would end. It called on him to “hold regular news conferences” and said it looks like he is hiding “or worse, being hidden.” Lazare argued that is impossible for the Biden campaign. “Biden cannot go on that kind of tour,” he said. “He can’t sit down with Hannity or go on Fox News or do anything like that because he’ll only make things worse.[…] It’ll become completely clear that he doesn’t know what’s going on around him.”

Co-host Ted Rall asked how Republicans should tread the line between criticizing the president and being sensitive to people who have experienced dementia in their own families. “They can say, ‘look, that guy’s too old, he’s senile.’ and jump up and down […] [Or] is the best tactic to basically express sympathy and say, ‘look this can happen to any of us. We have sympathy for the president and his family […] but the needs of the country come first,’ and maybe they should call for Harris to take over knowing full well [that] politically she is unpopular.” That doesn’t sound like something former US President and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump would do, Lazare said, “But I think the idea of calling on Kamala Harris to take over makes a great deal of sense because her poll ratings are abysmal.” However, co-host Angie Wong, a Republican, argued that she “would love Biden to remain on the ticket in November. That’ll be fantastic for Donald Trump and [in down-ballot races].”

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No immunity, no US president as we’ve known them. It becomes a whole new job description.

• Trump Asks Supreme Court To Intervene In Immunity Appeal (ZH)

Former President Donald Trump asked the Supreme Court on Monday to step in and weigh in on his claim of presidential immunity after the DC Circuit Court of Appeals sided with special counsel Jack Smith – ruling that Trump is not immune from prosecution. The lower court held off on issuing the mandate until Monday in order to allow Trump’s legal team time to approach the Supreme Court. Trump is specifically asking the Supreme Court to pause the lower court’s ruling until he can formally appeal, which will further delay his trial in front of District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan. The trial was originally scheduled for March 4, however Chutkan vacated the date in early February amid Trump’s immunity defense, and noted that the court would “set a new schedule if and when the mandate is returned.” Chutkan’s decision also denied Trump’s bid to toss the case in December based on the immunity claim.

“Smith sought to keep the trial on schedule in December by asking the Supreme Court to take up the question before the appeals court had a chance to consider it, but the justices rejected his request. “President Trump’s claim that Presidents have absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for their official acts presents a novel, complex, and momentous question that warrants careful consideration on appeal,” the application states. “The panel opinion below, like the district court, concludes that Presidential immunity from prosecution for official acts does not exist at all. This is a stunning breach of precedent and historical norms.” -Daily Caller

In January, Trump’s legal team presented oral arguments to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, which Trump attended. The Judge, Biden appointee Florence Pan, questioned whether presidential immunity extended to such examples as a president ordering SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival without facing criminal charges. “For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant. But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as President no longer protects him against this prosecution,” the panel wrote in its Feb. 6 ruling. “Former President Trump lacked any lawful discretionary authority to defy federal criminal law and he is answerable in court for his conduct.” In short, to be continued…

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Booby-trapping the law.

• Ukraine Aid Bill Is A Trump Impeachment ‘Time Bomb’ – US Senator (RT)

Republican Senator JD Vance has argued that a new bill proposing additional military aid for Kiev could spell another impeachment case against Donald Trump should he win reelection in November, calling the measure a “time bomb.” In a memo circulated on Monday, Vance noted that the latest Ukraine bill calls for funding which would expire “nearly a year into the possible second term of President Trump,” suggesting that Democrats could ultimately impeach him if he chose not to renew the aid. “If President Trump were to withdraw from or pause financial support for the war in Ukraine in order to bring the conflict to a peaceful conclusion… it would amount to the same fake violation of budget law from the first impeachment,” Vance wrote, adding that “Partisan Democrats would seize on the opportunity to impeach him once again.”

He went on to say that the aid bill “represents an attempt by the foreign policy blob/deep state to stop President Trump from pursuing his desired policy,” as the former president has repeatedly questioned American largesse to Ukraine throughout the conflict with Russia. Democrats voted to impeach Trump in late 2019, accusing him of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress after he threatened to withhold US aid to Ukraine during a call with his counterpart Vladimir Zelensky. Part of a larger funding package worth more than $95 billion, the bill would devote $60 billion for Kiev, as well as additional aid for Israel and US allies in Asia. It has been subject to political deadlock for months. Trump himself has slammed the legislation, recently telling an audience in South Carolina that such foreign aid should be repaid to the US government.

“They want to give, like, almost $100 billion to a few countries, $100 billion. I said, ‘Why do we do this? If you do, you give them, not $100 billion, you give it to ‘em as a loan,’” he said. Following lengthy negotiations over the new military package in Washington, a final vote to pass the Senate’s version of the bill could come as soon as this week, according to multiple reports. Trump has said on multiple occasions that he would somehow resolve the two-year-old conflict “in one day” if he were to return to the White House. His eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., suggested that “the only way” to persuade Zelensky to engage in talks with Russia was to “cut off the money” that’s being provided to Kiev by Washington.

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“Moscow’s representatives are not certain what caused this, but have simplified their messaging in response..”

• Western Diplomacy ‘Primitive’ – Moscow (RT)

Russian diplomats perceive their Western counterparts’ approach to international affairs to be “quite primitive,” Moscow’s deputy permanent representative to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, has said. Moscow’s representatives are not certain what caused this, but have simplified their messaging in response, he added. Polyansky made remarks about the quality of the Western diplomatic corps in an interview with RIA Novosti published on Monday, based on his personal experience at the UN. He expressed concern about Anglophone speakers at the forum selectively ignoring the context of particular situations for their own benefit. ”They pick an arbitrary point in time and claim nothing happened before it. They try to blame a nation for its actions regardless of prior events or the general context,” he explained.

The diplomat cited the Ukraine conflict as an example. The US and its allies have been describing Moscow’s military action against Kiev as “unprovoked” and supposedly motivated by “imperial ambitions,” and have pressured other nations to frame it in the same way. As they learn more about the conflict, however, those parties realize how much the general context and Western actions since Ukraine gained its independence matter, he added. ”This trick does not always work, but it is a trend. I don’t know if it’s some deeper trend or just something typical for some people coming from [Western] schools of diplomacy,” Polyansky said. “Having a dialogue with them is challenging because they show certain superficiality, tunnel vision, and unwillingness to seek the core causes of conflicts. No solutions can be found without [such analysis].”

The office of the Russian envoy to the UN has been simplifying its addresses due to uncertainty over how their words are understood, he said. Russian diplomats used to quote foreign and Russian classics in speeches, but are no longer using this rhetorical device as much, Polyansky said. ”Times dictate things. Our partners may now be less well-read individuals, so occasionally we want to speak in plainer terms to make sure our signal comes through,” he explained.

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“..Hillary Clinton calling him a “useful idiot” for Russia, Carlson laughed it off. “She’s a child, I don’t listen to her,” he said. “How’s Libya doing?”

• Tucker Carlson Reviews Putin Interview And Reveals What ‘Radicalized’ Him (RT)

Following his two-hour interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, US journalist Tucker Carlson opened up about his experience at the World Government Summit in Dubai. In an hour-long interview with TV presenter Emad Eldin Adeeb, Carlson addressed why the conversation with Putin did not touch on certain topics, how the US political establishment had reacted to it, and why Washington has failed to understand Moscow, among other things. According to Carlson, he had an off-the-record conversation with Putin after their recorded interview was over. He would not reveal what was discussed, however. Carlson did say that Putin seemed willing to negotiate with the West about both the end of the Ukraine conflict and a new balance of power in the world. Diplomacy is the art of compromise, and almost everyone “other than maybe the United States during the unipolar period” understands this, Carlson said.

But while Putin wants the conflict to end, his position will only harden the longer it goes on, he added. One of the major revelations in the interview for Carlson was that Russia had asked to join NATO – and while then-US President Bill Clinton seemed receptive, his aides pushed against the idea and it ultimately failed. Since the entire point of NATO was to keep the Soviet Union out of Western Europe, Carlson said in Dubai, “if the Russians ask to join the alliance, that would suggest you have solved the problem and you can move on to do something constructive with your life. But we refused.” “Go sit in the sauna for an hour and think about what that means,” he added. Politicians in the West aren’t setting themselves “achievable” goals, Carlson has argued. “I have heard personally US government officials say well we just have to return Crimea to Ukraine,” he said. “That’s not going to happen, short of a nuclear war. That’s insane, actually.”

Even bringing up this kind of idea “shows you are a child, you don’t understand the area at all, and you have no real sense of what’s possible,” the journalist concluded. According to Carlson, one of the biggest issues in the US and the West in general is the tendency to reduce everything to the 1938 Munich conference, at which Britain and France sought to “appease” Nazi Germany by giving it a portion of Czechoslovakia. “The American policymaker historical template is tiny – in fact there’s only one – and it’s a 2-year period in the late 1930s, and everything is based on that understanding of history and human nature. That’s insane,” Carlson said. Carlson pointed out that he’s 54 and grew up in an America that had nice, safe and beautiful cities, “and we no longer have them.”

It was “radicalizing” to see Moscow “cleaner, safer and prettier” than American cities, he said, or be reminded of that in Dubai and Abu Dhabi – while in the US, one can’t ride the subway in New York City because it’s dirty and unsafe. “That’s a voluntary choice,” he said. “You don’t have to have crime, actually.” Asked why he hadn’t raised certain topics with Putin, Carlson said he wanted to do the interview because he was interested in how the Russian leader saw the world – and not to inject himself into the discussion. Most journalists who interview leaders the US dislikes tend to make it about themselves, Carlson added, and since he only cared about the approval of his wife and their children, he didn’t need to virtue-signal. Asked to comment on former US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton calling him a “useful idiot” for Russia, Carlson laughed it off. “She’s a child, I don’t listen to her,” he said. “How’s Libya doing?”

Tucker Moscow

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“Leaders of any country on the planet, other than maybe the United States during the unipolar period, are forced by the nature of their jobs to compromise. That’s what diplomacy is..”

• Putin Wants To End Ukraine Conflict – Tucker Carlson (RT)

Russian President Vladimir Putin is willing to engage in diplomacy to end the fighting in Ukraine, but the longer it continues the less likely he will be to compromise, US journalist Tucker Carlson warned on Monday. Carlson spoke at the World Government Summit in Dubai, where he flew after interviewing Putin in Moscow last week. The video of the discussion has been viewed hundreds of millions of times. “Putin wants to get out of this war. He’s not going to become more open to negotiation the longer this goes on,” Carlson said in response to a moderator’s question. The West needs to keep in mind that “Russia’s industrial capacity is a lot more profound than we thought it was,” and that Moscow is having a far easier time manufacturing weapons and ammunition than NATO countries that have been supplying Ukraine, the journalist continued.

There are competent people in US President Joe Biden’s administration, Carlson noted, but they lack perspective and see international relations through a very narrow lens in which every foreign leader is Adolf Hitler and every day is Munich 1938. As a result, Western governments have no real sense of what is possible or achievable, he claimed. “Leaders of any country on the planet, other than maybe the United States during the unipolar period, are forced by the nature of their jobs to compromise. That’s what diplomacy is,” Carlson told the crowd in Dubai. Putin practices diplomacy just like everyone else, but “his position is hardening,” he added.

Following Carlson’s two-hour interview with Putin, the Kremlin said that Russia has communicated its stance to the US quite clearly, but that Washington did not appear interested in talks. “The US authorities know our position very well, they are perfectly aware of all of Putin’s main points,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told TASS news agency on Saturday. However, the American leadership apparently lacks the “political will” for negotiations. “This is not an issue of knowledge, but an issue of desire. The desire to do something to get on to the track of negotiations. We have not yet seen such a desire or the political will for this [in the US],” Peskov noted.

Tucker Russia

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“..a world leader for a quarter century with the lack of gravitas — to put it politely of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and many others in both parties who are surface-level, donor-captured, soundbite specialists..”

• Putin and Trump Seen as ‘Threat’ by Davos Globalists (Sp.)

Tucker Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin has attracted over 190 million views on X (formerly Twitter) as of February 11. “I think it was fortunate that the interview occurred well before the heart of the primary season so that voters got a fair chance to see the interaction for themselves in a long format forum that was, fortunately, not interrupted by pesky commercials,” Charles Ortel, a Wall Street analyst and investigative journalist, told Sputnik. “My guess is that getting on Putin’s calendar for such a long interview was a challenge, so I imagine it suited both parties to have this video out well in advance of the nominating convention for Democrats and of the general election. It would be great to have one or even more follow-ups in coming months,” he added.

“I also think the contrast between Putin’s measured and thoughtful perspectives, having been a world leader for a quarter century with the lack of gravitas — to put it politely of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and many others in both parties who are surface-level, donor-captured, soundbite specialists was stunning. This contrast was remarkable considering Biden’s post-interview meltdown before what remains of the ‘press’,” Ortel continued. The Wall Street analyst noted that judging from viewership statistics, the corporate — and political donor-controlled — media is destroying itself. He stressed that “no political interview has garnered nearly as much coverage as Putin’s recent sit down with Tucker,” adding that he expects “it will, in the end, change the thinking of most open minds.” Prior to the historic interview, US corporate media pundits and Democratic political figures urged Americans to ignore Carlson’s show.

Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton called Tucker a “useful idiot”, claiming that the US journalist “parrots Vladimir Putin’s pack of lies about Ukraine.. Clinton’s remarks before the interview echoed those of Soviet-era apparatchiks who said of Nobel Prize-winning novel Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak: “I haven’t read Pasternak, but I condemn him.” “Hillary Clinton’s star set long ago while Tucker Carlson is, today, one of the most followed and fair-minded voices on earth,” Ortel said, commenting on Clinton’s rant. “Certainly, the Clinton family has much to fear as 5 November 2024 looms.” The Wall Street analyst, who has carried out a private investigation into allegations of fraud by the Clinton Foundation over several years, noted that “there are serious unanswered questions over how much foreign government and oligarch money may have funded Hillary’s political campaigns in 2005-6, 2007-8, and 2015-16, including donations from Ukraine’s [oligarch] Victor Pinchuk and his wife.”

He added that there are also “reasonable concerns as in the case of the Bidens, that the Clinton family exploited their offices to enrich themselves for decades, illegally.” “Hillary Clinton will not be remembered well in history,” Ortel said. “She coasted into national politics, at first, in sympathy over the Lewinsky affair as she had no actual ties to my home state of New York. As Senator, she promoted foreign adventurism in Afghanistan and Iraq that clearly failed. Meanwhile her husband advanced a boldly crooked set of scam charities we have previously covered that bilked governments and other donors of billions of dollars, for which there has never been honest accounting.”

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“Musk echoed Johnson’s sentiment, saying “As you said, there’s no way Putin is going to lose. If he backs off, he will be assassinated..”

Really?

• “Vladimir Putin Will Not Lose This War” (ZH)

During today’s Twitter Spaces, Elon Musk and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) discussed their opposition to the ongoing war in Ukraine. “We all have to understand that Vladimir Putin will not lose this war… Losing to Vladimir Putin is existential to Vladimir Putin. Russia has four times the population and a much larger industrial base,” said Johnson, adding “Russia can produce 4.5 million artillery shells per year. We’re not even up to 1 million per year. The average age of a Ukrainian soldier right now is 43 years old.” “If you’re worried about the people of Ukraine, you have to understand that probably 100,000 of their soldiers have been killed,” Johnson continued, adding “The only way this war ends is in a settlement, and every day that the war goes on, more Ukrainians and more Russian conscripts die, more civilians die, and more of Ukraine gets destroyed. Again, sending $60 billion as added fuel to the flames of a bloody stalemate makes no sense.”

Musk echoed Johnson’s sentiment, saying “As you said, there’s no way Putin is going to lose. If he backs off, he will be assassinated. And for those who want regime change in Russia, they should think about who is the person that could take out Putin?” He also defended his record – saying “My companies have probably done more to undermine Russia than anyone. Space X has taken away two-thirds of the Russian launch business. Starlink has overwhelmingly helped Ukraine.”

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“I think it’s clear that disqualification can occur if evidence is produced presenting a conflict or the appearance of one..”

• Fani Willis Could Be Disqualified, Judge Says (ET)

Fulton County Superior Judge Scott McAfee confirmed on Feb. 12 that the hearing about misconduct claims against Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and special prosecutor Nathan Wade “must occur” on Feb. 15 and could lead to disqualification. Ms. Willis is presiding over the high-profile racketeering case that names former President Donald Trump and 14 others. “I think it’s clear that disqualification can occur if evidence is produced presenting a conflict or the appearance of one, and the filings submitted on this issue so far have presented a conflict of interest that can’t be resolved as a matter of law,” Judge McAfee said. Ms. Willis will be called as the first witness, the judge said after hearing some of the prosecutors’ arguments. “I don’t see how quash can be imposed here,” he said, referring to the district attorney’s effort to dismiss the subpoenas.

On Feb. 12, the judge held a hearing regarding the district attorney’s motions to quash the nine subpoenas issued on Ms. Willis herself and her staffers ahead of this week’s anticipated hearing in which the district attorney will have to respond to allegations of an “improper” relationship. On Jan. 8, defendant Michael Roman filed a lengthy motion that alleged that Ms. Willis was in a personal relationship with Mr. Wade, an attorney with a private law firm whom she had contracted to take a lead position in the racketeering case. He alleged that Mr. Wade took Ms. Willis on “lavish” vacations, including a cruise, and that she financially benefited from the situation. He also made several other allegations, including that Mr. Wade wasn’t qualified for the position and that Ms. Willis used funds improperly, which the judge indicated would not be the focus of the Feb. 15 evidentiary hearing. After the huge claims were made, several co-defendants filed their own motions to disqualify Ms. Willis based on “prejudicial” actions.

“Specifically looking at defendant Roman’s motion, it alleged a personal relationship that resulted in a financial benefit to the district attorney that is no longer a matter of speculation,” the judge said. “The state has admitted a relationship existed, and so what remains to be proven is the existence and extent of any financial benefit, again if there even was one.” Judge McAfee said the claims of prejudice were based on public statements—a speech Ms. Willis gave at an Atlanta church where she invoked God and said her critics were playing the “race card”—and did not warrant a hearing meant to produce evidence for the record. Other issues such as Mr. Wade’s resume also did not warrant an evidentiary hearing, according to the judge. The district attorney had filed a motion arguing that no evidentiary hearing was necessary because no conflict of interest had occurred, but the judge rejected the argument.

“Because I think it’s possible that the facts alleged by the defendant could result in disqualification, I think an evidentiary hearing must occur to establish a record on those core allegations,” Judge McAfee said. He said that the hearing will focus on “whether a relationship existed, whether that relationship was romantic or not in nature, when it formed, and whether it continues.” “I think that’s only relevant because it’s in relation to the question of the extent of any personal benefit conveyed as a result of the relationship,” Judge McAfee said. Mr. Roman’s attorney, Ashleigh Merchant, alleged that the relationship began as early as 2019 and that the couple cohabited at one point and claimed in a court filing that she could produce witnesses to testify to these allegations.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1757133934633386223

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“What is unclear is why Putin, Xi, and Iran think they can reach an agreement with immoral governments. How many times will Putin purchase a Minsk Agreement?”

• Israel’s Ever-widening War (Paul Craig Roberts)

Rafah is the town that borders Egypt and the Sinai desert, where one million Palestinian refugees have fled to escape the merciless Israeli attacks against them. More than 100,000 Palestinian civilians, including 70,000 Palestinian women and children, have already been killed and wounded. Most of these poor refugees are literally starving to death because of the 3-month long Israeli blockade of water, food, electricity, and medicine to Gaza. If Israel launches this attack on Rafah, with the aim of driving one million Palestinians into the desert — and killing all those who refuse to leave Gaza– Egypt warns that a regional war will likely result, one which could conceivably become a World War. Biden could prevent this with a single phone call. If the US cut off all military and financial aid to Israel, the Israelis could not continue to prosecute its genocidal ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians from Gaza. However, just the opposite seems to be happening, with the full support and complicity of the United States.

Putin, Xi, and the Iranians are extraordinarily mistaken thinking that they can sit aside from the conflict as the conflict is directed against them. The Israeli offensive has left 85% of Gaza’s population internally displaced amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure was damaged or destroyed, according to the UN. And the Great Moral Western Democracies continue to support the Israeli Genocide of the Palestinians even as Egypt warns of a widening war. What is clear is that the West can no longer in any way be considered to be moral. What is unclear is why Putin, Xi, and Iran think they can reach an agreement with immoral governments. How many times will Putin purchase a Minsk Agreement?

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“..where we are cajoled to accept a “great reset” and a “new world order” controlled by unseen elites..

• Descent into Madness: Dostoevsky and the End of the West (Boyd)

Our society is coming to resemble a dystopian “peoples’ paradise” in its darkly disturbing features. Think back to iconic works of literature like Arthur Koestler’s Darkness At Noon and George Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four. Are we not living in a society which is little more than a cross between the nightmare visions of Koestler and Orwell? Do we not live in a society where dissidents are branded as “domestic terrorists,” “insurrectionists,” or “racists,” and face imprisonment for heretofore unimaginable thought crimes, all in the name of “defending our democracy”? –where our children have become wards of the state and are indoctrinated daily by mountains of fetid radical ideology? –where television and the Internet are employed to fashion a particular jaundiced view of life?—where science is now used to tell us the world will end in, what, ten years, if we don’t take immediate action to curb “the climate crisis”?—where we are cajoled to accept a “great reset” and a “new world order” controlled by unseen elites?

Far too many citizens do not fathom what has occurred and is happening in our society. And those who do understand, whether here in the US or in Europe, are swatted down by the long arm of “Big Brother,” turned into “non-persons,” their reputations destroyed, awakened by armed-to-the-teeth FBI agents before dawn and imprisoned for months or years without trial or the benefit of counsel—“enemies of the regime.” Is this not reminiscent of what occurred in Eastern Europe immediately after the conclusion of World War II, when the Soviets progressively installed socialist dictatorships by successfully eliminating and suppressing any real opposition, all happening why the benevolent USA looked on?

But in some ways our situation is worse than that of those Soviet-occupied countries in the aftermath of the world war. For while the post-war Communists essentially maintained certain inherited standards of behavior, for instance, supporting large families and traditional marriage, our elites continue to push the boundaries of what was once thought normative and acceptable in every area of human endeavor, even under Communism. And the disruption or rejection of the laws of nature and those well-established and valid millennia-old norms of behavior and belief leads to gross and grotesque imbalances and vicious infections in society which distort and eventually destroy it—what I have called in an earlier essay, “the zombification of our culture.”

It’s as if significant portions of American (and European) culture have been possessed by frenetic Evil incarnate…in academia and education, in our media and communications, in politics, and in our entertainment and sports industries. We are now supposed to be like Pavlov’s dog, trained to bark when prompted, to sit when told, in short, to be obedient and receptive subjects of the latest ukase or dogmatic proclamation of government or revelation of its satraps and lapdogs at some formerly-prestigious university or from fashionable glitterati.

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” We now have a usefully intricate anatomy of an undeservedly influential newspaper as it abjectly surrenders to power the sovereignty it is its duty to claim and assert in every day’s editions..”

• The Crisis at The New York Times (Patrick Lawrence)

It has been evident to many of us since the genocide in Gaza began Oct. 7 that Israel risked asking too much of those inclined to take its side. The Zionist state would ask what many people cannot give: It would ask them to surrender their consciences, their idea of moral order, altogether their native decency as it murders, starves and disperses a population of 2.3 million while making their land uninhabitable. The Israelis took this risk and they have lost. We are now able to watch videos of Israeli soldiers celebrating as they murder Palestinian mothers and children, as they dance and sing while detonating entire neighborhoods, as they mock Palestinians in a carnival of racist depravity one would have thought beyond what is worst in humanity—and certainly beyond what any Jew would do to another human being. The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports, as American media do not, that the Israel Defense Forces covertly sponsor a social media channel disseminating this degenerate material in the cause of maintaining maximum hatred.

It is a psychologically diseased nation that boasts as it inflicts this suffering on The Other that obsesses it. The world is invited—the ultimate in perversity, this—to partake of Israel’s sickness and said, in a Hague courtroom two weeks ago, “No.” Post–Gaza, apartheid Israel is unlikely ever to recover what place it enjoyed, merited or otherwise, in the community of nations. It stands among the pariahs now. The Biden regime took this risk, too, and it has also lost. Its support for the Israelis’ daily brutalities comes at great political cost, at home and abroad, and is tearing America apart—its universities, its courts, its legislatures, its communities—and I would say what pride it still manages to take in itself. When the history of America’s decline as a hegemonic power is written, the Gaza crisis is certain to figure in it as a significant marker in the nation’s descent into a morass of immorality that has already contributed to a collapse of its credibility.

We come to U.S. media — mainstream media, corporate media, legacy media. However you wish to name them, they have gambled and lost, too. Their coverage of the Gaza crisis has been so egregiously and incautiously unbalanced in Israel’s behalf that we might count their derelictions as unprecedented. When the surveys are conducted and the returns are in, their unscrupulous distortions, their countless omissions, and—the worst offense, in my view—their dehumanization of the Palestinians of Gaza will have further damaged their already collapsing credibility. We come, finally, to The New York Times. No medium in America has had further to fall in consequence of its reporting on Israel and Gaza since last October. And the once-but-no-longer newspaper of record, fairly suffocating amid its well-known hubris, falls as we speak. It has erupted, by numerous accounts including implicitly its own, in an internal uproar over reportage from Israel and Gaza so shabby—so transparently negligent—that it, like Israel, may never fully restore its reputation.

Max Blumenthal, editor-in-chief of The Grayzone, described the crisis on Eighth Avenue better than anyone in the Jan. 30 segment of The Hill’s daily webcast, Rising. “We’re looking at one of the biggest media scandals of our time,” he told Briahna Joy Gray and Robby Soave. Indeed. This well captures the gravity of The Times’s willful corruptions in its profligate use of Israeli propaganda, and Blumenthal deserves the microphone to say so. Since late last year The Grayzone has exhaustively investigated The Times’s “investigations” of Hamas’s supposed savagery and Israel’s supposed innocence. This is more than “inside baseball,” as the saying goes. We now have a usefully intricate anatomy of an undeservedly influential newspaper as it abjectly surrenders to power the sovereignty it is its duty to claim and assert in every day’s editions. It would be hard to overstate the implications, for all of us, of what The Grayzone has just brought to light. This is independent journalism at its best reporting on corporate journalism at its worst.

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Assange

 

 

Elbalmer

 

 

Sunak vax
https://twitter.com/i/status/1757186168507052239

 

 

Silverback

 

 

Tree planting
https://twitter.com/i/status/1757059356535804164

 

 

Longest truck
https://twitter.com/i/status/1756952347735921042

 

 

Milky Way
https://twitter.com/i/status/1756949552953778634

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle February 12 2024

Feb 122024
 
 February 12, 2024  Posted by at 9:46 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  98 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Snowy landscape with Arles in the background 1888

 

• How Ball Got Rolling With Tucker Carlson’s Putin Interview Proposal (Sp.)
• Egypt Warns Israel: Rafah Invasion Could Negate ’79 Peace Treaty (ZH)
• Ukraine Should Be A ‘Buffer Zone’ – Orban (RT)
• EU Openly Threatened Orban For His Reluctance To Finance Kiev (TASS)
• Ukraine ‘Must Accept New Reality’ – Kremlin (RT)
• 10 Million More Refugees Could Flee To Germany If Ukraine Falls – Welt (RT)
• Zaluzhny’s Photo With Banderite a ‘Threat’ to Zelensky (Sp.)
• Russia Must Permanently Abandon Europe And Turn Fully To Asia (Karaganov)
• Farmers Bring Poland To Standstill (RT)
• “That is Not the Judgment of the Press” (Turley)
• “Oh What a Tangled Web Biden Weaves, When He First Practices to Deceive” (VDH)
• Could Trump Win By Simple Attrition Rather than Vindication? (Turley)
• Soaring Debt Pushing Wealthy Nations To ‘Fiscal Death’ – Economist (RT)
• Peaceful Protests Are a Waste of Time and Energy (Paul Craig Roberts)
• The Crime Of The Century: Midazolam Murders – Euthanizing The Elderly (Kelly)

 

 

 

 

Liberal tears
https://twitter.com/i/status/1756706512540499971

 

 

Ads
https://twitter.com/i/status/1756692976426701093

 

 


Maria Zakharova: “After watching Putin’s interview, Scholz and Sunak disobeyed the orders of the USA.

