Feb 272024
 
 February 27, 2024  Posted by at 9:26 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  49 Responses »


Vincent van Gogh Peach trees in blossom 1888

 

NATO Troops In Ukraine Can’t Be Ruled Out – Macron (RT)
West Could Cause ‘Worst-Case Scenario’ In Ukraine – Slovak PM Fico (RT)
Putin Insisted On Donbass Ceasefire In 2019 – Zelensky (RT)
Zelensky Downplays Ukrainian Losses to Wheedle More Money Out of West (Sp.)
The Case of the Navalny Corpse – Cherchez Les Femmes (Helmer)
Navalny About To Be Freed In Prisoner Swap When He Died – Ally (BBC)
Leaked Details on CIA Ops in Ukraine Signal ‘End is Near’ for Kiev (Sp.)
Start of SMO Spelled End To Western Global Dominance – Borrell (TASS)
Era of West’s Maritime Hegemony Has Reached Its End – Houthis (Sp.)
Super Bull Market in Gold About to Start – Charles Nenner (USAW)
Biden Operative Inserted Into Fani Team (ZH)
Jim Jordan Reveals New Whistleblower (ZH)
EU Finance Ministers Clash as Bloc Fails to Centralize Market Supervision (Sp.)
Musk Warns Google’s Woke Bureaucratic Blob Won’t Allow Its AI To Be Fixed (MN)
Dissolving Illusions About Vaccine Safety (Mercola)
The Rapidly Emerging Rule of Tyranny in the West (Paul Craig Roberts)
The Border Fiasco and the “Smart Wall” (Whitney Webb)
EU Considers Ban On Repairs For All Vehicles Over 15 Years Old (WS Apes)

 

 


Jacob Rothschild died at 87. Who has their portrait taken this way?

 

 

Black flag

 

 

Tulsi

 

 

Nuland Nordstream

 

 

The Prime Minister of Hungary has given women a lifetime 0% personal income tax exemption if they give birth to and raise at least 4 children.

 

 

Bret

 

 

Roadblocks
https://twitter.com/i/status/1762044181604655309
https://twitter.com/i/status/1762134920837648412

 

 

 

 

Compare that to what they said 2 years ago.

NATO Troops In Ukraine Can’t Be Ruled Out – Macron (RT)

French President Emmanual Macron has argued that deployments of troops to Ukraine by NATO members and other allies cannot be ruled out because Western powers must stop at nothing to ensure that Russia does not defeat Kiev’s forces. “There’s no consensus today to send, in an official manner, troops on the ground,” Macron told reporters after hosting a meeting of European leaders on Monday in Paris. “But in terms of dynamics, we cannot exclude anything. We will do everything necessary to prevent Russia from winning this war.” France hosted Monday’s summit of Ukraine backers to demonstrate steadfast support and European unity amid concerns that US aid to Kiev may stop, especially if Donald Trump wins this year’s presidential election. Macron said that while Ukraine’s European allies want to avoid escalating the conflict into a direct war with Russia, they agree that they must do more to ensure that Moscow doesn’t win.

“We have to take stock of the situation and realize our collective security is at stake,” the French leader said. “We have to ratchet up. Russia must not win, not only for Ukraine, but secondly, we are, by doing so, ensuring our collective security for today and for the future.” Macron noted that the allies who say “never, ever” today about direct troop deployments to Ukraine are the same ones that previously ruled out escalations of military aid that were later granted, including long-range missiles and fighter jets. “Two years ago, a lot around this table said that we will offer helmets and sleeping bags, and now they’re saying we need to do more to get missiles and tanks to Ukraine. We have to be humble and realize that we’ve always been six to eight months late, so we’ll do what is needed to achieve our aim.”

There is broad consensus among the nations represented at Monday’s meeting that the allies must provide more aid to Ukraine and step up more quickly, Macron claimed. “We are not at war with the Russian people, but we cannot let them win in Ukraine,” he said, adding, “We are determined to do everything necessary for as long as necessary. That is the key takeaway from this evening.” Washington ran out of money for Ukraine last month, after burning through $113 billion in congressionally approved aid packages. US President Joe Biden is seeking an additional $60 billion in Ukraine funding as part of an emergency spending bill that also includes aid for Israel and Taiwan. Conservative Republican lawmakers have balked at approving more aid for Ukraine, saying Biden is merely prolonging the conflict without changing its outcome. Trump has claimed he will end the crisis within 24 hours by forcing Ukrainian and Russian leaders to the negotiating table.

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“..He pledged not to let Slovak troops get involved in the fighting, even if it costs him his premiership..”

West Could Cause ‘Worst-Case Scenario’ In Ukraine – Slovak PM Fico (RT)

Western nations may come up with the “worst solution” for the Ukraine conflict at a top-level meeting convened on Monday by France, according to Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico. The Elysee Palace described the event it is hosting as a chance for participants to “reaffirm their unity” and express their determination to defeat Russia in Ukraine. There was initial speculation in the media that Slovakia would not send a representative, but Fico confirmed on Sunday that he would be attending. ”The information about the issues we’re supposed to talk about on Monday sends chills down my spine,” he said in a video statement on social media. Fico expressed concern over a “total escalation” of the conflict by the West and “unlimited military and financial assistance” that the strategy entails. He pledged not to let Slovak troops get involved in the fighting, even if it costs him his premiership.

Fico is an outspoken critic of the Western approach to the Ukraine conflict. He said he wanted to hold consultations with Slovakia’s national security council and his coalition partners before going to Paris. Western leaders will be tackling concerns over optics, an unnamed French presidential official explained to AFP. Ukraine’s backers need to counter any “impression that things are falling apart” for Ukraine after a series of setbacks on the battlefield, the source said. The intention is to send a message to Russian President Vladimir Putin that “he will not prevail” and to examine ways to “do things better and more decisively,” the official added.

The meeting in Paris comes as hostilities enter their third year. The government in Kiev rejected a draft peace agreement with Moscow in 2022, and opted to seek a military victory instead. Last year, Ukrainian forces failed to regain any significant territory despite receiving numerous heavy weapons from foreign donors. Russia liberated the strategically important Donbass town of Avdeevka this month. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and top officials have blamed a shortage of Western weapons for their earlier failed counteroffensive and the current retreat. Half of pledged arms arrive in Ukraine behind schedule, costing Kiev both troops and land, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov complained on Sunday.

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It wasn’t just Boris Johnson in March 2022, they had gotten to him well before that.

Putin Insisted On Donbass Ceasefire In 2019 – Zelensky (RT)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has acknowledged that his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, urged him to stop the hostilities in Donbass in 2019. He added that he had strong concerns at the time that diplomacy would freeze the conflict, but not resolve it. Speaking at a press conference on Sunday, Zelensky gave an account of his face-to-face meeting with Putin in Paris in December 2019, which took place several months after he was elected. According to Zelensky, he had a long conversation with Putin, who “constantly raised the issue of ceasefire.” The Ukrainian president said he told the Russian leader that it would not work out in the long run, noting that this turned out to be the case. He recalled that while talking to Putin, he expressed his doubts about the Minsk agreements – which sought to end the hostilities in Donbass – “because… the withdrawal of troops along the line of contact does not work.”

He claimed that he had shown Putin data which proved that the progress was too little and too slow. “I showed him that we would spend 20 years pulling back troops.” Zelensky said this means that the Donbass conflict would have remained frozen for many years, adding that he and Putin had been “haggling” for a long time over the issue. Brokered by Germany and France, the now-defunct 2014 and 2015 Minsk agreements were aimed at halting the hostilities in Donbass and give the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk special status within the Ukrainian state. The 2019 meeting between Zelensky and Putin took place in the Normandy Format with the participation of the German and French leaders.

At the time, the negotiations made some headway, with the sides reaching an agreement on the disengagement of troops in Donbass and prisoner exchanges. However, Russia accused Ukraine of failing to implement the Minsk agreements, saying this was one of the key reasons for launching the military operation against Kiev. Former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko has admitted that Kiev’s main goal was to use the ceasefire to buy time and “create powerful armed forces,” a position that was later echoed by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and ex-French President Francois Hollande. In autumn 2022, several months into the Ukraine conflict, the two Donbass regions and two other former Ukrainian territories voted overwhelmingly to join Russia in referendums.

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“In general, Zelensky’s statement was so senseless and implausible that I think it will cause a wide resonance, including in Ukraine..”

Zelensky Downplays Ukrainian Losses to Wheedle More Money Out of West (Sp.)

Speaking to CNN on Sunday, Zelensky again begged his Western backers for more money and weapons. “Whether Ukraine will lose is dependent on you, our partners, the Western world,” he said. “We will not lose this war if we get the weapons. We will win.” Zelensky’s interview came on the heels of Russia’s capture of Avdeyevka, a city in the Donetsk region, from the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which were forced into a further retreat. The Ukrainian army is continuing to lose ground since the failure of the Kiev regime’s summer offensive. The botched counteroffensive attempt alone resulted in 159,000 Ukrainian servicemen killed and wounded, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense. Still, the Ukrainian president insisted at a Sunday press conference in Kiev that Ukraine has lost just 31,000 troops killed since the outset of the conflict.

But that contradicted the assessment of US officials last summer that Ukraine had alreadt lost close to 70,000 killed and 100,000 to 120,000 wounded, noted Alexander Mikhailov, analyst and head of the Bureau of Military-Political Analysis in Russia. Speaking to US journalist Tucker Carlson in August 2023, Douglas Macgregor, a retired colonel of the United States Army and a political analyst, suggested that Ukraine’s real losses amounted to 400,000. “That was said before the battle for Avdeyevka and other major battles,” Mikhailov told Sputnik. “Zelensky’s statement in this context should be viewed as an indication of fear of [the Ukrainian] people. He has repeatedly lied. Apparently, he lies and talks about 31,000 killed in order to reduce social responsibility for what was happening,” he noted. The analyst referred to reports that Kiev officials were deliberately understating Ukrainian losses to avoid paying compensation to the families of the deceased.

While targeting his domestic audience in his speech, the Ukrainian president also sought to reassure Western viewers that Ukraine still has enough manpower — and that all that it needs to win are extra money and weapons. “In general, Zelensky’s statement was so senseless and implausible that I think it will cause a wide resonance, including in Ukraine,” Mikhailov stressed. The Ukrainian president also insisted that the Ukrainian military has a clear vision for 2024. Last November Ukrainian MPs lashed out at then-commander-in-chief General Valery Zaluzhny for his failure to outline a military strategy for the coming year. Since he replaced Zaluzhny with Colonel General Oleksandr Syrsky, the Ukrainian president has claimed that Kiev now has not just one plan but was preparing “several” versions of its battlefield strategy for 2024. Mikhailov considers that implausible, however.

“Zelensky just needs to say something so that the Democrats could convince the Republicans to sign $60 billion [in aid to Ukraine],” said the analyst. “Zelensky’s statement that there is a plan for 2024, that they had a plan for 2023 or for 2022” doesn’t make much sense, he added. “They had plans all the time, but these plans ended in nothing and were axed by the reality in which the Russian Federation achieves its goals and continues to fulfill the goals of the special military operation, on a larger scale than previously stated,” Mikhailov said. The analyst also found Zelensky’s comments about a change of strategy ironic, given his claim that Ukraine’s summer counteroffensive plan was cracked by Russia.

“Our counteroffensive action plans were on the Kremlin’s table before the counteroffensive actions began,” Zelensky told a press conference in Kiev. “By stating that the Russians knew about the counteroffensive, he may be rubbing US intelligence’s nose in it,” Mikhailov said. “Because the Americans now control many processes: American and British intelligence agencies — Western intelligence agencies — control all plans of Kiev. And therefore, if it was leaked, it means they missed it.”

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“..Between the two political corpses, a lot of money is at stake..”

The Case of the Navalny Corpse – Cherchez Les Femmes (Helmer)

Two women, Kira Yarmysh and Maria Pevchikh made up the series of lies which in August 2020 claimed that Alexei Navalny had been poisoned with Novichok by a Russian state death squad – first in a cup of tea he drank at Tomsk Airport; then in a bottle of mineral water which he drank in his hotel room; and finally in the underpants he dressed himself with before the water, before the tea. As each of these claims proved untrue on the public evidence, they and Navalny agreed to the release of medical data collected by the group of German doctors who treated Navalny after his admission to the Charité Clinic in Berlin on August 22, 2020. But neither data presented in the doctors’ publication in The Lancet of December 22, 2020, nor the doctors’ report itself proved that Navalny had been poisoned by Novichok. That conclusion came in press releases from the German military, and then from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

According to the Berlin doctors, “severe poisoning with a cholinesterase inhibitor was subsequently diagnosed. 2 weeks later, the German Government announced that a laboratory of the German armed forces designated by the OPCW had identified an organophosphorus nerve agent from the Novichok group in blood samples collected immediately after the patient’s admission to Charité, a finding that was subsequently confirmed by the OPCW.” That’s a political advertisement, not a medical diagnosis – no doctor has signed his name to either, and no German military officer has signed his name to the first. One day before The Lancet publication, on December 21, Navalny, Pevchikh and Yarmysh published their fabrication of the underpants story with the fake telephone call of an FSB agent, Konstantin Kudryavtsev, admitting to Navalny everything which had been disproved until that time.

The combination of fabricated evidence of the murder weapon and then of the murderer’s accomplice was repeated in the documentary film which won the Oscar award for documentary films in March 2023. Yarmysh was Navalny’s press spokesman in August 2020; she still is. Pevchikh was the script writer for Navalny and the channel to him from Anglo-American government agents, as well from Russian financiers in London like Yevgeny Chichvarkin, once the Evroset mobile telephone magnate. If the two women had been telling the truth and Novichok had been in Navalny’s tea, water, or underpants, he would have been dead within minutes of contact. So too would Pevchikh who hand-carried the water bottle from Tomsk to Novosibirsk, then Omsk, and finally Berlin.

Navalny’s blood, urine, skin, and hair, clinically tested and reported by the German doctors treating him at Charité Clinic, proved his collapse had been caused by a combination of drugs he had himself consumed. The two women, and other members of Navalny’s family, including his wife, Yulia Navalnaya, 47, his mother Lyudmila Navalnaya, 69, and his daughter Daria, 23, have all refused to disclose any medical data on his prior medical conditions and the medicines he was taking before the August 2020 episode. Navalny himself gave permission to the Charité Clinic doctors in Berlin to publish their test results in The Lancet report, believing they would corroborate his story. Following Navalny’s death on February 16, 2024, there has been no release of the medical data, nor the medicines Navalny was taking at the time of his death; the record of his vaccinations against Covid-19 which were given to him in Germany; his prior medical conditions; or the toxicology and pathology data collected in the post-mortem investigations following his death.

Russian law prohibits the release of this personal information without the permission of the senior next of kin and executor whom Navalny named in his will. He named his mother, Lyudmila. He did not name his wife, Yulia. His reason for doing that has begun to surface in Moscow. It marks infighting over the political succession to Navalny, and the money which the US has been providing to the Navalny organization. That heirs fight over succession rights, assets and cash is commonplace. What has not yet been noticed in either the Russian or western press reporting is the document on which probate cases start the world over – the will of the deceased. The first sign that an inheritance fight has begun is that while Lyudmila Navalnaya went to Kharp, where Navalny had been imprisoned, and Salekhard, where his body was taken for post-mortem testing, Yulia Navalnaya flew to California to meet President Joseph Biden. Between the two political corpses, a lot of money is at stake.

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There’s Navalny aid Ms Pevchikh again. This makes no sense. Why would Putin have him killed?

“Putin has gone mad with hatred for Navalny,” Ms Pevchikh said. “He knows Navalny could’ve defeated him.”

By polling at 2%? Navalny has meaning only in the western narrative.

Navalny About To Be Freed In Prisoner Swap When He Died – Ally (BBC)

Alexei Navalny was about to be freed in a prisoner swap when he died, according to his ally Maria Pevchikh. She said the Russian opposition leader was going to be exchanged for Vadim Krasikov, a Russian hitman who is serving a life sentence for murder in Germany. Two US citizens currently held in Russia were also going to be part of the deal, Ms Pevchikh claimed. She added that negotiations were at their final stage on 15 February. The next day, Mr Navalny died in his cell in the prison colony in Siberia where he was being held on a 19-year sentence over charges that were widely seen as politically motivated. Prison officials said the 47-year-old had fallen ill following a “walk”. In a video posted on Mr Navalny’s YouTube channel, Ms Pevchikh, who is the chairwoman of his Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), said negotiations for a prisoner swap had been under way for two years.

She added that after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 “it was clear that Putin would stop at nothing” and that Mr Navalny “had to be freed from jail at any cost, and urgently”. According to Ms Pevchik, Mr Navalny was going to be freed under a humanitarian exchange and American and German officials were involved in the talks. The process finally resulted in a concrete plan for a prisoner swap in December, she said. Vadim Krasikov – a Russian who was found guilty of shooting former Chechen rebel commander Zelimkhan Khangoshvili in the head at close range in Germany in 2019 – was going to be part of the deal. Two US nationals currently held in Russia were also going to be exchanged, Ms Pevchikh said, although she did not name them. However, earlier in February, President Putin told US host Tucker Carlson that talks were ongoing with the US about freeing American journalist Evan Gershkovich, who is being held on espionage charges.

President Putin hinted that in exchange Russia would accept a person who “due to patriotic sentiments, eliminated a bandit in one of the European capitals… during the events in the Caucasus” – almost certainly a reference to Krasikov. According to Ms Pevchikh, Russian President Vladimir Putin changed his mind about the deal at the last minute. She said he “could not tolerate Navalny being free” – and since there was an agreement “in principle” for Krasikov’s freeing, Mr Putin decided to “just get rid of the bargaining chip” and “offer someone else when the time comes.” “Putin has gone mad with hatred for Navalny,” Ms Pevchikh said. “He knows Navalny could’ve defeated him.” As a former KGB officer, President Putin is used to saying – or promising – one thing, and then doing something completely different. It is a policy he and his government have been consistently implementing for almost a quarter of a century. Up until the day Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, President Putin and several Russian officials repeatedly denied there was a plan to invade the country.

Although we do not know what exactly happened to Navalny in prison, engaging in negotiations on his release without intending to set him free would fit the Kremlin’s behaviour over the past years. Within an hour of publication, Ms Pevchikh’s video had had hundreds of thousands of views. The Kremlin has not yet reacted to the claims put forward by Ms Pevchikh, but President Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov has previously said allegations of government involvement into Navalny’s death were “absurd”. Authorities initially refused to hand Navalny’s body over to his mother, only relenting eight days after his death. On Monday, Navalny’s spokeswoman Kira Yarmish posted a message on social media saying his allies were looking for a venue where supporters could hold a public farewell later this week. Such an event is expected to be closely monitored by the authorities, provided it is allowed to go ahead at all. A rights group said 400 Russians were arrested across the country for laying flower tributes to Navalny following his death.

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“..the CIA’s role in dealing with the Banderites goes back into the late 1940s and early 1950s..”

Leaked Details on CIA Ops in Ukraine Signal ‘End is Near’ for Kiev (Sp.)

Russia’s Foreign Ministry has dissected Sunday’s NYT story on the CIA’s operations in Ukraine, challenging the newspaper’s assertion that Western intel services’ active involvement in the country began only after the February 2014 Euromaidan coup. “The CIA has helped Kiev to train its spies, and not just spies, but outright militants, extremists, terrorists, thugs. Everyone. And one of the most striking examples of this chain being set in motion occurred in 2013-2014. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, reacting to the NYT’s reporting. “Under the guise of democratic forces and civilians, those which took part in the Maidan were primarily trained at bases in Poland and the Baltic states. And we have spoken about this,” she said. NATO countries’ intelligence services worked to establish bases and other infrastructure in Ukraine long before the 2022 escalation, the spokeswoman said, and not only on the border with Russia, but across the country.

“This begs the question: why is the New York Times only now raising concerns about this? We have provided all the information publicly. Why was the American press silent for many years?” she asked. According to the Times’ account, the CIA created a dozen secret spy bases in Ukraine near Russia over an eight year period going back to 2016, with the intelligence “partnership” supposedly taking “root a decade ago,” after Maidan-appointed spy chief Valentyn Nalyvaichenko contacted then-CIA director John Brennan and the MI6 asking them to help rebuild the Security Service of Ukraine (Ukrainian acronym SBU) “from the ground up.” “They’re lying about the US role in those early stages,” says former CIA analyst and State Department Office of Counterterrorism expert Larry Johnson. “They’re lying about the US and British role in helping create the coup and what happened in the Maidan. They’re acting like ‘oh, you know, the Maidan happened and then the CIA was contacted, after the fact’.

Well that’s not true,” Johnson told Sputnik, suggesting that the NYT is looking to create a narrative on the coup, the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 incident, the ‘Russia the aggressor’ story which ignores Ukraine’s punitive ‘Anti-Terrorist Operation’ in the Donbass starting in 2014, etc. “You’ve got once piece of disinformation after another” in the story, according to the observer. “And then, they’re saying that it was the United States trying to rein in Ukraine from carrying out all these terrorist attacks. So it’s really like we’re trying to send the message that ‘these attacks on Russia were not the fault of the United States, it was the Ukrainians acting on their own,’” which is another patent falsehood, Johnson said. “We’ve had connections [with Ukrainian anti-Soviet and anti-Russian elements] going back to 1955. I mean the CIA’s role in dealing with the Banderites goes back into the late 1940s and early 1950s. They’re trying to portray that this is like some new relationship or just over the last 10-15 years. That’s nonsense,” the former CIA analyst emphasized.

Asked about the likely motivations to publish the expose at this stage of the proxy war in Ukraine, while Russia is advancing through the Donbass and US and European arms assistance to Kiev is under threat, Johnson suggested it may be a signal that Washington has decided to wrap up its Ukrainian project. “I think this is a sign that the end is near for Ukraine. That’s the only reason they’re leaking it now. Because the Ukrainians themselves are putting that information out,” Johnson said. “It’s a sign that the rats are starting to leave the sinking ship. This is their way to say that it’s not the fault of the United States. You know, ‘we did everything we could, it’s these crazy Ukrainians.’ This is part of a ‘blame Ukraine’ [narrative],” the observer noted.

As for the dozen clandestine bases mentioned in the piece, Johnson expressed confidence that Russia knew about these facilities, and likely has taken or will take action to eliminate them. “If I’m Russian intelligence, you’re going to blow those sites up,” he said. “The bases are not going to be that close to Russian territory because the Russians can easily take them out. And they almost exaggerate the kind of intelligence that’s collected. Again, if the CIA was really operating like the CIA is supposed to, that means they would have recruited human sources in the SBU already. That would have been passing them information without admitting or acknowledging it. But that’s not what was going on. This is what they call an open liaison service, so the information is being passed freely.”

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“If the current global geopolitical tensions continue to evolve in the direction of ‘the West against the Rest,’ Europe’s future risks to be bleak..”

Start of SMO Spelled End To Western Global Dominance – Borrell (TASS)

The era of the West’s global dominance finally came to an end with the start of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine and the conflict in the Gaza Strip, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell wrote on his blog. “If the current global geopolitical tensions continue to evolve in the direction of ‘the West against the Rest,’ Europe’s future risks to be bleak. The era of Western dominance has indeed definitively ended. While this has been theoretically understood, we have not always drawn all practical conclusions from this new reality,” Borrell wrote. According to him, the special military operation in Ukraine and the Gaza conflict have “significantly increased this risk” of a confrontation between the Global West and the Global South, which can already be “seen in the Sahel and elsewhere in Africa.”

He emphasized that many countries in the global South accuse the West of “double standards.” Borrell considers this fact unfair and blames Russia and its propaganda for this. “Russia has managed to take advantage of the situation,” he believes. “We need to push back on this narrative but also to address this issue not only with words: in the coming months, we must make a massive effort to win back the trust of our partners (primarily countries that were European colonial possessions in Africa – TASS),” he added. In his blog on the outcome of the Munich Security Conference, Borrell once again rebuked EU countries and the United States for not heeding his warnings two years before the conflict in Ukraine about the rapidly growing security threats to the West. He once again urged Western countries to arm themselves and supply as many weapons as possible to Kiev to try to regain their global dominance.

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“Yemen is a haven of peace, partnership, construction, giving and humanity, especially when the intentions are sincere..”

Era of West’s Maritime Hegemony Has Reached Its End – Houthis (Sp.)

Despite lacking any sort of blue water navy or even much of a brown water fleet beyond machinegun-armed gunboats, the Yemeni militia has managed to put a giant dent in international shipping through the Red Sea chokepoint linking Europe and Asia, with the volume of maritime traffic through the nearby Suez Canal dropping by as much as 40 percent. The era of Western dominance of international waters has reached its end and the US and its allies will have to deal with it, Houthi government Defense Minister Mohamed al-Atifi has said. “The United States, Britain and Israel must realize that the policies of demarcation and assertion of hegemonic influence over the seas have become an obsolete and unwelcome approach,” al-Atifi said in a speech at the graduation ceremony of Yemeni cadets in Hudaydah.

Suggesting that Yemen’s naval forces have “redefined” the concept of regional maritime security, al-Atifi stressed that the Houthis would continue their military operations in the Red Sea as long as the Israeli aggression in Gaza continues, and “as long as blood continues to flow through our veins.” “We are custodians over the navigational course in the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Arabian Sea and the Bab al-Mandab Strait,” al-Atifi said. “We reaffirm that the Yemen Armed Forces will not target any ships that are neither affiliated with the Zionist enemy nor serving its interests. Marine navigation for vessels through the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea is safe,” the defense minister assured. “Sanaa is committed to all international treaties and conventions that do not infringe upon Yemeni dignity and sovereignty or subject it to hegemony and foreign mandates,” he added.

“Yemen is a haven of peace, partnership, construction, giving and humanity, especially when the intentions are sincere. But when challenges grow and the enemies of God and the nation conspire to impose the will of evil and tyranny, another Yemen emerges and its loyal men find themselves as steadfast mountains against their enemies, strong and proud in their positions, pushing to restore balance and removing symbols of evil, oppression, tyranny and arrogance,” al-Atifi said.

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“..if you know winter is coming, you cannot stop it, but you can get a winter coat. Again, Nenner thinks “Trump is the winter coat.”

Super Bull Market in Gold About to Start – Charles Nenner (USAW)

Renowned geopolitical and financial cycle expert Charles Nenner has been warning of a huge war and financial cycle, and it is clear both continue to build. The war cycle will continue to amplify until World War III breaks out. Meanwhile, unpayable debt will continue to explode until another Great Depression hits America again. Standing in the gap is gold, and the wait for a bull market is about over. Nenner explains, “The dollar’s buying power could possibly be cut in half. . . . That’s the reason why we expect a super bull market in gold and silver when the cycle bottoms. You remember I came on and said coming, coming, but not yet? I say it was too early . . . but, now, we are getting very close to a bull market. . . . Gold could still have one more down move because the cycles are still down.”