“Scholz disobeyed the order of the USA not to watch the interview. If he continues to violate the instructions of the White House, he may lead Germany out of the crisis. The recent Prime Ministers of Britain, weak-willed individuals, they carried out the will not of the British people or even their own personal will, but obediently waltzed, led by Washington towards the boudoir.”

 

 

Nikki Haley

Trump Haley
https://twitter.com/i/status/1756832137980838180

 

 

Biden Superbowl
https://twitter.com/i/status/1756726329695973841

 

 

Sure this is not a Trump ad?!

 

 

 

 

“..the Kremlin had concerns even before the interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin that there would be a “persecution” of Tucker Carlson. ”

• How Ball Got Rolling With Tucker Carlson’s Putin Interview Proposal (Sp.)

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin, released Thursday, lasted more than two hours and covered a range of topics, including the Ukraine conflict, sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline, and Russia-NATO relations. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has told reporters that Tucker Carlson himself proposed the interview with Vladimir Putin and that the president quickly agreed. He also noted that the West is becoming more and more unpredictable, and that the Kremlin had concerns even before the interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin that there would be a “persecution” of Tucker Carlson.

Peskov believes that Tucker Carlson foresaw the heated sentiments around the interview with Vladimir Putin, but that it added to the popularity of the American journalist. “He’s still having a hard time, as far as I’m aware. But he is a clever enough man, I think he foresaw things would get heated. It’s fair to say that this interview has greatly raised his popularity,” Peskov said. On Thursday night, Carlson published his interview with the Russian president, which lasted for over two hours. Prior to that, the journalist faced criticism from his Western colleagues just for sitting down with the Russian leader. The interview sparked huge interest around the world, and has received more than 180 million views on X and 12 million on YouTube.

Oz dub
https://twitter.com/i/status/1756802067711115605

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“..if past is prologue, watch for the Israeli government to disregard the protests of its partners and benefactors — protests that may be offered primarily for domestic consumption..”

• Egypt Warns Israel: Rafah Invasion Could Negate ’79 Peace Treaty (ZH)

With Israel on the verge of invading Gaza’s southernmost city, Egypt is warning that such a move could trigger a suspension of the treaty that has maintained peace between the two countries since 1979, the Wall Street Journal reports. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday directed the Israeli Defense Forces to plan the evacuation of the city of Rafah, which lies on Gaza’s southern border with Egypt and reportedly holds more than a million refugees already forced from their homes elsewhere in the 25-mile-long strip. One particularly sensitive slice of real estate is the so-called Philadelphi Route or Philadelphi Corridor, which stretches nine miles along the Gaza-Egypt border. Diplomatic accords establish limits on the number of troops that either Israel or Egypt can position in several delineated zones along and near the border, and certainly don’t authorize large numbers of Israeli troops and armored vehicles.

In late December, Netanyahu said the Philadelphi Route “has to be in our hands” if Gaza is to be effectively and permanently demilitarized. In January, an Egyptian official said, “It must be strictly emphasized that any Israeli move in this direction will lead to a serious threat to Egyptian-Israeli relations.” While an Egyptian diplomatic delegation visited Tel Aviv on Friday to discuss the situation in Gaza, Mexican Egyptian President Sisi has rejected several phone calls from Netanyahu over recent weeks, sources tell the Journal. The threat that large numbers of Palestinian refugees could soon be pouring across the border raises many deep concerns for Egypt. Perhaps more than the challenge of managing a humanitarian crisis, if displaced Palestinians launch attacks on the IDF from Egypt, that could trigger Israeli retaliatory strikes across the border. If Israel doesn’t allow the Palestinians to return, tensions between Israel and Egypt would be sharply increased for years to come.

Since the war began, Egypt has been reinforcing its border with Gaza, building a concrete, barbed-wire-topped wall that extends six meters into the ground below it, while also boosting surveillance capabilities, and moving tanks and armored vehicles into the vicinity. The Israel-Hamas war is proving costly for Egypt in other ways, as Suez Canal traffic has plummeted some 30%. Egypt’s warning comes alongside expressions of concern by a variety of countries both inside and outside of the region: “Military operations right now would be a disaster for those people, and it’s not something that we would support,” said US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.

“Invading Rafah… which is the last refuge for hundreds of thousands of civilians whom the brutal Israeli aggression displaced will have [grave] consequences,” said the Saudi foreign ministry. “Deeply concerned about the prospect of a military offensive in Rafah – over half of Gaza’s population are sheltering in the area,” tweeted UK foreign secretary David Cameron. “The people of Gaza cannot disappear into thin air…[it is a] “humanitarian catastrophe in the making,” said German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock. A Rafah invasion would create an “unspeakable humanitarian catastrophe,” said EU Foreign Minister Joseph Borrell. Israel’s plan “threatens to cause the loss of more innocent life and exacerbate the humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip,” said the United Arab Emirates foreign ministry. However, if past is prologue, watch for the Israeli government to disregard the protests of its partners and benefactors — protests that may be offered primarily for domestic consumption.

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“Ukraine offers Europeans no additional security because most of us are already members of NATO, which is much stronger than Russia..”

• Ukraine Should Be A ‘Buffer Zone’ – Orban (RT)

Ukraine’s best geopolitical bet would be to become a “buffer zone” between Russia and the West, under arrangements made to guarantee the country’s future security, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said. The Hungarian premier made the remarks while debating former Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schussel, with excerpts from the exchange published by the Vienna daily Die Presse. Orban disagreed with Schussel’s contention that the Ukraine crisis could be solved only if the immediate start of negotiations on Ukraine’s accession to the EU and NATO coincided with the start of ceasefire talks. [BQ] Whether we like it or not, whether Ukrainians like it or not, Ukraine is on the map where it is. The best prospect for it would be to form a buffer zone between Russia and the West – with security guarantees, of course.

In any other case, according to the prime minister, “Ukraine will lose its land,” and “the Russians will destroy Ukraine again and again.” He stressed that Moscow would “never accept an EU and NATO member like Ukraine on its doorstep.” Orban also rejected claims by officials in Brussels and Kiev that Ukraine is “defending” Europe. “Ukraine offers Europeans no additional security because most of us are already members of NATO, which is much stronger than Russia,” he stated, adding that there is “no risk” that Russia could attack a bloc member. He also pushed back against Schussel’s argument that a ceasefire would mean a de facto defeat for Ukraine, saying that this depends on how a person sees the future as Kiev could potentially lose more territory.

According to Orban, the EU is also in no position to provide Ukraine with an adequate amount of weapons and money, adding that the bloc’s citizens are “dissatisfied because their governments are giving Ukraine more and more financial support”. Russia has repeatedly voiced concerns about NATO’s unchecked expansion towards its borders after the collapse of the Soviet Union, with President Vladimir Putin citing Ukraine’s push to join the alliance as one of the key reasons for the current conflict. In December 2021, weeks before the start of the hostilities, Moscow submitted a draft of security guarantees to the US and NATO, demanding that the West ban Kiev’s accession to the military bloc and retreat to its borders as of 1997. The overture, however, was rebuffed.

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Nice club to be a member of…

• EU Openly Threatened Orban For His Reluctance To Finance Kiev (TASS)

Leaders of the European Union openly threatened to undermine the Hungarian economy if its government refuses to approve financial aid to Ukraine, said Balazs Orban, the political director of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Financial Times reported on January 29, citing an internal EU document, that Brussels was drawing up a confidential plan to undermine Hungary’s economy if it continued to refuse to approve funding for Ukraine. According to the article, the EU threatened to completely freeze Hungary’s outstanding funds and collapse the exchange rate for the national currency, the Hungarian forint, in order to harm the Central European country’s economy and impair its investment attractiveness. “When the heads of EU states and governments talked to the prime minister by phone, they openly threatened him with these particular consequences,” the official told Austria’s Exxpress news portal.

At the EU summit in Brussels on December 14-15, 2023, the Hungarian prime minister blocked amendments to the community’s budget for 2024-2027 that called for allocating 50 bln euros to Ukraine. Instead, Viktor Orban proposed providing financial aid to Kiev on an annual basis with strict controls over expenditures. On February 1, the European Union summit approved the allocation of 50 billion euro from the EU budget to Ukraine spread out over the next four years. At the same time, they accepted Hungary’s proposal and established a mechanism to control the spending of funds. In a year from now, the EU will discuss this issue again, and in two years, it will revise the amount of financial aid to Ukraine in light of its own new budget drafting.

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“Should we begin the same negotiations, there’s a completely different reality now. And this new reality, no matter how painful it may be for the Kiev regime, must be recognized..”

• Ukraine ‘Must Accept New Reality’ – Kremlin (RT)

Ukrainian authorities must accept the “new reality” no matter how “painful” it might be for them, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. He was responding to a question on the prospects of new talks between the two warring countries. Peskov made the remarks in an interview released by Russian journalist Pavel Zarubin on Sunday. Should Russia and Ukraine ever actually get back to the negotiating table, the potential talks will not be the same as those held early in the ongoing conflict, Peskov suggested. “Should we begin the same negotiations, there’s a completely different reality now. And this new reality, no matter how painful it may be for the Kiev regime, must be recognized,” he stressed.

While Peskov did not elaborate, he presumably referred to the territorial changes, namely incorporation of the four formerly Ukrainian regions, Zaporozhye and Kherson, as well as Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics into Russia following referendums in late 2022. Kiev, however, has repeatedly vowed to seize all its former territories from Moscow, including Crimea which broke away from Ukraine in the aftermath of the 2014 Maidan coup and subsequently joined Russia. The March 2022 negotiations between Moscow and Kiev culminated in the signature of a preliminary agreement between the two nations, signed in Istanbul. The deal obliged Russia to withdraw its troops from around the Ukrainian capital, but Kiev violated the agreement almost immediately after it had been signed.

According to recent revelations by David Arakhamia, the leader of president Vladimir Zelensky’s party in the Ukrainian parliament, and a key negotiator at the botched talks, then-UK PM Boris Johnson played a pivotal role in orchestrating the failure of the talks. As Arakhamia put it, Johnson at the time simply told the Ukrainians “let’s just continue fighting” and urged them not to sign anything with Russia. Moscow has repeatedly insisted it was ready to settle the hostilities through negotiations, blaming the lack of any diplomatic effort on the matter on Kiev. The stance was reiterated by the Russian President Vladimir Putin during the conversation with the American journalist Tucker Carlson last week. “The President of Ukraine [Vladimir Zelensky] has legislated a ban on negotiating with Russia. He signed a decree forbidding everyone to negotiate with Russia. But how are we going to negotiate if he forbade himself and everyone to do this? We know that he is putting forward some ideas about this settlement. But in order to agree on something, we need to have a dialogue,” Putin stated.

RFK Ukraine

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EU governments would be overthrown.

• 10 Million More Refugees Could Flee To Germany If Ukraine Falls – Welt (RT)

As many as 10 million more refugees could flood into Germany if Ukraine disintegrates, Welt am Sonntag has said, citing estimates from officials. Despite the worsening situation regarding the conflict with Russia, the German government still believes this worst-case scenario is not likely to materialize this year, the media outlet added. Since the conflict between Kiev and Moscow flared up almost two years ago, 1.1 million Ukrainians have fled to the country, according to the German Interior Ministry. Meanwhile, the flow of newcomers from other countries, including Syria, Afghanistan, and African nations, shows no sign of abating. In 2023, more than 350,000 people applied for asylum in Germany, the highest number since 2016, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) reported last month.

The German government estimates that approximately 10 million people would flee Ukraine if the country falls apart, Die Welt, citing anonymous security officials and a lawmaker, said in an article on Saturday. The vast majority of these people would head westward in hopes of reaching Germany, the media outlet claims. Roderich Kiesewetter, an MP from the opposition Christian Democratic Party, told reporters that European nations should pick up the slack as US President Joe Biden’s aid package remains deadlocked in Congress. “If we don’t change our strategy on support for Ukraine, the worst-case scenario of a massive exodus from Ukraine and a spread of the war to NATO states will be much more likely,” the lawmaker predicted. Kiesewetter went on to warn that in this case, “ten million refugees are a rather lowball assumption.” Last week, the governor of the German state of Hesse, Boris Rhein, announced that the federal government and all 16 states of the country had agreed to issue special debit cards to refugees, which are supposed to supersede cash payments during the course of the year.

According to the official, the cards will “prevent the possibility of transferring money from state subsidies to countries of origin, and thus combat… human-trafficking.” Pre-paid cards will apparently have limited functionality, with features such as free cash withdrawal and transfers to recipients inside and outside of Germany disabled. They will also not work outside of the country, or even a designated municipality within it. Last month, the German parliament passed legislation that facilitates the deportation of failed asylum seekers and grants additional powers to the police. The new rules considerably extend the custody period pending deportation, in order to prevent situations in which failed applicants simply abscond around the time they are supposed to be sent home.

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“..while Zaluzhny was respected by his troops and liked by the civilian population, Syrsky evokes the opposite reaction..”

• Zaluzhny’s Photo With Banderite a ‘Threat’ to Zelensky (Sp.)

Earlier this week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky fired the top General for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valery Zaluzhny, after weeks of speculation and conflicting reports. The weekend before, after media outlets reported on his imminent firing but before it became official, the Ukrainian commander of the 67th Mechanized Brigade Andriy Stempitsky posted an image of himself smiling next to Zaluzhny with a portrait of former Nazi Stepan Bandera and a red and black Banderaite flag. Mark Sleboda, an international relations and security analyst told Sputnik’s Fault Lines on Friday that the image was an “explicit threat against Zelensky.” “We saw Zaluzhny pose over [the] last weekend for a photo with a commander of the Right Sector*, the Banderite fascist, neo-Nazi battalion that is now an official part of the military,” Sleboda recounted. “In front of his giant portrait of Stepan Bandera, the West Ukrainian genocidal Nazi collaborator […] and next to a red and black Banderite flag with the inscription ‘victory without negotiations.’ So, I saw that as a pretty explicit threat against Zelensky.”

Sleboda noted unconfirmed reports that the Ukrainian intelligence agencies were given orders to watch for soldiers leaving the front but also noted that any potential unrest depends largely on Zaluzhny’s next move. “Does he do anything to incite this? Does he maneuver behind the scenes with other political figures against Zelensky? Does he stay quiet and actually put the interest of the regime above his personal ego for the time being?” Sleboda asked. “I don’t know about that because he refused to resign and decided to make, obviously, a political issue out of this,” he concluded, referring to Zaluzhny’s reported refusal to resign. March 15, will be a date to watch, Sleboda said. March 15 is when Zelensky’s current presidential term should end but likely won’t because of a martial law declaration that has been in place in Ukraine since the start of Russia’s special military operation, but Sleboda thinks forces in Ukraine may use that date to make a move against the president.


Zaluzhny with Ukrainian 67th Mechanized Brigade commander Andriy Stempitsky post with a metal in front of a portrait of Stepan Bandera.

“There may be political forces unhappy with Zelensky within the regime that will use that as the point to say that he is not a legitimate leader after that and seek to seize control,” Sleboda speculated. Sleboda also explained that he does not believe Zaluzhny’s dismissal was based on bad strategy but for personal reasons. “This was all personal,” Sleboda explained. “He made mistakes, there’s no question there but most […] on both sides, seem to regard Zaluzhny as more intelligent, more competent and more, shall we say, [an] out of the box thinker than [Zaluzhny’s replacement General Oleksandr] Syrsky.” Earlier in the interview, Sleboda explained that while Zaluzhny was respected by his troops and liked by the civilian population, Syrsky evokes the opposite reaction.

“He was the commander of the ground forces, he was responsible for the unsuccessful defenses of [Artemovsk] and […] Soledar,” Sleboda explained. “They call him General Butcher and General 200 (ed. note: ‘Cargo 200’ – military slang used in the Soviet and post-Soviet states referring to the transportation of the deceased soldiers) and neither one of those are favorable,” Sleboda continued. “It is in reference to his seemingly casual way of throwing away the lives of his own men.” Despite his Russian background, Syrsky was picked because of his loyalty to Zelensky, Sleboda explained. He also speculated that Syrsky would be more willing to commit reinforcements to Avdeyevka than Zaluzhny was, just like Syrsky did in the failed defense of Artemovsk. “This is evidently where we’re going, and General Butcher […] is going to be throwing more Kiev regime lives away,” he predicted.

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Professor Sergey Karaganov, honorary chairman of Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, and academic supervisor at the School of International Economics and Foreign Affairs Higher School of Economics (HSE) in Moscow.

• Russia Must Permanently Abandon Europe And Turn Fully To Asia (Karaganov)

At the end of the 2000s, with a group of young colleagues, we began to argue the merits and necessity of Russia’s “eastern pivot” (at the same time, current Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu – and his colleagues – were working in the same direction). The concepts and development focus of this challenge included the whole of Siberia and the Urals – a single historical, economic and human region. However, it turned out differently – pivot to Asia and its markets went administratively mainly through the Pacific Far East, and then the Arctic was added to it. The turn that began in the 2010s was successful, but only partially, largely because the Far East was artificially disconnected from the much more populous, industrialized and resource-rich eastern and western Siberia. It also continued to suffer from the “continental curse” – remoteness from markets.

Now, the new geostrategic situation urgently requires a return to the original idea – the eastward turn of all of Russia through the primary development of all of Siberia, including, of course, the Urals. In other words, we are talking about the “Siberization” of the whole country. Western Europe will be closed for many years and should never again become a first-class partner, while Asia is developing rapidly. The war provoked and unleashed by the West in Ukraine should not distract us from the movement towards the south and the east – where the center of human development is shifting. This new, but long foreseen, situation calls us to return to our “home.” A European journey of more than 300 years has given much, but long ago – a century ago, in reality – and has exhausted its usefulness.

Without this journey, initiated by Peter the Great, Russia would not have had many achievements. Foremost among them is the world’s greatest literature – the result of combining Russian culture, religion and morals with Western European culture. Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Pushkin, Gogol, then Blok, Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn – and other giants of the mind who have shaped our modern identity – would hardly have emerged without the “European injection.” During these three centuries, we have half-forgotten the eastern roots of our state and our people. The Mongols plundered, but they also promoted development. Finally, in opposition and cooperation with them, we learned from many elements of their statehood, which allowed us to build a powerful centralized state and continental thinking. From Genghis Khan’s empire we also seem to have inherited our cultural, national and religious openness. The Mongols did not impose their culture or their beliefs. Indeed, they were religiously open. That is why, in an effort to preserve Russia, Holy Prince Alexander Nevsky made an alliance with them.

Great Russia would not have come into being, and probably would not have survived on the Russian plain, besieged by rivals and enemies from the west and south, if our people had not moved en masse “behind the stone” (the Urals) “to meet the sun” from the 16th century onwards. Inexplicable, apart from the intervention of God’s will, is the speed of their impulse. The Cossacks reached the Great Ocean in six decades. The development of Siberia made the ancient Rus’, the Russian kingdom, into Great Russia. Even before it was proclaimed an empire, the resources of Siberia – first “soft gold,” then silver, gold, and other minerals – allowed us to create and equip a powerful army and navy. The caravans of the Northern Silk Road, carrying Chinese goods in exchange for furs to Russia and beyond, played an important role in this. There in Siberia, the Russians, competing and trading, began to work closely with the Central Asians, the ‘Bukharans’ as our people called them at the time.

Read more …

More protests to come.

• Farmers Bring Poland To Standstill (RT)

Traffic in cities and town across Poland was severely obstructed on Friday as farmers staged protests over what they consider to be unfair competition from cheap Ukrainian produce, as well as the EU’s green policies. Over the past few months, Polish agricultural workers have also repeatedly blocked the border with Ukraine. The month of January saw similar demonstrations in other EU nations, including Germany, France, and the Netherlands, over Brussels’ climate policies which have led to fuel price hikes. German farmers have been demanding that Chancellor Olaf Scholz reverse the proposed scrapping of a diesel fuel subsidy worth as much as €3,000 ($3,260) annually. The authorities in neighboring France withdrew plans to cut similar subsidies after farmers blocked a major highway near Paris last month.

Organized by the Solidarity trade union, Friday’s protest affected around 260 localities across Poland, with thousands of farmers blocking or slowing down traffic with tractors and other heavy machinery. They also blocked several border crossings with Ukraine. Several highways leading to the capital, Warsaw, were congested as a result of the demonstration, local police reported. In a statement released ahead of the protest last week, Solidarity said it was planning to set up road blockades until March 10. The trade union called out the Polish government for readily accepting the EU’s guidelines on the “import of agricultural produce and food products from Ukraine.” The protesters also called the position adopted by Brussels at the latest EU summit “unacceptable.”

Similar rallies were held across Poland in January. A separate protest by another group of farmers and truckers blocking a key border crossing with Ukraine saw Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government capitulate to the protesters’ demands, which included reinstating a permit system for Ukrainian truckers, adopting government subsidies for Polish corn, and a moratorium on tax hikes. Last Thursday, the European Commission proposed extending the suspension of customs duties on agricultural goods from Ukraine and Moldova through 2025. The measure was originally scheduled to expire this year. Thousands of farmers from across the bloc descended on Brussels ahead of that summit, throwing eggs, rocks, and fireworks at the EU Parliament building and setting huge piles of manure on fire.

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“The problem is Hur, not a President who not only appeared confused in the press conference but openly lied about various established facts…”

• “That is Not the Judgment of the Press” (Turley)

“That is not the judgment of the press.” Those words from President Joe Biden were a telling moment after a reporter noted that there is widespread concern that he is mentally diminished. Biden’s cranky response was overshadowed by his confusion on other points during the press conference, including mixing up the presidents of Egypt and Mexico. However, it captured the sense of license and expectation of the Biden White House that the press is supposed to toe the line, as it has for three years. In the disastrous press conference, CNN correspondent MJ Lee reminded Biden that he had urged Americans to “watch me” when he was confronted over his age: “Many [of the] American people have been watching, and they have expressed concerns about your age.” The President angrily responded: “That is your judgment!. That is your judgment! That is not the judgment of the press.”

The next day, many in the media came to Biden’s defense and attacked the Special Counsel report which detailed his “diminished faculties.” Others cleaned up the remark about the press. Biden clearly stated “That is your judgment! That is your judgment. That is not the judgment of the press.” NBC did not include the line in articles on the press conference despite showing it on the live coverage. Roll Call actually edited the President’s remarks to insert “for” in the key line: “That is not the judgment [for] the press.” That changed the line from questioning the right of the press to make such judgments to telling a reporter what the press view should be. Even if it was a Freudian slip, it was a telling slip. Other media inserted or suggested “public” rather than the press in the line. The obvious exasperation of the President reflects years of a passive, enabling media that shielded Biden from difficult questions on various scandals, including the corruption scandal.

What was striking, however, was the degree to which President Biden and his staff spent this week putting out clearly false statements. In an administration that has pushed for the censorship of citizens accused of disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation, the President openly lied about his conduct and the report. President Biden, for example, stated that the Special Counsel report found that he did not willfully retain material. It found the opposite . . . repeatedly. He stated that he did not disclose classified material to his ghostwriter. Special Counsel Hur found precisely the opposite. Biden stated that the material was not highly classified with “that red stuff…around the corners.” In fact, Hur found that the material was “highly sensitive,” including an Afghanistan-related memo from the National Security Adviser to President Barack Obama in 2009 marked “TOP SECRET/SCI” (Sensitive Compartmented Information).

Biden stated that all of the material was kept in locked or lockable filing cabinets. That was a lie. As the pictures vividly demonstrated, Hur found material in unlocked areas and virtually spilling out of torn boxes in his garage. What is notable is that Biden works almost entirely off teleprompters, reading statements clearly crafted by his staff. That would indicate that some of these comments were promulgated by staff. Even in the press conference on Friday, Ian Sams, spokesman for the White House Counsel’s Office ran into a skeptical reporter in the form of Jon Decker, the White House correspondent for Gray Television. Decker is the former head of the White House Correspondents Association and one of my former students. Decker is the gold standard for reporters and has always been objective, tough, and fair. His approach has not changed from the Trump to the Biden Administration.

Decker challenged Sam on coming to the podium to address the President’s statements and proceeding to make a false claim that this is the first Special Counsel to end his investigation without charges. So why would the White House risk looking like it is going full “Baghdad Bob” in denying readily observable facts? Because this is no real risk. The reason was evident the day after the report. While usually supportive outlets had to acknowledge the President’s false claims, media figures from MSNBC and CNN quickly fell into line and launched a full attack on Hur, often repeating identical words used by the White House about his observations being “gratuitous.” The problem is Hur, not a President who not only appeared confused in the press conference but openly lied about various established facts.

5 minutes

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“..who exactly had serially lied about Beau Biden’s demise, by claiming that he had died while on duty in Iraq, serving in the Delaware National Guard as a Judge Advocate? Joe Biden.”

• “Oh What a Tangled Web Biden Weaves, When He First Practices to Deceive” (VDH)

Joe Biden and his White House handlers continue to peddle misinformation if not lies about his removal of classified files. The worst is that Biden—supposedly so unlike Trump—came forward willingly as soon as he realized that he had unlawfully, but inadvertently, removed and possessed classified files. And thus he cooperated fully and promptly with federal authorities. The truth is far, far different. Biden removed files improperly both as a Senator and Vice President. He held some of them in his unlawful possession for perhaps at least 14 years without a word to authorities, dating back at least to his departure from the Senate on January 15, 2009 when he resigned to become Vice President—or if not longer over his some 36-year Senate career. In fact, in 2017 Biden was fully aware that he had wrongly removed these classified files. As Hur noted, there is a taped conversation on record between Biden and his ghostwriter to just that effect.

Biden, at home in Virginia, was recorded as remarking, “I just found all the classified stuff downstairs”. And yet Biden apparently did nothing. He never came forward to any federal authorities for nearly the next five years. So given that knowledge, why did the attorneys belatedly disclose Biden’s possession of the files on November 2, 2022? Civic virtue? Altruism? Respect for the law? Hardly. Otherwise, Biden would have disclosed his unlawful possession at any time during either the intervening prior years when he was a private citizen or during the first 18 months of his presidency, when he knowingly still possessed classified files and still did nothing about it. In truth, Biden would likely never have come forward, save for one insurmountable problem: Merrick Garland had likely decided to appoint Jack Smith as a special prosecutor to investigate the Trump files that the FBI had swooped into Mar-a-Lago looking for 3 months earlier on August 8, 2022.

In other words, knowing that Smith or a generic special counsel would very quickly be appointed (Smith was sworn in a little over two weeks later, on November 18, 2022), suddenly Biden and Co. preempted that announcement, in fear that Biden had done virtually the same thing as Trump—albeit without presidential declassification power and for at least 14 years in possession of classified files. Had the attorneys and Biden not come forward, Trump and others would have asked whether Biden had not also removed files. So to get out in front of the formal announcement of the Smith appointment, they preempted, misleadingly and disingenuously, preening that civic virtue had prompted Biden’s “voluntary” disclosures and “cooperation”.