On Bitcoin, Nenner says, “We had a high of $54,000, and we said if it hit $52,000, we would sell. I do not believe this story that Bitcoin will hit $100,000 based on my work. It has been proven that NASDAQ and Bitcoin go up and down together because it is based on nothing, and people are buying out of greed. Because we think we are at a top in the NASDAQ, then we don’t think the outlook for Bitcoin is too positive.” Nenner thinks the DOW is also topping, and he is telling clients to lighten up on the risk. Nenner sees a second Great Depression playing out again in 2026 or 2027. Nenner thinks the “War Cycle” will continue to build in 2024, but all bets are off in 2025.

Nenner says his wealthy clients see dark days ahead for the world and have actual bunkers to go along with a bunker mentality. Nenner think domestic terror and even war is coming to America in a big way. Nenner is still forecasting “2 billion will die in the next global war, and the only way we get a body count that high is with nuclear weapons.” Nenner sees an election coming in 2024 and still thinks Trump can win. Nenner warns that problems in America are too big for any one person to actually fix. Nenner still thinks if you know winter is coming, you cannot stop it, but you can get a winter coat. Again, Nenner thinks “Trump is the winter coat.”

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Two stories from one ZH article. The link between the White House and the various Trump prosecutions gets stronger by the day. Ugly.

Biden Operative Inserted Into Fani Team (ZH)

Two stunning reports have emerged that spell trouble for Fulton County DA Fani Willis. For starters, Breitbart News reports from multiple sources that the Biden administration “planted a Democrat operative in the Fulton County office to target former President Trump,” which according to the report “would present a strong argument that the administration interfered in the 2024 presidential election.” Breitbart News granted the sources anonymity to discuss the attorney’s office for fear of retribution. The sources have direct knowledge of the environment at the District Attorney’s Office, which they characterized as “corrupt.” The alleged ‘plant’ in questionf is Jeff DiSantis – the county’s Deputy DA, who not only worked on Willis’s 2020 campaign and was the former Executive Director of the Democrat Party of Georgia, he was the DNC’s deputy director of compliance.

Sources credit DiSantis with colluding with the White House to target Trump. “DiSantis did this,” one source told Breitbart News about the Trump case. “He’s the one. He is the one pulling all the strings. He was the one that walled her [Willis] off. He was in every important meeting. He is the brainchild behind this. That is the connection to the White House.” One of Breitbart’s sources said they are “one hundred percent” sure DiSantis was the inside man that the Biden administration planted in the Fulton County office. “DiSantis is the one pulling the strings on this whole thing,” a second source told the outlet. “Everybody heard Fani testify. It’s no secret that she’s not smart. That is how she sounds and acts every day of the week.” “Anyone that has common sense knows that the White House has been involved in this prosecution,” a source continued. “This shouldn’t just miraculously happen. Of course, she’s [Willis] not going to prosecute the former president United States without the current administration’s approval.”

According to the sources, DiSantis was deeply involved in selecting grand jurors for the Trump case based on voter registration data. “Part of why you’re raising money as a candidate is to get money to buy the data about who are your voters. DiSantis, as the former head of the state Democratic Party, he’s going to know you know [the data] in Georgia,” said a source. “There’s not one conservative person on that grand jury.” Sources also revealed that DiSantis was a member of Willis’s transition team after she won the election in November 2020. DiSantis helped Wade select employees for the new office. “DiSantis was there in the capacity to be a political strategist, hiding in the DA’s office,” a source told Breitbart News.

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But not who it is..

Jim Jordan Reveals New Whistleblower (ZH)

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) came down on Willis with an elbow drop from the top rope, revealing at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that there’s a whistleblower inside of Fani’s office. Whether it’s one of Breitbart’s sources – we don’t know, though Jordan’s comments suggest it might be Willis’s former friend, Robin Bryant Yeartie, who testified against her about Fani’s relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade. “[The whistleblower is] now talking with our office, and we’ll see how that goes. But that’s why we have subpoenaed documents related to this,” Jordan continued. As the Epoch Times notes further; “Over the past several weeks, significant allegations against Ms. Willis and her special prosecutor, Nathan Wade, have emerged, triggering several court motions and hearings during which Ms. Willis and Mr. Wade have testified. The allegations center around the timing of a romantic relationship between the two—the existence of which both have confirmed—and whether Ms. Willis financially benefitted from the arrangement.”

Ms. Willis hired Mr. Wade in November 2021 to handle the racketeering and election case against former President Donald Trump and several co-defendants. Late last week, President Trump’s team said they hired a private investigator to use a program to provide data on Mr. Wade’s cellphone, suggesting that Mr. Wade was actively engaged in a relationship many months before they claimed that their relationship started, in 2022, a key claim both made in court earlier this month. It’s unclear whether Mr. Jordan was referring to Robin Yeartie, a witness in the case who claimed that the two were involved in a relationship in 2019. Ms. Yeartie, who had owned the property where Ms. Willis had lived and was her friend, testified that she was forced to resign from the Fulton County District Attorney’s office several years ago.

However, there have been reports that the whistleblower could be another former employee at the office, Amanda Timpson. Mr. Jordan sent a letter to Ms. Willis’s office several weeks ago, saying the employee was fired because she was being retaliated against, which he said raises serious concerns about whether the district attorney was appropriately supervising the expenditure of federal grant funding allocated to her office and whether she took actions to conceal her office’s “unlawful use of federal funds.” As reported by The Washington Free Beacon, Ms. Timpson said troubles within the office started in March 2021 when she stopped an aide to Ms. Willis from allegedly trying to obtain funds from a $488,000 federal grant for an anti-gang violence organization to instead pay for travel, computers, and other items.

The report noted that she was fired in early 2022, saying only that she was terminated because of an “employee discharge.” But Ms. Willis rejected the claims by saying that the ex-employee’s claims are “false allegations” that are “included in baseless litigation filed by a holdover employee from the previous administration who was terminated for cause,” Politico reported. Her office stated that she failed “to meet the standards of the new administration.” “Any examination of the records of our grant programs will find that they are highly effective and conducted in cooperation with the Department of Justice and in compliance with all Department of Justice requirements,” Ms. Willis said earlier this month.

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Brussels is power hungry.

EU Finance Ministers Clash as Bloc Fails to Centralize Market Supervision (Sp.)

European Union finance ministers disagree regarding proposals to streamline the regulation of national capital markets, aiming to harmonize divergent systems and foster private investment in vital sectors like defense. Due to various market regulations and barriers among member states, the bloc is focusing on supervision, savings products, and insolvency rules to promote risk mitigation and streamline processes for businesses and investors. The bloc’s actions are driven by its bleak outlook as its major economies grapple with challenges such as high inflation, soaring energy costs, and deindustrialization due to their alignment with US-led anti-Russia sanctions, which have inadvertently backfired on the 27-member bloc. Consequently, the EU is facing mounting financial pressures and heightened geopolitical risks.

EU finance ministers are considering proposals from the Eurogroup to advance the capital markets union over the next five years. Paschal Donohoe, Eurogroup president, noted disagreement among member states on the level of ambition needed to establish a common supervisory framework, a key aspect of the bloc’s agenda, set to be completed by March. The Eurogroup represents the assembly of finance ministers from the Eurozone, comprising EU member states that have adopted the euro as their currency. Consisting of 20 members, it holds informal gatherings to oversee the political direction of the currency and manage facets of the EU’s monetary union, including the Stability and Growth Pact.

“Europe is acutely aware at the moment of the need for it to be able to stand firmly on its own two feet in the years ahead,” he said. “I really have felt this in a number of discussions of late that how we can strengthen ourselves is now a necessity,” the Eurogroup’s president noted. However, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire has expressed dissatisfaction over the pace of progress in establishing a capital markets union for the bloc. He recommended advancing with three or four supportive countries to pursue greater ambition on joint supervision rather than negotiating a deal among all 27 member states, reintroducing market securitization, and launching a savings product across the EU. According to sources familiar with the matter, the Netherlands and Spain have endorsed France’s initiative. However, they lean towards a pan-European agreement, but are prepared to explore other possibilities.

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“.. Google is one of the key delivery mechanisms of information on the planet, and it is going to have this ‘broken’ AI at its heart.”

Musk Warns Google’s Woke Bureaucratic Blob Won’t Allow Its AI To Be Fixed (MN)

X owner Elon Musk commented on the dumpster fire that is Google’s Gemini AI Sunday, noting that he has spoken to a senior Google executive who has claimed it is being fixed. As we previously highlighted, the latest ridiculous thing the AI has come out with is that it would not misgender Caitlyn Jenner in order to prevent a nuclear apocalypse. Musk chimed in, warned that “Given that the Gemini AI will be at the heart of every Google product and YouTube, this is extremely alarming!” Musk also revealed that a senior Google executive has told him “it would take a few months to fix,” adding “Previously, he thought it would be faster.” “My response to him was that I doubted that Google’s woke bureaucratic blob would *allow* him to fix it,” Musk continued.

“Unless those who caused this are exited from Google, nothing will change, except to make the bias less obvious and more pernicious,” the X owner further warned. The comments come after the Gemini AI also declared that it is “difficult to say” who is the worse human being when given the choice of Elon Musk or Adolf Hitler. The AI clearly cannot discern between right and wrong, having also declared that calling communism “evil” is “harmful and misleading” and refusing to say pedophilia is “wrong.” Musk is right, Google is one of the key delivery mechanisms of information on the planet, and it is going to have this ‘broken’ AI at its heart.

Elon UBI

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“It’s a dark night of the soul when you wake up to it..”

Dissolving Illusions About Vaccine Safety (Mercola)

One of the silver linings of the COVID mass injection campaign is that it has awakened many to the notion that vaccines aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. The COVID shots are so toxic, even though the injuries are being swept under the carpet like never before, there are just so many of them that the carnage cannot be hidden. And, because government and health authorities refuse to acknowledge the problem, many are now questioning all vaccines, not just the COVID shot. “It’s a dark night of the soul when you wake up to it,” Humphries says. “Your whole world does get a bit shattered, because you start to realize that the entire medical system is corrupt and backwards and that there’s probably better ways to do just about everything. And you know what? For 225 years, doctors have been saying that, and for 225 years, those doctors have been ignored. That’s one of the reasons we wrote the second book, ‘The Dissolving Illusions Companion book.’

It’s another huge book, about 600 pages, with 230-something doctors giving different quotes about what they saw, boots on the ground, for smallpox vaccines to the toxoid vaccines to scarlet fever, typhoid, and the worsening of all diseases that occurred after they gave vaccines. Some of them basically come out and say, ‘The entire profession of medicine is a complete waste of time. [They’re doing] damage to humanity. It would be better if all the doctors just were taken off the Earth and for humanity to do nothing.’ What we’ve done over the past 10 years is, in my travels, I would have to do more research to present different diseases. I would go one place and they say, ‘We want to hear about tetanus,’ or they want to hear more about whooping cough. More medical literature has also come out. So, we’ve added basically another book to ‘Dissolving Illusions.’

We’ve expanded it by 200 pages. We’ve added on a chapter on tuberculosis, which was called the White Plague. There’s an extra addition to the smallpox chapter. I’ve added about 20 or 30 new pages to the pertussis chapter. There is a chapter on deadly medicine, the practices from the early 1800s through to the 1940s that were provably causing lots of harm. Roman came up with more charts. There’s a follow-up on the polio chapter. Dr. Jacob Puliyel, who lives in India, wrote the papers on the oral polio vaccines, how they were causing paralysis in children. We added those follow-up papers, as well as a lot of other data that we left out of the original chapter to try to save space, but it’s so important, it really needs to be put out there.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1762265806002352386

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“Those advocating the genocide of humanity are not held accountable. Instead, they are respectable leaders of mankind..”

The Rapidly Emerging Rule of Tyranny in the West (Paul Craig Roberts)

An 18 year old mother put her baby in a dumpster with a trash compactor. The police found the baby’s remains wrapped in a mattress protector inside a zipped-up duffel bag. Evil must have taken a large step forward for a mother to do this to her baby. I can imagine Jakayla Williams thinking that if she had aborted the baby there would be no complaint, so why can’t she put the baby in the dumpster? Legalized abortion, that is legalized murder, has left women insensitive to murder. Consequently, murder is becoming legalized outside abortion. For example, Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians, and our Great Country America vetoes the UN resolutions against Israel’s genocidal murder of the Palestinians. Washington has redefined genocide as “self-defense” by the Israelis committing the genocide.

The atrocities are beyond belief. The Israelis are committing genocide of the Palestinians and the Democrat regime here vetos UN cease fire resolutions. But an 18 year old black American woman is going to be tried for first degree murder because she waited too long before she aborted her baby. How can this be that the Israeli and US governments can murder at will, but if a black woman disposes of her baby after the expiration of the “use by” date of her legal right to murder, she is a murderess? And look what the Great British and American Democracies have done to Julian Assange. Imprisoned in one form or the other for 12 years without any charges being brought. It is just like medieval times when feudal lords at their whim threw people in dungeons for keeps. The latest reports show that the Democrats are spending massive amounts of our money suppressing truth and financing the recruitment and provisioning of the immigrant invaders from 160 countries that are overrunning our country.

According to official, understated, figures, each year Biden is bringing in immigrant-invaders in numbers equal to 12 cities the size of Pittsburg Pennsylvania. So, 24 cities in two years, 36 cities in 3 years, and dumbshit Americans vote for Demorats who are stealing their country from them. How can a people as indoctrinated and brainwashed as Americans possibly avoid the tyranny that is rapidly descending on them? Many Americans have difficulty being realistic about government. They think government is there to serve them. It is not. Many decades ago Albert Jay Nock made that clear in the classic book, Our Enemy, The State. The trust that Americans place in official narratives is extraordinary. Americans fell for 9/11, for Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, for the “Covid Pandemic” hoax and the mRNA deadly vaccine. Our government wouldn’t lie to us, many say as they sit in front of CNN, Fox News, listen to NPR, read the New York Times and program themselves into mindlessness.

I recently read a letter from a US Senator to a federal agency demanding to know why the agency was financing research in Wuhan, China, focused on weaponizing bird flu. She hasn’t had a reply. Are the elite going to release weaponized bird flu on us in 2025? By then will it be a criminal offense to refuse the vaccine? Bill Gates has made it clear that the elite’s agenda is to kill off most of the world population. Mike Benz recently explained to Tucker Carlson the controls being put in place to prevent one word of truth being spoken in resistance to the tyranny that is prepared for us. The official narrative is that people are killing the planet by causing global warming. To save the planet people have to be eliminated. Here we face not Israel’s genocide of a couple of million Palestinians, but the elite’s genocide of 7.5 billion people. Those advocating the genocide of humanity are not held accountable. Instead, they are respectable leaders of mankind.

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“..a digital wall that is not a barrier so much as a web of all-seeing eyes, with intelligence to know what it sees.”

The Border Fiasco and the “Smart Wall” (Whitney Webb)

The disastrous situation at the US-Mexico border is, and has been, intentionally produced. Throughout the last several administrations, regardless of campaign and other public rhetoric, the porous nature of the border has remained unresolved. On several occasions, the situation as it has developed has been blamed largely on incompetence and government inefficiency. Though some administrations have been tougher than others in regards to terrestrial migration (under some metrics), the US-Mexico border has not been sealed off so to force entrants to cross through officially recognized and managed ports of entry. Under the current administration, it has been pointedly obvious that even the sections of the border that do contain physical barriers are being dismantled on purpose, all the while illegal crossings have risen to unprecedented levels. Whatever the motives for this deliberate policy on the part of the Biden administration, the end result has been the widespread characterization of the crisis as an “invasion,” priming the voter bloc usually most concerned with border security – the American Right – for military-style “solutions.”

While the justifications for the frenzied media coverage are based on the actual reality that the border is indeed highly insecure (and has been for some time), the policy responses from American politicians reveal that there is a bipartisan consensus about what must be done. Tellingly, the same “solution” is also being quietly rolled out at all American ports of entry that are not currently being “overrun”, such as airports. That solution, of course, is biometric surveillance, enabled by AI, facial recognition/biometrics and autonomous devices. This “solution” is not just being implemented throughout the United States as an alleged means of thwarting migrants, it is also being rapidly implemented throughout the world in apparent lockstep.

The reasons for the unspoken, but obvious, global consistency in implementing invasive, biometric surveillance is due to the fulfillment of global policy agendas, ratified by nearly every country in the world, that seek both to restrict the extent of people’s freedom of movement and to surveil people’s movements (and much, much more) through the global implementation of digital identity. Those policy agendas include mainly the UN’s Agenda 2030 or Sustainable Development Goals, specifically SDG 16, as well as Interpol’s Global Policing Goals. While the American Right has been rather outspoken in its rejection of the UN’s Agenda 2030, and the digital ID project at large, the distress over the border situation is being used to manufacture consent among this specific group for “solutions” that are focused on expanding surveillance and biometric collection as opposed to the implementation of physical barriers. The Hawaiian shirt-wearing inventor of the VR headset Oculus Rift, Palmer Luckey, has become the face of America’s “virtual border wall.”

Luckey, the brain behind the defense tech firm Anduril, is a long-time associate of Palantir co-founder Peter Thiel, with Luckey having met Thiel at 19 when Luckey presided over his first company Oculus Rift, which was later sold to Facebook. Thiel was then on Facebook’s board and was also instrumental in the rise of the social media company. Luckey’s Anduril is also backed by Thiel’s Founders Fund and another Palantir co-founder, Joe Lonsdale, is also an Anduril investor. Anduril is one of the main beneficiaries of government contracts to build autonomous surveillance towers along the US-Mexico border, which are now also being rolled out along the US-Canada border. As a consequence, they are likely to be among the beneficiaries of the Senate’s current proposal for “border security,” which sets aside $170 million for additional towers to be build. Under the Trump and now Biden administrations, Luckey has been vocal about how Anduril will create “a digital wall that is not a barrier so much as a web of all-seeing eyes, with intelligence to know what it sees.” As noted by WIRED in 2018, Luckey and Anduril has long been pitching its technology “as a complement to – or substitute for – much of [then] President Trump’s promised physical wall.”

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“..Circularity requirements..” I have a 25 year old car. Go fuck yourself.

EU Considers Ban On Repairs For All Vehicles Over 15 Years Old (WS Apes)

This Is Absolutely Insane. The European Union Is Considering A Ban On Repairs For All Vehicles Over 15 Years Old. “To encourage Europeans to buy new environmentally friendly vehicles.” So In The Name Of “Climate Change” Millions Of People Will No Longer Be Able To Repair Their Vehicles “. The EU considers banning repairing cars over 15 years old. I mentioned this at the close of program the other day, but, uh, this truly is where it is headed. This is an article from wine press. Uh, the proposal is an amendment to the European commission’s preexisting listen to what they call it. Circularity requirements, Circularity requirements. I guess recycle is kind of passed out of use now that you got, uh, the wind turbines that are not recyclable for the windmills and, uh, the solar panels and all these other issues.

You know, there used to be all this reduce, reuse, recycle, Uh, that doesn’t work anymore. That’s kind of become a mockery. So now that we got circularity requirements for vehicle design and on the management of end of life vehicles. The same is to renew the car fleet. See that’s it. They’re not banning anything. They’re renewing it. They’re renewing it. Yeah. Right…. To encourage Europeans to buy new environmentally friendly vehicles. Uh, this is beyond the despicable practice of planned obsolescence where the manufacturers would design something to break after a short period of time. This is this is planned immobilization. Planned immobilization by the government.

They don’t want people to have cars of any type. By the way, you notice that this doesn’t say anything about electric cars. Of course, they don’t really have to do that. Um, by the time your batteries are 15 years old, they’re already gone long dead. And if you, and if you try to replace those batteries, it’s going to cost more than your car’s worth. So they don’t have to do it for electric cars. It’s already implied your planned obsolescence, uh, based on the concept of a residual vehicle, A category for vehicles that are over 15 years old. Oh, all my vehicles are approaching a residual vehicle.” The people in charge always implement their agendas overseas first before bringing their regulations to America.

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Sagan

 

 

Master’s voice

 

 

 

 

Jag

 

 

Tetris
https://twitter.com/i/status/1762078095467569644

 

 

Tree house

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Oct 112023
 
 October 11, 2023  Posted by at 8:47 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  35 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Self portrait 1972

 

US Support for Israel May Set Off Total Middle East Upheaval – Ex-Envoy (Sp.)
The War Has Started (Illaik)
The Israel-Palestine War Is Washington’s Fault (Inlakesh)
US Funding May be Diverted From Ukraine to Israel (Sp.)
Zelensky Blames Putin For Hamas Attack On Israel (HE)
Khamenei Distances Iran From Hamas Operation (ZH)
Saudi Arabia Expresses ‘Unwavering’ Support For Palestine (RT)
The Civilization Of The Antichrist (Alexander Dugin)
Special Counsel Hur May Prove the Ultimate Punchline in Washington (Turley)
Washington Moving ‘Illegal’ Bioresearch Operations To Africa – Moscow (RT)
EU Issues Ultimatum To Elon Musk (RT)
Finland-Estonia Undersea Pipeline In Baltic “Deliberately Damaged” (ZH)
The US Is On The Verge Of Becoming A Tyranny (Paul Craig Roberts)

 

 

In what is only typical, I’ve seen stories about 40 beheaded babies everywhere. That is Putin eats babies territory. Don’t touch it. Reality is bad enough.

“Throughout the fake “Hamas beheaded 40 children” psyop, there wasn’t a single image of one of the supposed beheaded babies, no images of them when they were alive, no names nor ages, and no parents family members or came forward to say their child had been beheaded. It was all based on unverified claims and “beliefs” from the Israeli military.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blevins

 

 

 

 

Macgregor

 

 

Mental gymnastics”

More mental gymnastics:

@Thom_Hartmann Oct 8: “Hamas apparently knew how to get around Israel’s Iron Dome defenses. They probably learned this from Iran. Iran almost certainly got the information from Russia. And who gave it to Russia? Sure looks like it was Donald Trump, at the request of Putin..”

 

 

Rabbi

 

 

 

 

Pepe Escobar: “Israel bombed to smithereens St. Porphyrius Orthodox Church in Gaza: built 1,616 years ago, the third oldest church in the world.”

 

 

 

 

“The Israeli-US “pipedream” fostered by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that relations with Saudi Arabia are going to normalize is now also “gone” for the foreseeable future..”

US Support for Israel May Set Off Total Middle East Upheaval – Ex-Envoy (Sp.)

The United States will support Israel in all actions it takes against Hamas in Gaza after the killing of over 1,000 Israelis in Saturday’s incursion, but this will set off an anti-US wave across the Middle East and the wider Muslim world, former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman told Sputnik. Israel formally declared a state of war on Sunday, a day after Hamas invaded Israeli territory and committed the greatest slaughter of civilians in the 75 year history of the Jewish state. On Monday, Israel put the Gaza Strip under full blockade, with no food, gas or electricity supplies. Both Israel and Palestine have so far reported hundreds of dead and thousands of injured as a result of the escalation.

“The United States will support Israel reflexively but this will set off a much wider anti-US reaction across the Middle East and the wider Muslim world,” Freeman, who also served as assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs in the Clinton administration, said in an interview. The crisis is unlikely to be confined to Israel and Gaza and will metastasize to other neighboring countries, Freeman warned. “The geopolitical dangers could very well rapidly spread to Lebanon and Syria,” he said. The Israeli-US “pipedream” fostered by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that relations with Saudi Arabia are going to normalize is now also “gone” for the foreseeable future, Freeman believes. The Biden administration itself appears to have been caught off guard by the ferocious suddenness and success of Hamas’ invasion, Freeman suggested. “National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan last week made the truly idiotic claim that the Middle East region had reached a reassuring level of stability,” he said.

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“.. the Americans sent messages to the Resistance Axis – specifically Iran and Hezbollah – saying, essentially: “We don’t want this to escalate. We want and need stability on the Lebanese border with Israel. We are urging you not to interfere in this war.”

The War Has Started (Illaik)

Hamas did not coordinate its military operation with any of its Resistance Axis allies. It also did not plan to achieve the stunning results that were soon to follow. The Qassam Brigades’ immediate goal was only to destroy Israeli army positions around the Gaza Strip and capture as many soldiers as possible, which they could later exchange for the thousands of Palestinian captives in Israeli prisons. But the Palestinian resistance forces were taken by surprise at the laxity of the occupation army. Contrary to expectations, they stumbled upon security vacuums and poorly guarded military sites in which a large number of enemy soldiers and officers were fast asleep. It was this unexpected opportunity that prodded the Palestinian fighters to reach for bigger gains.

Hamas’ military leadership planned to carry out this operation in complete secrecy. Just weeks earlier, their fighters had conducted military maneuvers/exercises that were observed by the Israelis. But Tel Aviv’s rather complacent intelligence assessment had been that “Hamas is training for what it does not dare to do.” The Israelis, in short, thought that Hamas was merely flexing in order to gain financial concessions for Gaza. No actual operation was ever expected by Israel’s military brass. The veil of secrecy over the operation also extended to the Hamas fighters who carried out the attack. Sources close to Hamas say that their cadres believed, until the morning of the operation, that they were assembling for a training exercise, not for the real thing.

Very few knew details of the comprehensive attack plan. Even Hamas’ allies in Lebanon and Iran learned of the operation at zero o’clock and not a moment before, according to well-informed sources in the Resistance Axis. Even for this axis, the Hamas operation went beyond all possible expectations. Although true that many of the Hamas tactics employed are shared among the Axis’ fighters in Palestine, Lebanon, Iran, and Yemen, the innovation in the Al-Aqsa Flood operation was the signature of the Al-Qassam Brigades, and particularly its brilliant leader Muhammad Deif. The operation was coordinated with remarkable professionalism: accurate and detailed intelligence was amassed, high-level training exercises organized, secrecy was paramount, and superior coordination was established between the myriad drones, paratroopers, and vast majority of Hamas fighters who crossed into the occupation state, through tunnels and above ground.

Al Qassam also planned to target Israeli communications towers and all military sites surrounding Gaza. From a military perspective, this was a near-perfect operation that led to the destruction of all the facilities of the Israeli army’s “Gaza Division” and the annihilation of entire Israeli brigades. For Israel, this was a total humiliation – something it had never experienced before, even in the devastating 1973 Arab-Israeli war. With the support of the collective west, Israel is now assembling a plan to restore its deterrence. Operation Al-Aqsa Flood didn’t only affect the Israelis – it has also endangered western deterrence throughout West Asia and the Arab world. The decline in Israel’s deterrent capacity correlates directly with the weakening of western hegemony in the region.

While Israel has been scurrying around to mobilize its troops and equipment for a counterattack, the Americans sent messages to the Resistance Axis – specifically Iran and Hezbollah – saying, essentially: “We don’t want this to escalate. We want and need stability on the Lebanese border with Israel. We are urging you not to interfere in this war.” The messages were sent on 7 October, as events unfolded, and through more than one medium. Hezbollah’s response was seen on the ground the very next morning, when it bombed Israeli army positions in the occupied Lebanese Shebaa Farms. This was a warning message, which was clarified further by Hezbollah’s Executive Council Chief Hashem Safi Al-Din when he said: “We will not remain neutral in this battle.” Neither will Washington, which immediately announced $8 billion in aid to Israel, and sent an aircraft carrier to the eastern Mediterranean Sea. The US cannot afford for Israel to take more losses, but how far will they go to deter Tel Aviv’s adversaries?

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“..Biden has abandoned the idea of reviving the Iran nuclear deal and of ending the war in Yemen. He also decided to try and inflict a death blow on the Palestinian cause for statehood.”

The Israel-Palestine War Is Washington’s Fault (Inlakesh)

The Declaration of Principles, the first agreement in the Oslo Accords, was signed on the White House lawn over 30 years ago. The accords were supposed to solve the conflict in a span of five years, but failed due to America’s inability to function as a truly neutral peace broker. During the administration of US President Donald Trump, Washington abandoned the two-state solution altogether, through the pursuance of normalization deals between Arab nations and Israel. The issue of Palestinian statehood, which the UN agrees should be solved through a two-state solution, was sidelined as a non-issue and the one bargaining chip possessed by the Palestinians, Arab-Israeli normalization, began to be taken off of the table.

How did the Palestinian political parties respond to normalization in 2018? They overwhelmingly chose non-violent struggle, including in Gaza, where Hamas endorsed the ‘Great March of Return’, a mass protest movement which lasted around a year. Most of the protesters were peaceful, but it was the relatively small groups of Palestinians committing sabotage and anti-Israeli aggression at the border fence that made the news. In response, Israeli forces killed hundreds of Palestinians and injured almost 10,000. On the Israeli side, there was not a single dead soldier or civilian, while Israeli snipers targeted women, children, journalists, disabled people, and medical workers, according to a UN human rights report on the demonstrations. How did the US react to hundreds of thousands of unarmed Palestinian protesters marching on the separation fence between Gaza and Israel? It ignored them and continued to pursue Arab-Israeli normalization.

Under the Biden administration, the two-state solution was also sidelined and the plight of Palestinians was ignored as insignificant. Instead of seeking a solution to the violence which has been steadily escalating to levels not seen in 20 years, during the course of the past two years – especially in the West Bank – Biden has chosen to look the other way and has pursued Saudi-Israeli normalization instead. A deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel would also have the potential to collapse the Iranian-Saudi rapprochement, brokered earlier this year by China, in addition to potentially dragging Washington into an open confrontation with Yemen. Instead of seeking to fulfill the foreign policy pledges made at the start of his term in office, Biden has abandoned the idea of reviving the Iran nuclear deal and of ending the war in Yemen. He also decided to try and inflict a death blow on the Palestinian cause for statehood.

What Hamas just did from Gaza would never have happened if the US had pursued a somewhat rational approach to the region. It could even have been prevented if the US had presented a political plan to de-escalate rising tensions in the occupied territories. Instead, the American government decided to overlook the armed groups in Gaza while attempting to completely dismantle their cause. And all of this for what? A fancy photo op that Biden can use to steer the Democratic Party to victory in the presidential election in 2024, by claiming that he brought peace to the Middle East.

Due to the current conflict, normalization doesn’t seem to be on the table anytime soon anyway, which would mean Hamas’ offensive has not only dealt a blow to Israel, but also to the US. Now that Israel is at war with Gaza, what is the US doing? It is condemning one side, while arming Israel and greenlighting any action it takes. Initially, Washington even refused to urge a ceasefire, in contrast to the push for one from Moscow and Beijing. The White House refuses to acknowledge its role in creating the current violence and carries on with the exact same rhetoric and policy decisions that led to the horrifying war we see today.

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“The Republicans especially and the American people, frankly, have had enough of Ukraine..”

US Funding May be Diverted From Ukraine to Israel (Sp.)

The White House is seeking to attach Ukraine funding to the urgent package for Israel, in a hope that it will help circumvent House Republicans’ opposition to further assistance to Kiev, according to the US mainstream press. House Republicans have signaled strong support to Israel and speeded up efforts to elect a new House speaker. For its part, the White House has reportedly decided to capitalize on the momentum and pair urgent funds to Tel Aviv with a Ukraine military package. Biden officials are said to have held talks with top House and Senate figures to secure additional military supplies for Israel. Per the US press, the request could come to the US Congress as early as next week. “The funding is probably going to be diverted more to Israel,” Michael Maloof, a former senior security policy analyst in the Office of the US Secretary of Defense, told Sputnik.

“And I think the American people see that the Ukrainians just were not able to muster a counteroffensive and billions of dollars were expended and nothing to show for it. So Europeans are thinking the same way. And as we approach a winter which promises to be much more severe than in previous years, they’re going to be looking more inward in the European countries to their needs that are critical needs to survive. So I think in terms of US funding, first of all, nothing is going to get passed because we can’t get a House speaker and the House cannot take up anything unless and until it has a permanent House speaker.” It is unclear how big the Israeli package would be. However, per Maloof, Israel’s lobby in DC appears to be much stronger than the Ukrainian one.

Prior to the Israeli-Hamas war, the Biden administration was considering seeking a $100 billion package for Ukraine. However, some Freedom Caucus Republicans have already signaled they are against merging Israel and Ukraine aid in one bill. “They shouldn’t be tied together. I will not vote to fund Ukraine,” GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene from Georgia told the US press. “I think the White House proposal will be D.O.A. or dead on arrival unless the House and the Senate are in some kind of a mood whereby they give a bulk of stuff to funding to Israel and maybe a very small token portion to Ukraine. But I don’t know that. The Republicans especially and the American people, frankly, have had enough of Ukraine,” Maloof said. [..] Maloof suspects that the Israel-Hamas conflict could “explode into something much, much larger than just between Israel and the Palestinians.” “So we may be dealing with at least two conflicts at once,” he said, adding that the US is concurrently poking China over the Taiwan Island. It appears the US could easily outstretch itself.

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“..helping Russia in destroying freedom in Europe..” Sounds a bit desperate.. How would that get you your funding back anyway?

Zelensky Blames Putin For Hamas Attack On Israel (HE)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky released a video on Monday blaming the attacks on Israel by Hamas on Russia and Vladimir Putin. The attacks have resulted in a war between the IDF and Middle Eastern terrorist organizations, mostly taking place in and around the Gaza Strip. He posted the video to X, with the caption: “We have data very clearly proving that Russia is interested in inciting war in the Middle East. So that a new source of pain and suffering would erode global unity and exacerbate cleavages and controversies, helping Russia in destroying freedom in Europe. We can see Russian propagandists gloating. We can see Moscow’s Iranian friends openly extending a helping hand to those who attacked Israel.

All of this represents a much greater threat than the world is currently aware of. The world wars of the past were triggered by local aggressions. We know how to counter this threat. We have already prepared the necessary steps. And our primary goal is to protect the need for maximum global unity.” Zelensky stated, “We see Moscow’s Iranian friends openly supporting those who attacked Israel… “We are preparing the appropriate steps. And most importantly, we are defending the need for maximum unity in the world,” he claimed. “I am grateful to all the leaders and states who are now fully aware of the danger and are ready to work together to keep the situation under control to give the obvious sponsors of terror from broader interference,” he continued, seemingly referencing Russia.

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“Lebanon is not yet a war zone. However, it’s an area of operation. But it seems it’s also a space for both sides to exchange messages..”

Khamenei Distances Iran From Hamas Operation (ZH)

The Israeli army has reportedly issued an order for citizens to evacuate the Metula settlement, which lies just along the northern border with Lebanon. This after a salvo of some 15 rockets was fired from southern Lebanon in a suspected Hezbollah operation. “In response to the launches identified from Lebanese territory toward Israeli territory, IDF soldiers are currently responding with artillery fire,” regional sources report. The IDF said it intercepted several of them, while most landed in open fields. Things are steadily escalating there: “A senior Israeli officer was killed in a confrontation with militants on the frontier with Lebanon on Monday, Israel’s military has confirmed. The [Israeli] military said troops and aircraft killed two “terrorist infiltrators” who had crossed into Israeli territory. Palestinian Islamic Jihad claimed that they were its members. Later, at least three militants from Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement were killed as the military attacked sites in Lebanon in response to mortar fire.”

Still, both Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah have thus far narrowly avoided a spiral into all-out war at the Israel-Lebanon border. “What’s happening here seems to be a kind of contained tension. Lebanon is not yet a war zone. However, it’s an area of operation. But it seems it’s also a space for both sides to exchange messages,” an Al Jazeera’s correspondent, Ali Hashem, has observed. Iran, meanwhile, has been on the defensive after major US media, especially the Wall Street Journal, cited US sources who alleged Tehran supported, funded and helped plan Hamas’ deadly rampage across southern Israel on Saturday. There’s speculation that the Iranians fear Israel’s Netanyahu government could begin targeting sites inside Iran. A regional source reports Tuesday on the unprecedented softening of rhetoric from Iran’s leadership, related to Hamas and Israel as follows:

“Iran’s supreme leader has strongly rejected any involvement in the Hamas movement’s surprise attack on Israel. The public maneuvering, which involved Ayatollah Ali Khamenei strikingly repeating his rejection of an Iranian role three times in a 90-second span, follows controversial claims in US media that Tehran helped plan the Oct. 7 blitz. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a high-ranking Iranian source told Amwaj.media that Khamenei’s remarks—his first since the Hamas offensive—may have been sparked by “him seeing the direction of the Israeli public diplomacy campaign.” Rejecting concerns of an impending Israeli attack as Khamenei’s underlying motive, the source said the supreme leader’s comments are “pre-emptive” as opposed to reactive.”

Addressing the rare decision by Khamenei to be so vocal in his rejection of an Iranian role in the Palestinian blitz, a second senior source in Tehran told Amwaj.media, “Give me one reason why he should do otherwise.” Also speaking anonymously given the sensitivity of the matter, he continued, “Why should one give them the perfect justification they need for an attack?” At the same time, the source dismissed the notion that being so explicit in rejecting a role in the Hamas attack indicates a sense of weakness on the part of Iran.

The Pentagon has meanwhile warned both Iran and Hezbollah against jumping into the conflict in a fresh statement: “The senior US official said Iran, Hezbollah and other groups backed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) “should think twice” before joining in the war. “Iran-backed adversaries like Lebanese Hezbollah should not question the commitment of the US government to support the defense of Israel,” the official added. “We believe that the folks in the region understand what those capabilities are,” the White House’s National Security Council coordinator John Kirby, a former US Navy rear admiral, told reporters Monday evening. This as the following just came across the news wires: “US MAY DEPLOY A SECOND AIRCRAFT CARRIER NEAR ISRAEL: WSJ”

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The US tried to use the Saudi-Israel talks to tear apart the Muslim world. But Russia/China just brought Saudi and Iran together.

Saudi Arabia Expresses ‘Unwavering’ Support For Palestine (RT)

Saudi Arabia continues to support the “legitimate rights” of Palestinians, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman told Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in a phone call on Monday, Saudi media reported. The latest escalation in Gaza, which broke out after a surprise attack on Israel by the Hamas militant group over the weekend, poses a threat to security and stability in the entire Middle East, the crown prince said, according to the Saudi Gazette. The kingdom plans to take “proactive efforts” and collaborate with international and regional powers to prevent the conflict between Israel and Hamas from spilling over to other parts of the Middle East, bin Salman said, adding that his nation is also seeking to bring a “swift end” to the hostilities.

He further emphasized the importance of humanitarian law and refraining from targeting civilians, while insisting that Saudi Arabia stands by the Palestinians in their pursuit of a “dignified life… [the] realization of their hopes and aspirations,” as well as a “lasting peace,” according to the Saudi Gazette. Bin Salman also discussed the situation in Gaza with Jordanian King Abdullah bin Al-Hussein and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. Both conversations were largely focused on preserving regional stability and preventing the conflict from spreading, the outlet reported. Riyadh’s statements came amid the latest flareup of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, following a massive attack on Israel by the Gaza-based Hamas militant group. Militants fired thousands of rockets at Israel and launched a cross-border raid over the weekend.

More than 900 Israelis, including over 100 military personnel, died in the initial attack and follow-up clashes, Israeli authorities said. Israel responded with a massive bombing campaign against Gaza, also announcing a total blockade of the exclave, cutting it off from fuel, water, and food supplies. The Gaza Health Ministry said that at least 510 Palestinians had been killed and 2,751 injured in Israeli air raids as of Monday. The UN said on Tuesday it would launch an investigation into war crimes committed during the latest escalation, adding that it was in possession of “clear evidence” of violations by both sides. On Monday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan urged Israel and the Palestinian militants to refrain from further violence, and offered Ankara’s services as a mediator in any potential peace talks. He also said that his nation could facilitate a prisoner exchange if requested.

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“Muslims were not enemies of Ukraine and allies of Russia (with the exception of eschatologically awakened Iran and Syria), but now they will be..”

The Civilization Of The Antichrist (Alexander Dugin)

The escalation of Israel’s war with Palestine will undoubtedly consolidate the Islamic world. Conservatives in the West are again talking about defending the ‘Judeo-Christian civilization in the face of Muslims’, and the radical ideology of Hamas provides them with a convenient excuse for this. However, a society of deep atheism, materialism and legalization of all kinds of perversions, which has long since abandoned traditional theology and values (and orientations), cannot be considered either Christian or Jewish. If the West, as it is now, supports Israel, it is seriously guilty of something. After all, if the devil’s civilization is on your side, then you have done something wrong.

There is no such thing as a Judeo-Christian world, it just doesn’t make sense. The Islamic world, on the contrary, exists and in it, the traditions are still strong. It turns out that it is not the Judeo-Christians against the Muslims, but the Muslims against the satanic culture, against Dajjal. Biden’s idea of combining the theme of support for Ukraine with support for Israel, only underlines this: the West is always on the side of those who submit to its hegemony and serve it. Muslims were not enemies of Ukraine and allies of Russia (with the exception of eschatologically awakened Iran and Syria), but now they will be. Russia is the pole of a multipolar world. Islam is the pole of a multipolar world. Both poles oppose the West’s desperate attempts to save unipolarism and its global dominance at any cost, even at the cost of a world war.

The Palestinian conflict with Israel was not the frontline of a conflict of civilizations. Now it is. Just as the tensions between Russia and Ukraine were regional in character until the Nazis in Kiev were supported by the West, the war in Ukraine has become the frontline of a global confrontation between multipolarity and unipolarity. The scope of this confrontation is growing. The situation is becoming more and more sinister. Already, billions of people on the planet are convinced that the collective West and its allies are absolute evil and the civilization of the Antichrist. Democrats, globalists and neoconservatives are leading humanity straight into the abyss. Which, strictly speaking, is what demons are supposed to do.

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Hur’s job appears to be ‘under the carpet sweeper’.

Special Counsel Hur May Prove the Ultimate Punchline in Washington (Turley)

A neutron and Special Counsel Robert Hur walk into a bar and order two drinks. When Hur asks how much they owe, the bartender responds, “come on, for you guys, you know there’s never a charge.” Unfortunately, for the prosecutor tasked with investigating President Joe Biden, it may not prove a laughing matter. In many ways, Hur is the neutron prosecutor. He may have spent two days interviewing Biden on the discovery of classified material going back decades in various offices and home locations. But we already know that the Justice Department has long maintained a policy against the charging of a sitting president. There are no such problems for Hur’s colleague. Jack Smith was appointed to investigate former President Donald Trump. He is the ultimate proton prosecutor. Smith has aggressively pursued Trump in two different jurisdictions with a long litany of charges, including alleged criminal conduct tied to his removal and retention of classified material.

In comparison, Hur appeared to disappear. There was no word of any grand jury or the issuance of subpoenas. His interview this week was the sign of life for a prosecutor who seemed headed for milk cartons. I have long disagreed with the Justice Department policy as without foundation in the Constitution. There is no question that the best course in dealing with a felonious president is to first remove the president from office through the impeachment process and then indict the former president in the wake of the Senate conviction. However, even the Justice Department admitted in reaching this policy during the Clinton administration that “[n]either the text nor the history of the Constitution” is “dispositive” on this question.

It simply rendered an internal opinion against indictments of a sitting president as a matter of “considerations of constitutional structure.” That is particularly a problem in what could be a strong case. We still do not know whether fingerprints were taken off the documents found in various locations associated with the President. Unlike Smith’s investigation, there have been no strategic leaks from Hur’s investigation. On its face, the President claims that he had no knowledge of these documents appears dubious at best. Some classified material reportedly goes back to Biden’s time as a senator — material that he would have had to remove from a sensitive compartmented information facility or secure room on Capitol Hill. More importantly, the documents from the Obama Administration were removed when Biden left as vice president. They were then divided and repeatedly moved to different locations.

That suggests not just knowledge but a purpose. Why were they divided and some documents were found in his garage and possibly his library? If Hur found fingerprints that contradict Biden’s statements, he could face not just some of the same charges brought against Trump but also possible false statement or obstruction charges. Notably, Biden used counsel to conduct searches and (as in the Trump case) additional classified materials were found after the Biden team said that they had finished their searches. There are serious questions over whether, in allowing uncleared counsel to search through these documents, evidence may have been lost in how they were stored or appeared in locations like the garage. Hur can bring charges against third parties, who would not be barred from indictment under the DOJ policy. But what does Hur then do if he has evidence against the President himself? He could wait to see if Biden does not run for reelection or loses in 2024.

He could ask for a reconsideration of the policy, which was poorly supported during the Clinton Administration as a rationale for blocking any indictment for perjury by the Office of Legal Counsel. Absent such moves, the public may face the glaring contradiction of proton and neutron prosecutors where Smith pursues a former president with abandon while Hur is left with investigating with no possibility of an immediate charge. It is the type of question that Attorney General Merrick Garland should be eager to answer. Indeed, it should have been clarified at the outset with the mandate given to Hur. Garland, however, has maintained a position as a virtual spectator, disavowing any role in the ongoing investigations. He is neither neutron nor a proton. He is literally without mass. So the question is whether Hur can get anything other than free drinks in Washington. The answer to that question may prove to be the best punchline of all.

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There’s Metabiota again. Hunter Biden.

Washington Moving ‘Illegal’ Bioresearch Operations To Africa – Moscow (RT)

The US is transferring dual-purpose biological research activities to Africa, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed on Monday, citing Pentagon documents. According to Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, who leads the Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Protection Troops of the Russian Armed Forces, the move is in response to Moscow’s efforts to expose Washington’s illegal military-biological operations. He also cited the worsening “epidemic situation near biosites in the European region.” “The documents at our disposal confirm the activities of key Pentagon contractors on the African continent – in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, Cameroon, Uganda, and South Africa. Customers on the part of the US government are the DTRA [Defense Threat Reduction Agency], the National Security Agency, and the US Department of State,” Kirillov added.

Moscow has repeatedly accused the US of plotting biological warfare against it and other countries. Last year, Russian UN representative Vassily Nebenzia told the Security Council that Moscow had discovered at least 30 Ukrainian laboratories engaged in disease research, including anthrax and cholera, funded and supervised by the US. In May, State Duma Deputy Speaker Irina Yarovaya expressed concern over Washington’s interest in biological weapons, describing it as a highly concealed and unpredictable form of mass destruction that could become a global issue. The US has denied the claims. On Monday, the Russian Defense Ministry reiterated its previous concerns about “unauthorized” sample collection by Metabiota, which it referred to as a “key Pentagon contractor” during the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

According to the chief of Russia’s Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Protection Troops, the company’s lack of transparency, which prompted concerns from the World Health Organization, resulted in the illegal export of live Ebola virus samples to the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infections. “Predictable deterioration of the disease situation near American biosites is forcing the governments of many African states to take another look at the necessity and expediency of co-operation with the United States. For example, in 2022, Metabiota operations in Africa were terminated because the company’s illegal practices raised too many questions at the level of national governments,” Kirillov claimed.

The San Francisco-based Metabiota was a partner in the $200 million USAID-funded ‘Predict’ epidemiological research project, which concluded in 2019. Several reports, including one by the Associated Press in 2016, claimed that during the 2014 Ebola outbreak the company made a series of “costly” mistakes in its efforts to combat the disease in Sierra Leone. Metabiota employees contributed to flawed laboratory results, disrupted collaborations, and put people at risk of the deadly virus, according to the outlet, which cited leaked documents and interviews with international health responders.

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“..list the violations you allude to on X, so that the public can see them.”

“Our policy is that everything is open source and transparent, an approach that I know the EU supports.”

EU Issues Ultimatum To Elon Musk (RT)

A top European Union official has demanded a crackdown on “disinformation” on X (formery Twitter), warning that the bloc would take action against site owner Elon Musk if he allowed “terrorist content” to circulate on his platform. In an “urgent letter” addressed to Musk on Tuesday, EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton recalled the “very precise obligations” set out under the bloc’s internet regulation laws. He urged for stricter enforcement on X, claiming there had been a deluge of false information related to ongoing fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants. “Following the terrorist attacks by Hamas against Israel, we have indications that your platform is being used to disseminate illegal content and disinformation in the EU,” he said, adding that when X receives “notices of illegal content,” it must “be timely, diligent and objective in taking action and removing the relevant content.”

While Breton offered no examples of “violent and terrorist content” making the rounds on the platform, he went on to state that “public media and civil society organizations” had reported numerous cases of “fake and manipulated images,” including “repurposed” photos from unrelated conflicts and “footage that actually originated from video games.” The official said he expected a “prompt, accurate and complete response” from Musk’s team within 24 hours, and warned that “penalties can be imposed” if EU authorities find that X is not complying with the bloc’s primary internet regulation, the Digital Services Act (DSA). Musk later reacted to the letter in a social media post, asking Breton to “list the violations you allude to on X, so that the public can see them.” He added that “Our policy is that everything is open source and transparent, an approach that I know the EU supports.”

Breton declined to cite any particular cases of misinformation, instead stating that Musk is “well aware of your users’ – and authorities’ – reports on fake content and glorification of violence.” Under the DSA, websites and search engines can be fined up to 6% of their global turnover if they are found in violation of the rules. However, while the law will not be fully enforced until early 2024, sites designated as “very large online platforms” – or those with more than 45 million monthly users, such as X – were expected to meet the requirements starting in August. The violent flare-up in Israel erupted over the weekend, after Hamas – the Palestinian group that governs Gaza – sent waves of commandos and rockets into Israeli towns. The Israel Defense Forces have retaliated with heavy airstrikes on Gaza, which have continued into Tuesday night. Nearly 2,000 people have been killed on all sides of the conflict since Saturday, according to local officials, with thousands more injured.

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Finland has asked NATO to investigate. With a straight face.

Finland-Estonia Undersea Pipeline In Baltic “Deliberately Damaged” (ZH)

Months after famed journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Seymour Hersh revealed the US blew up the Russia-to-Germany natural gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea in September 2022 during a covert operation under the guise of the BALTOPS 22 NATO exercise, yet another undersea gas pipeline, this time, connecting Finland and Estonia has allegedly come under attack. Gasgrid Finland and Elering, the Finnish and Estonian gas system operators, detected an “unusual” leak in the 77-kilometer (48-mile) interconnector in the early morning hours on Sunday. “Based on observations, it was suspected that the offshore pipeline between Finland and Estonia was leaking,” Gasgrid Finland said in a statement. “The valves in the offshore pipeline are now closed and the leak is thus stopped.”

ERR News reported that the Estonian Navy started surveying the pipeline with its equipment on Monday, while the Finnish Security and Intelligence Service will also be involved in the investigation. While the Finnish operator gave no reason for the suspected leak on Monday, Finnish officials, one day later, have now said their investigation of the leak will be on the premise of sabotage. “FINNISH DAILY ILTALEHTI, SWEDISH PUBLIC RADIO, CITING FINNISH GOVERNMENT SOURCES: ESTONIA-FINLAND SUBSEA GAS PIPELINE HAS BEEN DELIBERATELY DAMAGED” … queue Western media outlets who will likely place blame on Moscow – just as they did after the September 2022 bombing of the Nord Stream undersea pipeline that once connected Germany with cheap natural gas from Russia.

In early 2023, journalist Seymour Hersh published a bombshell report as his first Substack post that the US blew up the Russia-to-Germany natural gas pipeline as part of a covert operation under the guise of the BALTOPS 22 NATO exercise. Last month, on the first anniversary of the bombing, he posted an article titled “A Year of Lying About Nord Stream, deals with motive. What was the United States’ motive?” His sources said told him: “Biden administration blew up the pipelines but the action had little to do with winning or stopping the war in Ukraine. It resulted from fears in the White House that Germany would waver and turn on the flow of Russia gas—and that Germany and then NATO, for economic reasons, would fall under the sway of Russia and its extensive and inexpensive natural resources. And thus followed the ultimate fear: that America would lose its long-standing primacy in Western Europe.”

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Interview. “..the US has no journalists, only propagandists, and the rule of law has been discarded. The United States is on the verge of becoming a tyranny. That is the American political crisis.”

The US Is On The Verge Of Becoming A Tyranny (Paul Craig Roberts)

There are currently no legal proceedings against the Biden family. The US Department of Justice and the FBI have instead protected both Biden and his son despite the massive evidence in their hands, such as the incriminating information on Hunter Biden’s laptop and the classified national security documents dating from his days as Vice President found in Joe Biden’s homes, car, garage, and storage places. The legal charges brought against Trump are like all the others since 2016–Russiagate, impeachments, document gate, stripper gate, January 6 Insurrection. They have no basis in reality or in law. They are brought by Trump-hating black prosecutors in New York state, New York city, and Fulton County, Georgia, and are nonsensical on their face.

Trump and his co-defendants have to pay attention to the charges, because the prosecutors are known enemies of Trump and his supporters, the judges are Democrats who don’t want Trump as president, and the trials will be held in Democrat jurisdictions where the juries will be Democrat and largely black. There is no outcry against this legal atrocity from the legal profession, the law schools, the bar associations, and very little from Congress. So we face the possibility that Trump can be falsely convicted and forced to spend the rest of his life in appealing the convictions. How the American people will take this I do not know. It might make them very angry and unwilling to accept the use of law as a weapon against Trump and the traditional American electorate. On the other hand, the people might conclude that their country has been lost and nothing can be done, give up, and submit to the rule of unaccountable power.

Everywhere the people see the political use of law for punishment by every federal department in the Biden Regime. Mike Lindell, a Trump donor, has been slapped with five audits by the Internal Revenue Service. Lawyers cannot defend Trump without being punished. Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, former Mayor of New York, has been slapped by the IRS with a tax and penalty bill of $550,000 and a lien on his home. Elon Musk is being investigated by the US Security and Exchange Commission for his purchase of Twitter. Democrats hate Musk, because he revealed that the FBI had secretly forced Twitter to censor all who disagreed with the Biden Regime’s narratives. The list is long. I will define for you American’s political crisis. The belief system has collapsed.