A final note: one of the more disturbing moments in Biden’s catastrophic press conference was his flare up at Hur’s revelation (“How dare he bring up that!”) that in formal interviews an enfeebled Biden had not remembered the general date of his son’s tragic death from a glioblastoma brain tumor on May 30th, 2015 at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington DC. Biden went on to vent at Hur. But Hur was simply documenting his analysis that Biden was severely cognitively impaired, and not as VP Kamala Harris claimed, gratuitously smearing Biden. But who exactly had serially lied about Beau Biden’s demise, by claiming that he had died while on duty in Iraq, serving in the Delaware National Guard as a Judge Advocate? Joe Biden.

Mayorkas

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“Trump has a curious fortune in critics who seem over time to combust in rather spectacular fashion..”

• Could Trump Win By Simple Attrition Rather than Vindication? (Turley)

While Woody Allen once said that “80 percent of success is showing up,” former president Donald Trump proved this week that the same could be said about “just sticking around.” Trump had one of the best weeks as cases and critics seemed to implode from the disqualification effort in Washington to the scandal in Georgia. Yet, Trump is not out of the woods and is facing significant threats in what is becoming a war of attrition. In Washington, the Supreme Court gave a chilly reception to the disqualification effort that bordered on the glacial. While law professors like Harvard’s Laurence Tribe insisted that the basis for barring Trump from office under the 14th Amendment was “unassailable,” the justices seemed utterly unconvinced and there is the possibility that the entire effort could now be defeated unanimously. Even liberal justice Ketanji Onyika Brown Jackson called the effort anti-democratic.

In Georgia, the case against Trump is floundering as allegations mount against Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis over her intimate relationship with her subordinate special prosecutor Nathan J. Wade. This week, a court filing alleged that Willis and Wade filed false claims in court on when their relationship began. The two prosecutors have insisted that they only became intimate after Willis hired Wade. Wade’s former lawyer has reportedly come forward to contest that claim. That allegation, if true, could make the continuation of Willis and Wade in the case untenable. Various defendants being prosecuted in Georgia are accused of false statements and filings in court. Of course, the removal of Willis and Wade will not necessarily end the case, but it will present logistical and optical problems for the office. There are also calls for the removal of Alvin Bragg in New York, who is accused of being lax on crime overall despite his determined effort to convict Trump.

Trump has a curious fortune in critics who seem over time to combust in rather spectacular fashion. Michael Cohen, his former lawyer, went to jail and lost his law license. At the Justice Department, various FBI officials from the Russian investigation were accused of wrongdoing and forced out of the Justice Department. That included James Comey who was found to have removed FBI material after Trump fired him and gave it to a friend who leaked it to the press. Another official pleaded guilty to criminal conduct associated with the Russian investigation. In politics, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who attacked Trump for his treatment of women, was forced out of office for sexual harassment. Michael Avenatti was sentenced to a long prison term for fraud and other crimes. Senator Robert Menendez (D., N.J.) who voted for Trump to be convicted in the Senate is now under indictment for corruption.

Even in the arts, Trump critics have fallen from great heights. Comedian Kathy Griffin has not only become persona non grata after her gory depiction of a beheaded Trump but she is now beseeching people to buy tickets for a languishing come-back tour. Alec Baldwin, who scathingly played Trump, has been criminally charged after shooting a movie crew member. Of course, it is fair to note that some of Trump’s allies have fared equally badly, including those convicted or facing trial such as Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and others. Yet, there is no question that time has worked in Trump’s favor in fulfilling certain narratives. He has accused the Democrats of trying to rig elections. While debunking claims in 2020, Democrats like Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold bulldozed any high ground by trying to prevent citizens from voting for Trump as he leads in the polls.

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“Global debt has surged by $100 trillion from a decade ago and hit a record of $307.4 trillion last September..”

• Soaring Debt Pushing Wealthy Nations To ‘Fiscal Death’ – Economist (RT)

Major economies that fail to address their mounting debt issues will die a “fiscal death,” the head of investment and wealth advisory Laffer Tengler Investments, Arthur Laffer, has warned. In an interview with CNBC this week, he predicted a “decade of debt,” adding that the borrowing crisis has embraced both developed and emerging countries, and it is not going to “end well.” Global debt has surged by $100 trillion from a decade ago and hit a record of $307.4 trillion last September, amid the biggest surge in global interest rates in 40 years, according to the economist. Wealthy countries such as the US, UK, France, and Japan account for more than 80% of that increase due to their uncontrolled accumulation of debt.

China, India, and Brazil saw the most pronounced growth of borrowings among emerging markets. “I would expect that some of the bigger countries that don’t address their debt issues will die a slow fiscal death,” Laffer said, adding that some emerging economies “could quite conceivably go bankrupt.” While low-income countries are at high risk of debt distress, repaying debt would be particularly problematic for high-income countries due to an aging population and a lack of workforce, the economist warned. The most recent report by the Institute of International Finance shows that the share of debt has hit a staggering 336% of global GDP compared to an average debt-to-GDP ratio of 110% in 2012 for advanced economies, and 35% for emerging markets.

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“If Putin and Xi and the Iranians think that they can sit out the conflict, they are mistaken. You cannot sit out a conflict that is directed at you.”

• Peaceful Protests Are a Waste of Time and Energy (Paul Craig Roberts)

Will protesters ever learn that peaceful protests do not work when governments care not what people think and represent private agendas and not the people? The protests that work are the violent ones by Black Lives Matter and Antifa. It appears that one-tenth of a million Gazans have already been killed or maimed by the American-financed and militarily-supplied Israeli intended genocide of the remnants of the Palestinian population, a people who have been evicted from their lands and villages bit by bit since 1947. This time the violence is massive, and only the Houthis, a poor population in Yemen that survived years of Washington-inspired attacks from Saudi Arabia, has lifted a hand to help the Palestinians. The “civilized West” responded to the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians by cancelling their contributions to the UN agency that provides Palestinians with humanitarian aid.

Consequently, now 1,000,000 Palestinians are facing starvation as Israel has blocked food deliveries and medicines, knocked out the water supply, hospitals, sanitation, and intends to drive any surviving Palestinians into Egypt. So what do we hear from the governments of the “great moral West”? We hear about Israel’s right of “self-defense.” The Western governments, immoral to the hilt and all enthralled to Israel, have redefined genocide as self-defense. The West’s citizens are so successfully propagandized by Israeli disinformation over decades and generations that the subservience of Western “democracies” to Israel goes unremarked among the small part of the world that is considered to be the West. But not in the rest of the world. The United States and Israel have achieved the status of pariah states, the agents of Satan.

Why, despite this realization, does the rest of the world sit watching the destruction of a people, as Romans watched for entertainment lions devouring Christians in the Colosseum? Russia, China, Iran, and the rest with the exception of South Africa, which took Israel to the International Court of Justice, have not lifted a finger to help the Palestinians. Washington claims to protest but keeps sending Israel the weapons. This despite the fact that the governments of Russia, China, and Iran know that the real target is them. Israel and the neoconservatives intend the destruction of Iran, which will release “jihadists” into the Russian Federation and deprive China of oil. It is Japan in the 1930s all over again, and yet the targeted countries do nothing. If Putin and Xi and the Iranians think that they can sit out the conflict, they are mistaken. You cannot sit out a conflict that is directed at you.

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“The widespread and persistent use of Midazolam in UK suggests a possible policy of systemic euthanasia.”

• The Crime Of The Century: Midazolam Murders – Euthanizing The Elderly (Kelly)

If the data is correct, the only conclusion is that tens of thousands of elderly English were murdered with an injection of the end of life drug Midazolam. These deaths were then falsely blamed on Covid, which was the basis of the public fear campaigns used to justify the lockdowns and mass mandated injections of the public (including children) with an experimental medical intervention that had zero long term safety data. And along the way, a small group pushing the need for mass mandated injections made billions.

https://researchgate.net/publication/377266988_Excess_Deaths_in_the_United_Kingdom_Midazolam_and_Euthanasia_in_the_COVID-19_Pandemic

This paper shows that the UK spike in deaths, wrongly attributed to COVID-19 in April 2020, was not due to SARS-CoV-2 virus, which was largely absent, but was due to the widespread use of Midazolam injections which were statistically very highly correlated (coefficient over 90 percent) with excess deaths in all regions of England during 2020. The widespread and persistent use of Midazolam in UK suggests a possible policy of systemic euthanasia.

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SolarActivity

 

 

RFK vaccines

 

 

Biolabs
https://twitter.com/i/status/1756606702634348580

 

 

 

 

Model X

 

 

CO2

 

 

Fish
https://twitter.com/i/status/1756426580446834935

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle February 10 2024

Feb 102024
 
 February 10, 2024  Posted by at 9:45 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  66 Responses »


Edward Hopper Christmas card 1928

 

• Eventful Events (James Howard Kunstler)
• Biden’s Angry Press Conference Made Hur’s Memory Report Infinitely Worse (Sp.)
• Putin Interview May Help Stop West From Committing Suicide – Scott Ritter (Sp.)
• Tucker-Putin Interview to Erode Funding Crusade for US in Ukraine (Sp.)
• Putin Interview Helps Americans Understand Ukraine Conflict – Kwiatkowski (Sp.)
• The Biden-Schumer Plan to Kill More Ukrainians (Jeffrey Sachs)
• Ukraine’s Top General Fired For Disobeying US – Politico (RT)
• Nuland Told Zelensky Not To Fire Top General – The Times (RT)
• Ukraine’s New Commander-in-chief Is An Unpopular ‘Butcher’ – Politico (RT)
• General Syrsky, Hero of Kiev or Butcher of Bakhmut? (Sp.)
• Houthis Say All Warships Must Leave Red Sea (Sp.)
• Any Gaza Deal Could Break Netanyahu’s Coalition (Harb)
• German Foreign Minister’s Grandfather Was ‘Ardent Nazi’ – Bild (RT)
• The “Unassailable” Theory Faces a Potential Unanimous Rejection (Turley)
• Biden’s Eulogy Will Be ‘Journalism RIP’. How He Destroyed the 4th Estate (Jay)

 

 

 

 

Tenney
https://twitter.com/i/status/1756024349239246939

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1755830142910566427

https://twitter.com/i/status/1756011968115220878

 

 

Obama3rd

 

 

 

 

RFK Biden

 

 

Mamet
https://twitter.com/i/status/1755767014876926374

 

 

 

 

“Mr. Biden’s charade of running for reelection must come to an end. What will the Democratic party do about that?”

• Eventful Events (James Howard Kunstler)

This Friday morning, the USA is fraught with events unspooling. As I write, with dawn just breaking, there is almost zero opinion yet formed about these troubling matters on the vast Internet — but it will probably come in hot-and-heavy as the day ticks on. If Mr. Biden is truly mentally incompetent, as established more-or-less legally by Special Counsel Hur, then there is the obvious remedy of the 25th amendment — removal of a president for reason of disability. A debate over this would seem unavoidable now. The question also implies that Mr. Biden’s charade of running for reelection must come to an end. What will the Democratic party do about that?

A not inconsiderable part of our Ukraine problem has been that our chief executive was for years engaged in bribery and money-laundering misadventures there, for which there is abundant and powerful evidence, meaning he may have had very personal interests in keeping that country disordered — and sending billions of dollars there, some of it surely embezzled among the Zelensky government. You’d have to also be aware that the bag-man in those operations, the President’s son, Hunter, might well have misbehaved with drugs and prostitutes on his many trips to Ukraine as a board member of Burisma. Hunter’s self-compiled archive of round-the-world drug-fueled porn recordings on the laptop that (the FBI confirmed recently) was unquestionably his own, suggests that the Ukraine authorities may have their own recordings of him behaving similarly, or worse, and are using them to blackmail “President Joe Biden.”

We will also learn the judgment, probably with remarkable dispatch, of the Supreme Court in the matter of Colorado kicking Donald Trump off the election ballot. Meanwhile, the case against Mr. Trump in Fulton County, Georgia, is falling apart in DA Fani Willis’s pathetically comical scandal, now with a new “love nest” twist (paid for with public money). And Judge Engoron and AG Letitia James might be weighing the fates of their reputations in the shabbily-conducted and bogus real estate valuation fraud case against Mr. Trump, which will eventually be vivisected at some level of appeal. The old saying remains powerful: There are decades when nothing happens, and weeks when decades happen.

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“If Obama came out and said, ‘I’ve had enough. I’ve seen enough. This has to stop,’ then maybe.”

• Biden’s Angry Press Conference Made Hur’s Memory Report Infinitely Worse (Sp.)

Biden’s press conference was held in response to the report issued by special counsel Robert Hur concluding that the President should not be charged for his handling of classified documents during and after his time as Vice President. Among the reasons Hur decided against prosecution was that he felt Biden’s defense would present him as “a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory” noting that during their interview the President’s memory was “significantly limited” and that “He did not remember when he was vice president.” The report quoted the President in a conversation that was recorded asking “If it was 2013 – when did I stop being Vice President?” and “In 2009, am I still Vice President?.It also notes that he couldn’t remember “even within several years” when his son Beau Biden died. During the press conference, Biden slammed the report for containing “extraneous commentary” that has “no place in this report.”

Hur

However, moments earlier he stopped midway through a sentence explaining where his deceased son got a rosary for him. “I wear, since the day he died, every single day, the rosary he got from our Lady of–” he said before abruptly pausing for a few seconds and then changing the subject to an annual Memorial Day service he and his family holds for Beau Biden. Biden also snapped at reporters, when one asked him how bad his memory was, Biden shot back “My memory is so bad, I let you speak.” The decision to hold a press conference was motivated by anger, Martin argued, “He couldn’t control it because he was so angry […] he made it infinitely worse.” While Martin disagreed with co-hosts Ted Rall and Angie Wong that Biden may step down or be removed from office due to the report and subsequent press conference, he agreed that it may cause him to drop his bid for reelection. “I don’t see how he runs for reelection. He may stay in office to the end, but now there’s a real specific case to try to say, ‘It’s over, Joe.’ But I don’t think he thinks it is. I don’t think his wife [thinks it is.]”

Wong asked if the 25th Amendment, which allows a President’s cabinet to remove the President from power if he or she is incapacitated, could be invoked in Biden’s case. Martin said he does not believe it will happen but that Democrats know how bad it looks “I do think Democrats believe that they’re in big trouble because of this, but I don’t know the path [to removal,]” he speculated. “Both parties[…] set up a system where the President is so darn powerful […] if he doesn’t step away, and I don’t think he will, I think he is going to stay there.” Martin later added that it is a “tragedy” that his family is allowing him to continue on in his current state. When pressed, Martin did come up with one scenario that Democrats could use to convince Biden to drop out of the race: his former boss.

“If Obama came out and said, ‘I’ve had enough. I’ve seen enough. This has to stop,’ then maybe. But I can’t imagine Obama doing that. [Or] maybe I can, I don’t know. That might be the Hail Mary.”Martin also speculated that the Democratic convention could be a place to make the change. “The Democrats [could] go in and say ‘You know what? We don’t have a path forward here.’ But they’re out of time.” Martin argued. “Any move they make will look desperate, and part of the problem will be, [Biden] didn’t get this way yesterday, he’s been this way for […] two years or three years. How could you do this to this country? And I think that’s how voters will feel.”

MSNBC

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“Tucker Carlson opened a door into modern day Russia, opened a door into the personality of Vladimir Putin, opened a door into the history of Russia, opened a door into the Russian soul..”

• Putin Interview May Help Stop West From Committing Suicide – Scott Ritter (Sp.)

Tucker Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin has gone viral almost immediately after being posted online on February 8, having been viewed over 50 million times on social media platform X alone mere hours after the upload. The interview in question turned out to be a “very much a tour de force” where Putin introduced American audience “to the nuances of Russian history” and “into the complexities of the Russian soul,” said former US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter. “This really isn’t about the content, although there is some interesting information that came out. This is about the process. Tucker Carlson opened a door into modern day Russia, opened a door into the personality of Vladimir Putin, opened a door into the history of Russia, opened a door into the Russian soul,” he said. According to Ritter, during the course of the interview Putin, metaphorically speaking, “helped create a map” that can guide viewers “through the complexities of what makes Russia tick”

While it remains to be seen “how many millions of people” will watch Putin’s interview, Ritter argued that it is “one of the most important interviews of the modern era” because it “has the ability to stop the West and Russia from going to war, to stop the West from committing suicide. “All of the answers to all of the problems that face Russia and the West today were laid out by the Russian president. There’s no hidden agenda. There’s no, you know, secret code that has to be known,” he explained. “You just have to know Russia. You have to understand what makes Russia tick. You have to understand the thinking behind the Russian president’s decisions, the motives behind Russia. You have to understand Russia.” Though it appears unlikely that Carlson “understood Russia” when he set off to take this interview, he “knows that he was given a toolbox complete with tools, and now he has to go out and finish the job,” Ritter added.

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“..they really bring a different historical perspective to life that is very different from what Americans do. Americans don’t remember much.”

• Tucker-Putin Interview to Erode Funding Crusade for US in Ukraine (Sp.)

American journalist Tucker Carlson has come under a barrage of verbal attacks and denunciation from the Washington elite for interviewing Russian President Vladimir Putin. Among those going into meltdown mode and vilifying the renowned ex-Fox News host, were the US mainstream media, Team Biden officials and disgruntled, two-time failed presidential contender Hillary Clinton who branded him as a “useful idiot”, claiming that everything that Putin would say would be a “pack of lies”. Meanwhile, millions took to Twitter and Carlson’s website to watch the history-making interview. “The media freak out,” Larry Johnson, a retired CIA intelligence officer, told Sputnik. “The media has been losing credibility with each passing week. They are seen as dishonest and propagandists. So, what they think is really of little importance, I don’t see a groundswell developing to try to attack Tucker. The irony is, if you take the Fox News Network and MSNBC and CNN combined, Tucker has more viewers, more people following him, than those networks do. They’re just jealous.”

“Tonight, Fox News Network and CNN and MSNBC combined may have had a total of 8 million viewers. Tucker is already three times the size of whatever they saw. Now he also has a global audience, but, you know, this thing is going to spread. I would anticipate that before this is done, well over 100 million people, maybe 200 million, will have watched it worldwide,” he predicted. The now-retired CIA official believes that Putin’s interview could end up eroding support for the Kiev regime among American conservatives and make it even more difficult for US lawmakers to funnel billions into Washington’s Ukraine proxy conflict. While speaking to Carlson, Putin briefly recounted Russia’s history to illustrate the strong cultural, religious, and ethnic bonds shared between Russians and Ukrainians.

The Russian president shed light on the post-Cold War period and US schemes to pull Ukraine away from Russia’s fold by promising to admit it into NATO and later fomenting a coup in 2014 with the active participation of neo-Nazi paramilitary groups which soon morphed into an eight-year war by the Kiev regime against Donbass. Putin underscored that Russia did not start the Ukraine conflict in 2022 but moved to end the Kiev regime’s war against its own people. “Putin believes, as I do, that history helps shape the present,” Johnson explained. “And if you don’t understand where you’ve been, you’ll have a tough time to understand where you’re going. And so understanding the history that’s inherent in all of this and particularly people in Russia, in the Caucasus, down into the Middle East, they really bring a different historical perspective to life that is very different from what Americans do. Americans don’t remember much.”

If Americans want to comprehend why Russia rushed to the rescue of Donbass in 2022 and declared the denazification of Ukraine to be one of its key goals, they must remember that the wounds of WW2 that are still fresh in Russia, the ex-CIA official stressed. “Whereas, as you see today, with respect to the Russian people remembering the Great Patriotic War [WW2], they remember,” Johnson noted. “They carry pictures. So it’s still fresh. And the damage inflicted upon the Russian people by the Germans, the Nazis, is something they have not forgotten and won’t easily forget. So I think that’s part of why Putin goes back to history, to drive home the point that Russians have a different timeline, different perspective from Americans. And it’s important for Americans to understand that.”

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“Because it is an election year, and Biden is standing for re-election, his backers in the administrative state are very afraid of any presentation of ‘a loss’ in Ukraine..”

• Putin Interview Helps Americans Understand Ukraine Conflict – Kwiatkowski (Sp.)

Tucker Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin has shed light on the causes of the Ukrainian conflict which is “in many ways not normal” given Ukraine’s deep historic, cultural and ethnic ties to Russia, as per retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, a former analyst for the US Department of Defense. Putin’s historic remarks have clearly shown to what extent the West meddled in Ukrainian affairs after the collapse of the USSR, fanned nationalist sentiment in the Eastern European state and eventually fomented a coup d’etat in 2014 which was completely unnecessary given that the legitimate Ukrainian leadership at the time sat down with the opposition and was ready to hold snap elections.Per Kwiatkowski, this interview actually helps drive home the message that the US arming of the Kiev regime and prolonging of the Ukraine conflict must be stopped, because it is unpopular, unaffordable and destroys the Eastern European country.

“Most public opinion here opposes sending money to Kiev,” the former Pentagon analyst pointed out. “Because it is an election year, and Biden is standing for re-election, his backers in the administrative state are very afraid of any presentation of ‘a loss’ in Ukraine. Hearing directly from President Putin and via his many incisive soundbites that will be replayed and discussed later for wider audiences will help Americans, although not the Biden administration. It will help the discussion that goes on in the US, and also Europe.”She noted that “members of Congress, especially Republicans, will be watching this in order to see how it may inform them as to how this conflict is going, and what it is about.” Most recently, the Senate voted to begin debate on a $95 billion aid package to fund Ukraine, Israel and other US allies.

However, the US mainstream press admitted that the bill faces an “uphill battle” given that the debate will begin just days before the Senate’s two-week recess and just a few weeks before government shutdown deadlines in March. The legislation is a variant of the $118 billion bill earlier blocked by Republican senators and stripped of its border provisions. Previously, House Speaker Mike Johnson made it clear that the “compromise” bipartisan bill will be dead on arrival in the lower chamber. He and other conservative Republicans also signaled that the foreign aid package should not be rammed through the US Congress until measures to tackle the US border crisis are adopted.

Putin touched on US domestic issues during his interview with Carlson, explaining “what many people here also know, and that is the damage we are doing to our US dollar, and our own ability to be a strong, healthy, economically productive economy,” said Kwiatkowski. The US’ deeper engagement in its proxy war in Ukraine is fraught with a risk of a direct conflict with Russia. When asked about the prospect of NATO-Russia war, Putin said: “If someone has the desire to send in American troops that would certainly bring humanity to the brink of a very serious global conflict… This conflict is taking place thousands of kilometers away from your national territory! Don’t you have anything better to do?” Kwiatkowski believes this message will resonate in the United States.

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“The 2014 Ukraine team, including Biden, Nuland, Jake Sullivan (then and now Biden’s national security advisor), Geoffrey Pyatt, and Antony Blinken (then the deputy national security advisor), remains the Ukraine team today. It is a team of bunglers..”

• The Biden-Schumer Plan to Kill More Ukrainians (Jeffrey Sachs)

President Joe Biden is refusing to fold a losing hand as he bets with Ukrainian lives and U.S. taxpayer money. Biden and Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer propose to squander the lives of tens of thousands more Ukrainians and $61 billions of federal funds to keep Biden’s disastrous foreign policy failure hidden from view until after the November election. The $61 billion will make no difference on the battlefield except to prolong the war, the tens of thousands of deaths, and the physical destruction of Ukraine. It will not “save” Ukraine. Ukraine’s security can only be achieved at the negotiating table, not by some fantasized military triumph over Russia. $61 billion is not nothing. This worse-than-useless outlay would exceed the combined budgets of the U.S. Department of Labor, Environmental Protection Agency, National Science Foundation, and the Women, Infant, and Children nutrition program.

Almost exactly 10 years ago this month, Biden did much to put Ukraine on the path to disaster. This is well known to those who have looked carefully at the facts but is kept hidden from view by the White House, the Senate Democrats, and the mainstream media that back Biden. I have previously provided a detailed chronology, with hyperlinks, here. Ukraine’s security can only be achieved at the negotiating table, not by some fantasized military triumph over Russia.In 1990, President George H. W. Bush, Sr. and his German counterpart Chancellor Helmut Kohl promised Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand eastward if the Soviet Union accepted German reunification. When the Soviet Union disbanded in December 1991, with Russia as the successor state, American leaders decided to renege.

President Bill Clinton began NATO expansion over the vociferous opposition of top diplomats like George Kennan and the opposition of his own Secretary of Defense, William Perry. In 1997 Zbigniew Brzezinski upped the ante, with a plan for NATO to expand all the way to Ukraine. He famously wrote that without Ukraine, Russia would cease to be a great power. Russian leaders have repeatedly made clear that NATO expansion to Ukraine is understandably the reddest of Russian redlines. In 2007, President Vladmir Putin stated that NATO enlargement to that date was a cheat on the 1990 promise, and that it must go no further. Despite these clear warnings, including by his own diplomats, George W. Bush Jr. committed in 2008 to expand NATO to Ukraine and Georgia in order to surround Russia in the Black Sea.William Burns, now CIA director, and then the U.S. Ambassador to Russia, wrote a famous memo entitled “Nyet means Nyet,” explaining that Russia’s opposition to NATO enlargement was across Russia’s political spectrum.

Most Ukrainians themselves were also firmly against the plan, favoring neutrality over NATO membership. The Ukrainian Rada declared Ukraine’s state sovereignty in 1990 on the basis of becoming “a permanently neutral state.” In 2009, the people of Ukraine elected Viktor Yanukovych, who ran on a platform of neutrality.In early 2014, the U.S. decided to help bring down Yanukovych in a coup. This was standard U.S. deep-state operating procedure, one used on dozens of occasions around the world. The CIA, National Endowment for Democracy, USAID, and NGOs like the Open Society Foundation went to work in Ukraine. The point person was Victoria Nuland, who was first Richard Cheney’s principal deputy foreign policy advisor, then George Bush Jr.’s ambassador to NATO, then Hillary Clinton’s spokesperson, and by 2014 Assistant Secretary of State.

This time, the Russians caught the conspiracy on tape, in an intercepted call between Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt (now Assistant Secretary of State). Nuland explains to Pyatt that Vice President Joe Biden will help choose and cement the post-coup government. The 2014 Ukraine team, including Biden, Nuland, Jake Sullivan (then and now Biden’s national security advisor), Geoffrey Pyatt, and Antony Blinken (then the deputy national security advisor), remains the Ukraine team today. It is a team of bunglers. They thought that Yanukovych’s overthrow would quickly usher in NATO expansion. Instead, ethnic Russians in Ukraine virulently rejected the Russophobic post-coup government that was installed by Nuland, and called for autonomy of the ethnically Russian regions. In a referendum, Crimea voted overwhelmingly to join Russia.

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“..Syrsky, who is widely unpopular in the military, is reportedly seen as politically safe as he is an ethnic Russian with no political ambitions..”

• Ukraine’s Top General Fired For Disobeying US – Politico (RT)

General Valery Zaluzhny was dismissed as the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces partly because he had clashed with the Pentagon about how to conduct the counteroffensive against Russia last summer, Politico EU reported on Friday. President Vladimir Zelensky sacked Zaluzhny on Thursday, even as the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) warned this might trigger riots or a mutiny. General Aleksandr Syrsky has since been announced as Zaluzhny’s replacement. Officially, the US has neither supported nor opposed Zaluzhny’s firing, with National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan telling the media last weekend that “we’re just not going to get embroiled in that particular decision.” Unofficially, Zaluzhny was blamed for the Ukrainian disagreements with the Pentagon during the 2023 counteroffensive, a source who has “advised the White House on military matters” told Politico.