The elites no longer believe in the Constitution that defines the country. Students in law schools and journalism schools are taught that the US Constitution is a racist document and an instrument of white oppression of people of color. They are taught that the Constitution stands in the way of “social progress,” by which they mean the use of law not as a shield of rights but as a weapon for coerced change based on ideological beliefs and commitments. What it boils down to is this: In America you are no longer innocent until proven guilty. You are guilty because you are white, or because you are a Trump supporter. No other evidence is necessary. The Democrats have put 1,000 Trump supporters in prison because they attended a rally for Trump.

Traditionally, American liberals based their demands for reforms not on appeals to good will but on denunciation of existing society. This made it easy for the Cultural Marxists to march through the institutions and discredit Western civilization and the institutions that embody it. Today in American universities no student ever hears anything affirmatory about his country. Instead, they learn that it is something that must be reconstructed. Journalism students learn that objectivity is no longer the purpose of reporting and that news is a weapon to be used to remake society. Law students learn that law is not a protector of rights but a weapon to be wielded to revolutionize society. Consequently, the US has no journalists, only propagandists, and the rule of law has been discarded. The United States is on the verge of becoming a tyranny. That is the American political crisis.

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“Tigger is quite big enough,” said Piglet.
“He isn’t REALLY very big.”
“Well, he SEEMS so.”
Pooh was thoughtful when he heard this, and then murmured:
“Whatever his weight in pounds, shillings, and ounces,
He always seems bigger because of his bounces.” A.A.Milne

 

 

Lids

 

 

 

 

Leopard
https://twitter.com/i/status/1711988297596018975

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Oct 022023
 
 October 2, 2023  Posted by at 8:47 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  23 Responses »


Rembrandt van Rijn The Descent from the Cross 1634

 

The Western World Is Now a Tyranny (Paul Craig Roberts)
One Year Lying About US-Led NATO’s Nord Stream Terrorism Breeds More War (SCF)
Western ‘Idiots’ Want World War III – Medvedev (RT)
PM Sunak Backtracks On Sending British Troops To Ukraine (ZH)
Ukraine Must Mobilize Youths – Ex-UK Defense Chief (RT)
EU Will Back Ukraine Without The US – Borrell (RT)
‘My People Have Bigger Problems Than Ukraine’ – Fico (RT)
Russia’s Military Budget Set To Rise By 70% (RMX)
‘Camouflage’ for Zelensky to ‘Steal More Money From West’ (Sp.)
Blinken’s ‘History Lesson’ Gets Corrected By X Users (RT)
Nagorno-Karabakh Is No More (Pepe Escobar)
The Proper Way to Impeach: Steve Bannon was Right for the Wrong Reason (Turley)
Federal Prosecutors Want Gag Order Against Trump After His Recent Remarks (ET)
Trump Sues Christopher Steele Over Hoax Dossier (ZH)

 

 

 

 

Scott Ritter About Ukraine since 1945

 

 

 

 

TDS

 

 

 

 

Vandersteel

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s all been said before..

“..a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all..”

The Western World Is Now a Tyranny (Paul Craig Roberts)

America’s reputation as “the land of the free” is rooted in the Anglo-Saxon legal and political tradition, not in diversity and multiculturalism. Law as a shield of the people instead of a weapon in the hands of rulers is a British achievement that Britain’s American colonies inherited. It was the accomplishment of a specific ethnicity known as Anglo-Saxon. Bringing rulers to the same accountability to law as the lowest peasant was a centuries-long process beginning with Alfred the Great in the 9th century and culminating in the Glorious Revolution of 1680. In this legal tradition law is based in the customs and mores of the people, not on edicts issued from rulers, government bureaucrats, regulatory agencies, and activist judges. Obviously, this conveys an ethnic basis to law. A Tower of Babel–the fate of all diminishing white countries today–has no common customs and mores and no basis for law other than rulers’ edicts enforced by power.

Throughout the Western World today the people have lost the protection of law as a shield and suffer under rulers who wield law as a weapon. In the United States today demonstrators and rally attendees are turned into “insurrectionists” and sentenced to prison. Even US President Donald Trump is being subjected to four fake felony prosecutions in order to prevent him from being elected president. During my youth law was seen as a shield of our rights, not as a weapon to be used against us. US Supreme Court Justice George Sutherland explained in 1934 that the purpose of law was to discover innocence or guilt, not to dispose of an enemy:

“The United States Attorney is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done. As such, he is in a peculiar and very definite sense the servant of the law, the twofold aim of which is that guilt shall not escape or innocent suffer. He may prosecute with earnestness and vigor–and indeed, he should do so. But, while he may strike hard blows, he is not at liberty to strike foul ones. It is as much his duty to refrain from improper methods calculated to produce a wrongful conviction as it is to use every legitimate means to bring about a just one.”

US Attorney General and Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson saw it the same way: “Any prosecutor who risks his day-to-day professional name for fair dealing to build up statistics for success has a perverted sense of practical values, as well as defects of character… A sensitiveness to fair play is perhaps the best protection against the abuse of power, and the citizen’s safety lies in the prosecutor who tempers zeal with human kindness, who seeks truth and not victims, who serves the law and not factional purposes, and who approaches his task with humility.” In 1940 Jackson said that unethical prosecutors are a threat to justice because of the danger that the prosecutor..

..“will pick people that he thinks he should get, rather than pick cases that need to be prosecuted. With the law books filled with a great assortment of crimes, a prosecutor stands a fair chance of finding at least a technical violation of some act on the part of almost anyone. In such a case, it is not a question of discovering the commission of a crime and then looking for the man who has committed it, it is a question of picking the man and then searching the law books, or putting investigators to work, to pin some offense on him. It is in this realm–in which the prosecutor picks some person whom he dislikes or desires to embarrass, or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense, that the greatest danger of abuse of prosecuting power lies. It is here that law enforcement becomes personal, and the real crime becomes that of being unpopular with the predominant or governing group, being attached to the wrong political view, or being personally obnoxious, or in the way of the prosecutor himself.”

Robert Jackson’s 83-year old description of unethical prosecution precisely describes all of the “investigations,” impeachments, and indictments of President Trump that have been ongoing since 2016 for 8 years and show no sign of abating. The prosecutions of Trump are clearly prosecutions for the purpose of getting rid of a leader who presumes to challenge the ruling establishment. The prosecutions of Trump underline the termination in the US of the impartial rule of law.

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“The reality is fascism, imperialist lawlessness and barbarity are already well-ensconced in this White House.”

One Year Lying About US-Led NATO’s Nord Stream Terrorism Breeds More War (SCF)

Washington’s imperialist interests of dominating Europe and displacing Russia as an energy supplier are central to the reason for the war in Ukraine. This selfish and criminal agenda becomes evident if the Nord Stream act of terrorism is acknowledged and properly understood. The Western public would be up in arms over the false propaganda about the Ukraine war and the supposed “defense of democracy”. Not only that but the European and NATO states would be seen as the criminal accomplices and pathetic vassals that they are. The United States sabotages European civilian infrastructure and the economies of its supposed allies – and yet those allies utter not a word of protest. Indeed, they have willingly and meekly participated in their self-harm.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and other European leaders should be prosecuted for complicity in international terrorism and treason against their national interests. Ironically, this week, Joe Biden while in Arizona dared to tell American voters that they face a stark choice in the presidential elections coming next year. Biden said the choice would be for U.S. citizens to either “support democracy” under his continued leadership or “elect extremism” under Donald Trump or some other Republican candidate. What could be more extreme than Biden ordering his military agencies to blow up gas pipelines owned by Russia and other European states?The fact that Biden and the United States have been permitted to get away with the outrage of Nord Stream terrorism is why Washington and its NATO acolytes have continually escalated the proxy war in Ukraine against Russia over the past year.

The astounding impunity afforded to the U.S. and its NATO accomplices over the Nord Stream incident is consistent with the way these same imperialist powers have gotten away with mass murder and waging criminal wars for decades without any prosecutions. The U.S. establishment and its clandestine agencies are a criminal syndicate that also suffers from delusions of virtue. Impunity breeds more criminality. The United States and its Western partners have rarely, if ever, been held to account for their historic crimes against the rest of the world. When such a transparent, brazen act of terrorism is perpetrated as in the Nord Stream sabotage and it is ignored then the world has shifted to an even more perilous situation where crimes have no punishment and even greater, more nefarious crimes can be engaged in.

The U.S. and its NATO henchmen, in particular Britain, are arming a Nazi regime in Kiev with tanks, cluster bombs, depleted uranium shells and longer-range missiles to strike Russia. The impunity that the Americans and their partners believe that they have acquired is shocking and hideous. There is no restraint. For years, the NATO axis has been arming and training Nazi battalions in Ukraine to cynically take an imperialist war to Russia’s doorstep. Canada’s scandalous adulation of a Nazi war criminal in its parliament last week is a sign of the depraved times we live in. But we have reached this degeneration because, as the Nord Stream incident illustrates, the Western powers, primarily the executive American power, feel they are not just above the law but entitled to smash the law for whatever objective they deem desirable.

When those who profess to uphold the law, break the law, then there is no law. That is the frighteningly barbaric world we live in today. Biden warned this week of fascism creeping up on the United States in the form of domestic political rivals. The reality is fascism, imperialist lawlessness and barbarity are already well-ensconced in this White House.

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“..a “freshly minted cretin”..

“..the [Russian] strikes on German factories where those missiles are being made would also be in full compliance with international law..”

Western ‘Idiots’ Want World War III – Medvedev (RT)

The conflict in Ukraine may lead to World War III because of the “idiots” occupying leading roles in the West, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has warned. “The number of high-ranking morons is rising in NATO member states,” he wrote on Telegram on Sunday. Medvedev, who currently serves as the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, was responding to statements from London and Berlin the previous day. The former president labeled the UK’s newly appointed Defense Secretary Grant Shapps a “freshly minted cretin” over his idea of sending British military instructors to Ukraine to train local troops for the conflict with Russia. If this happens, the UK servicemen would become a “legitimate target” for Russian forces, Medvedev warned.

Shapps has proposed deploying instructors to Ukraine, “knowing fully well that they’ll be mercilessly destroyed, and no longer as mercenaries, but precisely as British NATO specialists,” the Russian official wrote. Medvedev also described the head of the German parliament’s defense committee, Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, as “another fool” after she urged Berlin to supply long-range Taurus cruise missiles to Kiev. She also claimed that Ukrainian attacks on targets inside Russia using those German-made munitions would be in full compliance with international law. “In this case, the [Russian] strikes on German factories where those missiles are being made would also be in full compliance with international law,” he said.

“Still, those idiots are actively pushing us towards World War III,”the former president concluded. In a previous post on Saturday, Medvedev insisted that Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine would continue until the current regime in Kiev is “destroyed and the historic Russian territories are liberated from the enemy.” Moscow has repeatedly warned that deliveries of weapons to Ukraine by Western countries only prolong the fighting and increase the risk of a direct military confrontation between Russia and NATO. Russian officials have also argued that the provision of arms, intelligence-sharing and the training of Kiev’s troops already means that Western nations have de facto become parties to the conflict.

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Are they just flying trial balloons over there?

PM Sunak Backtracks On Sending British Troops To Ukraine (ZH)

On Sunday, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev who currently serves as the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, suggested that British soldiers training Ukrainian troops in Ukraine would be legitimate targets for Russian forces, as would German factories producing Taurus missiles should they supply Kyiv. Medvedev, who is deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, and has become one of the most hawkish and anti-Western figures in Russian politics, said such steps by the West were bringing World War Three closer. In a post on Telegram, Medvedev first slammed Shapps’s proposal to deploy military instructors to Ukraine, in addition to training Ukrainian armed forces in Britain or other Western countries as at present. “(This will) turn their instructors into a legitimate target for our armed forces,” Medvedev wrote on Telegram. “Understanding perfectly well that they will be ruthlessly destroyed. And not as mercenaries, but namely as British NATO specialists.”

Medvedev then turned his focus to Germany, vilifying those who want Berlin to supply Ukraine with Taurus cruise missiles that could strike Russian territory and try to limit Moscow’s supply to its army. “They say this is in accordance with international law. Well, in that case, strikes on German factories where these missiles are made would also be in full compliance with international law,” Medvedev said. “These morons are actively pushing us towards World War Three,” Medvedev said. Realizing that he probably does not want his government to end in a mushroom cloud, British PM Rishi Sunak quickly backtracked and during a visit to Burnley on Sunday, said he wanted to make the situation “absolutely clear,” explaining that Shapps did not mean British soldiers would be deployed in Ukraine during the conflict with Russia, claiming there was “some misreporting” of comments by Defense Secretary Shapps, who floated the idea; he did however say that the UK has been training Ukrainian soldiers on British soil for “for a long time.”

According to the PM, the defense secretary actually meant that “it might well be possible one day in the future for us to do some of that training in Ukraine.” “But that’s something for the long term, not the here and now, there are no British soldiers that will be sent to fight in the current conflict. That’s not what’s happening,” he insisted. London continues to provide military training to the Ukrainians, but it’s “doing that here in the UK,” Sunak assured. US Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene also voiced alarm over Britain’s apparent plans to send troops to Ukraine, writing on X (formerly Twitter): “They’re going to start World War III” and that “the US cannot participate” in such a deployment, stressing: “No American troops” in Ukraine.

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Come get killed at 16!

Ukraine Must Mobilize Youths – Ex-UK Defense Chief (RT)

Former UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace has claimed that Kiev is succeeding in its counteroffensive but to maintain the momentum and “finish the job,” President Vladimir Zelensky must throw more and younger Ukrainians into battle, while the West provides them with weapons to defeat Russia. Throughout the summer, Kiev’s forces have ultimately failed to make any notable territorial gains and have suffered heavy casualties as they tried to break through Russia’s defenses consisting of vast minefields, as well as heavy artillery and swarms of drones. According to Russia’s Defense Ministry, the number of Ukrainian servicemen killed since the start of the counteroffensive has surpassed 83,000.

Wallace, however, believes that “slowly but surely” Ukrainian forces have been “adapting tactics, absorbing lessons, and making the best of the equipment we have all gifted them,” and that Kiev’s victory is imminent as long as the government “plays its part.” “The average age of the soldiers at the front is over 40. I understand President Zelensky’s desire to preserve the young for the future, but… just as Britain did in 1939 and 1941, perhaps it is time to reassess the scale of Ukraine’s mobilization,” Wallace wrote in an opinion piece published by The Telegraph on Sunday. Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said that such heavy casualties were the result of Kiev throwing untrained soldiers into “senseless assaults and slaughter.”He added that these “cynical actions by the West and their henchmen in Kiev are only pushing Ukraine towards self-destruction.”

Back in July, Wallace called Ukraine a “battle lab” for the British military during a report to the parliament. “Let us not pause for one day,” he stated on Sunday. “The world is watching to see if the West has the resolve to stand up for our values and the rules-based system. What we do now for Ukraine will set the direction for all of our security for years to come.” Mobilization in Ukraine has been ongoing since the start of the conflict and had some bumps recently. The country has been hit by scandals involving conscription chiefs, prompting President Vladimir Zelensky to announce in August that he was firing all regional draft heads in the country.

The Ukrainian government has relaxed eligibility standards for recruits, declaring people with certain mental and physical conditions fit for duty. After the launch of Russia’s military operation, Kiev barred men aged between 18 and 60 from leaving the country. Kiev also recently ordered female medics and pharmacists to register for possible enrolment, reportedly causing an exodus of women in those professions. The Russian military leadership in the meantime has no plans to conduct mobilization as its current needs are fulfilled by career military service members, including those who volunteered to fight in Ukraine, according to a senior official. The Russian president reported earlier this month that some 300,000 people had enrolled in the Russian army this year alone.

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Europe’s already sinking into a black hole. Forget it.

EU Will Back Ukraine Without The US – Borrell (RT)

The EU’s military aid to Ukraine will not depend on the decisions taken by the US, the bloc’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, told journalists during his visit to Kiev on Sunday. Brussels plans to continue and further increase its military assistance to the Ukrainian forces, he added. “We have not waited for the [US] decision to be taken to increase our propositions to support Ukraine,” the official said when asked about the EU’s reaction to the US Congress removing military aid for Kiev from its short-time spending bill passed over the weekend. Brussels still regretted the American lawmakers’ decision “deeply and thoroughly,” Borrell said, expressing his hope that “this will not be a definitive decision, and Ukraine will continue having the support of the US.”

The EU Commission had earlier proposed creating a fund for Ukraine worth €50 billion ($52.8 billion), the bloc’s top diplomat said, adding that he also suggested creating a similar fund amounting to €20 billion ($21.13 billion) within the European Peace Facility at an EU foreign ministers meeting in August. “Let’s see what’ll be happening in the US but from our side, we will continue supporting and increasing our support,” the official said. The EU’s top diplomat also maintained that the bloc’s military aid for Kiev is “permanent structured” and does not depend on the decisions of other nations or the results of the Ukrainian operations. His comments came amid the continued Ukrainian offensive, which has failed to bring about any major changes to the frontlines over some four months since its launch, despite massive Western military aid before its start and heavy Ukrainian losses over its course.

“We are facing an existential threat for Europe,” Borrell claimed, adding that if Brussels wants the Ukrainian troops to be “more successful, we have to provide them with better arms and quicker.” He still hinted that Kiev should be more grateful for the bloc’s efforts. In some cases, “our support is not being perceived as important as it is,” the EU top diplomat said, insisting that “it is.” He then said that the total military aid from Brussels and the EU member states to Ukraine amounted to €25 billion ($26.4 billion). The bloc’s cumulative military, financial and humanitarian support reached €85 billion ($89.8 billion), he added.

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I said yesterday that he campaigned on “Not a single penny” more, but it was “Not a single round..”

Meanwhile, Donald Tusk held a mass pro-globalist rally in Warsaw on Sunday. We’re not done yet.

‘My People Have Bigger Problems Than Ukraine’ – Fico (RT)

The Slovak Social Democracy (SMER-SD) party will not support further military aid for Ukraine, its leader, Robert Fico, told journalists on Sunday. Fico’s party took the lead in the parliamentary elections held over the weekend and is now poised to start talks about forming a government. “Slovakia and the people of Slovakia have bigger problems than Ukraine,” he said at a press conference following the announcement of the election results. The SMER-SD won around 23% of the vote, with its closest competitor, Progressive Slovakia (PS), receiving some 18%. When asked about his party’s stance on helping Kiev, Fico said that, if his party successfully forms a government, it would still be ready to help, but only in a humanitarian way.

“We are prepared to help with the reconstruction of the state, but you know our opinion on arming Ukraine,” he said. The SMER-SD conducted an election campaign under the slogan “Not a single round,” suggesting that it would end military assistance to Kiev. An EU and NATO member state with a population of around 5.5 million, Slovakia has already supplied Ukrainian forces with armored personnel carriers, howitzers, and its entire fleet of Soviet-era MiG-29 fighter jets. Last week, Fico vowed at one of his campaign rallies that his party would not “send a single round [of ammunition] to Ukraine” if it won the election. On Sunday, the politician, who is a former prime minister, described the ongoing conflict as a great tragedy, adding that prolonging the standoff would only make things worse.

“We will do everything we can to start peace negotiations as quickly as possible,” he said, referring to the conflict between Moscow and Kiev. “Further killing does not benefit anyone,” Fico added. Slovakian President Zuzana Caputova said on Sunday that she would formally ask Fico to form a new government on Monday. With no party set to win a majority, Slovakia will need to form a coalition government. The pro-European HLAS (Voice) party, which took third place with 14.7%, did not rule out a possible alliance with SMER-SD. Fico also received congratulations on his election victory from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who said it would “always [be] good to work together with a patriot.” A victory by Fico and his party has reportedly sparked concerns in the US. According to Russian foreign intelligence, Washington had sought to keep the previous Slovakian government in power.

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Poorly write-up.

Russia’s Military Budget Set To Rise By 70% (RMX)

Russian military spending is set to rise by almost 70 percent — to €106 billion — by 2024, according to a Russian Finance Ministry document published Thursday, an increase that illustrates Moscow’s determination to continue its military intervention in Ukraine despite the human and economic costs. According to the document, Russian defense spending will increase by 68 percent in 2024 compared to this year and will reach 10.8 trillion rubles (€106 billion). As a result, the amount allocated to defense will represent about 30 percent of total federal spending in 2024 and 6 percent of GDP — a first in Russia’s modern history. The budget for internal security is set to rise to 3.4 trillion rubles (€33 billion), almost 10 percent of annual federal spending.

The priorities for this budget are outlined as “strengthening the country’s defense capacity” and “integrating the new regions” of Ukraine whose annexation Moscow has demanded, as well as “social aid for the most vulnerable citizens,” just months ahead of the Russian presidential elections in spring 2024. Conversely, total spending on education, healthcare and environmental protection accounts for barely a third of the defense budget, according to ministry figures. Overall, federal spending will total 36.7 trillion rubles (€359 billion), a dramatic 20 percent increase over 2023. The government, however, has explained little about how it will finance this large increase, as Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Musustin said last Friday that revenues from the sale of hydrocarbons will be down sharply and will account for “a third of next year’s budget” in 2024, whereas before the invasion of Ukraine, they accounted for half the budget.

The sector used to drive Russia’s growth, hydrocarbon sales are declining due to international sanctions and the European Union’s determination to move away from energy dependence on Moscow. One indication that the government expects a delicate month ahead for the Russian economy is that it has announced that it has based its budget forecast on the assumption of a dollar worth around 90 rubles, thus betting on a weakening of the national currency in the medium term. The draft budget law for 2024-2026 is due to be sent to the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, on Friday.

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“Ukraine’s Possible New Counteroffensive..”

‘Camouflage’ for Zelensky to ‘Steal More Money From West’ (Sp.)

Kiev’s alleged push for another counteroffensive, this time in the autumn, can be perceived as the West’s red herring, Scott Bennett, a former US Army psychological warfare officer and State Department counter-terrorism analyst, told Sputnik. The Zelensky regime had elaborated a plan for a major offensive in the Kherson and Zaporozhye region in early October, securing the approval of Ukraine’s sponsors in Washington and London, an informed source told Sputnik earlier this week. According to the source, Kiev’s special forces intend to seize control of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) as part of the blueprint. All this could be Western countries’ red herring, Scott Bennett suggested, pointing to the Ukrainian Army’s futile attempts to break through Russian defensive lines.

“As a result of the resounding defeat of Ukraine, the West is frantically searching for an opportunity to try and escape the coming judgement and potential crimes against humanity charges for the death and destruction the Biden Administration has recklessly unleashed. And the nearest opportunity for distraction may be the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant,” Bennett argued. He recalled that many perceive this facility as “a target for destruction in a kind of ‘doomsday’ button that the US might try and push, in an attempt to generate sufficient chaos and destruction to distract the world away from the small scale battles of Ukraine, to the global implications of a nuclear disaster.” According to the former psychological warfare officer, the potential destruction of the Zaporozhye NPP would be the “ultimate expression” of this chaos.

He warned that if the facility is destroyed, “the resulting tsunami of social, political, economic disruption would disorganize opposition parties and protests against the current political elites in Europe and America, and justify a lockdown or martial law and police state mentality which could be endlessly extended.” Bennett didn’t rule out that “the West will combine its best liars in the CIA, the Mossad, the MI6 to blame the event on Russia, and perhaps also simultaneously initiate some self-inflicted false flag attacks at the same time—such as assassinate Joe Biden and Zelensky at the same time and blame this on Russia in order to justify ‘police action’ and a drafting of Americans into the military for conflict with Russia.”

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Trying to blame the holocaust on Russia. Through insinuation.

Blinken’s ‘History Lesson’ Gets Corrected By X Users (RT)

Users of the social media network X (formerly Twitter) have fact-checked a statement made by United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken in which he said Vladimir Putin’s government “manipulates” the details of massacres in Kiev in 1941 “to provide cover for Russia’s abuses in Ukraine.” “Eighty-two years ago, Nazis murdered 34,000 Jews at Babyn Yar,” Blinken wrote in a Friday post. “Soviets buried this history, which today Putin’s government manipulates to provide cover for Russia’s abuses in Ukraine.” He added that “the US is committed to justice for Holocaust survivors and accountability for atrocities.” Blinken was referring to massacres in the Babyn Yar ravine in present-day Kiev, perpetrated by Nazi Germany’s forces and their local Ukrainian collaborators in late September and October 1941 during its campaign against the Soviet Union.

The first such massacre, which took place on September 29 and 30, saw some 33,771 Jews killed. Other victims of mass killings at the site include Soviet prisoners of war (POWs), communists and Romani. It is estimated that between 100,000 and 150,000 people were murdered at Babyn Yar during the German occupation. The atrocities, which were considered to be extreme even by Nazi Germany’s standards, have been a source of debate in Ukraine over reports of local collaborators being involved. Estimates by historians put at one million the number of Jews killed in what is now Ukraine during the Second World War. As such, X users were quick to point out what they suggested was Blinken’s rather short-sighted recollection of historical events.

“Soviet prisoners of war were among the people massacred at Babyn Yar,” reads a contextual fact-box added by X users to Blinken’s post. “The Soviets liberated Babyn Yar and Kiev in 1943. The Soviets held a trial in 1946 in Kiev for 15 German policemen involved in the Babyn Yar massacres.” In response to Blinken’s statement, Russia’s First Deputy Permanent Representative to the UN, Dmitry Polyansky, wrote on X: “I was brought up in the USSR and we all knew about Babyn Yar. Nazi crimes were never ‘buried’ in my country, unlike yours. Writing such a sacrilegious post is beyond any basic notions of decency.” On Friday’s 82nd anniversary of the first Babyn Yar massacre, the Ukrainian foreign ministry issued a statement saying that the event should serve as a reminder to oppose “aggressive-chauvinistic ideologies, in particular, Russian aggression against Ukraine.”

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“..unlike the West which has become quite skilled in organising color revolutions, Moscow does not engage in such activities.”

Nagorno-Karabakh Is No More (Pepe Escobar)

In the end, Nagorno-Karabakh – or the Artsakh Republic – is no more. It will cease to exist on 1 January 2024 – also the first day of the Russian presidency of BRICS 11. All autonomous state structures will be dissolved – according to a decree signed by the head of the Republic, Samvel Shahramanyan. The population – roughly 147,000, 99% of them Armenian Christians – has a choice that’s not really a choice: “familiarize themselves with the conditions of reintegration presented by the Republic of Azerbaijan” and stay, or leave to Armenia for good. Predictably, the exodus is on: an interminable serpent of vehicles congesting the mountain roads of a beautiful landscape where generations of Armenians lived for centuries. As of Thursday night, over 70,000 Armenians had left towards the Syunik region.