British and American generals helped plan and wargame Ukraine’s big offensive push to the Azov Sea, but Zaluzhny “tossed aside” the plan after just four days of brutal fighting and opted for tactics the Ukrainians were more familiar with, according to a Washington Post postmortem published in December. The anonymous adviser told Politico that the Ukrainians “just weren’t interested in US advice, and they generally concluded that we have nothing to offer them advice-wise,” noting that many of the Pentagon’s suggestions ended up “tone-deaf” as the Americans had no experience in this kind of warfare.

While Zaluzhny bore the brunt of the blame for this, the US “kept yelling at the wrong person,” Politico’s source claimed, because he was “hamstrung by Zelensky” and the president had the final say on military matters. The much-heralded offensive resulted in “staggering manpower losses,” according to Politico, while failing to achieve any of its objectives. Since then, disagreements between Zelensky and Zaluzhny have gone public. The leader also suspected the general of wanting to run for president, to the point where his sacking was seen as a political necessity, one Ukrainian analyst told the outlet. Syrsky, who is widely unpopular in the military, is reportedly seen as politically safe as he is an ethnic Russian with no political ambitions.

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“Nuland flew there for a good reason, apparently to sort things out and clear up this conflict between Zelensky and Zaluzhny and to find out what is really happening and how it might all end..”

• Nuland Told Zelensky Not To Fire Top General – The Times (RT)

US Acting Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland was unhappy with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s plan to fire General Valery Zaluzhny and offered to “smooth over” the differences between the two, The Times reported on Friday. Zelensky fired Zaluzhny as commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces on Thursday. Nuland was in Kiev at the end of January, as rumors of Zaluzhny’s impending dismissal began to gain traction. In a meeting with the US ambassador to Kiev, Bridget Brink, and Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, she supposedly offered to help bridge the gap between the president and his top military leader. Citing a source privy to the meeting, The Times reported that Nuland was “unhappy to see Zaluzhny go” and offered to “smooth over misunderstandings.”

Umerov reportedly told Nuland that Zaluzhny had “reacted with skepticism” to Zelensky’s public statements and direct orders, going so far as to negotiate directly with Western countries about weapons deliveries behind the Defense Ministry’s back. Zelensky was unhappy that the general would not provide any plans for his 2024 military campaigns, Umerov is said to have told Nuland. Russia’s chief delegate to the military security and arms control talks in Vienna, Konstantin Gavrilov, had identified the Zaluzhny affair as the reason for Nuland’s visit long before the Times. “Nuland flew there for a good reason, apparently to sort things out and clear up this conflict between Zelensky and Zaluzhny and to find out what is really happening and how it might all end,” Gavrilov told the Rossiya-24 TV channel on February 1. He also predicted that a reconciliation is “unlikely” because things between the two have “gone too far.”

Officially, the US has neither supported nor opposed Zaluzhny’s replacement. Within days of Nuland’s visit, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told American media that “we’re just not going to get embroiled in that particular decision.” Currently the acting deputy to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Nuland was previously in charge of European and Eurasian affairs at the State Department. In December 2013, she visited Ukraine to hand out pastries to the armed protesters in Kiev’s central square. She was then taped discussing how to “midwife this thing” just days before the February 2014 coup that overthrew the elected Ukrainian government and triggered a conflict with Russia over Crimea and Donbass.

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“In a group chat of Bakhmut/Artyomovsk veterans, one soldier wrote “we’re all f**ked” upon learning of Syrsky’s appointment..”

• Ukraine’s New Commander-in-chief Is An Unpopular ‘Butcher’ – Politico (RT)

Ukraine’s new armed forces chief, General Aleksandr Syrsky, is deeply unpopular among the rank and file of the Ukrainian military, who view him as a “butcher” willing to sacrifice waves of troops, Politico reported on Thursday. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky named Syrsky as the new head of the armed forces on Thursday, after firing General Valery Zaluzhny from the post. The switch had been the subject of media rumors for several weeks, and Zelensky hinted in an interview last week that it would form part of a wider “reset” of the country’s military and civilian leadership. Syrsky is a controversial choice, best known for “leading forces into a meat grinder in Bakhmut [called Artyomovsk in Russia], sending wave after wave of troops to face opposition fire,” Politico said.

The unsuccessful defense of Artyomovsk/Bakhmut last year cost Ukraine dearly, and earned Syrsky the nickname ‘butcher’, an anonymous source within the Ukrainian military told the news site. A captain told the outlet that Syrsky’s appointment is a “very bad decision,” adding that soldiers refer to him as ‘General200’, a nickname that Politico said refers to 200 of his men dying, but could also refer to ‘Cargo 200’, a Soviet and Russian military code used to describe corpses being removed from the battlefield. “General Syrsky’s leadership is bankrupt, his presence or orders coming from his name are demoralizing, and he undermines trust in the command in general,” an anonymous Ukrainian military officer and frontline intelligence analyst posted on X. “His relentless pursuit of tactical gains constantly depletes our valuable human resources, resulting in tactical advances such as capturing tree lines or small villages, with no operational goals in mind.”

“This approach creates a never-ending cycle of fruitless assaults that drain personnel,” the officer said. In a group chat of Bakhmut/Artyomovsk veterans, one soldier wrote “we’re all f**ked” upon learning of Syrsky’s appointment, Politico stated. Syrsky takes over command of a depleted military, with Kiev having lost more than 383,000 men since the hostilities started in February 2022, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. Prior to his dismissal, Zaluzhny warned Zelensky that a rapid improvement in Ukraine’s position on the battlefield was unlikely, regardless of who took his place, the Washington Post reported last week. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday that Russia’s campaign against Ukraine will not be affected by Syrsky’s appointment, and that Moscow will continue until its objectives are achieved.

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“After we withdrew the troops from Kiev, as we promised to do, the Kiev authorities, as their masters usually do, threw [the peace deal] in the dustbin of history..”

• General Syrsky, Hero of Kiev or Butcher of Bakhmut? (Sp.)

The mainstream media have spent the better part of a day pumping up newly appointed Ukrainian Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrsky as a modern-day von Clausewitz, hailing him as the commander almost singlehandedly responsible for the defense of Kiev during the first weeks of the conflict with Russia. Here’s what such reports are hiding. The recent decision by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to oust his top general and to replace him with Ground Forces commander Oleksandr Syrsky sent shockwaves throughout the media establishments of Kiev’s NATO patrons. Legacy outlets’ reactions included fears that the political leadership in Kiev may have undermined confidence among the military by swapping General Valery Zaluzhny with Syrsky, and concerns that President Zelensky’s new pet general may not be able to “resist political interference in operational matters.”

Other outlets attempted a positive spin on things, pumping up Syrsky’s ego as a brilliant strategist, with Bloomberg pointing to his supposed key role in the defense of Kiev “against all odds” at the start of Russia’s military operation in 2022, and Business Insider hailing his command as a “shocking upset that surprised many who assumed the capital would fall quickly.” AFP went so far as to suggest that it was Syrsky who scuppered “the Kremlin’s” purported “plans to bring the country to its knees within days.” President Zelensky awarded Syrsky the “Hero of Ukraine” title for the operation. In reality, as many of these same outlets have previously admitted, Russia’s withdrawal of troops from areas around the Ukrainian capital at the start of the conflict was politically motivated.

Specifically, it was based on the expectation that the “gesture of goodwill,” as Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called it, would help end the crisis before it escalated into a bloody, full-scale proxy war in the heart of Europe. Syrsky had nothing to do with it. Russia began withdrawing troops from Kiev region on March 29, 2022. The same day, peace talks resumed in Istanbul, Turkiye. Ahead of the negotiations, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkiye confirmed that Russian and Ukrainian negotiators were close to reaching a deal, with Kiev accepting neutrality and non-bloc status. But after Russian troops were gone and Syrsky’s forces came in to replace them without a shot being fired, Zelensky immediately went back on his word and scuppered talks.

“After we withdrew the troops from Kiev, as we promised to do, the Kiev authorities, as their masters usually do, threw [the peace deal] in the dustbin of history,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting with African leaders last June, holding up the text of an agreement with Kiev which included “permanent neutrality” enshrined in Ukraine’s constitution, security guarantees, and even details on the size of its standing army in peacetime. In his bombshell interview with Tucker Carlson on Thursday, President Putin reiterated that Russia made the decision to bull back from the Ukrainian capital in the expectation that it would result in a peace deal. “My counterparts in France, in Germany, said ‘how can you imagine them signing a treaty with a gun to their heads? The troops should be pulled back from Kiev.’ I said, ‘alright.’ We withdrew the troops from Kiev.

As soon as we did so, our Ukrainian negotiators almost immediately threw all our agreements reached in Istanbul into the bin and prepared for a long-running armed confrontation with the help of the United States and its satellites in Europe,” Putin recalled. In other words, far from saving Kiev “against all odds” during the chaotic first week’s of Russia’s special military operation, Syrsky “won” his first major battle in NATO’s proxy conflict against Russia exclusively due to geopolitical considerations, and specifically to Moscow’s peacemaking efforts. Syrsky’s fortunes would continue along the same vein through the autumn of 2022, when, during an operational regrouping of Russian forces to concentrate troops along a smaller front as additional troops were called up during Russia’s partial mobilization, the commander was hailed, again without any particular skilled maneuvers on his part, for the so-called “Kharkov counteroffensive,” which saw Ukrainian forces reoccupying much of the region with almost no resistance as Russian forces pulled back.

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“..the goal being to force all foreigners out of the region ..”

A major change. So far they have only targeted ships linked to Israel.

• Houthis Say All Warships Must Leave Red Sea (Sp.)

The Houthis will continue to fire on Western warships operating in the Red Sea, with the goal being to force all foreigners out of the region, Yemeni Supreme Political Council member Mohammed Ali al-Houthi has announced. “Our message is that just as the British warship has left the region for overhaul, the other warships will likewise leave the region…All [foreign] warships must leave the Red Sea, stop their attacks on Yemen, and end their blockade of the country,” al-Houthi said Thursday, in the wake of reports that the HMS Diamond guided missile destroyer would be “temporarily” pulled out of the Red Sea for refit following repeated attacks by the militia. Houthi-affiliated media released footage earlier in the week showing what appeared to be a cruise missile appearing to strike a warship, later said to be the HMS Diamond, and setting it ablaze.

Britain’s Ministry of Defense did not comment on the footage, but did confirm Tuesday that the Royal Navy’s HMS Richmond frigate would be taking the HMS Diamond’s place to continue “to ensure freedom of navigation in the Red Sea” as the latter is taken out of service for refit. “HMS Diamond joined Operation Prosperity Guardian…in December and has maintained a near constant presence in a ‘high threat area’ of the Red Sea,” the MoD said in a statement. “The destroyer came under fire in three separate attacks by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, successfully destroying nine drones using her world-class Sea Viper missile system and guns,” the ministry added. The warship is now expected to “undergo a period of maintenance and resupply as HMS Richmond takes over her important mission,” the MoD said. “The situation in the region is fraught, and ships in the force are firing on a daily basis – we hand over the baton with our best wishes to the fantastic team in Richmond who we know will do a great job,” HMS Diamond Commander Peter Evans said of the rotation, offering no further details about its nature.

Coalition forces have been extremely sensitive in discussing Houthi attacks, possible casualties or injuries in the Red Sea mission. Last week, US authorities revised their story about the deaths of two Navy SEALs, who were lost at sea in the Red Sea, indicating that the troops perished while trying to board a ship suspected of trying to smuggle weapons to Yemen. Separately this week, the Houthis reported an attack on the Morning Tide, a Barbados-flagged, British-owned cargo ship, and the Star Nasia, a Marshall Islands-flagged American ship. The company operating the Morning Tide confirmed that its vessel had been struck in a drone attack on February 6, causing minor damage to the port side of the vessel. No injuries were reported.

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“..Joe Biden, the official sponsor of Israel’s four-month-long massacre..”

• Any Gaza Deal Could Break Netanyahu’s Coalition (Harb)

There are two words that sum up all the noise around the Paris negotiations over a Gaza war settlement today: “temporary” and “sustainable.” The truce envisaged by the parties present in Paris – Qatar, Egypt, Israel, the US, and France – is a “framework agreement.” The Israeli occupation authorities want any deal to deliver only a “temporary cessation of military operations,” which augurs an eventual resumption of its massacre in Gaza. Hamas and other Palestinian resistance factions, meanwhile, are proposing, through various amendments, a complete cessation of military operations as a prelude to a “sustainable calm.” It is not yet clear why the US administration of Joe Biden, the official sponsor of Israel’s four-month-long massacre, insists on dealing with the “Gaza war” file as if its core issue is the release of Israeli prisoners held in Gaza – rather than the resolution of a decades-long occupation of Palestinian lands and people that led to the state of affairs today.

Any treatment or settlement of this war must start with the occupation and its vast repercussions – the very essence of the conflict. Instead, the White House’s stance reflects an American view that Washington does not bear sole responsibility for now, and raises questions about the nature and effectiveness of the role of the Qatari and Egyptian “mediators.” The latter two Arab states were part of the Paris discussions to draft the agreement over a week ago, with US–Israeli intelligence agencies represented by CIA Chief William Burns, Mossad Chief David Barnea, and the head of the Israeli Shin Bet Ronen Barr. Hours after Hamas announced the submission of its “framework agreement” response to the Qatari and Egyptian mediators, statements issued by the Israelis and Americans revealed their intent to sabotage a genuine peace or a halt to military conflict.

US President Biden commented prematurely by saying that Hamas’ remarks were “exaggerated,” while Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant – fresh out of talks with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken – said the response presented by Hamas was “negative,” and was intentionally drafted to be rejected by Israel. From his perspective, Gallant isn’t exactly wrong. What Israel seeks from the agreement is a US–Arab mandate to restart its war once Israeli prisoners have been released by Gaza’s resistance. The bottom line is fairly unambiguous: Israel wants a continuous war. Gallant concedes publicly that “the war is far from over.” Netanyahu, after meeting Blinken, said, “We have to end the war with a landslide victory, and it is a matter of time. Our army is advancing systematically, and we have ordered the army to work in Rafah,” where the occupation army has for days been threatening a major offensive along the border with Egypt. This will mean the re-displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians already displaced to the border area over the past weeks.

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Russia pays attention.

• German Foreign Minister’s Grandfather Was ‘Ardent Nazi’ – Bild (RT)

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock’s grandfather was “an unconditional National Socialist” who had read ‘Mein Kampf’ and fully stood with the Nazi regime, according to documents seen by the tabloid Bild. Baerbock has spoken publicly about her grandfather’s wartime experiences, telling an audience in 2022 that Waldemar Baerbock returned to Germany from the east in early 1945 “as a defeated soldier.” What Baerbock did not mention was that her grandfather was an officer in the Wehrmacht, and had been awarded one of the Third Reich’s highest military honors, the War Merit Cross with Swords in 1944, Bild reported on Thursday. The cross was bestowed on soldiers for “special services when deployed under enemy weapons or for special services in military warfare.”

According to the newspaper, Waldemar Baerbock’s military records describe him as “an unconditional National Socialist,” who had read Adolf Hitler’s book ‘Mein Kampf’ and whose character was “completely rooted in National Socialism.” Asked for comment, Baerbock’s office said that “the foreign minister was not aware of the documents.” Germany’s Federal Archives note that military records from the time “almost always” describe officers with phrases like “stands firmly on the basis of the National Socialist worldview,” and praise their “impeccable National Socialist attitude.” According to Bild, Waldemar Baerbock told his family in the late 1990s that he had served in the Wehrmacht. Before he died in 2016, he wrote down his war memoirs in a notebook, which he passed to his family. Baerbock mentioned her grandfather in her 2021 autobiography, but did not state whether his notebook contained any references to his supposed Nazi ideology.

During a 2022 speech marking the 80th anniversary of the Wannsee Conference, where Nazi officials formulated and planned the so-called ‘final solution’ for Europe’s jews, Baerbock declared that even low-level government functionaries of the Third Reich were responsible for “the crimes and genocide of the Nazi regime.” Annalena Baerbock was a co-leader of Alliance90/The Greens in Germany before becoming foreign minister in late 2021. An ardent interventionist, Baerbock has steered the party away from its long-standing policy of pacifism, and reportedly pushed Chancellor Olaf Scholz to approve shipments of heavy weapons to Ukraine. While her party’s 2021 manifesto explicitly stated that it wanted to “end European arms exports to war and crisis zones,” Germany has become the second-largest supplier of arms to Kiev after the US.

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SCOTUS to the rescue.

• The “Unassailable” Theory Faces a Potential Unanimous Rejection (Turley)

This week, the argument before the Supreme Court in Trump v. Anderson captivated the nation as the justices considered the disqualification of former President Donald Trump from the 2024 presidential ballot. For some of us, the argument brought back vivid memories of covering Bush v. Gore almost 25 years ago. While one justice (Clarence Thomas) remains on the Court, the last major intervention of the Court into a close presidential election is a matter of distant history. As someone who covered both cases, much is regrettably familiar: the deep division in the country and rage of many advocates. However, unlike 2000, the Court itself appears virtually unanimous in this case. The biggest difference is not the Court but the coverage. The Trump case exposed the erosion of legal coverage in the media. For millions of Americans, the cold reception of all of the justices to the novel theory under the 14th Amendment came as a surprise.

Networks and newspapers have been featuring experts who assured the public that this theory was well-based and disqualification well-established. The only barrier, they insisted, was the blind partisanship of the six conservative justices on the Court. Twenty-four years ago, I was covering the Bush v. Gore case for CBS. I had just left NBC as an analyst when the election controversy exploded. While there were the usual partisans and some outlets slanted the merits, the coverage was overall balanced and informative. This is not a case of the Court changing. We have changed as legal analysts. The Court itself is deeply divided on some issues. However, the justices gave a fair hearing to both sides. That is not the case with the coverage. Looking back at the coverage, most legacy media called upon the same legal experts who have previously endorsed virtually every claim made against Trump. They predictably declared Trump as clearly disqualified despite the fact that this theory has never been embraced by the federal courts.

Figures like federal court Judge J. Michael Luttig who called these arguments against disqualification as “revealing, fatuous, and politically and constitutionally cynical.” Others insisted that the argument that the provision might not apply to presidents as “absurd.” That was the argument pushed by Justice Ketanji Onyika Brown Jackson. Many of the media turned to Professor Laurence Tribe despite a long record of constitutional claims rejected by the Court, in some cases unanimously. Tribe assured the public that the theory was “unassailable” and also insisted that the theory (later voiced by Jackson) is “an absurd interpretation.” It is important that such views are heard in the coverage. The problem is that the media has, once again, pushed this novel (and in my view unfounded) theory to the point that many assumed that it was indeed unassailable.

What was most troubling is the repeated attacks on the Court by legal experts who suggested that the only thing keeping Trump on the ballot was the bias of conservative justices. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D. Md.) declared “This is their opportunity to behave like real Supreme Court justices.” It appears that both Justices Kagan and Jackson did not behave like “real Supreme Court justices” in oral argument by objecting to core aspects of this theory. We will have to wait for the final opinion but most of us are predicting a reversal of Colorado and the possibility of a unanimous or near unanimous decision. The question is whether such a result will change how media outlets frame these disputes in the future. After weeks of portraying the opposition as only resting with the right of the Court, the coverage had a weird disjointed feel as some of the same commentators reported that the justices appeared uniformly unconvinced by this “unassailable” theory.

Turley Kagan

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“The fourth estate has literally died and has been replaced by phalanx of corrupt young men and women who have redefined the profession entirely as an extension of the state and its craven objectives..”

• Biden’s Eulogy Will Be ‘Journalism RIP’. How He Destroyed the 4th Estate (Jay)

The Biden administration is inventing a phoney war and journalists are supporting the narrative without even missing a heartbeat. The fourth estate has literally died and has been replaced by phalanx of corrupt young men and women who have redefined the profession entirely as an extension of the state and its craven objectives. In the UK, the odious Douglas Murray who has shown Britain from day one of the recent conflict in Gaza that he is more than happy to replicate every item of fake news that Israel’s IDF is happy to hand him – without even acknowledging the bigger picture of a brutal occupation. He is, essentially, a pro-Zionist fanatic and it beggars belief that he is even allowed to go on air and report, when he has shown his almost cult-like following of the Netanyahu government and its objectives to wipe out the civilian population of Gaza. He is a genocide denier and yet he is allowed to continue his work as a journalist. Should we be shocked though to learn that just recently his diatribe of on air lies about the Gaza genocide, which always paints the Israelis as the victims and the Palestinians as savages, has been taken to the next level?

Murray now is in London trying to help Israel with its fundraising. Thirty years ago, this would have been unthinkable. A wall of resistance from professionals which would have blocked him in the media industry would have prevailed. “Unethical” would be the key word which would have put this vile Israeli apologist back in his box. But in modern Britain, media has become so corrupt, that few, if any are shocked that a journalist can work openly as an activist as well. One could argue that one role is merely an extension of the other, both of them dripping with the blood of Palestinian children. Real journalism is being shut down at an alarming rate. Partisan journalism, which even allows hacks to be activists at the same time, is the new norm. To give you an idea just how far this has advanced, any kind of criticism of how the state handles or reports on the Gaza genocide is met with a steel hand in a steel glove in both the UK and U.S. Pity the young students at Northwestern University who have obscure anti Klu Klux Klan federal laws levelled against them by the FBI for producing a parody newspaper which mocked U.S. policy of Israel and Gaza. You couldn’t make it up.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

AI

 

 

 

 

Kiwi

 

 

Baby hippo

 

 

Dinosaur

 

 

Belly Rubs
https://twitter.com/i/status/1755600174536360156

 

 

Beetle Frogs

 

 

Illusion

 

 

Stick

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle February 9 2024

Feb 092024
 
 February 9, 2024  Posted by at 9:25 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  76 Responses »


Edward Hopper Gloucester Beach, Bass Rocks 1924

 

• Tucker Carlson: The Putin Interview (ZH)
• Tucker Carlson’s Moscow Tour Sparked Major Buzz in US, Russia – Peskov (Sp.)
• Hillary Clinton Kicked Off Years of Anti-Russia Hysteria (Miles)
• “My Memory Is Fine” Biden Fumes, Before Proving it’s Not (ZH)
• ‘Too Old And Feeble’: No Charges For Biden (ZH)
• Zaluzhny Removed as Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief (Sp.)
• Zelensky Was Warned Of Riots If He Sacked Top General (RT)
• Ukrainian Suffering Severe Shortage of Infantry, as Morale Plummets (Sp.)
• Capitol Hill Bipartisan Bill Falls Apart (Manley)
• Threats Of Open Border Chaos Turn Into Rumors Of ‘Executive Action’ (ZH)
• US Blocks Yemen-Saudi Peace Deal (Antiwar)
• The EV Transition Is Coming Undone (JoNova)
• Why Medvedev Is Free to Go Full ‘Born to Be Wild’ (Pepe Escobar)
• EU Fears Trade War With Trump But Biden Wrecked Its Economy (Sp.)
• Trump Pleased After SCOTUS Ballot-Ban Hearing Ends (ZH)
• Every Child Is A Whole Universe (CD)

 

 

 

 

Vote

 

 

RFK

 

 

 

 

Ursula
https://twitter.com/i/status/1755270763056156863

 

 

Malema

 

 

 

 

Tucker was not prepared for Putin taking control of the interview. But he did.

• Tucker Carlson: The Putin Interview (ZH)

The trigger for the Ukraine war: “Initially, it was the coup in Ukraine that provoked the conflict… They launched the war in Donbas in 2014 with the use of aircraft and artillery against civilians. This is when it all started.” Getting to the meat of the Ukraine war, Putin told Carlson that “The former Russian leadership assumed that the Soviet Union had ceased to exist and therefore there were no longer any ideological dividing lines. Russia even agreed voluntarily and proactively to the collapse of the Soviet Union, and believed that this would be understood by the so-called civilized West as an invitation for cooperation and association.” “We were promised no NATO to the east, not an inch to the east, as we were told. And then what? They said, well, it’s not enshrined on paper, so we’ll expand.”

“That is what Russia was expecting, both from the United States and this so-called collective West as a whole. There were smart people, including in Germany, Egon Bahr, a major politician of the Social Democratic Party, who insisted in his personal conversations with the Soviet leadership on the brink of the collapse of the Soviet Union, that they knew security systems should be established in Europe. Help should be given to unified Germany, but a new system should be also established to include the United States, Canada, Russia and other Central European countries. But NATO needs not to expand. That’s what he said. If NATO expands, everything would be just the same as during the Cold War, only closer to Russia’s borders. That’s all. He was a wise old man, but no one listened to him. In fact, he got angry once. If, he said, you don’t listen to me, I’m never setting my foot in Moscow once again. Everything happened just as he had said.”

Vladimir Putin: I already said that we did not refuse to talk. We’re willing to negotiate. It is the western side, and Ukraine is obviously a satellite state of the US. It is evident. I do not want you to take it as if I am looking for a strong word or an insult. But we both understand what is happening. The financial support. 72 billion U.S. dollars was provided. Germany ranks second, then other European countries come. Dozens of billions of U.S. dollars are going to Ukraine. There’s a huge influx of weapons. In this case, you should tell the current Ukrainian leadership to stop and come to a negotiating table, rescind this absurd decree. We did not refuse.

Tucker: Sure, but you already said it. I didn’t think you meant it is an insult because you already said correctly, it’s been reported that Ukraine was prevented from negotiating a peace settlement by the former British Prime Minister acting on behalf of the Biden administration. So, of course they’re a satellite. Big countries control small countries. That’s not new. And that’s why I asked about dealing directly with the Biden administration, which is making these decisions, not President Zelensky of Ukraine.

Surrender

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“Does Carlson need some sort of protection of ours? I do not think so. I think he is capable of standing up for himself..”

• Tucker Carlson’s Moscow Tour Sparked Major Buzz in US, Russia – Peskov (Sp.)

The arrival of US journalist Tucker Carlson in Moscow, along with his subsequent interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin, has caused a major commotion in the US and Russia, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday, noting the anticipation and thorough analysis that is expected to surround this interview.[..] “Carlson’s persona, his arrival in Russia and the interview with Putin is an event that has stirred up much public attention not only in the United States, but also in our country, to be fair. This attention is sometimes, let us say, extraordinary. Obviously, this is an interview that is anticipated. [And] obviously, this is an interview that will be read and analyzed for more than [just] one day,” Peskov told reporters.

The spokesman emphasized that any interview with the head of state, particularly with a foreign representative, is a major event. Peskov further stated that Moscow does not have any specific expectations regarding the reaction to Putin’s interview with Carlson. However, he highlighted the importance of diverse international reactions, noting that they should have a presence in some form. “Does Carlson need some sort of protection of ours? I do not think so. I think he is capable of standing up for himself. Despite the not-so-sane voices in the United States, there are also some sane voices out there. Hence, we will stay tuned. We believe it is vital that as many individuals worldwide as possible become familiar with the perspective and outlook of the Russian leader,” Peskov remarked.

Tucker terror

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They were getting along fine. But Hillary needed someone to blame her loss on.

“..The only way to secure peace and prevent World War III may lie in electing, or reelecting, a president unbeholden to the US’ political and foreign policy establishment…”

• Hillary Clinton Kicked Off Years of Anti-Russia Hysteria (Miles)

Hostility towards Russia has grown steadily in US media discourse since former President Donald Trump’s electoral victory in 2016. The businessman’s triumph was a seismic moment in politics which, along with Brexit in the United Kingdom, fundamentally reshaped the political conversation in the West.Now, with US-Russia relations at their lowest point since the Cold War, observers are taking a look back to understand how Russophobia grew to such epic proportions in the Western world. Security analyst Mark Sleboda joined Sputnik’s Fault Lines program Wednesday to examine the media response to Tucker Carlson’s interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and host Jamarl Thomas noted the influence of one person in particular in fueling anti-Russia hysteria.

“This all goes back to Hillary Clinton if I’m being honest,” said Thomas as Sleboda noted that Russophobia limited Trump’s options in diplomacy with Russia during his presidency. “The Democratic position [was that] it was Vladimir Putin who took Donald Trump under his wing and carried him, like the footprints thing, where Jesus carried the person when they only saw one set of footprints and that Putin is the reason that Trump got in office.” “And Hillary Clinton breathlessly told everybody this in fact, that’s what she ran on after the fact she lost,” Thomas added. “That was one of the things that she basically blamed. Democrats believe it to this day and they believe it because from their point of view, there was no way that this incompetent man beat our most qualified woman in the history of women in regards to politics,” the host pointed out. “That skew is there because Hillary Clinton seeded the population with that nonsense. It’s unfortunate, to be honest,” Thomas insisted.

Sleboda agreed with the assessment, adding, “there’s no question she [Clinton] was a big player. “I mean, and she didn’t stop at slurring Donald Trump, of course,” Sleboda noted. “She slurred members of her own party who were – Tulsi Gabbard – who were running for president, as a Russian agent simply because Tulsi Gabbard had positions on foreign policy that were critical of existing US foreign policy, including on events that led up to this conflict in Ukraine.” “So, Hillary Clinton is just so pro-hegemon, you know, US playing the role of world hegemon that she’s willing to slur even members of her own party,” the analyst concluded, “as being Putin’s puppets, much less, of course, Donald Trump.”

Democrats have increasingly favored accusing their political opponents of ties to Russia since 2016, when members of the Hillary Clinton campaign devised the tactic as a way to explain the candidate’s unanticipated loss to Donald Trump in that year’s presidential election. Within 24 hours of her [Clinton’s] concession speech, [Campaign manager Robby] Mook and [John] Podesta assembled her communications team at the Brooklyn headquarters to engineer the case that the election wasn’t entirely on the up-and-up, according to an account by journalists Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes. “For a couple of hours, with Shake Shack containers littering the room, they went over the script they would pitch to the press and the public. Already, Russian hacking was the centerpiece of the argument.” Senator Bernie Sanders has also engaged in the McCarthy-esque argument. “Who’s paying you?” the Vermont politician who aligns with the Democratic Party angrily asked when confronted by a former campaign chief over his vote to arm Ukrainian neo-Nazis.

As relations between the US and Russia sink even lower amid the United States’ failed effort to defeat Russia in the US-backed proxy war in Ukraine, one increasingly senses that liberals have picked up the “neo-McCarthyist” mantle of demonizing Russia, as host Melik Abdul pointed out. The only way to secure peace and prevent World War III may lie in electing, or reelecting, a president unbeholden to the US’ political and foreign policy establishment.

Hillary
https://twitter.com/i/status/1755568411990470778

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“..Biden also bizarrely claimed that he had vowed to be a “president” for everybody “whether they were from a red state or a green state.”

• “My Memory Is Fine” Biden Fumes, Before Proving it’s Not (ZH)

In less than 15 minutes, President Biden proved Special Counsel Robert Hur right and confirmed all concerns about his fitness for office. As we detailed earlier, Hur wrote in his report that he would not suggest bringing charges against the president for his mishandling of classified documents because, “Biden will likely present himself to the jury, as he did during his interview with our office, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” The president, having ‘seen dead people’ numerous times this week, was apparently displeased with the report, and decided the correct course of action was a (rare) press conference to set the world straight on his mental acuity. It did not go well. He welcomed the special counsel’s decision not to bring charges: “The bottom line is the matter is now closed,” Biden asserted, with respect to the report.But, then proceeded to throw his staff under the bus:

“I take responsibility for not having seen exactly what my staff was doing,” he said. “Things that appeared in my garage, things that came out of my home, things that were moved, were moved not by me, but my staff, but my staff,” he continued. Then he took issue with the special counsel report’s questioning his mental acuity around the timing of his son’s death, and angry-old-man mode was unleashed: “How in the hell dare he raise that? Frankly, when I was asked the question, I thought to myself, it was none of their damn business,” Biden thundered. Biden started to say he wore his son’s rosary every day since the day Beau died, but stopped, when he appeared to forget where the rosary came from. “Every Memorial Day we hold a service remembering him, attended by friends and family and the people who loved him,” Biden continued, after a pause. “I don’t need anyone. I don’t need anyone to remind me when he passed away.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1755784945371398528

The mumbling continued as opened up the press conference to questions – not a great idea in hindsight. Constantly defending himself against allegations of failing memory, Biden appeared to snap when Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy asked Biden, “How bad is your memory?” “My memory is so bad I let you speak,” Biden said. “My memory is fine. Take a look at what I’ve done since I’ve become president.” Doocy pressed, pointing to the Special Counsel’s description of Biden as an “elderly, well-meaning man.” “I am well-meaning. And I’m an elderly man. And I know what the hell I’m doing,” Biden reacted. “I’ve been president – I put this country back on its feet. I don’t need his recommendation.” Biden’s rage reached its zenith when a CNN reporter began to ask a question about the American people’s concerns about his mental state (a perspective that is widely held according to many polls). “

The American people have been watching and they have expressed concerns about your age,” the reporter said. “That is your judgement! That is your judgement! That is not the judgement of the press!” Biden shouted back at her. Biden also bizarrely claimed that he had vowed to be a “president” for everybody “whether they were from a red state or a green state.” And then, as his piéce de resistance, after initially walking out, the president called Israel’s response in Gaza “over the top” and then mistakenly referred to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as the President of Mexico. “Initially, the president of Mexico — Sisi — did not want to open up the gate to allow humanitarian material to get in. I talked to him. I convinced him to open the gate.” He did not correct himself. Watch the full (15 minutes from start to finish) shitshow here:

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Meanwhile, where are the nuclear codes?

• ‘Too Old And Feeble’: No Charges For Biden (ZH)

The latest evidence of a two-tiered justice system and Democrats apparently above the law comes in a report released Thursday afternoon by the special counsel investigating President Biden’s mismanagement of classified documents, which decided against charging the president.”Our investigation uncovered evidence that President Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials after his vice presidency when he was a private citizen,” according to a special counsel’s final report. In the report, special counsel Robert Hur wrote, “Biden will likely present himself to the jury, as he did during his interview with our office, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

Despite the president’s mishandling of classified documents about foreign policy and the military and pages and pages of entries about national security, the special counsel concluded: “We conclude that no criminal charges are warranted in this matter. “We reach the same conclusion even if Department of Justice policy did not foreclose criminal charges against a sitting president.” This report was released one year after Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Hur as the special counsel to oversee the investigation into classified documents discovered at the president’s office and Deleware’s home in late 2022.

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Mere days ago, Syrsky said he didn’t want the job. The US are pushing. I saw things on both Zerohedge and Moon of Alabama about a 29 year old deputy battalion commander named Lt. Oleksandr Shyrshyn. They’re not the same person. Syrsky is 58. He’s Russian-born and has a brother who lives in Russia.

• Zaluzhny Removed as Ukraine’s Commander-in-Chief (Sp.)

The general’s ouster comes after months of intrigue between himself and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who slammed the commander for revealing that Kiev’s summer 2023 counteroffensive had ended in failure. Ukrainian Armed Forces Commander-in-Chief Valery Zaluzhny has left his post as the Ukraine’s top general, Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov has announced. “General Valery Zaluzhny had one of the most difficult tasks – to lead the Armed Forces of Ukraine during the Great War with Russia,” Umerov wrote in a social media post Thursday evening. “But war does not remain the same. War changes and demands change. Battles of 2022, 2023 and 2024 are three different realities. 2024 will bring new changes for which we must be ready. New approaches, new strategies are needed,” he added.

“Today, a decision was made on the need to change the leadership of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. I am sincerely grateful to Valery Fedorovych for all his achievements and victories,” Umerov wrote. Earlier in the day, Zaluzhny and Zelensky published photos to their respective social media confirming that they had met. “I have just met with the supreme commander. We had an important and serious conversation. A decision was made about the need to change approaches and strategy. I am grateful to all those close to me, to the team at the General Staff, the Defense Ministry, the president of Ukraine,” Zaluzhny wrote. In a video address Thursday evening, Zelensky confirmed that Zaluzhny had been dismissed, and announced that he would be replaced as commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces by Colonel-General Oleksandr Syrsky, a Russian-born officer who has served as commander of Ukraine’s Ground Forces since 2019.

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“.. if Zelensky wants a “reset,” then he should start with himself and other officials in his government, Poroshenko added…”

• Zelensky Was Warned Of Riots If He Sacked Top General (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has yet to sack the country’s commander-in-chief Valery Zaluzhny because the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) warned him that such a move could lead to unrest, sources told Ukrainska Pravda newspaper. The paper reported on Wednesday that it had been planned to make Zaluzhny’s dismissal public on Friday, February 2, but the move was delayed because of the advice coming from the SBU. According to sources, the agency told its staff to be ready for riots in the Ukrainian capital Kiev if the general, who remains popular with both the public and soldiers, were removed. The SBU also contacted some of the military commanders, asking them to keep an eye on their troops and make sure none of them leave their positions, they added.

Reports of tensions between Zelensky and Zaluzhny have been circulating for months, with the failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive last year believed to have worsened relations. In mid-January, Bloomberg reported that the falling out between the pair happened after the president was angered by the general describing the situation on the battlefield with Russia as “a stalemate.” Zaluzhny later retracted his comments, but “stresses have remained despite official assertions that the leadership is unified,” the newspaper said. Rumors that the commander-in-chief was about to be removed emerged in late January, coming from both military and political sources. However, they were denied by both the president’s office and the defense ministry.

On Friday, the Washington Post reported that Zelensky’s administration had informed the White House that the decision had been made to dismiss Zaluzhny. The Biden administration officials accepted the move, neither supporting nor opposing it, the newspaper’s sources said. Zelensky publicly addressed the situation for the first time in an interview with Italy’s RAI TG1 news channel on Saturday, saying that he’s planning “a replacement of a series of state leaders, not just in a single sector like the military.” According to the president, a “reset” is needed because “if we want to win, we must all push in the same direction, convinced of victory.”Earlier this week, former Ukrainian president Pyotr Poroshenko suggested that Zaluzhny should be left in charge of the military. And if Zelensky wants a “reset,” then he should start with himself and other officials in his government, Poroshenko added.

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“You can feel that people are morally and physically exhausted..”

• Ukrainian Suffering Severe Shortage of Infantry, as Morale Plummets (Sp.)

Ukrainian troops are experiencing an acute shortage of infantry, the military is physically exhausted, and its morale is falling, US newspaper The Washington Post reported, citing soldiers and commanders of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The Ukrainian military believes the shortage of personnel could have a domino effect, especially in winter, when weather conditions are difficult. “You can feel that people are morally and physically exhausted,” the publication quoted a Ukrainian commander, who identified himself as Sergei, as saying. Battalion commander Alexander told the publication that no one is joining the army, because “the state has failed to explain to them that they should go there.”

A lack of ammunition and weapons is also a problem for Ukrainian troops. According to one commander, his unit had received only 10 shells for two howitzers. The reports of acute troop shortages come as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is reportedly preparing to replace his military chief, General Valery Zaluzhny. The question of how many new soldiers Ukraine needs to mobilize has been among the major stumbling blocks between the two. Zaluzhny previously told Zelensky that Ukraine needs nearly 500,000 new troops, but the latter privately and publicly pushed back on that figure. The draft law on mobilization was supported by Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, in the first reading on Wednesday. Unlike a previous version, it does not provide for the conscription of disabled people, but it significantly tightens the process itself.

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“..we’ve got to stop lumping all of this stuff together. I can tell you that the people do not want, in my district, to continue funding this Ukraine war with no accountability, no plan to victory..”

• Capitol Hill Bipartisan Bill Falls Apart (Manley)

Lawmakers in DC released a large bipartisan bill on Sunday. That bill aimed to reform immigration policy in a decade with $20 billion (out of $118 billion in total for funding for Ukraine and Israel). On Wednesday the US Senate blocked the bill, but is open to hearing a revised version of the legislation which includes Ukraine and Israel aid but not immigration reform. On Wednesday, Gerry Wilkins, a political consultant and candidate for US House Alabama District 6, spoke with Sputnik’s Fault Lines. Wilkins said that US voters in Alabama aren’t interested in aiding Ukraine with “no accountability, no plan to victory”. “I think Speaker Johnson has a very difficult time ahead. When you look at the majority in the House. But he does need to bring a standalone Israel bill, a standalone border security bill. And we’ve got to stop lumping all of this stuff together. I can tell you that the people do not want, in my district, to continue funding this Ukraine war with no accountability, no plan to victory,” Wilkins explained.

“That’s just a nonstarter for people in Alabama, especially when we have an invasion going on at the southern border.” The political consultant sounded off the steps that he would like the US government to take in addressing security at the US-Mexico border, including an end to what is called “catch and release”—a system in which an illegal immigrant is released to the community while they await hearings in immigration court instead of detaining them. “We need to reimplement the stay in Mexico policy,” Wilkins urged. “We need to end catch and release. We need to activate the National Guard at all of our border states. And we need to put a stop to this. And we have the technology to do it. And then we need to go after these cartels that are perpetrating this human trafficking and this fentanyl that is just pouring into our country.”

Wilkins then reaffirmed that there is a strong allyship between the US and Israel which has been active since the Vietnam War. Despite a difference in politics between US President Joe Biden and Israeli Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the US has continued to funnel billions of dollars to aid Israel in their conflict at the Gaza Strip.But now, half of US adults believe Israel has “gone too far” in their military campaign in Gaza as the death toll has risen to 27,000 people, with two-thirds of those victims being women and children. “So clearly, you know, Israel is a separate issue from Ukraine. And I’m completely in support of helping Israel, they’re our greatest ally in the Middle East, their strategic importance to us. So, I do think that needs to be a priority for us,” he said.

“And I also understand those that are concerned about the fiscal component to it, because, I mean, goodness, we’re approaching $35 trillion national debt right now. And every dollar we’re spending, we’re borrowing. So it’s clearly an issue we have to address. And we have a very tight majority. And there’s different opinions on this, but I think there are ways to navigate it,” Wilkins added.“And the fact that they’re trying to say, this is a border bill when they want to send another $68 billion to Ukraine. It’s ridiculous,” the analyt emphasized.

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“Perhaps the administration realizes that passing legislation on border security attached to Ukraine and Israel aid is a no-go, while actively fighting Texas over keeping the border open is not a good look…”

• Threats Of Open Border Chaos Turn Into Rumors Of ‘Executive Action’ (ZH)

On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre warned that unless the $118B ‘bipartisan’ border security bill (which allocates more than $75 billion for Ukraine and Israel) isn’t passed, there will be chaos at the southern US border.”Because congressional Republicans are choosing partisan politics over our national security and refusing to pass the bipartisan national security agreement that includes significant border reforms and funding, over the coming weeks, ICE will be forced to reduce operations because of budget shortfalls,” she said on Air Force One, The Politics Brief reports. “We have asked Congress for additional funding and resources, and every time Congress has provided less than we asked for, or most recently, completely ignored our supplemental request.” Likely sensing that nobody is buying what they’re selling, NBC News reported Wednesday night – citing anonymous sources (of course) that the Biden administration is now considering taking executive action to deter illegal immigration across the southern border.

Perhaps the administration realizes that passing legislation on border security attached to Ukraine and Israel aid is a no-go, while actively fighting Texas over keeping the border open is not a good look. And of course, NBC wants us to know that “the plans have been under consideration for months.” So, why force Congress to cough up billions for foreign countries first before playing that card then? Why not keep the border closed three years ago, instead of nuking Trump-era policies and announcing that the US was open to any and all? “The unilateral measures under consideration might upset some progressives in Congress, the officials said, but they noted that Democratic mayors who have asked for more help from the federal government to handle the influx of migrants in their cities would be pleased. The measures are still being drafted and are not expected to take place any time soon.

Biden faces growing political backlash, some of it from members of his own party, over his handling of the border as he campaigns for re-election. He plans to cite the Republican turnabout on the bipartisan border legislation as proof that for political reasons the GOP does not really want to solve the problem. But he is still vulnerable on the issue, trailing his likely 2024 opponent, former President Donald Trump, by more than 30 points on securing the border and controlling immigration, according to a new NBC News poll released this week.” -NBC News. “It’s a plan B,” said an anonymous official.

Sheriff
https://twitter.com/i/status/1755621635665658220

Read more …

“..the council does not have much influence and is known in Yemen as the “government of hotels” since many of its members are in exile..”

• US Blocks Yemen-Saudi Peace Deal (Antiwar)

The US is purposely blocking a Yemen peace deal that was negotiated between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia, The New York Times reported on Tuesday. The US decision to re-designate the Houthis as “Specially Designated Global Terrorists” will block the payment of public sector workers living in Houthi-controlled Yemen, who have gone without pay for years. The payment of civil workers has been a key demand of the Houthis and is part of the first phase of the peace deal. The Houthis had asked for the salaries to be paid for using oil revenue that goes to the Saudi-backed Yemeni government, whose leaders are mainly based in Saudi Arabia. It’s unclear if the Saudi side agreed to the Houthi demand or if they decided to pay the salaries using other means.

The first phase of the peace deal would also fully open Yemen’s airports and sea ports that have been under blockade since 2015, another aspect of the deal that will be complicated by the new US sanctions, which will go into effect later this month. A US official told the Times that the US would only allow the payment of Yemeni civil salaries if the Houthis choose the path of “peace” and stop attacking shipping in the Red Sea. But the Houthis, who govern the most populated area of Yemen, have been clear the operations will only stop once the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza ends. Instead of pressuring Israel to stop its onslaught, President Biden launched a new war against the Houthis, which has dramatically escalated the situation.

The Houthis are now targeting American and British commercial shipping, and there’s no sign they will back down. Since January 12, the US has launched at least 18 rounds of missile strikes on Houthi-controlled Yemen. President Biden has acknowledged the strikes are not “working” since they haven’t stopped Houthi attacks. But he vowed to continue bombing Yemen anyway. The US supported a Saudi/UAE-led coalition in Yemen in a brutal war that killed at least 377,000 people between 2015 and 2022. More than half of those killed died of starvation and disease caused by the bombing campaign and blockade.

A truce between the Saudis and Houthis has been held since April 2022, but a formal peace deal hasn’t been signed. Despite the new US bombing campaign, the Saudis and Houthis appear determined not to restart the war. When President Biden launched his bombing campaign in Yemen, Saudi Arabia urged the US to “avoid escalation.” This week, a Houthi official said the Yemeni group was ready to formally make peace with the Saudis. “Sanaa is prepared for peace with Riyadh despite the challenges posed by the US and its associated Yemeni groups,” said Hussein al-Ezzi, the Houthi deputy foreign minister. Some members of the US and Saudi-backed Yemeni presidential council are calling for a ground campaign against the Houthis. But the council does not have much influence and is known in Yemen as the “government of hotels” since many of its members are in exile.

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“..the UK Lords are calling for the government to counter the misinformation campaign filled with “mistruths”. The industry must be at deaths door.”

• The EV Transition Is Coming Undone (JoNova)

Last year the acceleration in EV sales stopped accelerating. The industry was still growing they said, just not quite as fast. Now, so soon, the sales are actually falling. In the UK, EV sales dropped off a cliff, falling 25% last month. Perhaps it was just a bad month? But in California, home of global green dreams, sales have also declined, and for the last two quarters. Ominously, this is happening despite government decrees insisting every new car sold in 2035 will be an EV. Sales are supposed to be launching into orbit. Something is very wrong. Meanwhile Hertz has taken yet another step away from their EV quest — after announcing they were selling off a third of their EV fleet at bargain basement prices, now they are cancelling plans to buy 65,000 Polestars. This was a $3 billion deal, and to let them out of it, Polestar has, by golly, demanded Hertz give them the right to buy back the old Polestars that Hertz wants to sell — that way Polestar can keep the older models off the secondhard market and stop the value from falling the same dire way the secondhand Teslas have.

Polestar is a Volvo spin off company, and now we understand why last week Volvo announced it would stop funding Polestar and reduce its shareholding. They knew what was coming. Not to put too fine a point on the state of the EV market, but Ford is losing $38,000 per EV. This means the more EVs they sell, the poorer the company gets. They made $10 billion dollars in profits last year, yet the balance sheet shows they lost about $5 billion just on EVs. This puts them in the bizarre position that they could theoretically give away the entire EV production line and boost company profits by 50%. It’s that bad… Indeed it’s so truly awful, that the UK Lords are calling for the government to counter the misinformation campaign filled with “mistruths”. The industry must be at deaths door.

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“..the inevitable conclusion is that the proxy war on country 404 will keep going on and on and on – in myriad levels..”

• Why Medvedev Is Free to Go Full ‘Born to Be Wild’ (Pepe Escobar)

It’s now crystal clear how Washington is actively splitting the EU in favor of a rabidly Russophobic Vilnius-Warsaw-Kiev axis. Meanwhile, the “no compromise” in Ukraine is deeply determined by geoeconomics: the EU desperately needs access to Ukraine’s lithium for the “decarbonization” scam; the vast mineral wealth; the rich black-earth soil (now mostly property of BlackRock, Monsanto and co.); the sea routes (assuming Odessa does not revert to its status of “Russian city”); and most of all, the ultra-cheap workforce. Whatever happens next, Baab’s diagnosis for the EU and Germany is gloomy: “The European Union has lost its central function”, and “historically, it has failed as a peace project.” After all now it’s the Washington-Vilnius-Warsaw-Kiev axis that “sets the tone.”

And it gets worse: “We are becoming not only the backyard of the United States, but also the backyard of Russia. The energy flows and container traffic, the economic centers are moving eastwards, forming along the Budapest-Moscow-Astana-Beijing axis.” So as we crisscross Medvedev, Ishchenko and Baab, the inevitable conclusion is that the proxy war on country 404 will keep going on and on and on – in myriad levels. “Peace” negotiations are absolutely out of the question – certainly not before the November elections in the U.S..

Ishchenko understands how “this is a civilizational catastrophe” – perhaps not “the first since the fall of the Roman Empire”: after all, several civilizations collapsed across Eurasia since the 4th century. What is blatantly clear is that the collective West as we know it is fast flirting with a one-way ticket to the dustbin of History. And that brings us to the genius of Shelley encapsulated in one of the most devastating sonnets in the history of literature, Ozymandias, published in 1818:

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

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“..Biden’s years of experience as a politician means he knows “what you have to do to prevent the world from going to war.”

• EU Fears Trade War With Trump But Biden Wrecked Its Economy (Sp.)

EU officials are reportedly drawing up a contingency plan for Donald Trump’s return to power. An anonymous official familiar with the preparations told Bloomberg that the European Commission is working on an “impact assessment” of the consequences of a potential Trump win, based on the candidate’s threats to slap the bloc with a series of tough new trade-related restrictions designed to address the perceived unfair treatment of American businesses, and Brussels’ supposed softness on China. The Trump team’s proposed measures include a 10 percent tariff on European goods, designed to boost US manufacturing, plus a response to European digital services taxes targeting American tech giants, and other measures meant to balance the lopsided trade relationship with the EU, with whom the US has had a deficit topping $200 billion for over three years running.

In response, Brussels is reportedly considering steps to try to assuage Trump’s hostility, including a “charm offensive” by senior officials reaching out to his team and expressing readiness to “work with” the Republican. But others seemed resigned to worsening ties, with German financial giant Deutsche Boerse warning that only “strong checks and balances” would be able to prevent Trump from making a pig’s breakfast of the transatlantic economic relationship. This sentiment was echoed by European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde last week. Lagarde warned that Europe should prepare for “threats” to Europe’s economy if Trump returns to power. “Let us prepare for potential tariffs, for potential harsh decisions that would be unexpected. Let us be strong at home,” she urged, suggesting that Brussels could prepare for Trump’s comeback by more closely integrating its single market regime (which would further strip bloc members of any semblance of economic sovereignty).

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the leader of Europe’s largest industrial economy, came out publicly in support of Biden’s reelection last spring, saying “the current president is better, so I want him to be re-elected,” and that Biden’s years of experience as a politician means he knows “what you have to do to prevent the world from going to war.” Trump, by contrast, according to Scholz, “stands for a great division in the country,” and “if all people are only against each other, then there cannot be a good future.” Leaving aside the fact that the planet is now far closer to a global conflagration than it was in January 2021, due in no small part to the Biden administration’s efforts to set Eastern Europe, the Middle East, East Asia and the Korean Peninsula on fire, European officials’ hopes about Biden restoring the pre-Trump transatlantic economic relationship haven’t exactly panned out, either.

While European businesses were harmed by the Trump tariffs, which ranged from steel and aluminum to washing machines, cosmetics, clothing and food, the Biden administration’s push to kick off a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, and a subsequent spike in energy costs, have had a far greater impact on the bloc’s economic prospects, leaving it slipping in and out of recession for nearly two years now. Furthermore, while the Biden White House did resolve a longstanding dispute over subsidies to US and European civilian airliner manufacturing, and suspended Trump’s steel tariffs, European officials and businesses couldn’t help but notice the Biden administration’s $390 billion Build Back Better ‘green’ subsidies package, which has incentivized dozens of major European companies to relocate to the US.

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“Why should a single state get to decide who gets to be the President of the United States?” asked Justice Elena Kagan. “That means is quite extraordinary.”

• Trump Pleased After SCOTUS Ballot-Ban Hearing Ends (ZH)

The justices were largely skeptical of Colorado’s arguments. Murray was repeatedly grilled by justices about why Section 3 of the amendment should apply to the presidency when that office isn’t explicitly listed in the provision Several of the justices also expressed concern that allowing Colorado to ban Trump from the ballot could result in retaliatory efforts by other states to keep a Democrat off the ballot under the same provision Justice Brett Kavanaugh made the point that Trump, who’s been criminally charged over his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, isn’t accused of insurrection in that case, even though the Justice Department could have done so. Notably, the so-called ‘liberal’ justices were just as sceptical as the ‘far-right’ ones.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson asked Mr. Murray about the lack of uniformity this decision could create. “Why should a single state get to decide who gets to be the President of the United States?” asked Justice Elena Kagan. “That means is quite extraordinary.” Trump was pleased with the arguments, calling it a “beautiful thing to watch in many respects.” The former president, who listened to the oral arguments on cable news from his Mar-a-Lago club, spoke to the press in Florida. “I thought it was a very beautiful process,” he said. “I hope that democracy in this country will continue because right now we have a very, very tough situation with all of the radical left ideas.”

Gorsuch

Thomas

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Amen.

• Every Child Is A Whole Universe (CD)

This is a letter to all the mothers and caregivers. There’s that sensation you know, when you hold a warm, little baby, listening to their soft breaths and feel the tiny heartbeat like a butterfly in their chest. Or when you smooth down your child’s hair after they’ve first shuffled out of bed and look into their eyes, wondering what new connections will spark today in that little head. Like you, we have known joy and delight beyond words in those simple actions of mothering and care. Yet, underneath it all, there is an unspoken terror that comes from also knowing this: every single thing depends on that fragile butterfly beating in their chest and on the bright sparks lighting up in their head. You know this, too. Everything depends on keeping them safe. This basic truth has drawn us two together, over and again through the years.