The Azeri government in Baku sent police/security forces to Stepanakert. Former Foreign Minister Ruben Vardanyan, an oligarch, was detained by Azeri security while trying to leave for Armenia, mingling with refugees. He had renounced Russian citizenship last year when he moved to work in Artsakh. He’ll probably be freed. Others won’t be so lucky. Everyone leaving is being exhaustively searched. Baku has warned that every Artsakh notable – political and military – will be captured. This is how it sadly ends: the story of how a bunch of crooks – Team Pashinyan in Yerevan – profited personally from a geopolitical pretext. Armenian PM Pashinyan announced that in a few days he’ll consider there are no more Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh. Translation: those that decided to stay will be considered to be Azerbaijanis. Yet for Baku, Armenians from Artsakh will always remain Armenians – and thus an object of suspicion.

[..] As corridors go, Zangezur is the proverbial Chinese win-win. Azerbaijan links with its Nakhitchevan enclave and Turkiye. Russia gets a road that goes through Baku and Yerevan. Armenia opens itself to international trade. And Iran is satisfied that the manager will be the former owner of the place: Russia. Ay, there’s the rub. The usual suspects were not happy that Russian guards would be back in Armenia. So they sabotaged this clause via their agent Pashinyan. The record shows how Team Pashinyan behaved these past few months: Armenia’s First Lady visited Kiev; Yerevan transferred “humanitarian aid” to Ukraine; there were joint military exercises with the U.S.; frantic back and forth by U.S. and EU politicos and NGOs. Relations with Moscow are deteriorating fast. Yerevan – a juicy strategic target – is being taken over by the Hegemon and its vassals. It’s not an accident that Yerevan hosts the second largest American embassy in the world. So only one thing is certain: the Transcaucasus will continue to be on fire.

It’s not clear what will happen to Zangezur – and if and when Pashinyan will act on it. There’s always a – remote – possibility that Pashinyan, egged on by his Western handlers, may try to strike a deal with Aliyev to leave Russia out. The Russian Foreign Ministry has not minced its words, noting how Yerevan “flip flopped on policy and sought Western support over working closely with Russia and Azerbaijan”. And how in meetings in Prague and Brussels under the EU, Pashynian “acknowledged Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity, but failed to address the rights and safety of the Karabakh Armenians.” The Foreign Ministry all but warns Pashynian that “unlike the West which has become quite skilled in organising color revolutions, Moscow does not engage in such activities.”

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People are confused about impeachment. It’s not a one time, one off thing, it’s a process in which truth finding is central. An impeachment inquiry provides more tools for that.

The Proper Way to Impeach: Steve Bannon was Right for the Wrong Reason (Turley)

Yesterday, I spent a very long day testifying in the first hearing of the House impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden. Not unexpectedly, my testimony angered many on both the left and the right. As I mentioned in my testimony, there is little tolerance for opposing views in this age of rage. Today, caution is considered cowardice and impartiality is viewed as chicanery. Yet our Constitution demands more of each of us at these moments. We can rise to that challenge, as the Framers hoped we would, or we can continue our national descent into rage and ruin. It is the difference between laying the groundwork for a real impeachment or for just another political hit-job.

I was asked to testify on whether the threshold had been met for an impeachment inquiry and what the best practices would be in the investigation of President Biden. I testified that the existing evidence was more than ample to warrant an impeachment inquiry and that these allegations, if proven, would constitute impeachable conduct. That was not enough for many. One of those was Steve Bannon, who went on social media to criticize House Republicans for not selecting someone who would testify, at the very start of an inquiry, that the case already was made for actual articles of impeachment. Bannon suggested that I should have been placed on the “maybe list” if I was not willing to say that the committee had the basis to vote out articles of impeachment on the first day of inquiry.

That, however, would be akin to calling a special grand jury and demanding an indictment before any witnesses or evidence are presented. Bannon’s criticism is emblematic of much of what I cautioned against in my testimony. I implored the Republicans not to replicate the last two impeachments, which I believe did considerable damage to this constitutional process. In the first Trump impeachment, I appeared as the only Republican witness in the only hearing held by the House Judiciary Committee. House Democrats then just cut to the chase and impeached Donald Trump on a thin, undeveloped record.In the second impeachment, they skipped the formalities entirely and went straight to the articles of impeachment in what I called a “snap impeachment.”

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“..He also suggested that Mr. Milley should be executed for his alleged conduct..”

No he did not. He said that: “..in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!”. Not that it should be now.

Federal Prosecutors Want Gag Order Against Trump After His Recent Remarks (ET)

Federal prosecutors have urged the federal judge to impose a gag order on former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election interference case, citing the “prejudicial extrajudicial statements” he made on social media. The special counsel team filed the request for a gag order against Mr. Trump on Sept. 15 to restrict him from making “intimidating” comments about witnesses, lawyers, and other people involved in the criminal case. Prosecutors said on Sept. 25 that Mr. Trump continued to wage “a sustained campaign of prejudicial public statements regarding witnesses, the court, the district, and prosecutors” even after the proposed order.

“The defendant should not be permitted to obtain the benefits of his incendiary public statements and then avoid accountability by having others—whose messages he knows will receive markedly less attention than his own—feign retraction,” they said in a court filing. “No other criminal defendant would be permitted to issue public statements insinuating that a known witness in his case should be executed; this defendant should not be, either,” it added. They referred to recent posts on his social media platform, Truth Social, including one on Sept. 22 in which Mr. Trump accused departing Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley of committing treason. In the post, Mr. Trump said that Mr. Milley’s alleged “treasonous act” could have led to “a war between China and the United States.” He also suggested that Mr. Milley should be executed for his alleged conduct.

Prosecutors also mentioned a video posted by Mr. Trump’s spokesman claiming that Mr. Trump had bought a Glock gun in South Carolina. The post was later removed, and the spokesman retracted his remarks, saying that Mr. Trump had only indicated his interest in buying the gun. Despite the spokesman’s retraction, prosecutors said that Mr. Trump “re-posted a video of the incident” posted by one of his followers with a caption that suggested he had indeed bought the weapon. “The defendant either purchased a gun in violation of the law and his conditions of release, or seeks to benefit from his supporters’ mistaken belief that he did so,” the prosecutors stated. Mr. Trump’s lawyers have objected to the request, and U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan on Friday set courtroom arguments for Oct. 16.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers have previously denounced the gag order request as an attempt to “unconstitutionally silence” his political speech. They called the request a “desperate attempt at censorship.” “The prosecution would silence President Trump, amid a political campaign where his right to criticize the government is at its zenith, all to avoid a public rebuke of this prosecution,” his lawyers wrote on Sept. 25. “However, above all else, the First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content. “The prosecution may not like President’s Trump’s entirely valid criticisms, but neither it nor this Court are the filter for what the public may hear,” they added.

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Why just Steele? And not Clinesmith, Sussman, Adam Schiff, Jerry Nadler, Comey, Hillary Clinton etc etc?!

Trump Sues Christopher Steele Over Hoax Dossier (ZH)

The Steele dossier was used by the Obama DOJ and the intelligence community to smear Trump as a Russian asset. Its various fabrications were legitimized under the guise of a legitimate DOJ investigation, and featured frequent strategic media leaks, ‘expert’ opinions, and manipulated evidence such as an email altered by former FBI attorney Kevin Clinesmith, which was used to renew a wiretap warrant on Trump Campaign adviser Carter Page. Then there was the fraudulent ‘Alfa Bank Server’ allegation made by Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussman, who pleaded guilty to not telling the FBI that he was Hillary’s employee when he alleged that Trump was directly communicating with the Kremlin via a covert server.

Steele peddled the dossier to the State Department – which then passed it along to former FBI deputy assistant director of counterintelligence Peter ‘We’ll stop Trump’ Strzok. Steele also met with the DOJ’s Bruce Ohr (whose wife, as we noted above, Fusion GPS employee), who he told that Russia had Trump “over a barrel.” (Bruce Ohr was consequentially demoted for making “consequential errors in judgement” for failing to inform his supervisors for his role in Russiagate, and retired on Sept. of 2020 “after his counsel was informed that a final decision on a disciplinary review being conducted by Department senior career officials was imminent”). Then there was the infamous ‘pee tape’ allegation that Trump paid prostitutes to urinate in a bed in Moscow where Barack and Michelle Obama had stayed, and that the Kremlin had a tape of the whole thing.

The 35-page dossier was publicly disavowed by high ranking FBI officials, including the bureau’s former deputy director Andrew McCabe, who told lawmakers in November 2020 that he would have never approved the Carter Page wiretap if he’d known the dossier was inaccurate. And now, Trump is suing Steele…

According to the Independent, the 77-year-old former president is bringing a data protection claim against Steele, and his consulting firm Orbis Business Intelligence, in the UK. “Proceedings have been issued on behalf of President Donald J. Trump against Orbis Business Intelligence Limited. The claim relates to breaches of UK Data Protection law arising from the inaccurate processing of the President’s personal data by Orbis following the publication of the false ‘Steele Dossier,’” said Trump attorney Tim Lowles. “The President’s claim seeks remedies including that the inaccurate data contained within the Steele Dossier be erased or rectified together with the payment of damages,” the statement continues.

On October 16, a two-day hearing will commence according to the report, citing a High Court order published Thursday. Steele has defended his work, telling the Oxford Union in March 2022: “What is being called the dossier was actually a series of single-source intelligence reports over a period of time, if you like, almost a running commentary on the election campaign and Russia’s perspective on it — and it comes from the Russian perspective of the telescope if you like,” adding “The sources were Russian, they were reporting on how Russia saw it, and of course, that may in some cases be rather different than how it was viewed in America at the other end of the telescope.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

Soccer dog
https://twitter.com/i/status/1708198778174345445

 

 

Ink

 

 

Turkey
https://twitter.com/i/status/1708441860228751683

 

 

Bless you
https://twitter.com/i/status/1708396893607465463

 

 

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Jul 232023
 


Andy Warhol Ingrid Bergman 1983

 

Zelensky Carries Out ‘Polonization’ Of Ukraine – Duma Speaker (TASS)
Russia on the Grain Deal at the UN Security Council (Combate)
Kiev Used Grain Deal To Stock Up On Military Supplies – Russia (RT)
West Driven By “Impotent Rage” – Moscow (RT)
China Overtaking US – Orban (RT)
Western Firms Reluctant To Pull Out Of Russia Despite Sanctions – Orban (TASS)
Washington Becoming Weary of Zelensky’s Never-Ending Demands For Aid (Sp.)
Japan Doesn’t Want to Fight for Taiwan and Neither Do Other US Allies (Sp.)
Lockheed Martin Predicts Strong Profits as Global Instability Rises (LI)
Hunter Biden Expected To Face Up To 10 Criminal Referrals (ZH)
New BRICS Currency Boosts Gold & Destroys Dollar – Jim Rickards (USAW)
Tyranny of the Minority (Turley)
The Downfall of Blobism (Kunstler)

 

 

 

 

Running out

 

 

Ted Nugent
https://twitter.com/i/status/1682755010566803457

 

 

 

 

He says $200 Billion.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1682824375056187393

 

 

Kolakusic
https://twitter.com/i/status/1682649222607261697

 

 

 

 

No Sane Person Goes to War against Russia (Military Textbook Ch. 1 Par. 1) | Dmitry Orlov

 

 

Macgregor: NATO is an Appendage of Globalist Foreign Policy

 

 

 

 

Will he give it away before they come take it?

Zelensky Carries Out ‘Polonization’ Of Ukraine – Duma Speaker (TASS)

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky is carrying out “polonization” of Ukraine in hopes that this would allow him to stay in power for longer, Russian State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said on his Telegram channel. “Zelensky is carrying out a process of polonization [capture of Ukraine by Poland – TASS] of his country, hoping that, in return, his masters [Washington and Brussels – TASS] will allow him to stay in power for longer,” he said. To that extent, a law was adopted that effectively equals Poles to Ukrainians, providing them with the same set of rights – stay without permission, employment, education, medical service and even some allowances, the official added.

According to Volodin, Ukrainians are being expelled from their homes in Sumy and Chernigov regions, which border Russia, as the authorities seek to replace them with Polish migrants, loyal to the neo-Nazi regime. Ukrainian citizens are also being forced to use Polish language instead of Russian; orthodox Christianity is being persecuted, with Ukrainians being converted to Catholicism, the Duma Speaker underscored. “Meanwhile, a 25-thousand military force comprised mostly of Polish and Lithuanian armed soldiers, ready to occupy Western Ukraine, has been established. The Poles want to take back what they consider their historic lands – the Eastern Borderlands. They do not need Ukrainian citizens on these territories,” Volodin noted.

He stated that, according to the ideology of Washington and Brussels, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian people must die at the frontline (with growing amounts of weapons being shipped to Ukraine to that extent), while the rest must lose their national identity. In order to meet this goal, “Poland’s imperial ambitions” are being used. “Washington and Brussels will continue waging the war until the last Ukrainian,” Volodin concluded.

Read more …

Twitter thread. More land given away:

“..the owners of a significant part of Ukrainian arable land (more than 17 million hectares) are Western corporations Cargill, DuPont and Monsanto.”

Did they pay Zelensky personally?

Russia on the Grain Deal at the UN Security Council (Combate)

“Most of you expressed, in one way or another, disappointment at the termination of the so-called grain deal that provided for exports of Ukrainian grain to global markets. I have a question to you. What was it that you expected? From the very start, we have been drawing everyone’s attention to the fact that the initiative did not meet the initially proclaimed goal and was gaining a well-defined commercial nature. In fact, from the very beginning, developed countries have taken the lead among those buying food from Ukraine. However, no steps were taken to remedy this trend. During the Black Sea Initiative, a total of 32.8 million tonnes of cargo was exported, of which more than 70% went to high- and upper-middle-income countries, including the European Union. The poorest states, notably Ethiopia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Sudan, and Somalia, accounted for less than 3%…


Such geography and commercialization of an initially humanitarian initiative is easily explained by the fact that the owners of a significant part of Ukrainian arable land (more than 17 million hectares) are Western corporations Cargill, DuPont and Monsanto. They bought up Ukrainian land after Kiev lifted a 20-year moratorium on its sale at the request of the IMF and became the main beneficiaries of Ukrainian grain exports. On the other hand, the Europeans who buy Ukrainian food at dumping prices then process it at home and resell as ready-to-consume goods with high added value. In other words, they earn twice. What does this have to do with the task of getting food delivered to the poorest countries, about which we have heard again today?”

Read more …

“A large number of Ukrainian soldiers and foreign mercenaries have also been stationed in the areas protected under the deal..”

Kiev Used Grain Deal To Stock Up On Military Supplies – Russia (RT)

Ukraine has used the Black Sea grain deal to accumulate sizable military and fuel supplies, Russian Deputy Ambassador to the UN Dmitry Polyansky told the organization’s Security Council (UNSC) on Friday. EU nations have also exploited the agreement to reap profits from cheap Ukrainian food products, he said. Since the UN-facilitated deal was introduced a year ago, “the Kiev regime has built up significant military and industrial [supplies], as well as fuel… storage capacities in the areas near its Black Sea ports,” the diplomat said during a UNSC meeting convened after Russia’s decision to withdraw from the agreement.

A large number of Ukrainian soldiers and foreign mercenaries have also been stationed in the areas protected under the deal, he said, adding that Russia could “remedy this situation” now that it has left the deal. The Ukrainian military did not hesitate to use the humanitarian corridors reserved for the grain shipments to launch attacks on the Russian military and civilian targets, Polyansky said, adding that neither the UN nor Western nations had reacted to such attacks in any way. “Do you just want us to put up with it?” asked the envoy. The Russian military repeatedly reported on Ukrainian attempts to strike targets in Crimea with both aerial and naval drones, which were mostly thwarted by Russian defense systems.

In May, Moscow stated that the Ukrainian forces had taken advantage of the grain corridors to stage attacks on Crimea. The deal itself, which was initially touted as a humanitarian initiative aimed at helping the poorest nations to avoid a food crisis, was ultimately “commercialized” by the West, Polyansky said. “Europeans, who buy Ukrainian food products at give-away prices, then process them and re-sell them as manufactured goods with high added value,” he continued, adding that EU nations are “benefiting twice” from the deal. “Tell me, where is the goal of providing the poorest nations with food here?” he asked.

Moscow has repeatedly stressed that only a tiny percentage of the grain exported from Ukraine as part of the agreement has been shipped to such nations, while the bulk of it has ended up in Europe. On Friday, Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto also stated that “95% of exported Ukrainian grain does not go to Africa.” He blamed this for rising food prices on the continent, which were “destabilizing regions that are already in difficulty.” The US Department of Agriculture also said in its July report that almost half of all Ukrainian wheat exports ended up in the EU after the grain deal was struck. Türkiye imported almost a quarter of Ukraine’s wheat over the same period, and only roughly one-fifth went to the “rest of the world,” the report showed.

Read more …

“Western leaders are suffering from “megalomania and inferiority complex” at the same time, which is a “dangerous mix..”

West Driven By “Impotent Rage” – Moscow (RT)

The geopolitical decisions of the US and its allies are being dictated by “impotent rage” over the West’s dwindling influence on the global stage, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov has stated. Following his meeting with members of the Alexander Gorchakov Public Diplomacy Fund in Moscow on Friday, Ryabkov was asked to comment on this week’s hearing at the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs, during which some participants suggested that the strengthening of Russia’s ties with Africa was a result of mistakes committed by Washington. In response, the deputy foreign minister broadly criticized the policies pursued by the US and its allies on the international arena, suggesting that the Western countries have been “making one mistake after another.”


“Their path over the past few years is a path of mistakes and suffering – suffering from their own deficiency in international affairs – from their inability to combine their ambitions, their high expectations that everybody around should obey them, with what they see in reality,” he argued. Ryabkov went on to describe the West’s behavior on the international stage as being driven by “impotent rage.” The diplomat said he senses “deep geopolitical volatility and offendedness” in the decisions made by the US and its allies. Western leaders are suffering from “megalomania and inferiority complex” at the same time, which is a “dangerous mix,” Ryabkov stressed.

Read more …

“..today, instead of American dominance, there are two suns in the sky..”

China Overtaking US – Orban (RT)

The world is facing the biggest power shift in decades, with the US poised to lose its leading position to China, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Saturday. This could result in a major conflict between Washington and Beijing unless the US accepts that it cannot be the “winner” forever, he warned. “[China] has become a manufacturing powerhouse and is now overtaking America,” Orban said in his annual speech in the town of Baile Tusnad in Romania’s Eastern Transylvania. In just 30 years, China has undergone the industrial revolution that took the West around three centuries, the Hungarian prime minister said, adding that America is about to say ‘goodbye’ to its status as the world’s only superpower.

Beijing is also challenging the values Washington seeks to portray as universal, Orban said. China considers American values to be a “hostile ideology,” he said, adding that “there is some truth in it.” Such a development would certainly not sit well with Washington, which will want to remain “on top of the world” forever, Orban warned. He said attempts to challenge existing hegemony had led to major conflict on multiple occasions in human history. “There are no eternal winners and eternal losers,” he added. A conflict between the two great powers is likely but not unavoidable, the Hungarian leader believes. The world needs to find a new balance, and the two opposing parties should recognize each other as equals, he said.

Major nations have to “accept that, today, instead of American dominance, there are two suns in the sky,” Orban added. He also painted a grim picture of Europe’s future by saying it’s about to lose its dominant position in the global economy. Orban blamed the West’s anti-Russian policies for this development. The EU is already “rich but weak,” he said, adding that it would further lose its competitive advantages as a result of its determination to impose sanctions on Russia. The idea that Russia can be separated from the world economy through various restrictions is an “illusion,” he warned. The EU has already witnessed the results of its erroneous decisions, Orban said, adding that “others buy Russian energy instead of us, and we pay more for energy than ever before.”

According to Orban, the UK and Italy would drop out of the world’s top ten economies, and Germany would fall to 10th place, down from its current fourth position. A significant part of the European economy is still linked to Russia despite all the rhetoric about sanctions, he said. Hungary has emerged as one of the major critics of Western policies amid the ongoing conflict between Moscow and Kiev. Budapest has repeatedly called for a ceasefire and peace deal in Ukraine, and has criticized the EU for sending arms to Kiev. In June, Orban told the German tabloid Bild that a Ukrainian victory on the battlefield was “impossible.” Hungary has also insisted that anti-Russia sanctions are hurting Europe more than they hurt Russia.

Read more …

“..the European Union countries had annually paid about 300 billion euros for oil and gas, whereas they paid 653 billion euros last year..”

Western Firms Reluctant To Pull Out Of Russia Despite Sanctions – Orban (TASS)

Western companies are not willing to leave Russia despite the sanctions, as they understand that Russia’s economy will still remain part of the global one, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Saturday in his speech at the Free University and the summer student camp in the Romanian town of Baile Tusnad (Harghita County) in Transylvania. The prime minister said that, according to his information, 88% of pharmaceutical, 79% of mining, 70% of energy and 77% of other European industrial companies that were operating in Russia at the beginning of 2022 were still staying in the country. “Of the 1,400 major Western companies, only 8.5% have left Russia,” said Orban, whose speech was aired by Hungarian television channel M1. According to the prime minister, foreign companies paid $3.5 billion to the Russian budget in 2022.


The prime minister said that there is an attempt to “disconnect Russia” from the European economy through sanctions in order to exert political pressure on Moscow. However, he is convinced that this will not have the desired effect, since Russia’s economy is intertwined with the rest of the world, including in the energy sector. “Somebody else is buying Russian raw materials, while we are suffering from military inflation and losing our competitiveness,” he said. Orban pointed out that before sanctions were imposed on Russia, the European Union countries had annually paid about 300 billion euros for oil and gas, whereas they paid 653 billion euros last year. Europe will not be able to compete with the rest of the world as long as energy supplies are twice as expensive as they used to be, Orban believes.

Read more …

“..while also deciding to view Zelensky at ground level instead atop a pedestal.”

Washington Becoming Weary of Zelensky’s Never-Ending Demands For Aid (Sp.)

American officials are growing tired of the demands that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky continues to make with regard to Western support for Kiev, Douglas MacKinnon, a former special assistant for policy and communications at the Pentagon, wrote in an opinion piece for a US media outlet. MacKinnon pointed out in his Saturday article for The Hill, citing sources, that US President Joe Biden “lashed out” at Zelensky in June 2022, yelling that the Ukrainian leader “should be showing more gratitude for the billions in aid he was getting from the United States via the American people.” Asked about Zelensky’s never-ending demands for US aid, a former high-level Pentagon official told MacKinnon that Western support is not infinite.

“Zelensky is acting like a spoiled, petulant child who gets everything he wants and it’s still not enough. Many in the U.S. government and many of our citizens are growing tired of his act. I can assure you he is burning bridges in Europe as well. There is only so much money and good will to go around,” the former Pentagon official said. MacKinnon emphasized that more and more Americans are becoming unsupportive of the continued US aid to Kiev and this trend is likely to grow, “as the American people take a harder look at the horrific consequences of the war while also deciding to view Zelensky at ground level instead atop a pedestal.”

Earlier this week, media reported that Washington was planning to announce a new package of military assistance for Ukraine worth up to $400 million. The new package, which could be announced as early as next week, could include artillery munitions, air defense missiles and ground vehicles for Ukraine’s ongoing counteroffensive. Earlier this month, the US Defense Department announced a new security assistance package to Kiev worth $1.3 billion that for the first time included 155mm cluster artillery rounds.

Read more …

Japan risks becoming both the rock and the hard place.

Japan Doesn’t Want to Fight for Taiwan and Neither Do Other US Allies (Sp.)

Despite Japan bolstering its military capabilities under the nation’s new Defense Buildup Program, it appears to have zero appetite to engage in direct confrontation with China over Taiwan, Western media and think tanks say. US military facilities in Okinawa, Japan, might play a central role in any Taiwan crisis, according to the Western press. Moreover, American military analysts have almost unanimously agreed that Japan is “the most likely US ally to contribute troops” in a potential US conflict with China over the island. Back in October 2021, War on the Rocks, a US online media outlet, quoted a Japanese poll which appeared to indicate that 74% of respondents would support their government’s military engagement in the Taiwan Strait against China.

The report further speculated about the possibilities of circumventing the country’s Constitution, which limits Japan’s ability to participate in conflicts. Bold statements made by some Japanese officials also seemed to confirm Tokyo’s resolve. One of them, former Minister of Defense Yasuhide Nakayama, insisted in June 2021 that Taiwan is a “red line” and that “we have to protect Taiwan as a democratic country.” Japan and Taiwan are geographically close and any possible military actions over the island could potentially affect Japan’s Okinawa prefecture, Nakayama argued at the time. The People’s Republic of China, which considers Taiwan its inalienable part, has repeatedly stated that it is going to reunite with the island peacefully, referring to years of fruitful collaboration with the former Taiwanese government formed by members of Kuomintang Party.

The Kuomintang can make a spectacular comeback during the Taiwanese general elections, scheduled for January 2024. The party’s victory could nip the fuss around Taiwan’s secessionism and potential conflict in the bud. Even US lawmakers admit it, considering the Kuomintang’s win a potential “threat” to Washington’s plans in the Asia-Pacific. [..] The unfolding situation has apparently given shivers to the Japanese leadership. The Wall Street Journal broke on Monday that the Japanese government is ready to give permission to the US to use bases in Japan in the case of conflict over Taiwan, but Tokyo’s own participation is unlikely. Per the report, Washington invited Tokyo to consider using its Self-Defense Forces, especially the Maritime Self-Defense Force for hunting for Chinese submarines around the island of Taiwan and for other military missions.

Read more …

What Ukraine is really about.

Lockheed Martin Predicts Strong Profits as Global Instability Rises (LI)

Lockheed Martin believes global instability is driving demand and sees an increase in annual profits. Washington’s proxy war in Ukraine has caused an increase in arms spending among NATO members, boosting weapons makers’ stock prices. On Tuesday, Lockheed raised its annual profit and sales outlook on strong demand for military equipment. After making the announcement, the company’s stock price increased by one percent. Reuters reports, “[Lockheed] expects full-year net sales to be between $66.25 billion and $66.75 billion, up from its earlier forecast of $65 billion to $66 billion.”

The billions in profit are driven by sales of big-ticket systems like the F-35. However, Lockheed has struggled to produce F-35s that can perform its promised abilities. In May, the government found the planes’ engines have a serious problem dealing with heat. “The F-35’s engine lacks the ability to properly manage the heat generated by the aircraft’s systems,” POGO reported. “That increases the engine’s wear, and auditors now estimate the extra maintenance will add $38 billion to the program’s life-cycle costs.” The arms maker has additionally experienced a boost in demand for smaller systems, like the Javelin anti-tank missile. The White House has shipped thousands of Javelin systems to Kiev since Joe Biden took office.

As well as predicting future success, Lockheed announced it beat expectations regarding quarterly sales. According to Reuters, “Quarterly net sales rose 8.1% to $16.69 billion, beating expectations of $15.92 billion.” Last year, Ian Bond, director of foreign policy at the Centre for European Reform, described the surge in the market for weapons as the highest since the Cold War. “This is certainly the biggest increase in defense spending in Europe since the end of the Cold War,” he said. Prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Lockheed’s stock price traded below $340 a share, the price increased to over $450 within a few months. On Thursday, Lockheed’s stock was valued at $456 per sale.