When some would tell us that our identities—Palestinian and Israeli—should make us enemies, we have known that another identity binds us together. We are both mothers, dedicated to keeping our children and all children safe and assured of a future. Every child is a whole universe. The life-giving work we do, as mothers and caregivers, to nurture and protect our children is just as immense and powerful, and it binds us together. Beyond that, we have also understood mothering as a collective calling, open to all, regardless of their own individual identity. All it takes is a willingness to put care and meeting the needs of the most vulnerable at the heart of our actions. In our politics, it’s an approach that can guide us to champion policies that protect and nurture people—and to reject policies that kill and destroy.

That’s why we must not turn away from the horror that has gripped Gaza. Women and families there are suffering through an onslaught of violence launched by the Israeli government—an assault that has already taken more than 26,637 Palestinian lives, nearly 40% children. More Palestinian children were killed in just three weeks than all children who were killed annually in every global conflict since 2019. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called Gaza a “graveyard for children.” Many of the children who survive are now without a mother or father. You can look at the brutal, ever-climbing numbers. Or you can try to imagine the agony of even one Palestinian mother who can’t possibly know when death might come for her child from the sky.

Even before this war, a ten-year-old child in Gaza would have already lived through four Israeli military campaigns. Their childhood would already have been marked by years of blockade and military occupation, a childhood spent in an open-air prison deprived of adequate food, electricity, clean water and the freedom to move. Women and families of Israel are mourning for those killed on October 7th and calling out for the return of the hostages, including their kidnapped children, young and grown. The ongoing bombardment by the Israeli government also puts their loved ones in danger and is destroying the prospects for a sustainable peace that could keep all Israelis and Palestinians safe. You can look at the brutal, ever-climbing numbers. Or you can try to imagine the agony of even one Palestinian mother who can’t possibly know when death might come for her child from the sky.

Every child is a whole universe. The life-giving work we do, as mothers and caregivers, to nurture and protect our children is just as immense and powerful, and it binds us together. That is why we must stand in defense of all children. We must stand in solidarity with all mothers and caregivers who struggle amidst war and disaster to keep children safe and healthy, in body and spirit. We must stand with all mothers and caregivers whose children today are missing, in horrific peril, or worse, whose children’s lives have been cut viciously, unimaginably short by violence that labeled them as disposable. One of us—Yifat—leads the organization MADRE, which has partnered with Aisha for years to promote women’s health and safety in Palestine. Aisha, trained as a midwife, has been a lifeline for mothers and pregnant women in the West Bank, who struggle to access prenatal and maternal care through the maze of Israeli military checkpoints that block their movement. Today, as settler violence surges, people are afraid to leave their homes—making women even more vulnerable.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Toucan

 

 

Cut glass
https://twitter.com/i/status/1755519573128798585

 

 

 

 

Mermaid’s purse
https://twitter.com/i/status/1755578110957830220

 

 

Hypnotizing

 

 

Elk

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle February 8 2024

Feb 082024
 
 February 8, 2024  Posted by at 9:53 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  92 Responses »


Paul Klee Dancing Under the Empire of Fear 1938

 

• Tucker Madness is Good for America (Scott Ritter)
• Elon Musk Responds To Calls For Tucker Carlson’s Arrest (RT)
• Tucker Carlson Threatened With Death, Sanctions for Putin Interview (Sp.)
• EU May Sanction Tucker Carlson Over Putin Interview (RT)
• Carlson Interview With Putin Could Topple Western Elites, End Ukraine War (Jay)
• Freakout Over Tucker Carlson Signals Collapse of Western War Propaganda (Miles)
• Of Course Journalists Should Interview Vladimir Putin (Tracey)
• Medvedev Predicts Apocalypse In Event of Russia-NATO War (TASS)
• NATO Prepares to Move East, as Russia Prepares to Move West (Bentley)
• Iran Refutes Accusations It Supplies Weapons To Houthis – Envoy To UN (TASS)
• The United States Has Zero National Security (Paul Craig Roberts)
• EU: The Closer to Kiev, the Further Away From Its People (Dionísio)
• A New and True Arab Spring – Part Two (Vasco)
• Mr Bean Blamed For Slow Electric Car Sales (RT)
• Facing Farm Protests, EU Eases Demands In 2040 Climate Proposal (Pol.eu)
• Assange Faces Torture and Suicide in US – UN (RT)

 

 

Collective madness is palpable today.

People even want Tucker Carlson to be prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act for interviewing Putin. They want him dead and locked up.

For an interview… That nobody has seen yet…

This is the kind of publicity that you couldn’t buy if you tried to. Marketing genius.

 

 

 

 

Putin Stone

 

 

Putin short

 

 

Mollie

 

 

 

 

Hageman
https://twitter.com/i/status/1755360573896945757

 

 

Trump campaign

 

 

Ai Weiwei

 

 

 

 

Weisselberg

 

 

 

 

“..If the American people are to have any hope of surviving the next decade, then an antidote to the disease of Russophobia must be administered..”

• Tucker Madness is Good for America (Scott Ritter)

The former Fox News talk show host-turned independent media phenomenon, Tucker Carlson, is in Moscow, where he has committed the mortal sin of interviewing Russian President Vladimir Putin. The interview is scheduled to air at 6 pm eastern time on Thursday, February 8. Let there be no doubt—Tucker Carlson has pulled off one of the most memorable journalistic accomplishments in modern history, and when the interview does air, it will—literally and figuratively—break the internet.

As someone who has travelled to Russia twice in the past year to engage in “people’s diplomacy” designed to advocate for better US-Russian relations, I applaud Tucker Carlson’s decision to go to Moscow and get this interview. The American people have been infected with a virulent case of Russophobia transmitted to them via a political and economic elite who have built a model of American relevance predicated on the need for an enemy capable of sustaining a military industrial and congressional complex by justifying an expansive budget that leaves America weaker and shareholders wealthier.

Rampant Russophobia threatens American security by creating a false sense of danger around which policies that could lead to a military confrontation with Russia—and nuclear war—are formulated and implemented. If the American people are to have any hope of surviving the next decade, then an antidote to the disease of Russophobia must be administered. This antidote is not difficult to acquire—it consists of fact-based truth grounded in a realistic understanding of the world we live in, inclusive of a sovereign Russia. The real issue is administering this antidote because the traditional vectors for the dissemination of information in America—the so-called mainstream media—have long since been corrupted by the very political and economic elites who are promoting Russophobia to begin with.

Love him or hate Tucker Carlson (I am guilty of having done both; I currently count Tucker as one of the “good guys”), he represents a massive media presence that operates outside the span of control of the informational elite in America, a social media-based presence which, given its association with Elon Musk’s “free speech” platform, X (the former Twitter), cannot be shut down or silenced. Quantifying the “Tucker Carlson factor” is a challenge. Back in August 2023, Tucker interviewed former President Donald Trump; the interview was streamed at the same time as a prime-time Republican Party presidential debate that Trump had boycotted. Fox News, which broadcast the debate, attracted some 12.8 million viewers during the two-hour broadcast. Donald Trump later posted on X that the interview had received 236 million views a day after it was streamed. But that number reflects what X calls “impressions,” not actual views—that number was just shy of 15 million (not as impressive, but still beating out the Fox debate.)

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“Arrest those calling for his arrest!”

• Elon Musk Responds To Calls For Tucker Carlson’s Arrest (RT)

Anyone calling for the arrest of US journalist Tucker Carlson over his plan to interview Russian President Vladimir Putin should themselves be detained, billionaire Elon Musk has suggested. Carlson arrived in Moscow last weekend, saying he intended to show Americans an unfiltered Russian position on the Ukraine conflict and the broader tensions between Moscow and the West. The former Fox News host accused the mainstream media of failing to provide the full picture due to political reasons, and said Musk had promised not to suppress the distribution on X (formerly Twitter) of his planned interview with Putin. There has been speculation about the potential risks to Carlson in his homeland due to his trip to Russia. Malaysia-based conservative blogger Ian Miles Cheong has suggested that he “could become the next Julian Assange,” noting that “politicians and establishment media shills” have been calling for Carlson’s arrest.

“Arrest those calling for his arrest!” Musk responded in a post on X. WikiLeaks founder Assange is currently in a British prison, fighting a US extradition request. Washington has indicted him with crimes related to the way whistleblower Chelsea Manning obtained classified materials on the US military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, some of which were damning for the American government. Supporters say Assange, who has not had full freedom since 2012, is being persecuted by the US and its allies for exposing their dirty secrets. He was jailed in 2019 after Ecuador revoked the political asylum that had allowed him to stay at the country’s embassy in London, enabling British law enforcement to arrest him.

Some public figures in the US have accused Carlson of harboring sympathies for Putin, and of intending to spread “Russian propaganda” by interviewing him. Even before the goal of Carlson’s visit to Moscow was confirmed, neoconservative writer Bill Kristol urged the US government to prevent the journalist from returning home, “until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” Carlson has insisted that he does not like the Russian leader, but said it is important for the American public to hear Putin’s views on the Ukraine conflict and the tensions between Moscow and Washington, considering what’s at stake. He also accused the American government of trying to prevent him from interviewing Putin, a notion that White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre dismissed as “ridiculous.”

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Tucker has been on the kill list for quite some time. He’s as popular in Ukraine as Putin is right now.

• Tucker Carlson Threatened With Death, Sanctions for Putin Interview (Sp.)

The US journalist has faced threats to his life for undermining Western regime narratives with his interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin. News spread Wednesday that US journalist Tucker Carlson has been added to a Ukrainian “kill list” as the reporter prepares to release an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. The disturbing development was noted by users on social media, who shared screenshots of the entry for Carlson on the Mirotvorets webpage. The controversial site compiles the personal information of journalists and other prominent figures who are deemed to be “enemies of Ukraine.” Users pointed out that Carlson’s entry has existed on the site for some time, but news of Carlson’s interview brought renewed attention to the fact that figures associated with the Kiev regime have apparently been monitoring the journalist for over a year.

Western corporate media often dismisses the significance of the Mirotvorets page, but the site is operated by figures with close connections to Ukrainian lawmakers. Journalists Vladlen Tatarsky and Darya Dugina were killed by Ukrainian terrorists after appearing on the “Peace Maker” section of the website. More recently, the author Gonzalo Lira died in a Ukrainian prison where he was being held after engaging in prominent public criticism of the Kiev regime. The incident garnered minimal comment from the Biden administration, even though Lira was an American citizen. Although the Zelensky regime enjoys American military and financial aid, that doesn’t stop Ukraine from listing US citizens on the “kill list”. Meanwhile, the White House has remained mum about US citizens’ presence on the assassination list.

It also emerged Wednesday that Carlson may be subject to Western sanctions for conducting the interview with President Putin.Reporting in US media, based on interviews with current and former members of the European Parliament, confirmed that Carlson could be legally punished for his act of journalism. Former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, now a member of the European Parliament, described Carlson as “a mouthpiece” for Putin and former US President Donald Trump.“As Putin is a war criminal and the EU sanctions all who assist him in that effort, it seems logical that the External Action Service examine his case as well,” said Verhofstadt. Former EU parliament member Luis Garicano agreed with Verhofstadt’s assessment. “He is no longer a newsman, but a propagandist for the most heinous regime on European soil and the one which is most dangerous to our peace and security,” said Garicano.

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“..a propagandist for the most heinous regime on European soil..”

It sort of makes sense. These people never talk to anyone who doesn’t share their views. So why would they let a jourmalist do it?

• EU May Sanction Tucker Carlson Over Putin Interview (RT)

American journalist Tucker Carlson could be banned from visiting the European Union after interviewing Russian President Vladimir Putin, Newsweek said on Wednesday, quoting one former and two current MEPs. The former Fox News host was spotted in Moscow last weekend and revealed on Tuesday that he would be interviewing Putin. The interview will be posted on X (formerly Twitter), with the platform’s owner Elon Musk guaranteeing it won’t be censored, Carlson said. Former Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt, now a member of the European Parliament, has already called for Carlson to be banned from the bloc. “As Putin is a war criminal and the EU sanctions all who assist him in that effort, it seems logical that the External Action Service examine his case as well,” Verhofstadt told Newsweek. The EAS is responsible for the bloc’s foreign policy and can recommend sanctions, which need to be approved by the European Council.

Verhofstadt is best known for having served as the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator, and for championing the idea of the bloc becoming an “empire.” He is not a lone voice in demanding a ban on Carlson, however. The journalist “is no longer a newsman, but a propagandist for the most heinous regime on European soil,” former Spanish MEP Luis Garicano told Newsweek. The London School of Economics alumnus now teaches at two US universities. “Carlson wants to give a platform to someone accused of crimes of genocide – this is wrong,” Estonian MEP Urmas Paet told the outlet, falsely characterizing the International Criminal Court (ICC) claims against the Russian president. Moscow has rejected the case as politically motivated. “So, for such propaganda for a criminal regime, you can end up on the list of sanctions. This concerns primarily a travel ban to EU countries,” added Paet, the former foreign minister of the Baltic state.

Announcing his interview on Tuesday, Carlson said “We’re not here because we love Vladimir Putin. We are here because we love the US and want it to remain prosperous and free.” Americans were ignorant of “history-altering developments” arising from the Ukraine conflict, because English-language media have lied to them, mostly by omission, Carlson said. “That’s wrong. Americans have the right to know all they can about a war they are implicated in.” The US and its EU allies have sent over $200 billion in military and financial aid to Kiev since the conflict escalated in 2022, while arguing they are not directly involved.

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“Tucker Carlson is about to bring the truth to the American people. But are they ready for it?”

• Carlson Interview With Putin Could Topple Western Elites, End Ukraine War (Jay)

In the seventies, when the cold war was at its peak, Donald Rumsfeld was convinced that the Atlantic Ocean, off the U.S. coast, was teaming with Russian submarines. The U.S. navy couldn’t detect them because, he was convinced, the Soviets had a new ‘acoustic technology’ which made them effectively invisible. Rumsfeld went ahead and ploughed billions of dollars into developing a new technology which could detect the non-acoustic subs. But that failed and is still costing the U.S. taxpayer today. The truth was in fact, the Soviet subs just weren’t there.The error on the part of Rumsfeld, it could be argued, still paid dividends as scaring the American public into believing a threat is real and imminent – on your doorstep in fact – is very profitable for a government which wishes to achieve two clear objectives: pouring billions into the pockets of defence contractors; and secondly whipping up fear of an imminent war with an enemy, with the sold objective of distracting the public away from a failing economy and abysmal foreign policy.

It’s happening today. If we look at the mainstream news all we see is talk of war with Russia. And yet there isn’t a single shred of intel which these outlets can offer to substantiate this claim. It will remind many of the weeks leading up the Iraq invasion in 2003 when the U.S. and UK faked intel to show that Saddam Hussein had WMDs. Western elites are guiding journalists to write this nonsense as their bigger plan is to stir up a frenzy of war talk so as to prepare the public for much bigger defence spending and, in the case of the UK, even conscription. This is really about covering up one of the biggest cock-ups in contemporary history which western governments have made – sanctions against Russia and the NATO campaign in Ukraine – which have backfired so spectacularly that the Biden administration and a number of EU governments are united in this scaremongering, believing it’s a winner.

Of course the “we’re going to war with Russia” comes from the White House. Where else? Only the U.S. has that sort of power with an increasingly craven, pathetic EU which is now so servile to the Biden administration that it’s beginning to make the UK look less of a poodle to the Americans. The whole scam is American and the Europeans are obliging with it in a big way. The only real threat the plan has of not working is if a few, remote feral corners of the media – or mavericks who were fired by media giants – make a stand and call it out for what it is. Which is why Tucker Carlson’s trip to Moscow where he intends to interview Putin is so important and such a threat to the Biden administration and western elites as a whole. When Carlson interviews the Russian leader and it becomes clear that western media have been lying for so long about the Ukraine war and even this latest ruse of Russia wanting to invade eastern Europe, then the whole scam will collapse.

Clearly the West is worried about the interview. They have already wheeled out enough congressmen on social media to try and brandish Carlson as some sort of traitor who should not be allowed back into the U.S. Western media will probably not report on the interview but this will only make it a bigger hit on social media. The interview is really the only single opportunity for this mad war machine to be halted, for the lies to be exposed and for a more salient approach to East-West relations to begin. It should not be underestimated. But the knifes are out. Watch in particular the embedded western media correspondents who live in Moscow push the blade into Carlson’s back and mock the interview in a bid to discredit the whole thing. Scores of millions of Americans are about to be enlightened on a whole plethora of issues which, until now, their own media have lied to them about. To call this interview a bombshell would be an understatement. Tucker Carlson is about to bring the truth to the American people. But are they ready for it?

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“And all Tucker Carlson is doing is now adding more information to that information war, and the United States is losing it.”

• Freakout Over Tucker Carlson Signals Collapse of Western War Propaganda (Miles)

The Western propaganda machine is losing its potency as the United States’ anti-Russian proxy war in Ukraine fails. Western mainstream media isn’t what it used to be. Some 20 years ago, US regime propagandists lied the United States into the Iraq War with ease. Saddam Hussein was “Hilter,” we were told. He wanted to conquer the world. He was making nukes. Americans bought the story unquestioningly. Such has not been the case with the latest war effort. Americans are intensely divided. Congress is unable to pass requisite funding. And the US proxy regime is failing on the battlefield. Increasingly, it seems the propagandists in Washington and Langley are no longer up to the task.

Amidst the collective Western freakout that journalist Tucker Carlson will share his interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin and provide Western audiences the opportunity to hear the unfiltered message of the US enemy du jour, analyst Steve Poikonen joined Sputnik’s The Critical Hour program Wednesday to discuss the sad state of affairs. “We’re going to fundamentally destroy the concept of journalism in the press in order to keep you from hearing this conversation,” Poikonen said, summarizing the mindset of Western rulers. “What we’re witnessing is multiple world governments telling people you don’t have the right to hear a conversation between two people that we don’t like right now.”

“I think that you have to look at every single instance of the state abusing its perceived authority or power to interfere with a journalist or their actions as part of the whole war on Julian Assange, WikiLeaks and journalism in general,” Poikonen added. Julian Assange, the renegade founder of the website WikiLeaks, has been held in the HM Belmarsh high-security prison in the United Kingdom for almost five years. The journalist was arrested after Ecuadorian President and suspected CIA asset Lenin Moreno revoked his asylum agreement after he’d spent seven years seeking refuge in the country’s embassy in London. Assange believes the United States seeks to sentence him to life in prison or even submit him to the death penalty.

Host Wilmer Leon noted that US ally Israel is also deliberately targeting and killing journalists in its assault on Gaza while the United States itself operates a “massive biosurveillance structure” more sophisticated than that run by any secret police in history. “The United States government/the West realizes it is losing the narrative, it is losing the public opinion,” said Leon. “When you look at the polls, Americans want us out of Ukraine, Americans don’t want their money to go there, Americans are opposed to the genocidal actions of the Zionist government in Israel. They’re losing the narrative, they’re losing in the court of public opinion.” “And all Tucker Carlson is doing is now adding more information to that information war, and the United States is losing it.”

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“..justified by the endlessly recycled premise that if Putin is not defeated in Ukraine, he’s sure to rampage through the rest of Europe, fulfilling his destiny as the latter-day incarnation of Hitler..”

• Of Course Journalists Should Interview Vladimir Putin (Tracey)

While I was in Moscow last December, people who had just been to the ghastly front-lines in Ukraine recounted stories of how members of the same family were often seen fighting against one another from dueling trenches: blood relatives of the same Slavic clan speaking the same language—Russian—hurling explosives in opposite directions over the same desolate no-man’s-land. How anyone could look at this situation and come away with triumphalist notions of war grandeur, rather than a deep sense of avoidable tragedy, seemed like a cruel farce. So that was exactly the sentiment I conveyed to the Russian hosts of the meeting I attended, some of whom did harbor such triumphalist notions (those present included a senior-ranking Kremlin official). “Chatham House” rules were stipulated for the gathering, precluding me from making any public disclosure of the attendees’ identities or what anyone else specifically said.

But I can certainly reveal what I said: that the war in Ukraine was an obvious disaster for all involved. The brutish, World War I-style trench warfare that had become the war’s grisly signature cannot possibly warrant any other conclusion. That was a message I was happy to deliver in Moscow, just as I’d be happy to do in Kyiv, and had previously done in Washington, D.C. I explained to my hosts that when the opportunity to come to Russia arose, I accepted without hesitation, because bilateral relations between the world’s leading nuclear superpowers had perilously deteriorated since the invasion of Ukraine. The grand cosmological treatises articulated by some of the meeting’s participants, about how Russia was waging a godly war of civilizational purification, were both wildly over-aggrandized and beside the point, I argued: A giant, man-made calamity was unfolding in real time, and it could always get exponentially worse given the ever-present risks of escalation.

Obviously Russia, as the invading power, bore a major share of the culpability for this disaster. But sadly for those who crave comforting moral simplicity, the Russia/Ukraine war is not the first in world history with a single cause or a sole culprit. Even getting to Russia in the first place required making a special trek to the Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C., where I received a “humanitarian” visa with strict limitations for the duration of my stay. Though it would be pompous to claim I was embarked on anything like a “humanitarian” mission—I had no plans to deliver medical supplies to the Donbas, for instance—there did strike me to be a kind of humanitarian value in doing whatever small part I could to maintain some semblance of interpersonal exchange between the two countries, which, lest anyone forget, maintain the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals. (The last remaining mutual arms control mechanism was ominously suspended in 2023.)

A top Russian official remarked that relations with the United States were at a lower point than any time since the founding of the Soviet Union; even basic diplomatic communications between the two governments had become negligible to non-existent. Yet these obstacles to normal U.S.-Russia engagement only heighten the obligation for any respectable journalist, if presented with the opportunity, to interview Russian President Vladimir Putin without a second thought. It’s worth recalling that Putin was relatively accessible to American media before the Ukraine war broke out. [..] Of course, whatever interview Tucker Carlson might conduct with Putin is subject to reasonable scrutiny. There is a balance to be struck between hyper-moralizing condemnation, gratuitous flattery, and appropriately probing interrogation—though few journalists manage to strike this balance. But it’s tediously, unbearably stupid for anyone to suggest that Carlson, simply by virtue of going to Russia with the intent of interviewing Putin, should therefore be assumed guilty of treason—probably the most overused smear in the present American political lexicon.

Anyone who blurts out that tired charge has probably not had an original thought since at least the Steele Dossier, and is clearly just interested in monomaniacal villainization of the world leader they love to revile—not ascertaining information to improve public understanding of critical world affairs. As we speak, Congress is lurching toward eventual passage of the largest disbursement of U.S. military “aid” since the beginning of the war, justified by the endlessly recycled premise that if Putin is not defeated in Ukraine, he’s sure to rampage through the rest of Europe, fulfilling his destiny as the latter-day incarnation of Hitler. Isn’t it about time someone journalistically scrutinizes that proposition by going directly to the source?

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“It is necessary to distract voters in order to justify multibillion [dollar or euro] spending on Banderovite ‘Ukraine’ that everyone has gotten sick of..”

• Medvedev Predicts Apocalypse In Event of Russia-NATO War (TASS)

In the event of a war with NATO, Russia would have to “respond asymmetrically” and use missiles “with special warheads,” Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said on his Telegram channel. He noted that, “if, God forbid, such a war happens, it will not follow the scenario of the special military operation” and it “won’t be waged in trenches with the use of artillery, armor, drones and means of radio-electronic warfare.” “NATO is a huge military bloc, the population of the countries of the alliance is almost one billion people and their joint military budget may reach one and a half trillion dollars,” Medvedev explained. “Therefore, due to the incommensurability of our [respective] military potentials, we simply won’t have a choice. The response will be asymmetrical. In order to protect the territorial integrity of our country, ballistic and cruise missiles with special warheads (nuclear arms – TASS) will be used.

This is based on our doctrinal military documents and is well-known to everyone. And this is precisely [equivalent to] the proverbial Apocalypse [or End Times depicted in the Biblical Book of Revelation]. The end of everything,” Medvedev stressed. So far, according to him, “all the big European bosses are cynically lying to their citizens” by reiterating the necessity to be ready “for a war with Russia.” “And while Russia has repeatedly spoken about the absence of any plans for a conflict with NATO and the EU countries, highly dangerous chatter on the subject continues [nevertheless],” Medvedev stated. He asserted that its causes are obvious. “It is necessary to distract voters in order to justify multibillion [dollar or euro] spending on Banderovite ‘Ukraine’ that everyone has gotten sick of.

Since gigantic sums of money are being spent not on resolving social issues in these countries, but on a war in a dying country, which is alien to taxpayers, with its population scattered all over Europe terrorizing local residents. This is why, every day the leaders of these countries are sermonizing that it is necessary to get ready for a war with Russia and continue to help Ukraine, which means producing more tanks, shells, drones and other weapons,” the deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council said. He concluded that European leaders “should tell the bitter truth to their voters instead of treating them as brainless idiots.” “They should explain to them what will really happen instead of repeating the deceitful mantra about readiness for a war with Russia,” Medvedev concluded.

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“..another significant Ukrainian retreat appears likely in the short term..”

• NATO Prepares to Move East, as Russia Prepares to Move West (Bentley)

The first phase of NATO’s Steadfast Defender military exercise got underway last week with a bit of a fiasco, when the UK’s $4.4 billion flagship aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, was sidelined by propeller shaft problems before it could even make it out of port. The Queen Elizabeth was scheduled to take a leading role in Steadfast Defender, and will now be replaced by the UK’s other (yes, they only have 2) carrier, HMS Prince of Wales, which itself broke down with propeller shaft problems in August 2022, only making it as far as the Isle of Wight in the English Channel, just a few miles from its home port of Portsmouth before having to be towed back to port for repairs that required almost a year before the Prince was again deemed sea-worthy.

If the Queen requires similar repairs to those the Prince underwent, HMS Queen Elizabeth and her arsenal of up to 36 F-35’s and 4 helicopters will be unable to participate in the Steadfast Defender exercise nor in any other seagoing operations until this time next year. This timeline is, as the Brits often say, “Highly likely”. The Queen is, as of now, unable to fulfill her duty in Steadfast Defender, as well as any upcoming Red Sea military operations, so, The Prince will have to take up the duty, barring any recurring problems with the Prince’s own shaft, which if they occurred, would leave the entire UK carrier fleet under repair for the “biggest NATO exercise since the Cold War” and at a time of significant and escalation naval combat operations in the Red Sea and Persian Gulf. A rather inauspicious beginning to the NATO exercise and the kingdom that once “ruled the waves”.

While the primarily naval/logistical part of the operation will continue from now until mid-March, the land warfare phase will last from mid-March through the end of using 90,000 NATO from and in the following NATO nations: Finland, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Sweden, and the UK. The movement of 90,000 NATO soldiers into the areas bordering Russia and Ukraine is also a prime opportunity to continue the importation of thousands of foreign mercenaries into the depleted ranks of Ukrainian cannon fodder. There are two separate variants foreign mercenaries in Ukraine these days – on the one hand, you have the Tik Tok Tourists, here only for the photo ops and bargain brothels, the low budget assassins from the narco-cartels in Central and South America, here to make gun, drug, and human trafficking connections, cheap and expendable, ideal candidates for suicide missions, who don’t have to even be buried, much less paid.

On the other hand, you have field grade NATO officers, highly trained weapons technicians and special forces “operators” from the elite units of the NATO militaries. Steadfast Defender is an opportunity to give these expert torturers and killers, these trained terrorists, a free ticket to Ukraine, with all their gear. Meanwhile, the Russian Army continues to advance all across the Donbass Front, particularly in the area of Kupyansk, where Ukrainian media have been spreading rumors in recent days of 40,000 Russian soldiers and 1,100 tanks and IFV’s. There is little to no evidence of such a massive build-up, and competent analysts have floated a theory that these announcements are really a cover excuse for a forthcoming retreat by Ukrainian forces to the western side of the Oskol River, which runs through the middle of Kupyansk. Either way, another significant Ukrainian retreat appears likely in the short term.