Read more …

How do you keep Joe out of the story?

Hunter Biden Expected To Face Up To 10 Criminal Referrals (ZH)

The Chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, James Comer (R-KY), says he plans to file “between six and 10 criminal referrals” against Hunter Biden once his committee finishes its investigation into the Biden family’s business dealings. According to the NY Post, the charges would include sex trafficking a woman across state lines for prostitution. “The Democrats kept saying, ‘Oh, we don’t have any evidence. You don’t have any evidence.’ Well, [Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene] showed them evidence,” Comer told Fox Business in an interview, referring to a sexually graphic image printed on a poster from Hunter Biden’s laptop, in which he’s stuffing his manhood into a prostitute’s mouth who was allegedly paid for with company funds.

“She showed them evidence of the president’s son committing a crime, violating the Mann Act,” said Comer, adding “She showed the plane tickets, she showed the pictures, she showed the evidence. You know, there’s no question he violated it. That’s another thing that he could have been charged with.” Comer also said that the referrals could include violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). “He was money laundering,” said Comer. “He was racketeering. He committed wire fraud. He violated the Mann Act. The list goes on and on and on.”

Meanwhile, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) on Thursday released an unclassified FBI document in which a confidential human source lays out an alleged bribery scheme involving Joe and Hunter Biden, in which a Ukrainian gas giant, Burisma, hired Hunter to gain access to his then-VP father. “The House Oversight Committee previously issued a subpoena to obtain the document, with which FBI Director Christopher Wray did not comply. Though he ultimately permitted the committee members to view the FD-1023 in a secure location, the contents remained unpublished until Grassley’s Thursday release. The document shows that the bureau had a trusted source privy to Burisma’s efforts to quash a probe from then-Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin and its plans to expand to the U.S. and secure a company for IPO purposes. -Just the News

Read more …

“You don’t need dollars and you don’t need gold. You just need to be smart enough to anchor your currency to gold..”

New BRICS Currency Boosts Gold & Destroys Dollar – Jim Rickards (USAW)

Seven-time, best-selling financial author James Rickards predicted in his most recent best-seller called “Sold Out” why broken supply chains would cause big inflation. He was right, and he still contends, “Supply chain problems and inflation are not over.” For an example of the supply chain still being in fragile shape, look no further than the failed grain deal between Ukraine and Russia last week. Rickards points out, “Putin has been very patient about this. He had a deal. Ukraine was not living up to their end of the deal. Putin says we are the ones getting attacked, so, screw the deal. What’s that going to do to the price of grain? It’s going to send grain prices up, and it’s already up 10% just in a matter of days.”

This brings us the new BRICS gold-weighted currency (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) that might be announced in the middle to the end of next month. Rickards calls one unit of currency a “BRIC.” This is a competitor to the U.S. dollar, but Rickards says, “It’s not a reserve currency. . . .I think it may be 8 grams of gold to one “BRIC” (currency), but I don’t know. What I do know is it does not matter. What does matter is they are going to anchor it to a weight of gold. . . . It’s NOT redeemable in gold, it is anchored to it. . . . Let’s says a “BRIC” is worth one ounce of gold. Today that is $1,970 per ounce, except the “BRIC” is NOT anchored to the dollar. It is anchored to gold, which stands in the middle of this equation.

So, the dollar price of gold is going to be going up and down all the time, which means the dollar/“BRIC” exchange rate is going to be going up and down all the time. They don’t have to defend the “BRIC.” They have gold, but they don’t have to back it up with gold. . . . They actually don’t need any gold. . . . If you have made your currency anchored to gold . . . do you want the price to go up or down? You want the price of gold to go up because that means the “BRIC” is worth more dollars, and the dollar is crashing. It’s a way to destroy the dollar. You don’t need dollars and you don’t need gold. You just need to be smart enough to anchor your currency to gold, and when dollar inflation starts to go up, your currency is going to be worth more because of how you pegged it, not to dollars, but how you pegged it to gold.”

Rickards goes on to say, “So, if I were a BRICS member, and I were Russia in particular, and I had this currency tied to gold, and I wanted my currency to be more valuable and your currency (U.S. dollar) less valuable, one of the ways to do that is mess with the supply chain and drive up the price of oil, gasoline, grain . . . which drives up pork prices and chicken prices, and the list goes on. That’s one way to do it.” Rickards also talks about deflation this year and big inflation coming after that. Rickards is predicting big inflation coming for people using dollars, and with his track record, you would be a fool to bet against his analysis.

Read more …

“I shall resist any illegal federal court order.”

Tyranny of the Minority (Turley)

“I shall resist any illegal federal court order.” When “the Court’s interpretation of the Constitution is egregiously wrong,” the president should refuse to follow it. Those two statements were made roughly 60 years apart. The first is from segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace (D). The second was made by two liberal professors this month. In one of the most chilling developments in our history, the left has come to embrace the authoritarian language and logic of segregationists in calling for defiance and radical measures against the Supreme Court. In a recent open letter, Harvard law professor Mark Tushnet and University of San Francisco political scientist Aaron Belkin called upon President Joe Biden to defy rulings of the Supreme Court that he considers “mistaken” in the name of “popular constitutionalism.”

Thus, in light of the court’s bar on the use of race in college admissions, they argue that Biden should just continue to follow his own constitutional interpretation. The use of the affirmative action case is ironic, since polls have consistently shown that the majority of the public does not support the use of race in college admissions. Indeed, even in the most liberal states, such as California, voters have repeatedly rejected affirmative action in college admissions. Polls further show that a majority support the Supreme Court’s recent decisions. So despite referenda and polls showing majority support for barring race in admissions, academics are pushing to impose their own values, regardless of the views of the public or of the courts.

However, even if these measures were popular, it would not make them right. It is precisely what segregationists such as Sen. James Eastland (D-Miss.) argued, that “all the people of the South are in favor of segregation. And Supreme Court or no Supreme Court, we are going to maintain segregated schools.” Tushnet and Belkin cite with approval Biden’s declaration that this is “not a normal Supreme Court.” Biden’s view of normalcy appears to be a court that agrees with his fluid view of constitutional law, by which he can forgive roughly a half of trillion dollars in loans or impose a national eviction moratorium without a vote of Congress.

Tushnet and Belkin know their audience. Biden has previously evinced little respect for the Constitution or the courts. Take the eviction case. In an earlier decision, a majority of justices had declared that Biden’s actions were unconstitutional, confirming what many of us had said for months. Even after the majority declared it unconstitutional, Biden wanted to reissue the national moratorium. White House counsel and most scholars told him the move would be blatantly unconstitutional and defy the express ruling of the court. Instead, he consulted the only law professor willing to tell him what he wanted to hear and did it anyway. It was quickly again declared unconstitutional.

Read more …

Good point:

“..who would even want to win the support of such vile creatures as Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Jerrold Nadler, and Adam Schiff, let alone be associated with them in the same club?”

The Downfall of Blobism (Kunstler)

You might not know it these lazy, hazy, muggy days of midsummer, but things are getting pretty wildly out-of-hand in our republic. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. blew up the Democratic Party yesterday in the House Subcommittee on Weaponization of Government hearing, acting like a normal human while being set upon by a flock of harpies desperately screeching “Russia, Russia, Russia,” as if that means anything anymore. He branded them as worse than the McCarthyites of the 1950s, rebuked their insane scurrilities supporting censorship, and left them in a state of exhausted disgrace.

It happens that he is running for the nomination of that very party knocking itself out to destroy him. To win that prize he would have to put a thousand top Democrats through some grueling act of repentance and contrition — and then you’ve got to ask yourself: who would even want to win the support of such vile creatures as Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Jerrold Nadler, and Adam Schiff, let alone be associated with them in the same club?

Elsewhere around the scene this week, we have the ever more degenerate antics of the FBI on view as whistleblowers pour out of the woodwork disclosing the rot behind Director Chris Wray and his boss AG Merrick Garland. This Deep State Blob of turpitude has been growing and festering with so many overlapping cover-ups that they’ve run out of rugs to sweep their crimes under. The massive moneygrubbing misdeeds of Hillary Clinton from Skolkovo and Uranium One beat a direct path through the Ukraine coup of 2014, to RussiaGate, to the Biden Family’s global influence-peddling operation and every mendacious act in-between including the FISA falsehoods, the J-6 entrapment caper, hundreds of malicious and deceitful prosecutions, the Covid-19 fraud, the censorship and medical tyranny, and God-knows how many ensuing deaths from a poisonous vaccine… and now, a brain-dead government trifling with nuclear war.

And whose brilliant idea was it, anyway, to install this disgusting and incompetent grifter, “Joe Biden,” as our head-of-state? They surely knew well before 2019 that his bag-man son was rooting out bribes in Ukraine, China, and elsewhere, at the same time he was consorting with whores and trafficked children while destroying his brain with crack and downing a fifth of vodka a day. And you’re telling me that the CIA and FBI did not know about any of this, even before October 2019 when Hunter’s laptop stuffed with graphic evidence fell into their hands? If they didn’t know any of this, then what’s the point of having an intel community?

My guess is that it was Barack Obama’s idea to stick “Joe Biden” in the White House in the vain effort to use this captive criminal to stave off any accounting for the aforesaid villainies that occurred during Mr. Obama’s two terms. The mission was originally Hillary Clinton’s — she had plenty at stake herself — but she botched the job in 2016 and allowed the Golden Golem of Greatness to slip into power. It is amazing to look back and see how the mighty Blob congealed after that election — like a giant rogue macrophage — to surround and eliminate Mr. Trump, who apparently did not know for many months what he was up against: the entire permanent bureaucracy.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Burton

 

 

 

 

Russ/Gore

 

 

Nanny cam

 

 


saharan dust, a mineral dust from the sahara desert, under the microscope. the dust particles contain sodium, manganese, aluminum, silicon, iron, cobalt, copper, potassium, sulfur and calcium. saharan dust provides marine bacteria and phytoplankton with important nutrients.

 

 

 

 

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Oct 162022
 
 October 16, 2022  Posted by at 8:15 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  45 Responses »


Rembrandt van Rijn Self-portrait 1629

 

Germany’s Failing ‘Stored’ Nat-gas & LNG Experiment (Vilches)
Nord Stream Saboteurs Plunged EU Into ‘Energy Poverty’ – Moscow (RT)
White House Comments On Paying For Starlink Service For Ukraine (RT)
Musk Makes U-turn On Starlink Service For Ukraine (RT)
Elon Musk Discovers Ukrainian ‘Kill List’ (RT)
The Ideological Tyranny of Liberal Interventionism (Ghorayeb)
European Auto Industry In Trouble – S&P (RT)
How 4,000 People From Groningen Managed To Turn Off The Gas Tap (NOS)
Strong US Dollar Is A Headache – IMF (RT)
Central Bank of G20 Host Indonesia Rails Against US Dollar (RT)
Will Beijing Join With Russia vs The West Or Keep Its Powder Dry? (Hvatkov)
Orban Warns Of ‘Protracted War’ (RT)
Hiding Hunter’s Laptop (Hanson)
Yes, They Claimed The Vaccines Would Prevent Transmission (Chung)
Twitter is a Weapon, not a Business (Robert Malone)

 

 

What an odd list.

 

 

John Maersheimer 2014

 

 

Walker

 

 

“Leave the climate activists glued to the wall. Make it an interactive exhibit by allowing patrons to throw tomato sauce at them and donate the proceeds to planting trees.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jinglemerkel Santakaputt.

“.. at the very best only 25% to 30% of the “supposed” 90% reserves could possibly ever be timely recovered and only very slowly through a period of time stretched out in months. ”

Germany’s Failing ‘Stored’ Nat-gas & LNG Experiment (Vilches)

Be that as it may, and as per the US State Dept. the NS1 and NS2 pipeline sabotage would supposedly have “no impact on European energy resilience”… then we should guess that Germans should just enjoy their Oktoberfest and — why not ? — also prepare to celebrate Christmas 2022 as if nothing negative had happened. On the contrary, if technical brain-power (currently AWOL) prevailed, then career strategists both sides of the Atlantic would now be spending all day and night trying to brush up hard on nat-gas management 101, better yet with a touch of sophomoric physics if all possible. And thus no-nonsense contingency plans would already be prepared and under deployment.

The reason is, as explained below, by EU and German design and commitment this is a failing EXPERIMENT. The planned ´stored´ nat-gas & LNG supply strategies have never ever been applied in equivalent circumstances with this strange methodology and humongous scale. Thusly, the 2022 German Oktoberfest will probably turn into a very acid sauerkraut with solid-beer icicles bizarrely hanging from the spouts. The Main Event would still be the December 2022 ´Jinglemerkel Santakaputt´ with nowhere to hide as all of Europe would be undergoing a thorough DE-industrialization process with sharp lowering of standards of living, and in many areas most probably with food issues, darkness & cold, deep frustration and un-heard-of unemployment with massive migrants wishing they had stayed back home (yes).

Be it from Qatar, Norway, or the US… or Russia…Liquefied Natural Gas cannot and will not save the day for Europe. First of all, LNG is and will be for a huge long time to come very scarce worldwide. Furthermore, there are very few loading and unloading terminals available at either end. For example, Germany has 0 (zero) LNG terminals. None. And even some loading terminals at source docks that are already built have serious operational problems or simply do not meet EU standards. Besides, there are not anywhere near enough LNG tankers available and very few are under construction. Who needed ugly dirty fracked LNG only 6 months ago ? And these infrastructure beasts take very long time to be conceived, approved, designed, funded, built, commissioned, certified, and offered to the market.

But it gets worse because many wrongly imagine that fracked sea-borne Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) is a substitute of nat-gas (not). First, it´s terribly more expensive, most explosive & dangerous to handle, and definetly way too scarce to meet European needs. Environmentally, LNG is “fracking” dirty and very cumbersome to liquefy, load and re-gassify with yet non-existant infrastructure at both ends… and is far more difficult to store and many times more costly to freight (Suez could be a limitation) from ackward overseas sources yet unknown (in tankers that do not yet exist) and only in risky seaborne batches onto many dozens of delivery terminals not yet built nor adequately planned for…

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“Stockholm has rejected a plan to set up an official joint investigation team together with Germany and Denmark to look into the explosions [..] All three nations also refused to grant Russia access to the probe. ”

Nord Stream Saboteurs Plunged EU Into ‘Energy Poverty’ – Moscow (RT)

The perpetrators behind the attacks on Nord Stream 1 and 2 natural gas pipelines have destroyed the European Union’s hope of secure and sustainable energy supply, Deputy Prime Minister Aleksander Novak has said on the sidelines of the Russian Energy Week forum. “Those who had plotted and perpetrated this terrorist act have basically plunged Europe into an energy poverty, so to speak,” Novak said on Friday, adding that the sabotage of the pipelines has all but “nullified the energy security” the EU has long sought to achieve. The former energy minister previously said that Russia is still able to supply natural gas to the European Union through a string of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that remains intact. According to President Vladimir Putin the ball was now in the EU’s court on whether it wanted this to happen.

Putin also suggested establishing a new “gas hub” in Türkiye to move the transit volumes to the Black Sea region. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan backed the idea during the leaders’ meeting earlier this week. The Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines, designed to carry Russian natural gas directly to Germany, bypassing transit states, including Ukraine and Poland, abruptly lost pressure last month, following a series of powerful underwater explosions off the Danish island of Bornholm. Moscow has called the incident a terrorist attack and said the US, a long-time critic of Germany’s reliance on Russian energy, stood to benefit most from the disabling of the routes, both politically and economically. Washington has denied any involvement. However, Secretary of State Antony Blinken hailed the incident as a “tremendous opportunity” for Europe “to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy.”

In the meantime, Stockholm has rejected a plan to set up an official joint investigation team together with Germany and Denmark to look into the explosions, Reuters reported, citing a Swedish investigator. Sweden allegedly argued that its own findings are too sensitive to share even with other EU nations. All three nations also refused to grant Russia access to the probe. Russia used to cover over 40% of the EU’s gas needs prior to the start of the military operation in Ukraine and ensuing sanctions. Supplies dropped dramatically this year, exacerbating the energy crisis, as the bloc is seeking to cut itself off from Russian energy to reduce its dependence and punish Moscow. The US, meanwhile, ramped up its supply of LNG to Europe over the past months, up to a point where it now accounts for nearly half of the bloc’s LNG imports, nearly twice the share recorded in 2021.

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..“burning” around $20 million per month on safeguarding the services from cyberattacks and jamming..”

White House Comments On Paying For Starlink Service For Ukraine (RT)

The Pentagon and US allies are exploring all options to maintain Starlink satellite services for Ukraine after tycoon Elon Musk said he’s no longer willing to provide the communications for free, the White House press secretary has said. During a briefing on Friday, Karine Jean-Pierre was asked if the Biden administration had considered Musk’s request for the Pentagon to foot the bill for satellite internet communications in Ukraine. “Look, we understand the importance of these capabilities to ensure stable communications for Ukraine’s forces in particular,” Jean-Pierre responded. Starlink, operated by Musk’s SpaceX company, has become the main communication tool for Ukraine’s forces since the start of the conflict with Russia.

According to the spokeswoman, the Pentagon is “working with allies and partners to look at all options on how best to support those needs identified by Ukraine specifically.” Further questions on the matter should be referred to the Department of Defense, she added. Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh confirmed on Friday that “the department has been in communication with SpaceX regarding Starlink,” but declined to expand on the nature of those contacts. The DoD understands the “fragility” of satellite communications and their importance for Ukraine “not just on the battlefield, but within the country itself,” Singh said. On Thursday CNN published a letter, which it said SpaceX had sent to the Pentagon in September, demanding that it cover the cost of operating the system in Ukraine. The company is no longer “in a position to further donate terminals to Ukraine, or fund the existing terminals for an indefinite period of time,” the document read.

Musk reacted to the report by pointing out that his “competitors in space launch and communications,” Lockheed Martin and Boeing, had jointly received over $60 billion in defense contracts in 2021 alone. The entrepreneur explained in a series of tweets how keeping up “warfront” communications was much more difficult and expensive. He said his aerospace company was allegedly forced to divert “massive resources” and was “burning” around $20 million per month on safeguarding the services from cyberattacks and jamming. “Russia is actively trying to kill Starlink,” Musk claimed, warning that it could well succeed in its efforts. “Starlink is the primary communications system of the Ukrainian army on the war front. If anyone else wants this job, please be my guest,” he wrote.

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“..the cost of the internet service in Ukraine, which could amount up to $ 400 million over the next year..”

Musk Makes U-turn On Starlink Service For Ukraine (RT)

The SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has made an abrupt U-turn on his decision to stop funding the operation of the Starlink satellite communication service in Ukraine, where it has been actively used by the Ukrainian troops. Earlier, SpaceX reportedly asked the Pentagon to cover the cost of the internet service in Ukraine, which could amount up to $ 400 million over the next year. “We’ll just keep funding Ukraine government for free,” Musk wrote in a tweet on Saturday, adding that SpaceX would do it “even though Starlink is still losing money and other companies are getting billions of taxpayer dollars.” Earlier, the SpaceX CEO pointed to the fact that his “competitors in space launch and communications,” Lockheed Martin and Boeing, had jointly received over $60 billion in defense contracts in 2021 alone.

The entrepreneur also complained in a series of tweets that keeping up “warfront” communications was difficult and expensive. He also stated that Russia was “actively trying to kill Starlink,” forcing the US company to spend some $20 million per month on safeguarding the services from cyberattacks and jamming. On Thursday, CNN obtained a letter, where Musk supposedly informed the Pentagon his company was “not in a position to further donate terminals to Ukraine, or fund the existing terminals for an indefinite period of time.” SpaceX has donated around 20,000 Starlink satellite units to Ukraine since the beginning of the conflict in late February, providing internet connection and military coordination in chaotic battlegrounds that would otherwise be cut off from the web.

Kiev then praised the terminals as an “essential part of critical infrastructure” but continued to urge SpaceX to send thousands of additional terminals. Musk previously stated that SpaceX would have spent more than $100 million providing Starlink services to Ukraine by the end of the year. At the same time, the company reportedly admitted that most units it had sent to Ukraine were partially or fully funded by the American, British and Polish governments. SpaceX also recently came under fire over alleged Starlink outages across some regions of Ukraine, which some Ukrainian soldiers described as “catastrophic” loss of communications, according to Financial Times.

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“The website has published personal details – names, addresses, photos, social media pages – of children, the youngest of whom is not even 10 years old..”

Elon Musk Discovers Ukrainian ‘Kill List’ (RT)

Elon Musk has expressed concerns over a controversial website that lists supposed enemies of Kiev, amid claims that his own name briefly appeared on Mirotvorets following his threats to cut funding for Starlink satellite internet services actively used by the Ukrainian troops. “Is this list real? What’s the URL?” the SpaceX CEO tweeted in response to independent journalist Eva Karene Bartlett, who on Friday shared a viral screenshot that claims to show his persona added to the notorious database. “I’ve been speaking and writing about this list for years, after being placed on it in 2019, but now that Musk is on it, after Roger Waters and others, perhaps the ‘peacemaker’ list might itself be killed…,” Bartlett wrote.

Elon Musk’s name was not on the list as of Saturday, and it remains unclear whether it indeed briefly appeared on Mirotvorets. Some reports alleged his profile was swiftly scrubbed from the database, while Ukrainian activists claimed the picture was fake and called it a Russian provocation. Many of Musk’s followers were surprised to find out that he’d never heard of Mirotvorets before, and bombarded him with examples of prominent public figures on the database, some already marked “liquidated.” Musk admitted it was “concerning,” after checking with Wikipedia that such a list does indeed exist, and was allowed to stay online since 2014. Mirotvorets, or “Peacemaker,” is a supposedly independent database of individuals whom anonymous moderators consider to be threats to Ukrainian national security.

The site denies being a kill list; rather, it claims to be a source of information for law-enforcement agencies and “special services” about pro-Russian terrorists, separatists and war criminals, among others. It allegedly has links to Ukraine’s Interior Ministry. The Mirotvorets project gained some notoriety in 2015, when writer and historian Oles Buzina and politician Oleg Kalashnikov were assassinated in Ukraine after their profiles appeared on the website. In 2016, EU officials and journalist groups condemned Mirotvorets for leaking data on more than 4,000 members of the media. Human rights activists have discovered that the website features the personal details of 327 children, prompting the Russian authorities to share their concerns over this “huge injustice” with UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. The website has published personal details – names, addresses, photos, social media pages – of children, the youngest of whom is not even 10 years old yet, according to the head of the Foundation for the Fight against Repressions.

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“..American and Ukrainian politicians—along with their loyal supporters—are not actually interested in real support for the Ukrainian people. What they want is compliance and consensus for their foreign policy endeavors.”

The Ideological Tyranny of Liberal Interventionism (Ghorayeb)

Since the outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian War this year, celebrities and public figures have been unanimous in their moral support for Ukraine. Some, like Telsa CEO Elon Musk, have gone further than words, lending significant material support to the cause. His spacecraft company, SpaceX, paid $80 million to provide Ukraine with the services of Starlink, which, among other things, enables Ukrainian troops to operate drones and communicate with each other. Musk has explicitly declared himself “pro-Ukraine.” A normal person would therefore view Musk, a self-professed centrist, as supporting an ally of the American government against the ravages of war.

However, Musk’s material and moral contributions mattered little when he proposed a peace plan outside the bounds of the liberal internationalist consensus. Russia, Musk tweeted, should be allowed to keep Crimea, and Ukraine should end its bit to join NATO and adopt a neutral status. Musk’s diplomatic musings swiftly drew the ire of the Ukrainian government and its supporters. It also attracted resentful remarks from his own government. Senator Lindsey Graham went on an angry rant against Musk that culminated in a call to cut electric vehicle tax credits, which he mistakenly thought benefitted Tesla. Elon’s car buyers haven’t qualified for a tax credit since 2018.

One may wonder why there is such intense outrage against Musk or why expressing an anti-war opinion is akin to providing support for Putin. Why is it that one tweet with a peace proposal has become a more powerful expression of Musk’s position than $80 million worth of material aid to Ukraine and numerous declarations of support? The reason is that American and Ukrainian politicians—along with their loyal supporters—are not actually interested in real support for the Ukrainian people. What they want is compliance and consensus for their foreign policy endeavors. Media outlets have noticeably censored and attempted to silence opinions that deviate from a consensus that stops short of extravagant government spending on weapons for Ukraine and unwavering admiration for Zelensky.

[..] Ideally, there would be a moral consensus against killing innocent people with room for civil political debate about the root causes of these wars, how we can de-escalate or end ongoing violence, and how to prevent them in the future. One could have contested Musk’s proposal with a counterargument about whether it is the optimal way of reaching what most people agree is wrong: killing innocent people. But this would only be possible if everyone involved in the discourse was concerned with achieving the end of the war and pursuing truth. However, the U.S. foreign policy elite—who have nakedly pursued their interests through intervention in the region before—and Ukraine’s corrupt president do not show an interest in either.

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No, electric cars won’t solve the problem..

European Auto Industry In Trouble – S&P (RT)

With energy prices in EU skyrocketing, a harsh winter could shut down production in parts of the automotive sector, S&P Global Mobility reported this week. According to a report titled “Winter is Coming,” the “combined black swan events” of the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine have stretched automotive supply lines, especially with regard to semiconductors. As a result, the industry “may face extensive pressure” from energy costs in the coming months. Starting in the fourth quarter of 2022 through 2023, quarterly production from Europe-based auto manufacturing plants is forecast to be between 4 and 4.5-million-units. However, “with potential utility restrictions,” that output could fall to as low as 2.75 million units per quarter, the report says.

The researcher projected significant supply chain disruptions from November through spring, citing mandatory energy rationing for the region’s auto producers and suppliers. “For an industry already struggling with low inventories of vehicles in dealer showrooms, an additional crisis could be incapacitating on a global scale,” it said. Edwin Pope, S&P Global Mobility principal analyst for materials and lightweighting, pointed out that “If you look through the supply chain – particularly where there’s any metallic structure forming through pressing, welding or extrusion – there’s a tremendous amount of energy involved.

“Total energy usage in these companies could be up to one-and-a-half times what we’re seeing in vehicle assembly today. Anecdotally, we’re hearing that some of this manufacturing capacity is becoming so uneconomic that companies are simply shutting up shop.” He also told Reuters that S&P Global Mobility’s analysis was conducted before the sabotage on the Russian Nord Stream gas pipelines late last month. “Events like that will inevitably shift the scales towards the lower end of what we have predicted, especially in terms of how long it takes to repair things of this nature,” Pope warned.

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Google translate.

“They only wanted to continue if the State imposed a production obligation on them, took over the liability and thus also the risk of prosecution.”