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“..his country was ready to call on the Houthis to cease fire, if Israel withdraws its troops from the Gaza Strip and lifts restrictions on sending humanitarian aid..”

• Iran Refutes Accusations It Supplies Weapons To Houthis – Envoy To UN (TASS)

The Iranian authorities do not arm Yemen’s Houthi rebel movement Ansar Allah, Amir Saeid Iravani, Iran’s permanent representative to the United Nations, told NBC. The envoy added that the Houthis “have their own weapons,” and Iran is not instructing the rebels on how to use them. The diplomat pointed out that his country’s relations with the Middle East armed formations, which Tehran calls the Axis of Resistance, are a defensive pact, and added that the country does not steer them in any direction, but does “some coordination, cooperation, consultation and maybe some financing also.” The Iranian envoy also said that his country was ready to call on the Houthis to cease fire, if Israel withdraws its troops from the Gaza Strip and lifts restrictions on sending humanitarian aid to the residents of the enclave.

The Axis of Resistance is made up of Muslim, mostly Shiite, armed formations. These include Yemen’s Ansar Allah movement, Lebanon’s Hezbollah group, Iran’s Islamic Resistance in Iraq, Palestinian Hamas movement, as well as the Zainebiyoun Brigade (consisting of Shia Pakistanis) and the Fatemiyoun Brigade (consisting of Shia Afghanis). With the conflict in the Gaza Strip escalating, the Ansar Allah (Houthi) movement announced that it would conduct strikes on Israeli territory and block pro-Israeli vessels from passing through the waters of the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait until Tel Aviv ceases its military operation in the Palestinian enclave. The Houthis have attacked dozens of civilian vessels in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden since mid-November of last year.

On the night of January 12, US and UK forces launched strikes using aircraft, ships and submarines against Yemeni rebel movement targets in a number of cities, including Sanaa and Hodeidah. US President Joe Biden said that the strike was carried out in response to unprecedented attacks by the Houthis in the Red Sea and was defensive. The targets included missile sites, UAVs and the Houthis’ radar stations. On February 3, American and British forces struck 36 Houthi-affiliated targets. On February 4, US Central Command (CENTCOM) reported conducting yet another series of strikes on Yemen, with the targets of the attacks being five cruise missiles launched by the Houthis.

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“For less than 4% of the US national defense budget, the US power grid and critical infrastructure can be shielded from EMP.”

• The United States Has Zero National Security (Paul Craig Roberts)

In his newly published book, Nuclear High-Attitude Electromagnetic Pulse, Steven Starr shows that all it takes is one nuclear explosion to shut down the United States and throw the population back into the Dark Ages. The electric power grid would be destroyed along with the communications system, the cooling systems at nuclear power plants and all electronic devices. The reason is that civilian infrastructure is not protected from ElectroMagneticPulse (EMP). The military has taken steps to shield its weapon and communication systems, but nothing has been done to protect civilian infrastructure. Bills mandating EMP protection have been defeated in Congress. Starr reports that only 4% of the US military budget is required to shield the power grid and civilian infrastructure. Instead, the Washington idiots waste trillions of dollars in pointless wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Serbia, Syria, Yemen, Palestine, and Ukraine. American cities would suffer no effects from blast and fire, such as would be produced by ground level detonation, but the consequences would be just as dire.

“105 miles above Ohio, a single nuclear warhead explodes. Because it is far above the atmosphere, there will be no blast or fire effects felt on Earth, however, this high-altitude nuclear detonation will create a gigantic electromagnetic pulse or EMP. “In one billionth of a second, the initial EMP E1 wave will cause massive voltages and currents to form within power lines, telecommunication lines, cables, wires, antennas, and any other electrically conductive material found beneath the nuclear detonation in a circular area covering hundreds of thousands of square miles. “Within this region, under ideal conditions, the E1 wave will produce 2 million volts and a current of 5,000 to 10,000 amps within medium distribution power lines. Any unshielded modern electronic devices that contain solid-state circuitry, which are plugged into the grid, will be disabled, damaged, or destroyed. This includes the electronic devices required to operate all critical national infrastructure.

“Unshielded electronic devices within ground, air, and sea transportation systems, water and sanitation systems, fuel and food distribution systems, water and sanitation systems, telecommunication systems, and banking systems would all be simultaneously knocked out of service – and all these systems would be disabled until the solid-state electronics required to operate them could be repaired or replaced. “The E1 wave will also instantly destroy millions of glass insulators found on 15 kilovolt-class electric power distribution lines. 78% of all electricity in the US is delivered to end users (residential, agricultural, commercial) through these 15 kV power lines. The loss of a single insulator on a line can knock out power distribution on the entire line. “At the same instant, the massive voltage and current induced by the E1 wave will damage and destroy the relays, sensors, and control panels at 1783 High Voltage Substations, knocking out the entire electric power grid in the eastern half of the United States.

“One to ten seconds after the nuclear detonation, the following EMP E3 wave would induce powerful current flows in power lines including lines that are both above and below ground. E3 would damage or destroy many – if not most – of the Large Power Transformers and Extra High Voltage Circuit Breakers required for the long-distance transmission of about 90% of electrical power in the United States. “The loss of Large Power Transformers and Extra High Voltage Circuit Breakers would mean that entire regions within the United States would be left without electric power for up to a year or longer. This is because Large Power Transformers are not stockpiled and the current wait time for their manufacture is 18 to 24 months; they must be custom designed and manufactured and about 80% are made overseas. They each weigh between 200 and 400 tons and must be shipped by sea and moving them to their final destination is quite difficult even under normal circumstances.

“Because nuclear power plants are not designed to withstand the effects of EMP, the solid-state electronics within their backup electrical and cooling systems would also be damaged and disabled. The failure of their Emergency Power Systems and active Emergency Core Cooling Systems will make it impossible to cool their reactor cores after emergency shutdown; this will quickly lead to reactor core meltdowns at dozens of nuclear power plants. “To summarize, a single nuclear high-altitude electromagnetic pulse can instantly take out most or all of the US power grid while simultaneously destroying the solid-state electronic devices required to operate US critical national infrastructure – including the safety systems at nuclear power plants. Following a nuclear EMP, the people of the US would suddenly find themselves living in the conditions of the Middle Ages for a period possibly as long as a year – most Americans would not be able to survive such circumstances. “For less than 4% of the US national defense budget, the US power grid and critical infrastructure can be shielded from EMP. However, the political will to implement this protection has not yet been found, so Americans remain very much at risk.”

[..]Thanks to the fools who govern us, we have zero national security despite the massive expenditures year after year, decade after decade. People do not realize that the convenience and entertainment provided by their cell phones comes at great cost when measured by risk. Nothing is secure in the digital age, not your identity, your privacy, your bank account, or your independence. The expansion of the digital revolution into money will mean that you can be denied access to your money for any reason including the exercise of free speech. All accumulated knowledge in digital form can be erased by one EMP. Try to imagine the consequences of such a loss. These are new risks never before experienced on Earth.

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“..we can establish a fundamental empirical principle: the greater a government’s support for Kiev, the greater its neglect of its own people..”

• EU: The Closer to Kiev, the Further Away From Its People (Dionísio)

On the very day that European leaders were holding a summit and carrying out all kinds of underground negotiations to secure the detour of another 50 billion euros into Kiev’s bottomless pit, the farmers’ struggle was sowing chaos in Brussels. There can be no clearer picture of the ever-widening gap between the needs of the people of Europe and the needs perceived by their supposedly “democratically” elected “rulers”.

The more Europe’s reality demands concentration and decisiveness in the face of worsening internal problems, the more the parties that are beholden to Brussels’ interests throw themselves headlong into the abyss called Ukraine. The trend is so clear that we can confirm the existence of a “Kiev curse”. From the UK to Finland, from Italy to Slovakia and many others in between, there are many examples of cases in which, the greater the public support for the Kiev regime, the greater the degradation of its public image and, the greater the chances of its government falling or being defeated in the elections. For Scholz, not even Baerbock’s greens will save him; for Macron, this time Le Pen’s fear will be overcome by the certainty that he, his neoliberalism and submission to U.S./NATO power are no good either.

What is certain is that, today, in the European Union, we can establish a fundamental empirical principle: the greater a government’s support for Kiev, the greater its neglect of its own people. Ukraine is not only the cancer that threatens to corrode the entire Union, it will also be the slow fire in which it consumes itself. Against this backdrop, in a Brussels city invaded by European farmers, the council approved the 50 billion Euro for a period of 4 years, of which 33 are borrowed and 17 are non-repayable. However, the approval process itself, and the destination of these funds, threatens to continue to tear holes in the so-called “European project”. And it is from the bottom that it is crumbling. In this way, the EU will necessarily succumb, just like the leaders of the empire, the USA, to its own contradictions, which are ever deeper, more antagonistic and irreconcilable.

The 50 billion allocated to Ukraine is taken from the “European Multiannual Framework“, i.e. the EU budget for the European Structural Funds, which are intended for the social, economic and cultural development of the member states themselves. Although Ursula Von Der “Liar” wanted to reprogram 100 billion euros, she had to settle for 64.6 billion. However, the only item that hasn’t changed since the beginning of the process is the Ukrainian one. Which means a lot: Ukraine was, and is, the priority of priorities. In the U.S., the UK and the EU, we find the same common denominator: prioritization of external conflicts increases as attention to internal problems decreases. Pockets are not unlimited and the leaders of the collective West have shown where their main concerns lie. And how is this possible?

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“..what will they say to God when he asks them why they did this?”

• A New and True Arab Spring – Part Two (Vasco)

In the Middle East, the U.S. maintains military bases across an entire land mass that connects Turkey in the north, Egypt in the west, Iraq in the east and Oman in the south, totaling 12 countries (including Occupied Palestine). They are already being attacked daily in Iraq and Syria. Iraqi resistance also attacked a base in Jordan, eliminating three American soldiers. The Iraqi (to a greater extent) and Jordanian (to a lesser extent) governments, as well as the Syrian, are therefore under enormous pressure to expel American troops. If Axis of Resistance forces begin attacking American bases in other countries as well (where public opinion is radically anti-American and pro-Palestinian), this could force the governments of those countries to commit to a withdrawal of American troops, as is happening in Iraq. And, just like in Iraq, this would weaken these same governments, which are largely supported by imperialist power.

At the same time that governments that collaborate with imperialism and Zionism are unpopular and suffer great pressure from their people, these same people are also influenced by the heroic examples of the Axis of Resistance. The popularity of the Houthis, which was already great, has only increased since the beginning of the blockade of the Red Sea. The people are armed and in the streets, and after this stage of the war they should focus on taking over the rest of Yemen. They only control 30% of the country, but that is where the majority of the Yemeni population lives. In other countries, the Houthis have also become very popular and groups that claim the Houthis fight tend to have more followers. The internationalism of the Houthis is truly moving, both in actions and in words: “Yemeni blood is not more valuable than Palestinian blood,” said Sanaa Information Minister Dhaif Allah al-Shami, in a statement expressing the noble sentiment revolutionary in opposition to the Arab governments’ betrayals of the Palestinian cause.

Sayyed Abdul Malik al-Houthi, leader of Ansurallah, disapproved of the collaboration of Arab and Muslim regimes with the enemy and called for unity for Palestine. In the same sense, the spokesman for the al-Quds Brigades, of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, also condemned this collaborationism: “what will they say to God when he asks them why they did this?” Arabs and Muslims consider themselves to be a single, great nation. It is really an artificial division carried out by England and France after the First World War. They are a people who were divided so that colonial powers could reign over them, to weaken them. But the feeling of unity and belonging to a single nation has not been annihilated, on the contrary: it is growing stronger. Arab governments make a serious mistake by not responding to their people’s demands to come to the aid of the Palestinians. The internationalist call of the heroic Houthi revolutionaries, who have become popular idols throughout the region, to sacrifice their own lives to defend Palestine echoes strongly throughout the great Islamic nation. The tendency is for revolutionary movements such as Ansarullah or Hamas to emerge or become popular in all Arab countries.

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Zealots are going to zealot. And you can’t really blame them. They’re born as simple-minded creatures.

• Mr Bean Blamed For Slow Electric Car Sales (RT)

The UK-based environmental charity Green Alliance has accused actor and comedian Rowan Atkinson of being a high-profile obstacle to the government’s efforts to phase out fossil fuel vehicles by 2035. Addressing the House of Lords on Tuesday, a group representative claimed that a comment piece written by Atkinson in the Guardian newspaper in June 2023 was “one of the most damaging articles” for the net zero cause and the public’s adoption of EVs. In his op-ed, Atkinson, who described himself as a “car person” and an “early adopter” of EVs, stated that while he had enjoyed owning a hybrid and a fully electric car, even though they were “a bit soulless,” he has increasingly felt “duped” regarding claims that EVs are an “environmental panacea.”

The actor criticized the use of lithium-ion batteries in EVs, citing research suggesting that greenhouse gas emissions during the production of electric cars were 70% higher than when producing gasoline ones. The main culprit, Atkinson pointed out, were the “absurdly heavy” batteries, which are estimated to last only up to 10 years. “It seems a perverse choice of hardware with which to lead the automobile’s fight against the climate crisis,” he wrote. Atkinson suggested the need for electric vehicles as a solution to the climate crisis could be negated by encouraging drivers to stop buying new cars every three years and to keep their vehicles for longer. Another solution, proposed by the actor, was exploring ways to increase the use of cleaner synthetic fuels. “I’m feeling that our honeymoon with electric cars is coming to an end, and that’s no bad thing,” the actor concluded.

In its letter to the House of Lords environment and climate change committee, the Green Alliance pressure group insisted that Atkinson’s views were misleading and suggested that his concerns regarding EVs had been “roundly debunked.” “Unfortunately, fact checks never reach the same breadth of audience as the original false claim, emphasizing the need to ensure high editorial standards around the net zero transition,” the group said. Other issues hindering the country’s phase-out of combustion-engine vehicles included insufficient charging infrastructure, high prices on new EVs compared to their petrol and diesel alternatives, and a “lack of clear, long-term messaging from government.”

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Protests work. The people will not forget that.

• Facing Farm Protests, EU Eases Demands In 2040 Climate Proposal (Pol.eu)

Under intense pressure from farmers, the European Commission has dropped key passages in a proposal for a new 2040 goal for cutting greenhouse gas pollution. “All sectors” would need to contribute to the effort, the EU executive’s plan says. But a mention of a possible 30 percent cut to agricultural pollution between 2015 and 2040, which was in previous drafts seen by POLITICO, had been removed. Also excised were recommendations for citizens to make changes to their behavior, like eating less meat, and a push to end fossil fuel subsidies. Farmers’ protests have broken out in many countries across Europe in recent weeks, with the industry expressing discontent over the EU’s green policies. Some of the largest demonstrations have been in Germany, prompted by a cut to diesel subsidies. Brussels has faced calls from industry groups and some political parties to lay out a 2040 climate pathway that doesn’t ignite further anger.

The EU’s plan is set to be presented on Tuesday and will recommend a 90 percent cut in total EU emissions by 2040 from 1990 levels — a suggestion in line with scientific advice. The updated version of the plan, which is still subject to change, framed agriculture in a more positive light compared to earlier drafts. The role the sector plays in the EU’s “food sovereignty” was also emphasized. This reframing is in line with a demand made by the powerful center-right European People’s Party (EPP) — the political family of top EU executive Ursula von der Leyen and the European Parliament’s largest group. Peter Liese, the EPP group’s environmental spokesperson, told reporters on Monday the EPP’s consideration of the Commission’s 90 percent 2040 target was conditional on more emphasis being placed on “positive opportunities” for farmers and less on “new instruments that rather see the farmers as an enemy of climate policy.”

But however positive the framing, the reality is hard to escape, said one EU official. The agriculture industry, the official argued, could and should contribute to hitting the EU’s climate goals, which include a legal mandate to be climate-neutral by 2050. “Despite all the semantics in the [Commission], there is an unequivocal Impact Assessment making a very compelling (business) case for an ambitious headline target and all sub-targets for sectors,” said the official, who was granted anonymity to discuss the negotiations, referencing an analysis that will accompany the EU’s plan.

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A new United Nations’ special rapporteur on torture.. Notice the similarities with Tucker Carlson.

• Assange Faces Torture and Suicide in US – UN (RT)

The United Nations’ special rapporteur on torture has called upon authorities in the UK to block Julian Assange’s possible extradition to the United States to face espionage charges. Britain could be violating human rights laws by turning the WikiLeaks founder over to the US, due to his fragile mental state, UN expert Alice Jill Edwards warned on Tuesday. Ahead of Assange’s final appeal against extradition this month, Edwards has warned that Assange’s “precarious mental health status” could mean that transferring him to US custody could endanger his health. “Julian Assange suffers from long-standing and recurrent depressive order,” Edwards said in a statement published on the website of the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on Tuesday. “He is assessed as being at risk of committing suicide.”

Assange, now 52, came to international prominence in 2010 when he published a series of leaks from US Army intelligence operative Chelsea Manning in what was referred to as the largest disclosure of classified documents in history. He faces up to 175 years in prison if convicted of a string of espionage charges. Edwards added that Assange is also at “risk of being placed in prolonged solitary confinement” and could receive a “potentially disproportionate sentence” in a US courtroom if extradition is approved. She also urged London to ensure “full compliance with the absolute and non-derogable prohibition of refoulement to torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”

A final decision on Assange’s possible extradition is expected to be made in London’s High Court on February 20 and 21. He faces a total of 18 criminal counts in the United States over his supposed role in leaking classified documents via the WikiLeaks platform, including some that exposed alleged war crimes. Assange has been hailed by his supporters as an anti-establishment hero who is being persecuted for exposing US military wrongdoing, and his prosecution would be an attack on journalism and free speech. “The last four and a half years have taken the most considerable toll on Julian and his family, including our two young sons,” Assange’s wife Stella, whom he married in prison, said last year. “The persecution of this innocent journalist and publisher must end.” Assange has been detained in the UK since 2019 and is currently being held at Belmarsh Prison in London. Prior to his detention, he spent nearly seven years in the Ecuadorian embassy in the English capital after being granted political asylum by the South American country.

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Patrick Moore

 

 

Oz turbines

 

 

Baby elephant
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Friends for life
https://twitter.com/i/status/1755263902865342596

 

 

Best friends
https://twitter.com/i/status/1755223022523592806

 

 

DooLittle house

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle February 7 2024

Feb 072024
 
 February 7, 2024  Posted by at 9:50 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  72 Responses »


Claude Monet Houses of Parliament (Sun Breaking through the Fog) 1904

 

• Trump Immunity Denied By DC Appeals Court In Election Case (ZH)
• Tucker Carlson Reveals Putin Interview Plans (RT)
• Tucker Carlson Reveals Elon Musk’s Putin Interview Pledge (RT)
• Tucker Carlson’s Exclusive Interview With Vladimir Putin – Full Transcript (LM)
• NYT Fantasy: Germany Gearing Up for Military Confrontation with Russia (PCR)
• Biden Threatens To Veto GOP Israel Aid Bill (RT)
• Zelensky To Fire His Top General’s Deputies – MP (RT)
• Ukraine’s Top General Sparing Neo-Nazis From Frontline Slaughter (RT)
• Lvov May Become Ukraine’s New Capital (Sp.)
• Sweden To Close Nord Stream Sabotage Probe – German Media (RT)
• NYT’s Friedman Hits New Low With Animalization of Arabs, Iranians (Juan Cole)
• Western Spin Doctors Dehumanize Select Peoples To Justify War (Bowes)
• Gold & Silver Fight Tyranny – Catherine Austin Fitts (USAW)
• Why Burn Books When You Can Bury Them? (Turley)
• America Is Undergoing Genocide (Paul Craig Roberts)

 

 

 

 

Trump pathetic
https://twitter.com/i/status/1754910639565263099

 

 

 

 

Tucker RFK
https://twitter.com/i/status/1754923481957871793

 

 

RFK

 

 

 

 

I’m trying to follow the logic here. It’s not easy.

“..the charges relate to official acts performed while he was president..”

“..”For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump..”

 

“If POTUS doesn’t have immunity they’ll be incapable of action for fear of future partisan reprisal..”

“Two of the judges on the panel, J. Michelle Childs and Florence Pan, were appointed by President Joe Biden. The third, Karen LeCraft Henderson, was appointed by President George H.W. Bush.”

• Trump Immunity Denied By DC Appeals Court In Election Case (ZH)

A three-judge panel for the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled on Tuesday that former President Trump does not have immunity from prosecution related to his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. “We have balanced former President Trump’s asserted interests in executive immunity against the vital public interests that favor allowing this prosecution to proceed,” the judges wrote in a 57-page opinion reported by CNBC. “We conclude that ‘[c]oncerns of public policy, especially as illuminated by our history and the structure of our government’ compel the rejection of his claim of immunity in this case,” the judges continue, upholding a trial judge’s previous ruling. Special Counsel Jack Smith brought the election interference case against Trump in US District Court in Washington DC, where the chances of him receiving a fair trial are slim to none.

“Trump is charged in the case with four counts of crimes including conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding. He has pleaded not guilty. Defense lawyers, seeking to dismiss the case, had argued to Judge Tanya Chutkan that Trump has “absolute immunity” from prosecution because the charges relate to official acts performed while he was president. After Chutkan declined to dismiss the charges, Trump’s attorneys brought the immunity argument to the appeals court. That move put the case on hold in Chutkan’s court. -CNBC. Trump’s legal team is expected to quickly ask the Supreme Court to overturn the decision, in which the former president’s legal team put forth three separate immunity arguments “both as a categorical defense to federal criminal prosecutions of former Presidents and as applied to this case in particular.”

“For the purpose of this criminal case, former President Trump has become citizen Trump, with all of the defenses of any other criminal defendant,” wrote the panel. “But any executive immunity that may have protected him while he served as President no longer protects him against this prosecution. “Donald Trump Jr. took to X to rail against the decision, posting: “If POTUS doesn’t have immunity they’ll be incapable of action for fear of future partisan reprisal. That endangers the United States and sets a terrible precedent. If this becomes the norm would a Trump DOJ prosecute Obama for droning an American? If not why not?”

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High expectations..

• Tucker Carlson Reveals Putin Interview Plans (RT)

The Ukraine conflict has reshaped the military and economic balance of power around the world but most Americans have no idea because their media has fawned over Vladimir Zelensky and refused to talk to his Russian counterpart, former Fox News host Tucker Carlson said on Tuesday. Carlson, who launched his own network on X (formerly Twitter), posted a short video from Moscow, explaining the logic behind his upcoming interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Most Western media outlets are corrupt and “lie to their readers and viewers,” mainly by omission, Carlson argued. There has been no effort to speak to Putin since the conflict started in 2022, while US outlets have conducted many “fawning pep sessions” posing as interviews with Zelensky, he added.

“That is not journalism. It is government propaganda – propaganda of the ugliest kind, the kind that kills people,” said Carlson. “Because no one has told them the truth,” most people in English-speaking countries are unaware of “history-altering developments,” according to Carlson. “That’s wrong. Americans have the right to know all they can about a war they are implicated in,” he added, noting that freedom of speech is the American birthright that can’t be taken away no matter who sits in the White House. Carlson reminded his viewers that the US government spied on his text messages in 2021, when he attempted to interview Putin. He urged Americans to watch the entire interview on X, which will not be censored or paywalled, and decide for themselves, “like a free citizen, and not a slave.”

Carlson was first spotted in Moscow on Saturday, but has played coy about his plans. Asked about the hysterical calls to have him banned from returning to the US or jailed – advanced by some prominent establishment commentators – he called them “crazy.” The Kremlin has neither confirmed nor denied any plans to have Putin give an interview to Carlson, telling reporters that any such engagements will be announced in the fullness of time. Carlson was the highest-rated evening cable show host in the US when he was fired by Fox last April, without explanation. He has since returned as one of the most popular interviewers on X, the formerly censorious platform Musk bought in 2022.

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“..X has significantly increased its compliance with government content takedown requests since his takeover, honoring 80% of such orders compared to 50% under his predecessors..”

• Tucker Carlson Reveals Elon Musk’s Putin Interview Pledge (RT)

Billionaire owner of X (formerly Twitter) Elon Musk has pledged not to censor Tucker Carlson’s interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin when it is posted on the platform, the American journalist claimed in a video he posted from Moscow on Tuesday. Carlson has been in Moscow for at least 4 days, sparking rumors that he planned to interview the Russian president. He confirmed his intention in the video, which has received over 260,000 likes. He praised Musk for his pledge “not to block or suppress the interview once we post it on his platform X,” confirming that the video would be available without a paywall to anyone who chose to watch it on the journalist’s own website as well.

“Western governments, by contrast, will certainly do their best to censor this video on other less principled platforms, because that’s what they do – they are afraid of information they can’t control,” the journalist continued, encouraging Americans to watch the interview in order to educate themselves on the “history-altering developments” unfolding in Russia and Ukraine. After assuming control of what was then called Twitter in late 2022, Musk famously partnered with a group of journalists to release internal communications that were widely accepted as proof that multiple US government agencies had been unconstitutionally suppressing the spread of narratives they found undesirable on social media. Musk’s decision to allow numerous prominent banned users back on X – including former US president Donald Trump and, more recently, Infowars host Alex Jones – was praised by free speech advocates, including Carlson.

The former Fox News host launched an independent talk show streaming on X last year after he was unceremoniously fired from hosting the number-one prime-time show in the US for reasons that have still not been made public. While Musk presented himself as a free-speech absolutist when buying the platform, X has significantly increased its compliance with government content takedown requests since his takeover, honoring 80% of such orders compared to 50% under his predecessors, according to a report published last year by tech outlet Rest of World. This has not stopped western governments, including the EU, from demanding he crack down on “disinformation” and “hate speech,” threatening severe penalties for noncompliance.

Like Carlson, Musk has been a vocal advocate for peace in Ukraine, repeatedly warning Washington against provoking a direct conflict with Moscow that could spiral into a third world war. Accordingly, while he provided Ukraine with free access to his company SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet service, he has refused to enable the system near Crimea, lest Kiev use it to facilitate attacks on the Russian fleet, arguing in September that to do so would render his company “explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation.”

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From a French-Canadian site. We don’t know the authenticity.

• Tucker Carlson’s Exclusive Interview With Vladimir Putin – Full Transcript (LM)

TUCKER: What would you say to the people who run America?
PUTIN: Our message is that Russia is not your enemy. We don’t want war. We are ready for peace. Your leaders seek conflict. This is not what we want. Russia defends its own people. We don’t want what doesn’t belong to us.
TUCKER: Would you like to visit Washington?
PUTIN: Yes, of course. I have already been to the United States. I love visiting and have met every president except Joe Biden. If I was invited, I would go. Yes.
TUCKER: What is your opinion of President Biden?
PUTIN: We are convinced that he does not lead the country. Let’s say we have good sources that confirm this, but obviously everyone can see it for themselves. The United States has now entered a dark period. His leadership is unaccountable.
TUCKER: Do you think Joe Biden won fairly?
PUTIN: I would prefer not to get into US domestic politics, but I will say that my embassy reported that your southern border was better managed than the 2020 elections. (laughter)

TUCKER: US poll shows you more popular than Biden – reaction?
PUTIN: (laughs) I don’t know if this should be taken seriously, but Russian ideals have support. We believe in traditional values; Marriage is between a man and a woman: men are men and women are women.
TUCKER: Who would you like to see as the next president of the United States?
PUTIN: Once again, it is not our place to say or get involved. Contrary to long-standing accusations, we are not interfering in your elections. We don’t need it, because it’s the same people who end up running things anyway.
TUCKER: Why did you invade Ukraine?
PUTIN: Did we invade or were we invaded? Look at the story. Look at the people who live there. Historically, we are the ones who were invaded and are only fighting back now. The lands and people are Russian and we will regain what has always been ours.