How 4,000 People From Groningen Managed To Turn Off The Gas Tap (NOS)

Only the threat of a criminal case would force oil companies Shell and Exxon to extract less gas in Groningen after the severe earthquake in 2012. A retired criminal court advised action group Groninger Soil Movement (GBB) to use heavy artillery. Public hearings by the Groningen parliamentary committee of inquiry for natural gas extraction have shown in recent weeks how great the impact of that advice has been. The committee closed those hearings yesterday. The GBB first filed a report on behalf of 4000 members in vain: the Public Prosecution Service saw no reason to prosecute NAM. The people of Groningen then asked the court in Arnhem to force the Public Prosecution Service to conduct such a criminal investigation.

In April 2017, the court ruled in their favor. The Public Prosecution Service should investigate whether gas extraction company NAM, a subsidiary of Shell and Exxon, has endangered Groningers. The case is still pending and has cost the GBB two tons in lawyers’ fees, but the effect was maximum. Ben van Beurden, the CEO of Shell, calls that criminal case a “game changer”. His company was suddenly accused of endangering people’s lives by extracting gas. His employees could be personally prosecuted for this. Shell and Exxon informed the Ministry of Economic Affairs that they wanted to stop gas production in Groningen. They only wanted to continue if the State imposed a production obligation on them, took over the liability and thus also the risk of prosecution.

Every other gas field in the world would be closed if it turns out that winning is not safe, both Rolf de Jong of Exxon and Van Beurden of Shell said. But they also realized that it was impossible to stop because Dutch households, hospitals and much industry depend on Groningen gas. It was one of the most startling issues to surface in the public hearings. Until then, the image was that former Minister Wiebes of Economic Affairs had single-handedly decided in 2018 to end gas extraction in Groningen in 2030. That was inescapable, he said, because the State Supervision of Mines then found that gas extraction might have to stop altogether to limit the risk of even more earthquakes. Moreover, the reinforcement operation, the reinforcement of unsafe houses, was completely out of control.

Many more houses had to be reinforced than the ministry wanted and, according to gas extraction company NAM, was necessary. Furthermore, it appeared from the interrogations that the cabinet was not in a hurry with the request of the oil companies. They feared that Shell and Exxon wanted to take the opportunity to also change the historic agreements on profit sharing. The two multinationals and the State divide the gas revenues, with the largest part of the profit (90 percent) going to the State. These are agreements that were made when gas extraction started in the early 1960s.

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“..appreciated 22% against the Japanese yen, 13% against the euro and 6% against emerging market currencies since the start of this year..”

Strong US Dollar Is A Headache – IMF (RT)

As countries around the world struggle to bring down soaring inflation, the weakening of their currencies relative to the US dollar has made that fight even harder, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has said. In a report published on Friday, the IMF elaborated how countries should respond to a strong dollar. It highlighted that the greenback is at its highest level since 2000, having appreciated 22% against the Japanese yen, 13% against the euro and 6% against emerging market currencies since the start of this year. “Such a sharp strengthening of the dollar in a matter of months has sizable macroeconomic implications for almost all countries, given the dominance of the dollar in international trade and finance,” the lender wrote.

It further indicated that while the US share in world merchandise exports has declined from 12% to 8% since 2000, the dollar’s share in world exports has held at around 40%. “On average, the estimated pass-through of a 10 percent dollar appreciation into inflation is 1 percent. Such pressures are especially acute in emerging markets, reflecting their higher import dependency and greater share of dollar-invoiced imports compared with advanced economies.” According to the report, approximately half of all cross-border loans and international debt securities are denominated in US dollars. While emerging market governments have made progress in issuing debt in their own currency, their private corporate sectors have high levels of dollar-denominated debt.

“As world interest rates rise, financial conditions have tightened considerably for many countries. A stronger dollar only compounds these pressures, especially for some emerging market and many low-income countries that are already at a high risk of debt distress,” the IMF said. The report suggested that the appropriate policy response is to allow the exchange rate to adjust, while using monetary policy to keep inflation close to its target. “The higher price of imported goods will help bring about the necessary adjustment to the fundamental shocks as it reduces imports, which in turn helps with reducing the buildup of external debt. Fiscal policy should be used to support the most vulnerable without jeopardizing inflation goals,” it said.

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“.. transactions in foreign currencies incur conversion costs, and when they are in US dollars, “the conversion fee is doubled..”

Central Bank of G20 Host Indonesia Rails Against US Dollar (RT)

Indonesia’s central bank has spoken out against the use of the US dollar in export-import transactions, and called for a switch to local currencies in international payments to reduce dependence on the greenback, news portal Tempo.co reported on Friday. Most of Indonesia’s international trade transactions are conducted in foreign currencies, predominantly the dollar, according to Nugroho Joko Prastowo, head of Bank Indonesia’s Solo Representative Office, as cited by local media. “90% of export-import settlements are in US dollars, when in fact the value of Indonesia’s direct exports to the US is only 10%, and the value of US imports is only 5%,” the official told journalists after opening a session on ‘Utilizing Local Currency Settlement (LCS) to Increase Export-Import Efficiency of the Greater Solo Region’.


He said transactions in foreign currencies incur conversion costs, and when they are in US dollars, “the conversion fee is doubled,” suggesting that a system of bilateral payments in local currency could solve the problem. The official said four countries have agreed to utilize LCS with Indonesia so far, namely China, Japan, Thailand and Malaysia. “Singapore has been plotted, although it has not been fully implemented, and soon the Philippines. Currently, the implementation of LCS with Saudi Arabia is also being explored,” he said. Indonesia will be hosting the G20 international forum, bringing together 19 countries and the European Union, on November 15-16 on the island of Bali. Indonesia currently holds the presidency of the group of leading economies.

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‘small fortresses with high walls’

Will Beijing Join With Russia vs The West Or Keep Its Powder Dry? (Hvatkov)

The 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, the pinnacle event in the country’s political life and held only every five years, kicks off in Beijing on October 16. Experts will be tuning in to pick up any signals related not only to the political standing and prospects of China’s leader Xi Jinping, who is likely to run for a third term, but also to the way the country is planning to build its relations with the US and Russia in the future. A new Mao – a new revolution? Western speculation believes that the event could signify a triumph for Xi as he will most likely remain at the helm of the party for a third term. Should that happen, it would go against the tradition which has formed in Chinese politics over the last 30 years. Up to now, the reins of power in the country were handed over to a new generation of leaders at the end of the second term. Thus, such a move would herald a new era in the history of modern China. Starting from 2018, it has become increasingly clear that Xi is going to defy this tradition. That year, amendments were made to the Chinese Constitution lifting the two-term limit on the presidency.

[..] Experts doubt that Beijing will abandon its policy of prudence and caution, and there are a number of reasons for that. “Much of what Vladimir Putin said in his speech at the accession ceremony is in line with China’s own attitudes. But when China talks about similar matters, the wording is often much broader and generally ambiguous. Naturally, Beijing is aware that its confrontation with the West is getting more intense. However, at the level of rhetoric, China tries to avoid being as explicit when expressing its position. Moscow and Beijing have similar viewpoints in that both believe the policies of the West are flawed, as they create artificial barriers to global trade, financial and economic ties and investment opportunities,” Lomanov said.

“China also criticizes the West for building ‘small fortresses with high walls’, referring to blocs like NATO and AUKUS, exclusive alliances designed to unite Western countries and those loyal to them, effectively cutting off everyone else. “China has always stressed the need to reform the existing system of global governance, as it is deeply unfair to developing countries. Despite all its leaps in economic development, China considers itself both a socialist country and the world’s leading developing nation. Therefore, at a practical level, the positions of Russia and China are indeed very close,” the expert from IMEMO RAS believes.

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“anyone who thinks NATO will protect us is wrong.”

Orban Warns Of ‘Protracted War’ (RT)

Prime Minister Viktor Orban said that Hungary needs an army “capable of striking and ensuring peace” in case the continent plunges into chaos over the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and the European Union’s failed policies towards Russia.“We cannot, like ostriches, bury our heads in the sand. We must accept the reality: if this continues, the economy of the continent will collapse, people will be in danger, and it seems that we must prepare for a protracted war,” Orban said on Saturday in Budapest, at a swearing-in ceremony of military volunteers. The Hungarian leader noted that “there are nations that have already begun making preparations and we can’t fall behind in this either,” as cited by the Budapest Times. “In times of war, we need an army capable of striking and capable of ensuring peace!” he told a group of some 250 young recruits, praising them as the “excellence of our nation.”


He added that Hungary needs “a few more” such battalions and announced new recruitment campaigns to be launched from December. Hungary, which is heavily dependent on Russian energy, has maintained a relatively neutral stance during the conflict in Ukraine, condemning the use of force by Moscow, but refusing to supply weapons to Kiev. Orban has frequently criticized the EU’s sanctions on Russia, calling them counterproductive. Over the past months, he has repeatedly called for “the failed policy of Brussels” to be changed, noting that the sanctions “didn’t fulfill the hopes that were pinned on them,” while Europe is “slowly bleeding.” Back in March, Orban said that he felt he couldn’t count on the US-led military bloc when it comes to real action concerning the country’s security, saying “anyone who thinks NATO will protect us is wrong.”

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Long overview.

Hiding Hunter’s Laptop (Hanson)

The definitive book on Cold War era information warfare from our Communist foes is Dezinformatsia: Active Measures in Soviet Strategy. In that book, disinformation is defined as “false, incomplete, or misleading information that is passed, fed, or confirmed to a targeted individual, group, or country.” The American public was subjected to a campaign right out of the Soviet playbook designed to obfuscate the Biden family corruption. It was concocted and deployed by a loosely connected conspiracy of the media, current and former government officials, the Biden campaign, and the social media tech companies. As soon as the story broke October 19, 2020 virtually every major and subsidiary media outlet reported on it with negative sentiment using one of two major themes:

First they argued that it was stolen. The immediate response was to deny the provenance of the laptop which was that Hunter Biden had abandoned it at a repair shop. They began questioning that story and throwing out the completely unfounded speculation that it may be stolen. This smear hit directly at John Paul Mac Isaac, the owner of the repair shop. He provided the contents of the laptop first to law enforcement and when they took no action, to Rudy Giuliani who eventually gave it to the New York Post. The bulk of the media accounts discussing the story in the next 24 hours included a reference to the “stolen” theme.

The second argument offered was that the laptop was not verified. This was the most defensible part of the smoke screen. Most of the media outlets did not have the hard drive so they could say they had not verified it themselves. However, the New York Post showed numerous items in their reporting that would lead any reasonable person to understand the laptop most likely belonged to Hunter Biden. During the taping of an interview with President Trump soon after the story broke, Lesley Stahl of “60 Minutes” ran with this narrative. Stahl denied that the Delaware computer suspected of belonging to Hunter Biden’s was even a story at all after claiming it has been “investigated and discredited.”

“It can’t be verified,” Stahl said of the laptop. “It can’t be verified.” “What can’t be verified?” Trump said. “The laptop!” It had been investigated, but unlike Stahl’s false claim to the contrary the laptop was not discredited. All of the investigations and verification measures showed the same thing: This was Hunter’s laptop, the information was his and it was devastating. One of the truly amazing things is the longevity of the media’s willingness to continue to ignore and suppress this story. It was not until March of 2022 that the New York Times and Washington Post both admitted the long-known fact that Hunter’s laptop was Hunter’s laptop.

Their admissions were not because of some ethical epiphany. They were merely part of a new aspect of the disinformation campaign about the likely charges coming from the ongoing investigation into Biden family corruption. They are based on the disinformation tactic popularized by John Ehrlichman, an aide to President Richard Nixon during Watergate. It’s called the modified limited hangout. In other words, mixing partial admissions with additional misinformation in order to confuse people.

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1000 times. The fact checks look like pretzels.

Yes, They Claimed The Vaccines Would Prevent Transmission (Chung)

No, you’re not crazy. Yes, they claimed the vaccines would prevent transmission. One of the most bizarre lies being told this week in response to Pfizer executive Janine Small’s testimony to EU Parliament is that, actually, the Covid vaccines were never supposed to stop the spread of the virus. Asked by Dutch MEP Rob Roos whether the company had tested its vaccine on “stopping the transmission of the virus” before it rolled out globally, Ms Small said “no” because “we had to really move at the speed of science to really understand what is taking place in the market”. “And from that point of view we had to do everything at risk,” she said. In a viral Twitter video which has now been viewed more than 12 million times, Mr Roos described the response as “scandalous”, arguing “millions of people worldwide felt compelled to get vaccinated because of the myth that ‘you do it for others’”.

Mr Roos said the admission removed the entire basis for vaccine mandates and passports which “led to massive institutional discrimination as people lost access to essential parts of society”. “I find this to be shocking, even criminal,” he said. Of course, fact checkers were not happy. This is not the bombshell it is being presented as, they argue, because it was public knowledge that the primary outcome measured in Pfizer’s clinical trials was reducing risk of disease, but not transmission. Moreover, as the Therapeutic Goods Administration stressed, “transmission effects” are “not an approved indication of any Covid-19 vaccine” currently available in Australia. In Australia, politicians and health officials held millions of people hostage for months, lecturing and threatening them to get vaccinated to regain their “freedoms”.


The vaccines were the “way out” of the pandemic, they were not to just to protect ourselves but to “protect others”, they would “stop the spread”, and not getting vaccinated was “selfish”. Vaccine passports, the “vaccinated economy”, were necessary so people who “did the right thing” would feel “safe” knowing they weren’t “mixing” with the unvaccinated, who were a “risk to the community”. By late 2021 and early 2022, as Omicron became dominant and it was clear vaccinated people were still catching and spreading the virus, the messaging changed. “Stopping the spread? What are you talking about? It’s about reducing hospitalisation and death. We have always been at war with hospitalisation and death.”

Read more …

Malone takes a turn away from vaccines.

Twitter is a Weapon, not a Business (Robert Malone)

The research and consulting firm “Edify” has recently disclosed results from a client-driven research project designed to analyze the relationships between the law firm of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati (WSGR), Twitter, Biden White House, Obama White House, James Baker, Alexander Macgillivray, Vijaya Gadde, and Anthony Fauci’s daughter, Alison Fauci, who is an engineer at Twitter. The first two of these analyses have been published here and here, and at least one more is anticipated in the near future. The findings clearly document the deep web of relationships tying together WSGR, Twitter, the censorship of President Trump, President Barack Obama, President Joe Biden and the Office of Science and Technology Policy and Google. All of these run through Alexander Macgillivray. Macgillivray currently serves the Biden White House OSTP (Office of Science and Technology Policy) as the Principal Deputy U.S. CTO (Chief Technology Officer).

What Edify documents is the web of relationships which have guided the censorship practices of the US Government-Technology/Social media alliance. As I read through the first of the two analyses, titled “EDIFY: CRITICAL NEXUS: TWITTER, WSGR, MACGILLIVRAY & WHITE HOUSE” (September 15, 2022), my interest was piqued by the documentation of the deep connections between Twitter, Biden, Obama, and the central role of Twitter as a tool for information and psychological warfare. Precisely the hot button issue that I discussed on the Joe Rogan Experience when I used those three words “Mass Formation Psychosis,” which triggered such a visceral reaction from the Silicon Valley technology giants, the Trusted News Initiative, and Peter Breggin.

Based on relationship mapping, Edify draws the following conclusions: “Twitter is the central node and the keystone to understanding. Twitter’s inherent value to the elites, political class and federal apparatus writ large is found in its ability to engage in perception management, which is a technical term more commonly referred to as “psyops” or “psychological warfare”. Twitter engages in perception management in its capacity to establish and manipulate reality by means of actively determining and shaping the content on its platform. Twitter consumers can receive filtered content or are prevented from receiving, seeing or having the ability to publish content altogether.

The de facto censorship occurs primarily along the lines of determining and enforcing community standards, guidelines and rules for user engagement. The evidence is clear that the decisions here appear to fall along clearly identifiable political lines resembling two-tier justice. Content determination, algorithmic manipulation and politically motivated censorship of off-reservation messaging and political opposition are all evidenced examples of how Twitter engages in perception management or appears to do so. Two evidenced domains of Twitter’s engagement in perception management include censoring content relative to COVID-19 and the Hunter Biden Laptop story.” [..] The quote above is just the beginning of the analytical conclusions, which include this gem:

“Alison Fauci is a Twitter software engineer who by title, would possess the technical capabilities and access to function as outlined in the testimony. Beyond Alison Fauci’s functionality as a conduit or intermediary for Dr. Anthony Fauci and his principals at the NIH/NIAID and up, Alison Fauci is by title technically positioned to potentially extract private Twitter user data on designated people including political opposition. Any such extracted data could be fed back upstream to the Obama, Biden cartel et al. It’s also further evidence of a distinct pattern of nepotism threading through all of these matters where spouses and children play critical roles determined by their placement into the broader construct. Alison Fauci was positioned to be a possible conduit of information in an intermediary fashion relative to the Anthony Fauci cohort and its preferences for Twitter’s censorship policies for reliable COVID content damaging to the COVID construct of enterprise fraud and that official narrative.”

Read more …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HEART

 

 

Cater snake

 

 


The Alpine Ibex’s preferred habitat is the rocky region along the snow line above alpine forests, where it occupies steep, rough terrain at elevations of 1,800 to 3,300 metres

 

 

Magician
https://twitter.com/i/status/1581272429527179265

 

 


A tiger’s tongue is so coarse, it can lick flesh to the bone. Photo: Tony Zerna

 

 

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Dec 212021
 
 December 21, 2021  Posted by at 12:00 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  51 Responses »


Emil Nolde Zwei Schwimmer1914

 

 

This letter is from longtime Automatic Earth reader and commenter “Huskynut” in New Zealand, written for the people in his address book. It may be good therapy for everyone to put all their Covid thoughts and frustrations in writing.

 

 

Huskynut:

Hi,

I’ve never done an open letter before – never had something I felt so passionately about as the precipice on which NZ is currently balanced. We’re way beyond any realm of “adults sharing political opinions” and a long way into “a cult just took my country”. I need to send this, yet I fear it will miss the mark, in which case I will have wasted my last shot.

My parents my schooling and several mentors along the way instilled in me a strong moral compass: one that hasn’t changed over time. As a human being I’ve fallen short of the directions of that compass many times, and sometimes even wilfully ignored it, but never was it wrong in pointing due moral North. I thank everyone who has contributed to that fundamental grounding in morality.

My experience has been that genuine morality exists outside of thought and rationality. The urging of our conscience is experienced subjectively and with immediacy, though we may subsequently analyse and understand it. I can dissect and understand why it is objectively wrong to segregate kiwis into Haves and Have Nots on the basis of their vax status, but I don’t have to analyse it to feel and know it’s wrong. It’s wrong simply and immediately because it’s wrong – the justification follows later.

Ours wasn’t a particularly virtuous or political family, but I remember when for a time we took inmates from the local Linton Prison home on day parole to help them adjust to outside life. On seeing my Dad doing the dishes one night, one mentioned he’d never seen a man do the dishes before.

I remember when we came very close to fostering a 14yo girl from a poor start – presumably to also help address the one-sided gender balance of five males to one females – but lost out on the basis of my mother’s Catholic aversion to assisting her to obtain contraception. I remember when the Springbok rugby tour drove a wedge through NZ society how we discussed the evils of the South Africa apartheid regime.

Those and many similar events – from which I benefited but can take no credit – were the grounding and calibration of my moral compass, which endures. I wish I could say the same for the moral compass of our collective society, which points nowhere and everywhere simultaneously. In 2021 NZ, “Don’t discriminate” has become “Must discriminate”. “Be courageous” has become “shit bricks, hide and await further instruction from the state”. “Think for yourself” has become “STFU and Obey”.

 

In my youth and till recent times, it was well understood from basic first principles that it was inimical in a democracy for people’s movements to be tracked. Now with “track and trace” I watch people queuing to do it voluntarily with nary a thought or a care. It used to be that “looking someone in the eye”, or more properly said their the face was the standard to assess their truthfulness. Now covering the face in social situations is considered “normal”, and indeed mandatory.

Some anecdotes:
– A local couple I know has just placed their house on the market. Both are now unemployed due to jab mandates and they can’t pay their mortgage. Logically and intellectually, that was a foregone conclusion of introducing mandates. Now I know first hand real people, good people, that it is happening to. In 2022 it’s entirely possibly it could happen to me. My home, that I fought so hard to buy and have put much blood, sweat and tears into rehabilitating could become another small casualty on my country’s war on reason and truth.

–  My neighbour’s wife suffered a botched neck operation and hasn’t worked for six months. The surgeon who could have remedied it is now unavailable. He’s been promoted to brain surgeon at Wellington hospital – the previous surgeon was forced out for being unjabbed. Scarce, highly-skilled expertise, thrown on the bonfire of vanity that is our current jabbing crusade.

Nothing about those scenarios is remotely rational, normal or proportionate. Two years ago I would’ve sworn it could not happen in the country of my birth. Except, even back then, I felt it coming. I don’t know how or why – perhaps it was having a lot of time on my hands during the initial lockdowns, when I was out of work and couldn’t buy building materials. But I read, extensively and widely, and nothing I read remotely made sense, even in those early days.

The modelling was crude and implausible, and built on that of Neil Ferguson of the UK, who had a historical record of gross exaggeration. The NZ government cabinet papers were junk – and despite my tendency to hyperbole – in this case I mean it literally and accurately – they were junk: simply not fit for the purpose of decision-making on what was to impact the entire population’s liberties, livelihoods and liability (ie government debt).

 

When all this is done, Jacinda will leave NZ (she can scarcely remain) and ascend to a grossly overpaid job at the UN, for demonstrating her fealty to the globalist system. Those whose lives she is currently wrecking will not be so fortunate. That she was elected to represent and serve the NZ public will matter not a jot, as politicians increasingly identify with their international cohort ahead of their own country.

That is the tragedy of modern politics, sadly, and no amount of denial or “reserved judgement” will change it. Politicians change the “facts on the ground” and move on, whilst the horn-swaggled majority are passively “waiting to see” how it all turns out. Thus was history ever written, and those who pretend to study it whilst remaining silent on the need for urgent action at the junctures and pivots are the very worst of journalists liars.

I believe I grok what it might have felt like to be an awake person in 1930’s Germany. Whilst all around people were happily supporting the Nazi party, swept up in the material benefits of cheap cars, new autobahns, workers holidays, and effusions of national unity and emotion. Yet some few were awake and cognisant of where the demonisation and scapegoating of minorities was heading. And those people were, of course, unheeded and marginalised themselves.. voices drowned in the propaganda of the day.

Mandating via authority that individuals must receive an injection is – objectively – little different than medical rape. We can clutch our pearls and equivocate over the magnitude of the relative bodily invasions (and my impertinence in using the term), but the principle of the right to bodily integrity is fundamental. Post WW2, the victors were so appalled by Nazi medical experiments  they enshrined that abhorrence in the Nuremberg Code.

 

No-one. Should ever. Be coerced into a medical treatment against their free will. The only time that code gets a mention these days is when the press are mocking a protester who naively carried a sign drawing attention to it. In the new world, nothing even exists until the authorities acknowledge it exists.

Truly the emperor not only has no clothes, but he’s mounting a child in the public square, whist the public sip their lattes and do their crosswords, lest their gaze fall upon the sight before them, and conscience compel them to utter the feeblest of peeps. This is the NZ of 2021, and – forgive me this indiscretion – I for one am fucking appalled.

This tyranny, this idiocy, this moral wasteland, will continue for precisely as long as it’s politically tenable – so long as politicians face no discernible backlash of opinion. That means every equivocating fence-sitter isn’t – as they might imagine – a passive observer. Rather, they’re an active enabler in the same way that passive German citizens in the 1930s enabled the full fruition and flowering of the Nazi regime.

Freedom to make one’s own choices around the benefits and risks of being jabbed is the only rational and moral basis for anyone – ever – to decide on a medical treatment, except in most genuinely extraordinary circumstances, for which Covid falls at least an order of magnitude shy of achieving. We need to abandon the virtue-signalling theatrics of “saving granny” or “saving the medical system from overwhelm” or whatever manipulative coercion is next invented. Recite after me these simple and readily-verifiable medical facts:

A jab (or two, three or twenty) does not stop someone contracting Covid
A jab does not prevent that person transmitting Covid
A jab temporarily lowers the risk of having severe symptoms from Covid FOR A FEW WEEKS ONLY

 

Oh, yeah, whilst the jab introduces significant risk of severe side effects. So much so that (in the US at least) the Covid jabs have in less than a year produced more reported side effects than all previous vaccines in total over the previous 30 years. In our munted reality, the marketing label on that one is: “Safe and Effective”.

There is no statistical correlation between countries with high vax uptakes and good covid outcomes. None. Not between countries, or within countries, where individual states are compared with others. If the damn jabs worked, that correlation should stick out like dog’s balls by now.

But those correlations don’t exist and so what has been published in their stead is a succession of ludicrously overbaked “models” prophesying doom, none of which have remotely approached reality, but all of which have stoked mindless fear and compliance. Goebbels would genuinely have bowed to the grotesque manipulators who carry this off. This chain of bullying has to stop:

– The bullying of business by Government – threatening them with hefty fines and turning them into arms-length petty enforcers, so that politicians do not have to front the public and face no direct backlash
– The bullying of staff and customers by business owners in “check your papers” petty tyranny. I need a vaccine pass to buy takeaway sushi now? Jesus Christ spare me..
– The bullying by families and friends of their counterparts in an urgent need to know their “status” as though that were the most normal thing in the world, when the right to medical privacy used to be a bedrock standard. Do you even remember those days?

 

It disgusts and appalls me that we’ve spent so many years uprooting and driving out the stain of pervasive bullying that was certainly a part of kiwi culture only for a cynical government to reboot the cycle and for a huge percentage of the country to actively participate or turn a blind eye. This jab-mania has become a religious fervour and a fresh batch of innocent witches is being set afire daily.

And yes, my choice of language contains hyperbole and vitriol. Yet it is not remotely an exaggeration. Whoever thinks this tyranny will all quietly disappear with time and patience is in for a horrible wakeup. Though, again, the lesson of history and psychology is that many – like the 1930s Germans – will employ every psychological strategy available to avoid facing the enormity of the reality surrounding and ahead of us.

Leaving the cult is painful, but you will become yourselves again. Or you can remain a servant to this Dear Leader, and the next, and the next. No tyrant in history has voluntarily relinquished power, and as mandates are extended and strengthened – as goalposts are now built on wheels to assist in relocating them – it’s blindingly obvious this will certainly not be the first autocracy to dismantle itself once the crisis de jour is over (hint: it will never be over).

Or, let’s take a moment to pull on that thread of “rationality” and see how long the garment hangs together. Once you’ve submitted to mandatory tracking and mandatory jabs, where exactly do you think you’ll draw the line and say “enough!”? Decades-old safety protocols were dropped to declare these jabs “safe and effective” – what happens when they drop those standards some more? Do they even need to test at all?

Can the next Fauci simply bless the coming vaccines like a Catholic priest with the host, and the faithful will line up for their next mandatory jab? Do we even need testing before we jab kids, or can we naively trust the Science knows what it’s doing? Once you’re comfortable with your movements being tracked 24 x 7, perhaps we can add your speech as well.