TUCKER: How would you feel, lol, if Trump won again?
PUTIN: We had good relations when Mr. Trump was president. There was no war. Our relationships were at a high point. That said, nothing is predictable and the statistics are the same. We’ll have to see.
TUCKER: What do you think of Mr. Zelensky and what would be your message to him?
PUTIN: I remember laughing at his jokes when he was a comedian in Russia. Back to the laughter.
TUCKER: Why is that?
PUTIN: There are strong financial entities that have an interest in keeping us as adversaries. One of your presidents warned against this. We Russians don’t have this problem.

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“The Russian population in Ukraine was suffering persecution, and that is why the Kremlin intervened.”

• NYT Fantasy: Germany Gearing Up for Military Confrontation with Russia (PCR)

I forget what year it was that the New York Times ceased being a newspaper and became a shill for the military/security complex. Now the former newspaper has teamed up with German war minister Boris Pistorius and two presstitutes to hype German rearmament to counter the Russian Threat. In one of the silliest articles I have ever read, the NYT reports that Pistorius is warning Germans to prepare for decades of confrontation with Russia and quickly rebuild Germany’s military “in case Vladimir V. Putin does not plan to stop at the border with Ukraine.” Let’s stop here for a minute and remember the Third Reich when Germany was a major military power capable of defeating Poland, France, and Great Britain in a few weeks. Germans were proud and highly motivated, but confrontation with Russia brought a quick end to the Third Reich.

In contrast, today Germany is a deracinated state taught guilt and self-loathing by decades of American and Jewish control over German education and overrun with third world immigrant-invaders. Germany has been an American puppet state since 1945, and is being de-industrialized by American sanctions allegedly aimed at Russia but hitting Germany. The notion that Germany would be capable of confronting Russia militarily is hilarious. Note the assumption that “a newly aggressive Russia” might not stop with Ukraine. As Putin has made clear both with words and by how he has limited Russian military action in Ukraine, Putin’s goal is limited to the previous Russian territories that Soviet leaders placed into the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. The Russian population in Ukraine was suffering persecution, and that is why the Kremlin intervened.

Washington still thinks in 19th century terms that power is gained by the conquest of land. That is not the way Russia and China think. For Russia and China influence is obtained through economic and financial cooperation, not by occupying land or controlling governments. Washington and Israel are the only two militarily aggressive countries in the world. The head of Germany’s intelligence service, Bruno Kahl, is even sillier than the war minister. Kahl said, according to the NYT, “If Ukraine were forced to surrender, that would not satisfy Russia’s hunger for power. If the West does not demonstrate a clear readiness to defend, Putin will have no reason not to attack NATO.”

Clearly, the chief of German intelligence, if it can be called that, has no idea of the dynamics of power. Ukraine is defeated. Russia is not pursuing its advantage. Putin is just sitting there waiting for the realization to soak in. The most preposterous aspect of the NYT’s article is the assumption that “hard power” is military power and that military power is independent of economic power. Germany’s only strength was its economy. Washington has taken that away by blowing up the Nord Stream Pipeline and by forcing Germany to abandon lucrative business deals with Russia. With Germany joining Britain in war talk about Russia, it is Washington pulling the puppet strings. Sooner or later Europeans will figure out that it is NATO, not Russia, that will bring war to Europe.

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“The security of Israel should be sacred, not a political game..”

Funny, I would say that about the children of Gaza. Their lives should be sacred.

• Biden Threatens To Veto GOP Israel Aid Bill (RT)

US President Joe Biden has vowed to veto a Republican-proposed standalone aid package for Israel if it manages to pass through Congress. The idea to pass a “clean” aid package, not tied to border security or Ukraine, was floated by speaker of the US House of Representatives Mike Johnson last week. A number of GOP lawmakers have been opposing a $118 billion national security package, which includes $60 billion in Ukraine military aid, $14 billion for Israel and roughly $20 billion for funding US border policy changes. The package is set to be voted on in the Senate this week. In a statement published by the Office of Management and Budget on Monday, the White House urged both chambers of Congress to reject Johnson’s Israel-only bill, calling it “another cynical political maneuver” after the Biden administration spent “months working with a bipartisan group of Senators to reach a national security agreement that secures the border and provides support for the people of Ukraine and Israel.”

The bipartisan package also includes $10 billion in humanitarian assistance for civilians in Gaza, the West Bank and Ukraine. “The security of Israel should be sacred, not a political game,” the statement read. As early as November, National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby indicated that Biden “would veto” a stand-alone Israel aid bill. Johnson responded to the president’s veto threat this week by calling it “a betrayal of our great ally and friend Israel in their time of desperate need.” “The idea that Joe Biden would suggest that he would not send a clean funding measure to assist them is just outrageous,” the House speaker told CNN, warning that the Senate border package would be “dead on arrival” in Congress.

He also previously criticized the Senate bill, saying it would not even “come close to ending the border catastrophe the president has created.” The speaker urged the Senate to take up the standalone Israel aid bill, asking senators to abandon their efforts to keep Israeli aid linked with other issues. While US lawmakers have been entangled in negotiations over the new security supplement for months, EU leaders last week signed off on a €50 billion ($54 billion) support package for Kiev “within the EU budget.” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who originally vetoed the proposal arguing that Brussels has no idea how the monies will be spent, was reportedly “blackmailed” into accepting the deal.

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Zelensky is more likely to blindly do the US’ bidding.

• Zelensky To Fire His Top General’s Deputies – MP (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky reportedly plans to fire his top general Valery Zaluzhny in the next few days and will likely also dismiss all of the commander’s deputies, a member of the country’s parliament, the Rada, claimed in a Telegram post on Tuesday. The expected firing of Zaluzhny was initially reported last week by several media outlets. However, due to a leak to the press, Zelensky appears to have postponed the decision. Nevertheless, he admitted on Sunday that he would be replacing his top commander and conducting a “serious” overhaul of the country’s leadership. According to MP Alexey Goncharenko, in tandem with Zaluzhny’s sacking, the president intends to fire all of the general’s deputies as well, including Evgeny Moysyuk, Nikolay Balan and Mikhail Zabrodsky.

Goncharenko denounced any attempts to diminish Zaluzhny’s achievements and called the prospect of his firing a “complete disgrace” for Zelensky, adding that it was “wrong” to “spin up negativity, play political games and raise tensions in society during a war.” While Zelensky has not yet made it clear when Zaluzhny would be let go, another Rada MP, Evgeny Shevchenko, has suggested that the commander will be relieved of his position sometime this week. He will then reportedly travel to the UK to serve as Kiev’s ambassador, Shevchenko said, noting that such a position would essentially be a “political pension” for the general. Zaluzhny’s firing comes after months of strained relations with the Ukrainian president. The two fell out over their respective assessments of the battlefield situation, following Kiev’s failed summer counteroffensive. In an article for The Economist in November, Zaluzhny described the situation on the ground as a “stalemate” while Zelensky vehemently rejected that depiction.

In an interview with Italy’s RAI TG1 news channel on Sunday, however, Zelensky appeared to have changed his tune and admitted that there were issues on the front line. In order to solve them, he said that there needs to be a complete overhaul of the country’s leadership, which would not be focused on replacing just a single person, apparently referring to Zaluzhny. The top Ukrainian commander, meanwhile, has reportedly told the president, as per the Washington Post, that no amount of leadership changes would result in any rapid improvements on the battlefield, insisting that Kiev’s forces needed more recruits to gain an advantage. He also stressed that Ukraine needs to prepare for a rise in the rate of personnel losses in 2024. According to Russia’s Defense Ministry, Kiev lost more than 23,000 soldiers in January. In December, the ministry estimated that since the start of the conflict, over 383,000 of Ukraine’s troops had been killed or wounded.

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”The guy with the gun usually wins and last time I checked Zaluzhny’s got more guns than Zelensky..”

• Ukraine’s Top General Sparing Neo-Nazis From Frontline Slaughter (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, who has reportedly been attempting to fire his top general, Valery Zaluzhny, could find himself out of a job before the nation’s top military commander, considering that the latter is backed by armed neo-Nazis, former CIA analyst Larry Johnson has argued. Amid widespread reports that Zelensky had unsuccessfully tried to sack Zaluzhny, Ukrainian and foreign media described a tense meeting between the pair, with the general reportedly rejecting a call to resign voluntarily and the president hesitating to remove him under pressure from military top brass. Zelensky has since told the press that a major overhaul of the military command was imminent.

In conversation with Nima Alkhorshid, the Brazil-based host of the YouTube channel, Dialogue Works on Sunday, Johnson claimed the soap opera would be hilarious “if hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians weren’t dead and maimed.” ”The guy with the gun usually wins and last time I checked Zaluzhny’s got more guns than Zelensky,” Johnson said. Comparing the two men, he said the general should not be seen as a “great guy.” “I don’t want to present Zaluzhny as some sort of military genius or really a good-hearted man,” the commentator remarked. He is “a bit of a scumbag” who “embraces the neo-Nazi ideology,” Johnson claimed. ”He’s been very careful to not insert the most ideologically driven troops – the Azov and the Kraken units – into the front lines where they get killed, because he wants to preserve them. Instead, he is sending the cannon-fodder guys.”

Whether or not Zaluzhny shares the radical nationalist ideology of the Ukrainian far-right is hard to tell from his public statements, but he is believed to have considerable support in those circles. A social media post on Friday by Andrey Stempitsky, a Ukrainian military leader and prominent member of the nationalist Right Sector group, featured a photo of him giving Zaluzhny an honorary ID, certifying the general as the first member of Stempitsky’s brigade. A portrait of Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian nationalist leader and Nazi collaborator, was in the background of the image. Zelensky was elected president in 2019 on a platform of reconciliation with rebels in the east and with Russia, but threats of violence by the extreme right made his office pull back from early attempts to deliver on that promise.

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“..a new USAID-Ukraine project for the construction of a railway connecting the EU and Ukraine has Lvov and not Kiev as its endpoint..”

• Lvov May Become Ukraine’s New Capital (Sp.)

In December 2023, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and a major Ukrainian railway company signed an agreement for the construction of a 75-kilometer section of the European-gauge railway. The railroad will be part of a larger trans-European project (Mediterranean Corridor) starting in southern Spain and finishing in Lvov. Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev believes that Lvov is set to become Ukraine’s new capital city. His conclusion is based on the fact that a new USAID-Ukraine project for the construction of a railway connecting the EU and Ukraine has Lvov and not Kiev as its endpoint. According to Medvedev, business sometimes reacts to unraveling geopolitical developments more quickly and pragmatically than politicians, and much can be understood from the project details and their reasons.

“It looks like the first confirmation that Lvov-Lemberg will be the new capital of Ukraine within the borders of the Lvov region… It’s just that business is much more prescient than politicians,” Medvedev wrote on X (former Twitter). Lvov-Lemberg is the old name for the city from when the region was part of the Austrian monarchy. Allegations hinting at the capital city being moved away from Kiev are old news for history enthusiasts. After all, national borders and political affiliations have altered dramatically across the continent even throughout the 20th century. Ever since Russia launched its special military op, EU officials have frequently voiced opinions pertaining to the fact that some of today’s Ukrainian lands historically belong to other EU nations. Such is the case with Eastern Galitsia, Transcarpathia (Zakarpattia), Bessarabia, or North Bukovina.

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We’re not supposed to know.

• Sweden To Close Nord Stream Sabotage Probe – German Media (RT)

Sweden will this week announce the end of its investigation into the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, German media claimed on Tuesday. The reports come after Swedish prosecutor Mats Ljungqvist told the Expressen national newspaper on Monday that he will disclose a major development in the case within days. Built to deliver Russian natural gas to Germany via the Baltic Sea, the Nord Stream pipelines were damaged by a series of powerful explosions in September 2022. Germany, Sweden, and Denmark each launched their own national probes into the incident after failing to agree on a joint effort. Several leading German news outlets, including Suddeutsche Zeitung, NDR, WDR and Zeit, have predicted that Sweden will close its investigation after failing to identify any suspects.

The move will benefit German investigators, according to the news outlets, as Sweden will be able to share evidence with them once its own case is closed. Investigators are reportedly focusing their attention on a yacht named Andromeda, which was allegedly rented in Poland by a Ukrainian citizen before the bombing, and may have carried the team responsible for it, according to a working theory. Warsaw has been accused of stonewalling requests for assistance from fellow EU members and feeding them disinformation to scapegoat Russia, the Wall Street Journal claimed last month.

Skeptics of the Andromeda theory have argued that the depth at which the pipelines were blown up would have made it impossible for divers lacking highly specialized skills and equipment to plant the explosives. American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh claimed in February 2023 that the incident was actually a clandestine US-Norwegian operation, personally ordered by President Joe Biden to ensure the EU’s decoupling from Russian energy supplies. Washington and Oslo have rejected the allegations, although senior officials in Moscow have said they find Hersh’s reporting plausible. Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated that the sabotage was “most likely” carried out by the US “or someone at their instruction.”

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“Such language proliferates in times of tension and war. The impulse to it should be resisted by ethical persons, and even just by normal non-psychopathic human beings..”

• NYT’s Friedman Hits New Low With Animalization of Arabs, Iranians (Juan Cole)

Calling people animals is a way to dehumanize them, and probably helps convince individuals that the other people around them approve of treating the animals badly. In ways that aren’t entirely clear, this way of speaking is certainly wrought up with violence and even genocide. Israel’s Defense Minister called the Palestinians of Gaza “human animals” when he announced a “complete siege” of Gaza after the horrid Hamas terrorist attack of October 7. Galant’s willingness to destroy most of the homes in northern Gaza and to displace over a million people, leaving them cold, hungry, thirsty and increasingly victims of disease, surely was enhanced by his conviction that he is dealing with animals rather than human beings. Some might defend him, saying that he only called Hamas “human animals.” But if that were true, why is he treating all Palestinians in Gaza worse than dogs?

The Nazi dehumanization of Jews is notorious. They called them rats, lice, cockroaches, foxes, vultures. Such language proliferates in times of tension and war. The impulse to it should be resisted by ethical persons, and even just by normal non-psychopathic human beings. Prominent New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, alas, fell victim to the seductions of such language in his Friday column. He openly said that he approaches the Middle East at times from the perspective of the Warner Brothers’ Animal Planet channel. Friedman actually wants a two-state solution and so wants something for Palestinians more than what they now have, and he is hated by the Israeli far right (which is increasingly the Israeli mainstream) for these stances.

So it is unfortunate that he deployed the language of insects for Iran and Hamas members. He might defend himself by pointing out that he called the United States an “old lion” of which no one in the region is afraid any more, or that he caricatured Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu as a lemur. But in his column, the old lion and the lemur are not depicted as vicious or disgusting. The three-time Pulitzer prize-winner compares Iran to a parasitoid wasp that lays its eggs in caterpillars. He says that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps is like the wasp, and the caterpillars are Lebanon’s Hezbollah, the Iraqi Shiite militias, and Yemen’s Helpers of God (Houthis). How does this language add to understanding? If he is saying that Iran has fostered Shiite militias in nearby countries on the model of its Revolutionary Guards, this is true.

But why would Lebanese be interested in Iranian training, weapons and monetary support? In 1947-1948 Zionist militias ethnically cleansed over half of Palestinians, expelling them from their homes and farms and forcing some of them to Lebanon, where they dwelled in camps. As a liberal Zionist, I presume that Friedman applauds this ethnic cleansing, though the liberal part of the equation makes him sympathetic to Palestinians getting a state on 22% of the land of the British Mandate of Palestine, all of which was promised to the Palestinians by the British White Paper of 1939.

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“..Ukrainians are treated as fellow human beings while thousands of brown Muslims drowning in the Mediterranean struggle to hold column inches in the same newspapers..”

• Western Spin Doctors Dehumanize Select Peoples To Justify War (Bowes)

Anyone watching the ebb and flow of Western coverage of the Ukrainian conflict will notice the emergence of a centrally formed, “fact-light” narrative that suggests Ukrainians are utterly blameless, in a conflict which did not, in fact, begin on February 24, 2022, but with a CIA-back coup in Kiev in 2014, powered by ultra-nationalists and the far right. Its roots stretch even deeper, decades back, to the attempts at the destabilization of the Ukrainian SSR by Western intelligence agencies. Of course, the Western viewer is conveniently spared such details. The skill of deceit by omission of fact has been well honed by the likes of the BBC and CNN. Additionally, the Western media has also been adept at memory-holing Kiev’s crimes against its own people in the aftermath of the 2014 Maidan coup. There is no space to report the gross corruption, the punitive neo-Nazi battalions unleashed on the Donbass region, or the murder, abduction and rape deployed against the Russian-speaking populations who refused to accept the illegitimate mandate of the post-Maidan government.

So, while The Western media gleefully attaches itself to this centralized narrative, there are very hard questions to be asked about the motivations and psychological tools being used in licensing and peddling the justification of war, and when it comes to Palestine, one of these uncomfortable realities is the deployment of subconscious racism. Let’s look at the convenient demonization of Islam. It is by no means an accident that the majority of victims of America’s catastrophic post-9/11 “war on terror” were Muslim. Decades of demonization of Islam as a savage religion bent on world domination have had a subconscious effect on the “collective mind” of the West. This is then energetically exploited by the Western media as required. When Syrian and African refugees from wars stimulated by the Western powers sought refuge in Europe, they were met with protest and in many cases violent objection.

However, when it came to the Ukrainian conflict, some Western commentators openly talked about the fact that the Ukrainian refugees “looked like us,” that they could be “our own people,” that they were blonde-haired and blue-eyed. It was a jarring display of how Ukrainians are treated as fellow human beings while thousands of brown Muslims drowning in the Mediterranean struggle to hold column inches in the same newspapers. The intimate relationship between the client media and the military industrial complex also requires deep investigation and analysis. Media empires such as Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp exert vast and overwhelming influence on the public discourse when it comes to the justification of war.

The relationship between the critically important military industrial complex and the creation of a defensible war narrative is undeniable yet persistently denied. So as the world shifts its gaze from Ukraine towards the Middle East, it’s remarkable how quickly the Ukrainian conflict has slipped from the top of the news feeds in the West. It’s also remarkable how criticism of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has become suddenly acceptable, whereas the same criticism only months ago was universally suppressed in the Western media.

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“The federal government is being run as a criminal enterprise. . . .not just a little criminal, but a lot criminal.”

• Gold & Silver Fight Tyranny – Catherine Austin Fitts (USAW)

Catherine Austin Fitts (CAF), Publisher of The Solari Report, financial expert and former Assistant Secretary of Housing (Bush 41 Admin.), says, “The federal government is being run as a criminal enterprise. . . .not just a little criminal, but a lot criminal.” CAF thinks now is the time for state governments to act to protect their citizens from the dangers of a falling dollar and increasing central control over “We the People.” CAF explains, “One of the things we are talking with the states about is Sovereign State Banks, so they can protect their transactions in dollars. We are also talking about State Bullion Depositories. This is so states can protect their rainy-day reserve and, ultimately, their transaction ability with gold and silver. Under the Constitution, the states have those powers.

This is very important if we are going to have sovereignty as individuals and not wake up one day and find ourselves in the same spot as the Canadian truckers who had their bank accounts shut down for protesting the CV19 lockdowns and mandates. More and more, we are seeing people say the ‘wrong things,’ and suddenly they find their bank account is shut down. So, if we are going to have individual sovereignty, we need governments that can provide sovereignty. . . . . The states have the power to implement financial transaction arraignments to protect our financial transaction freedom. Without our financial transaction freedom, we are literally going to lose all of our freedoms.”

CAF says there are many reasons to be concerned for the dollar as the world reserve currency system. Fewer and fewer countries are paying for oil trade in dollars. The US now has record debt and likely it cannot be paid back—ever. CAF also points out, “We are seeing a serious loss of confidence for the US federal government to keep its word. As we see this erosion of confidence, we see the US government and central banks assert more and more control in a way which is nothing but tryanny. . . . The challenge in the dollar system is that the dollar system has been managed in a very corrupt way. That corruption has made the dollar system much more expensive and much less efficient than it could be.

The corruption is destroying the productivity of the dollar system. That is telling people all over the world that this is a system you cannot rely on and you can’t trust. It is also devastating to the brand of the dollar system for the military not to look strong. . . . What you are watching is a diminishing of trust all around the world. . . . People are wondering how we are going to survive if the dollar system is going to continue to erode?” CAF also talks about the CV19 murder and disability program and how that is going to affect the economy and the November 2024 Election. CAF says, “A lot can happen before November. . . .I had a preacher who once told me, ‘If we can face it, God can fix it.’”

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“[i]s the [Biden] Admin asking us to remove books, or are they more concerned about search results/order (or both)?”

• Why Burn Books When You Can Bury Them? (Turley)

The House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government on Monday revealed yet another facet of the Biden Administration’s sprawling censorship system that targeted dissenting books. It appears that, as with social media companies, it succeeded in getting the company not to promote disfavored books. Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan revealed on X that the White House was directly involved in the censorship campaign. That includes a 2021 email from one Biden official asking to discuss “the high levels of propaganda and misinformation and disinformation of [sic] Amazon?” Amazon in turn appears to ask only how high the Biden White House wants it to jump on censorship: “[i]s the [Biden] Admin asking us to remove books, or are they more concerned about search results/order (or both)?”

After the meeting, Amazon confirmed in an email that it was actively doing what the government demanded in suppressing sales by not promoting disfavored books: “As a reminder, we did enable Do Not Promote for anti-vax books whose primary purpose is to persuade readers vaccines are unsafe or ineffective on 3/9, and will review additional handling options for these books with you.” This effort notably parallels demands from Democratic leaders who have called for enlightened algorithms to frame what citizens access on the internet. In 2021, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) objected that people were not listening to the informed views of herself and leading experts. Instead, they were reading views of skeptics by searching Amazon and finding books by “prominent spreaders of misinformation.”

Warren blamed Amazon for failing to limit searches or choices: “This pattern and practice of misbehavior suggests that Amazon is either unwilling or unable to modify its business practices to prevent the spread of falsehoods or the sale of inappropriate products.” In her letter, Warren gave the company 14 days to change its algorithms to throttle and obstruct efforts to read opposing views. It is important to keep in mind that these efforts at censorship targeted scientists who have been vindicated in many of their objections to policies and claims of the government. For example, a new scientific review by 12 researchers from leading universities found little support for the claims that masks reduced Covid exposures. The Centers for Disease and Control Prevention (CDC) initially rejected the use of a mask mandate. However, the issue became a political weapon as politicians and the press claimed that questioning masks was anti-science and even unhinged.

In April 2020, the CDC reversed its position and called for the masking of the entire population, including children as young as 2 years old. The mask mandate and other pandemic measures like the closing of schools are now cited as fueling emotional and developmental problems in children. The closing of schools and businesses was also challenged by some critics as unnecessary. Many of those critics were also censored. It now appears that they may have been right. Many countries did not close schools and did not experience increases in Covid. However, we are now facing alarming drops in testing scores and alarming rises in medical illness among the young. Masks became a major social and political dividing line in politics and the media. Maskless people were chased from stores and denounced in Congress. Then-CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said during a Senate hearing that “face masks are the most important powerful health tool we have.”

The head of the World Health Organization even supported censorship to combat what he called an “infodemic.” A lawsuit opposing these efforts was filed by Missouri and Louisiana and joined by leading experts, including Drs. Jayanta Bhattacharya (Stanford University) and Martin Kulldorff (Harvard University). Yet, universities joined social media companies and politicians in targeting dissenters and silencing opposing voices. Bhattacharya previously objected to the suspension of Dr. Clare Craig after she raised concerns about Pfizer trial documents. Those doctors were the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated for a more focused Covid response that targeted the most vulnerable population rather than widespread lockdowns and mandates. Many are now questioning the efficacy and cost of the massive lockdown as well as the real value of masks or the rejection of natural immunities as an alternative to vaccination. Yet, these experts and others were attacked for such views just a year ago. Some found themselves censored on social media for challenging claims of Dr. Fauci and others.

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” Just as nothing will be done about the genocide of the Palestinians, nothing will be done about the American genocide. White people are an endangered species..”

• America Is Undergoing Genocide (Paul Craig Roberts)

It is not a conspiracy theory that the 300,000 immigrant-invaders (official count) entering the US unopposed each month are recruits organized by NGOs and not refugees from political persecution. The NGOs that are underwriting the invasion provide maps of the routes along which food and shelter are provided. Roads and bridges are being constructed to aid the invasion. One of the NGOs is the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), of which the current director of the US Department of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, himself a Jew, was a board member until December 2020. According to an article on substack, HIAS has received $100,000,000 from the US government in the past three years. Mayorkas is foreign born and himself an immigrant-invader. Yet, he is the director of Homeland Security for the United States. On January 31, the House Committee on Homeland Security voted to approve articles of impeachment of Mayorkas for “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” in enforcing border policy and “breach of public trust.”

There has been no investigation of whether it was Mayorkas who gave $100,000,000 of US taxpayers money to a Jewish NGO engaged in the organized invasion of the US. According to the report on substack, HIAS has a processing center in the Darien Gap used to collect the immigrant-invaders and to send them on their guided and provisioned way. Apparently, Mayorkas is aware of this, and possibly is helping to finance it. But don’t expect Congress to investigate anything that might reflect unfavorably on a Jewish organization. Another problem is Vanita Gupta, daughter of Indian immigrants, who is Associate Attorney General of the US. Gupta has been active in investigating police departments, in enforcing LGBTQ2 rights and hate crime prosecutions, and winning settlements for illegal immigrant children. Her father is a director of Avantor, a company that makes in Mexico acetic anhydride, a product used in producing heroin and methamphetamine.

As the Democrats’ open border policy facilitates the drug trade, the question is whether an associate attorney general who fights for immigrant-invaders and whose father is involved in a corporation that produces a product used in the drug trade has a conflict of interest. Governance in a tower of babel is problematic, especially when the most recent citizens are people of color with racial privileges that give them preferred entry into top positions. Many of the immigrant-invaders arrive from countries in which it is commonplace that officials privatize their offices for money or for ideological and social agendas. When a Western government has so many government officials from countries outside the Western tradition, how does the country remain Western? Isn’t it transformed into something else?

Under the Democrats, each and every month illegal immigrants are permitted to enter the US in numbers (official, the real number might be higher) equal to the population of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. Think about it. Every year the Democrats’ open border policy saddles us with 12 cities the size of Pittsburgh full of third world immigrants who know nothing of Western ways. it is a new form of genocide that America is undergoing. It is unclear to me if there is enough of America left to be able to rescue itself. Rescue is certainly impossible as long as gullible, insouciant, hapless Americans continue to vote Democrat. Not that the Republicans are much different. As far as I can tell, the only difference between the two parties is that Republicans do not hate white people, and it is not their policy to destroy them and to replace a white country with people of color. But Republicans lack a fighting spirit. They themselves are part of the Establishment, and they are content to milk the situation to their own end. Just as nothing will be done about the genocide of the Palestinians, nothing will be done about the American genocide. White people are an endangered species. Their governments are conspiring against them.

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Rancourt
https://twitter.com/i/status/1754727126152945732

 

 

Lily
https://twitter.com/i/status/1754886443133018498

 

 

Ostrich

 

 

Engineering

 

 

Grey whale

 

 

Hammock

 

 

 

 

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