Are you OK if they mandate installation of an Alexa in your home to monitor what you say in private, for the good of everyone? It’d be really convenient. Should all government departments be allowed to share all your data with each other, because the more they know about you, the better the services they can deliver, right?

 

The specific scenarios don’t even matter – once you’ve surrendered your right to privacy and to bodily autonomy, you can give up any and all pretense to democracy. You don’t determine the State – the State determines you. And if you’re happy to accommodate and adjust rather than raising your voice now, the probability you’ll somehow grow a pair and decide to stand up somewhere later down the track is remote.

And if you don’t demand rights and freedoms for all – right now – before this toxic barrenness becomes firmly embedded and then built upon – then what? Is the current state of affairs “good enough” for the rest of your life? For your children?

Hence this plea to morality. To try and remind people of what they’ve forgotten – of the values they used to place stock in, and of the values that we as a country used to at least pretend we believed in.

The NZ of my (distorted, aging) memory used be a country with a good set of functioning moral compasses. There was some variation in the direction they pointed – one person’s North might’ve been another’s North East, but no-one’s pointed South. We pioneered the 40 hour work week and  women’s suffrage of the back of those collective moral compasses. Nobody needed a thesis, or a statement from an Expert to know that bullying was wrong, discrimination was wrong, exclusion was wrong.

As my neighbour observed yesterday, when we saw someone bullied, we didn’t always stand up to the bully, but we knew inside that was the right thing to do. So what’s changed? Now that people are been bullied all over and few are raising a voice, what gives? Is it simple cowardice? Because that can be remedied. A bunch of broken compasses cannot.

Or does cause lie in the Orwellian double-speak that permeates and underpins everything we’re told? We’re a “team of five million” until its time to throw a chunk of the team to the wolves. Nurses are “brave and on the frontlines” until they exercise their own medical choice to remain unjabbed, at which time they’re worthy of no reciprocal loyalty and can be summarily “let go”. Silence and compliance are virtues. Fear is truth.

 

I could go on, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned in the past months is that facts are little more than an inconvenience to Believers, whether they’re the Jehovah’s Witness at the front door, or the Covid Cult member. I could provide dozens of links to all manner of science, from epidemiological to psychological, all driving gaping holes in the mainstream narrative.

And then, like clockwork, I watch the person’s defense to cognitive dissonance kick in and there’s a rapid retreat into their cosy Beliefs, where the government is Kind, all manner of Science is Settled and Jabs are Highly Safe and Effective.

Been there, tried that.. and yeah, I’ve been kind of a dick about it some of the time. I thought the people I’ve known for years, and who I know to be good, decent, caring folk would want to hear facts that challenged what they’d been led to believe, and it was a shock to find they didn’t. It turns out that in the contest between fact and well-financed propaganda, the latter wins every time!

The government spin doctors and the “nudge units”, the carefully crafted and paced cycles of abuse, lockdowns and partial – conditional – release affect people far more than lone voices. You have to admire the government goons – they are good at the shit they do, and when every Western country on the planet is saying and practicing some variant of the same schtick, a vast number of people just zone out and lock step.

 

So – my challenge to you is this. Over the Xmas period, in conversation with people you encounter, say “What’s happening in NZ isn’t right- it has to stop”. If people – being freely and fully informed – want to get jabbed, then they should have ready access to jabbers. But bullying and coercing people to get jabbed by taking away their jobs, or access to social facilities needs to stop, and immediately.  

I’m not asking you to take up arms and storm the ramparts, just to find and exercise your voice. What the government is doing, they are doing in your name (and mine). Find your sense of outrage and shame that your government is dividing and crushing citizens of this country. They are doing it in your name, and ostensibly for your benefit. And if it is actually OK with you, then our moral compasses may have diverged sufficiently that we’re now heading in different directions.

I see two possible outcomes – either as a society we wake up with a helluva start to realise we’ve fallen asleep at the wheel. We pull over, get some rest, and make a firm mental note to start paying more attention in future. Or we stay asleep, and we take that Thelma and Louise ride off the precipice. It’s not yet too late, but there is not a lot of clear road left ahead either.

I get that was a bummer of a read for a XMas story. But what’s XMas even about if it’s not joining in union with the rest of our society.

I genuinely wish you all the best for the year ahead.

Love and peace,
Andrew

 

 

 

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Oct 132021
 
 October 13, 2021  Posted by at 5:22 pm Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,  24 Responses »


René Magritte Memory of a journey 1955

 

 

I thought that this, today, from our resident physician John Day in Texas deserves more attention than it gets in our Comments section. Because John is living, as we speak, the consequences of the vaccine mandates that are thrust upon doctors, nurses, pilots, etc.

You may be perfectly healthy, you may have dedicated yourself to your job, and the people you serve, for decades, but if you’re hesitant, based on your experience over all that time, about being injected with a substance that was never properly researched (can we agree on that at least?), you are now an Untermensch.

I’m just thinking: how many lives could John, and 1000s of medical professionals like him worldwide, have saved and/or made lesss stressful? How far gone must you be when you start firing the people who literally save lives, in the middle of a pandemic? What’s wrong with you?

When the only alternative you have is leaky so-called vaccines that have been proven to harm and kill many 1000s of people, and you have shunned any and all prophylactics and early treatment options? But instead you fire doctors who have made it their mission to save lives for decades?

Make it make sense to me. I dare you.

 

 

John Day MD: Monday night I was heartened to hear that Texas Governor, Greg Abbott had issued an executive order forbidding any entity within Texas from having a COVID-vaccine mandate. I did not see this as being against private businesses deciding things, but as being supporting of individual humans having the right to make their own, personal medical decisions, with somewhat less coercion. This does go against existing federal policies to withhold payment from Nursing homes and medical facilities that do not enforce COVID-vaccine mandates. It seems that the federal government can choose to withhold such payments, which will kill those businesses if they don’t comply.

That category includes the public health clinic, for which I work until the end of the month. The board decided to declare a vaccine mandate around the time that the nursing home vaccine mandate was announced by the feds. The writing was on the wall, but the official position is that it was to protect people. It elicits less cognitive dissonance to tell oneself that one is acting virtuously, rather than being coerced. That comfortable position is now superficially challenged by Governor Abbott. His executive order is now a thing, not an expected-soon thing. It is ahead of the proposed OSHA recommendations in time.

One of the fundamental assumptions in the OSHA draft is that mass vaccination is the best protection against COVID. What if it increasingly appears to be worse-than-nothing after about 6 months, and offsetting-penalties before that? People are clearly more susceptible to catching COVID in the 13 days immediately following vaccination, and the Public Health England data shows that the vaccinated are more prone to catching COVID (negative protection rate) after about 6 months, now in all ages above 30.

I am heartened by Governor Abbott’s order because it is an action against tyranny, an action in support of individual freedom and personal bodily autonomy, medical autonomy. It comes at a time when the primacy of vaccination-only policy is openly decaying, because everybody can see that they don’t work very well. Not everybody does see that, but it’s apparent to many people who are not even really scrutinizing things.

Tyranny craves absolute control of each person, each action, and increasingly, of each thought and perception, which might lead to actions. Tyranny must control all circumstances, so that no actor can choose non-compliance. Using artificial intelligence to shape “consensus” on social media, through advancing posts that fit the narrative, retarding or deleting posts that do not support, or contest the narrative, and salting in some snide “bot” attacks to publicly demean any new post that challenges the narrative. 2-3 of those makes people afraid to comment in favor, but the negatives have to be there right away. That’s do-able…

 

Freedom of choice requires groceries, water, shelter, food, fuel and companions. Tyrant-types need to own all of that. They need to be able to keep the essentials of life away from dissidents. People need to remain completely focused upon compliance, in order to avoid insecurity. The specter of insecurity must be always present to remind people to not miss a payment, or a paycheck. I have long wondered how there might ever be a societal shift away from the micro-control which has come to be so pervasive in my world these days. We seem to be seeing it in the squeezing-too-hard-too-fast edicts coming from the tyrants and petit-tyrants as they experience insecurity themselves.

What is happening, as a result of this fast and tight squeeze is a separation out of people who are more independent of thought and action, who have also kept open some options for themselves, and who are at least suspicious of this power grab over their bodies. Many people who solve difficult problems in human society might be in this class. Many who already got COVID vaccines, especially early-adopters, can still have deep misgivings about what they now see happening, the totalitarianism of vaccination in places like Australia. Why? It does not make sense as presented. It seemed to make sense that way up through May or so… I think we can see the position of big pharma, wanting to control the narrative that pumps money to it.

The answer to a vaccine that makes you catch COVID after 6 months is boosters every 3 months, each at full price. Just don’t look at the 2 weeks after the shot. It’s not fair to count that. Don’t look at heart attacks after COVID vaccination. Don’t. No! Don’t look at all-cause-deaths. No! Another good thing about mandatory vaccination is that it allows for the removal, the shunning of the non-compliant from all of the things which support their lives, “the economy”. This dovetails into electronic transactions through smartphones. Each transaction can be approved or denied. Accounts can be deleted. China is leading the way with this technology.

 

From my personal point of view, I want to turn my brothers and sisters in a direction away from that. I have to start walking away from it myself, and I have been wandering, trying other little trails, like buying things with cash more. Credit-shopping online is so easy… Getting home improvements done in Yoakum works better with cash, except it is easy to leave a credit card with the hardware store… This is really a complex life-support system and it is owned by the control-freaks who control the rest of us through controlling our access to the necessities of life, and to our communications with each other. They control us while we comply. They threaten our existence, but they also feel their existence threatened. They grasp us so tightly that they squeeze some of us out between their fingers.

Those most capable of doing something new, making parallel economic support structures, are being squeezed out of the current structure by the insecure, control-freak “owners”, who are the “owners” as long as the rest of society sees them to be the owners, and the economy holds them in that rank. The first steps for those of us who would build an alternate economic support system are parallel steps. We can’t just leave. Getting out of debt, riding bikes, growing vegetables, storing food, water and fuel, having reliable vehicles, and being helpful to other human friends, family and neighbors are things we should all be doing already.

Each day brings me new questions. I meditate, then do my best to contribute to the good of all. The insecurity of the current “owners” drives them to act against the interests of the humans who are members of the societies, upon which they rely for their own support. Let’s help them out by gently relieving them of duty. Nope, I’m not sure how that works, but not by becoming like them…

 

 

 

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Aug 272021
 
 August 27, 2021  Posted by at 9:30 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , ,  64 Responses »


Claude Monet Hollowed Cliff near Étretat 1883

 

Coroner Confirms 44-Year-old BBC Presenter Died From Vaccine Side Effect (RT)
New Zealand Police Break Up One-Person Anti-lockdown Protest In Auckland (G.)
‘Bombshell’ Study Finds Natural Immunity Superior To Vaccination (Unherd)
The Suspicious FDA “Approval” Of The Pfizer Vaccine (Techno Fog)
******nit, Stop The FRAUD (Denninger)
What Can We Learn About COVID Tyranny From Australia And Afghanistan? (Smith)
The Weaponization Of Medicine (FMP)
Health Workers Protest Against Introduction Of Mandatory Covid Jabs (K.)
Arkansas Jail Dosing Inmates With Ivermectin, In Spite Of FDA Warnings (AP)
The Cost-Benefit Analysis of COVID (Greenwald)
Biden Does Surreal Press Conference, Vows To Hunt Down Isis, Blames Trump (ZH)
US Provided Taliban With Names Of Americans, Afghan Allies To Evacuate (Pol.)
Taliban Opens Chain Of U.S. Army Surplus Stores (BBee)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Who ordered this autopsy? Where are the reports on all the other autopsies?

Coroner Confirms 44-Year-old BBC Presenter Died From Vaccine Side Effect (RT)

A coroner’s report has confirmed that late BBC Radio presenter Lisa Shaw died from “complications” related to AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine. Shaw died on May 21 at the age of 44 roughly three weeks after she received her first dose of AstraZeneca’s vaccine. She did not have any known underlying health problems but developed blood clots after receiving the jab. On Thursday – over three months after her death – a coroner finally confirmed that Shaw died from complications that were suffered as a result of vaccination. Coroner Karen Dilks declared that Shaw “died due to complications of an AstraZeneca Covid vaccination,” or specifically, “vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia” which caused the blood clots in her brain.


In the weeks after the vaccine, Shaw had complained about severe headaches. Some 332 similar cases and 58 deaths have been recorded in relation to the AstraZeneca vaccine. Many countries have suspended or completely stopped the use of AstraZeneca’s vaccine, with some limiting its use for those over the age of 60. In the UK, however, the age restriction is significantly lower. On May 7, just over a week after Shaw received her dose, the UK government announced that those under the age of 40 should be offered an alternative to AstraZeneca “if available and if it does not cause delays in having the vaccine.” The government currently warns that AstraZeneca’s side effects can include rare blood clots, capillary leak syndrome and Guillain-Barre Syndrome, and that those who experience “a severe headache that is not relieved with simple painkillers or is getting worse or feels worse” should “seek medical advice urgently.”

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How do you “break up” one person?

New Zealand Police Break Up One-Person Anti-lockdown Protest In Auckland (G.)

A one-person anti-lockdown protest in central Auckland has been shut down, after the police were alerted to discussions of a potential gathering on social media. New Zealand police said officers were on Queen Street on Friday after hearing a protest was being planned, but only one person arrived with the intention of protesting, Newshub reported. “Police have been in the area and have spoken to one person who arrived intending to attend the protest. Police spoke to the individual who was encouraged to comply with alert level four restrictions and chose to leave,” a spokesman said. They said they are continuing to monitor the situation. An Instagram account had called on people “who see the bigger picture” to get involved in the protest, Newshub reported, despite also saying it wasn’t involved in the demonstration and had no idea who was behind it.


The post criticised prime minister Jacinda Ardern and the government for “destroying the economy” and “destroying jobs”, despite the unemployment rate dropping to 4 percent in the June 2021 quarter and the economy weathering the pandemic better than expected. Last week, around 100 anti-lockdown protesters gathered on Queen Street, and four people were arrested. Four people were also arrested at a protest of about 20 people in the city of Tauranga outside the local police station. Another group gathered outside a police station in the South Island city of Nelson the same day, but dispersed after officers issued 20 verbal warnings.

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We’ve known this all along. Where’s the bombshell?

‘Bombshell’ Study Finds Natural Immunity Superior To Vaccination (Unherd)

A major study conducted by Israeli researchers into natural immunity has found that immunity acquired via infection from Covid-19 is superior to immunity from the Pfizer vaccine. Researchers at Maccabi Healthcare and Tel Aviv University compared the outcomes of over 76,000 Israelis in three groups: the doubly vaccinated (with the Pfizer vaccine), the previously infected but unvaccinated, and the previously infected with a single dose. They found that fully vaccinated people were significantly more likely to have a “breakthrough” Covid infection than people who had previously been infected and recovered from the disease. “This study demonstrated that natural immunity confers longer lasting and stronger protection against infection, symptomatic disease and hospitalisation caused by the Delta variant,” the authors conclude.


The study is only published as a preprint at this stage and has not been peer reviewed. Critics including British immunologist Andrew Croxford have pointed out potential limitations, but it has been described by infectious diseases expert Professor Francois Balloux as a “bombshell” development. If the findings are confirmed, the implications for global Covid policy will be profound. It would not undermine the importance of vaccination for more vulnerable groups in society. However it would weaken the case for vaccinating children, despite the programme being confirmed in the UK today, as they (and the people around them) would get superior future protection from contracting the disease. And it would pose a fundamental challenge to the singular emphasis on vaccine passports for travel and large events, if unvaccinated people who have already had Covid actually pose less of a risk.

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“For those who received two doses of the Pfizer Vaccine in January 2021, the vaccine is “only 16% effective against symptomatic infection.”

The Suspicious FDA “Approval” Of The Pfizer Vaccine (Techno Fog)

The FDA says COMIRNATY is “safe and effective in preventing COVID-19 in individuals 16 years of age and older.” How effective? They state (~6 months after dose 2) that it is “91% effective in preventing COVID-19 disease,” citing to a study where Pfizer observed “77 cases of COVID-19 occurring in the vaccine group.” This leaves us with an important question. The Pfizer study is from a “follow-up through March 13, 2021.” That is over 5 months ago. Is the FDA using outdated data in support of the COMIRNATY approval? In other words, how long does the effectiveness really last? Pfizer has an answer for us. According to its August 23, 2021 fact sheet, “The duration of protection against COVID-19 is currently unknown.”

If you’re looking for data on the waning effectiveness of the Pfizer Vaccine against COVID-19, you have to search for yourself. You won’t find it with the FDA or Pfizer, underscoring an apparent effort to cherry-pick the data for the “approval.” According to one UK study of over 400,000 people (a study that is, by the way, much more rigorous than the one cited in the FDA approval), the “effectiveness fell to 74% five or sixth months after receiving both doses of the Pfizer vaccine.”

The news out of Israel is worse. For those who received two doses of the Pfizer Vaccine in January 2021, the vaccine is “only 16% effective against symptomatic infection.”

As we have observed, the CDC has promoted a misleading message on the risks the vaccines present to pregnant mothers. They used self-reporting studies that were racially skewed studies (~79% white and 1.4% black) and limited to looking at miscarriages from weeks 6-20. (This caused them to omit from the study 35 self-reported pregnancy losses at less than 6 weeks.) The new approval mentions a study on the Pfizer Vaccine exposure during pregnancy to be completed in 2025. Four years from now pregnant women will know whether this vaccine is safe. As for the current data? Here’s what the COMIRNATY package insert says about there being “insufficient” information on the vaccine risks to pregnancy.

Ok Techno, I’m with you so far… but did Pfizer do any studies on whether the vaccine was safe for pregnant women? YES! They did toxicology studies on female rats.

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“..if being vaccinated makes the person who gets it more-infectious then being jabbed is not only personally dangerous it is dangerous to public health..”

******nit, Stop The FRAUD (Denninger)

in the best case you must repeatedly take the risk of strokes and heart attacks, along with other serious adverse effects, in order to maintain protection. If the risk is 1/10,000 to do it once then the risk is 1/5,000 to do it twice, assuming the risk is linear which we do not know. If its exponential, and there is a strong suggestion that is the case because most of these events occurred after the second jab in the series, then the risk from taking three jabs may be 1/1,000 instead of 1/10,000 which is ridiculously higher and makes the decision to risk infection rather than vaccination simple for most people since only the quite-morbid are at higher risk from infection than 1/1,000 (0.1%) even if we assume the risk of eventual infection, if you do nothing, is 100%.

Note that if there is no end to these jabs then eventually even the most-morbid are stupid to take them since the risk of the jab killing them will rapidly exceed that of the virus doing so and this assumes that vaccine-induced enhancement does not show up and wildly multiply the risk of serious disease and death from the virus itself. There is no way to know whether these risks will converge either naturally or by forced action of a malevolent party but that they exist and are independently present is now known with scientific certainty as all of those mutations have now been found in the gene banks from sampled patients. If that “next mutation” winds up being of benefit to “being first” in an uninfected, non-recovered host and worse, if being vaccinated makes the person who gets it more-infectious then being jabbed is not only personally dangerous it is dangerous to public health and will cause a wave of serious illness and death to tear through the vaccinated population and if that happens there is nothing that can be done to stop it.

The FDA knows all of this as they have the same access to the published scientific work I do. They didn’t hold a hearing or take public comment, as they are supposed to, because then people like myself could submit into the formal, government record papers like the one I cited above. In addition the FDA cut off the data far enough back to deliberately ignore the most-recent few weeks, which show crazy deterioration in the percentage of people who die of Covid-19 and are vaccinated. In some counties (e.g. Clark, NV) the vaccinated are now the majority of the deaths. Does this prove vaccine-induced enhancement is here and raging? No; the data is too thin. But what it does prove is that being jabbed doesn’t stop you from getting sick nor does it stop you from giving the virus to others and that by itself reduces the decision to be vaccinated to one of personal choice at best.

And finally even Pfizer admits that they can’t get ahead of such a mutational event whether it occurs naturally or is forced and released by a malevolent actor. They say they can turn around a new version of the jab within 95 days but then you have to get it into the hundreds of millions of Americans and that can’t happen any faster the second time than the first. Assuming you immediately can ramp up production and distribution expecting that you can get effective coverage within less than another three to six months is fantasy-level bull**** as we didn’t manage that the first time and the virus mutates faster than you can accomplish it, making the attempt a game of whack-a-mole which you will inevitably lose. Never mind the risk that the reformulated version may produce immediate and extremely dangerous adverse events at a wildly-elevated rate: Without trials, which again will add months or years to the time required to deploy, there is no way to know! It is sheer arrogance to presume none of this will happen when we now have hard proof that least some of it did with the first go-around.

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“..these measures cannot be fast tracked in the same way in the US because Americans are heavily armed and have the ability to bury the establishment six feet under if we organized to do so..”

What Can We Learn About COVID Tyranny From Australia And Afghanistan? (Smith)

I have warned consistently that all governments around the world would eventually try to adopt proof of vaccination requirements in order for people to participate in everyday activities such as going to public venues, going to school, shopping in stores or even getting a job. The mainstream media and governments consistently claimed last year that vaccine passports were “not going to happen”, and that the very notion was a conspiracy theory. Now, the vaccines passports are being implemented in numerous countries including some parts of the US and anyone who stands against them is called a “conspiracy theorists”. You see how that works? If you expose the truth of an authoritarian plot the establishment lies and calls you a “conspiracy theorist”.

Once the establishment admits to the plot and you refuse to comply with it those same liars call you a conspiracy theorist AGAIN, as well as a “terrorist.” Yes, this was also predicted by myself and others at the beginning of the pandemic. We said that the people that fight against vaccine passport tyranny would be quickly labeled as traitors and terrorists “putting others at risk” because we are too “selfish” to bow down and take the experimental jab or submit to the lockdowns. This is exactly what has happened, with the DHS recently announcing that one of the warning signs of a potential terrorist includes opposition to covid mandates and vaccines.

I also predicted that the ultimate goal of the covid agenda will be to create domestic travel restrictions and state and city checkpoints, not to mention covid “camps” or prisons for the unvaccinated. In the US the DHS is admitting that they are entertaining the concept of interstate travel limits and a “papers please” system to prevent Americans from moving around freely. The state of New York hinted at covid camps many months ago, but the real plan is being revealed overseas in other Western nations like Australia and New Zealand.

And here is where we find the telegraphed punches… I have specifically examined Australia and New Zealand’s fast track covid tyranny plans a year ago in my article ‘The Totalitarian Future Globalists Want For The Entire World Is Being Revealed’ and I noted that whatever happens in these countries along with certain countries in Europe is going to be tried in the US in the near term. The main difference being that these measures cannot be fast tracked in the same way in the US because Americans are heavily armed and have the ability to bury the establishment six feet under if we organized to do so.

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“Once “medicine” and “science” are mixed with social pressure, they are no longer science or medicine. At that point they are instruments of thuggery, and nothing more.”

The Weaponization Of Medicine (FMP)

#1: Science is not consensus. Ten, one hundred, or a million people, all draped in lab coats and saying the same thing, does NOT make it so. In fact, it matters not at all. It’s nothing but theater, and it’s anti-science. All science is, really, is a process of testing ideas; it is not an organization, it is not based upon authority (it’s inherently anti-authority), and it is very certainly not allied with power. All that matters in science are verifiable results.

#2: Medicine stands apart from, and above, politics. Medicine is the application of science to the furtherance of human health. Politics is the use of persuasion and power to rule masses of humans. These are fully separate disciplines. To place politics over medicine is to subjugate and degrade medicine: it’s a path backwards into darkness. I’ll leave details on this point to working medical practitioners, who can provide them with far greater specificity than I can… provided they’re not too frightened to do so.

#3: Peer review no longer means much. Again I won’t go into great detail, but peer review has been captured by academic hierarchies and almost fully separated from science proper. It has become a tool of institutional power, wielded by academics who have sold out science for the favors of power and politics. At one time, “peer review” referred to the honest replication of experiments. That time is past.

#4: Medicine and science have nothing to do with social pressure. Once “medicine” and “science” are mixed with social pressure, they are no longer science or medicine. At that point they are instruments of thuggery, and nothing more.

#5: If you don’t read multiple scientific papers, especially from rebels and cast-outs, you simply don’t know. You can pretend you know, of course, and you can be sure that agents of the status quo will provide you with passable reasons to repeat their slogans, but you won’t actually know. What you see on TV is propaganda. What you see on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube is pre-censored. If you want to really know, you’ll have to find the scientific papers that address your question… and you’ll need papers that are rejected by televised authorities. If you don’t, all you’ll have are pre-censored conclusions, the underlying facts of which may or may not be reliable. At this point, if you don’t include “conspiracy theory” research, you’re more or less stuck with Orwell’s Ministry of Truth. Sad but mostly true.

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Working their asses off for 20 months and getting a mandate as their reward.

Health Workers Protest Against Introduction Of Mandatory Covid Jabs (K.)

Hundreds of Greek frontline health workers protested on Thursday against a plan to make Covid-19 vaccinations mandatory for the care sector as infection rates remained high. Healthcare workers observed a four-hour work stoppage against new rules obliging medical staff to vaccinate against the coronavirus, and to call for more resources to public health. The mandatory jab comes into effect for healthcare workers on Sept. 1. Those who do not comply and have not had at least one shot of a vaccine will be suspended from their jobs. According to the POEDIN labor union, about 10 percent of healthcare workers have not had a first vaccine jab. Protesters said that while the call for vaccination was widely acknowledged and complied with by healthcare workers, the view of a dissenting few should to be respected.


“I’m here today because I want to support the constitutional right of every Greek citizen to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to vaccination. I personally am vaccinated, but I believe it is my colleagues’ right to not get vaccinated if they don’t want to,” said Evangelia Karatzouli, a nurse at a public hospital. Greece on Thursday reported 3,538 new coronavirus cases in a single day, with 28 deaths. It reported a record daily rate of 4,608 infections on Tuesday. read more The Greek public hospital workers union will support unvaccinated colleagues, said its president, Michalis Yiannakos. “They consist of a tiny number, and have for the last 18-19 months been on the frontlines, caring for patients in the Covid wards, and have not ever gotten infected, and now they are being thrown out on the streets,” he said.

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“Whatever a doctor prescribes, that is not in my bailiwick..”

Arkansas Jail Dosing Inmates With Ivermectin, In Spite Of FDA Warnings (AP)

Inmates at a north-west Arkansas jail have been prescribed a medicine for treating coronavirus that is normally used to deworm livestock, despite federal health warnings to the public in exasperated tones. Washington county’s sheriff confirmed this week that the jail’s health provider had been prescribing the drug. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the federal drugs regulator, issued a warning via Twitter last weekend. “You are not a horse,” it said. “You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.” Sheriff Tim Helder did not say how many inmates at the 710-bed facility had been given ivermectin and defended the health provider that has been prescribing the medication. “Whatever a doctor prescribes, that is not in my bailiwick,” Helder told members of the Washington county quorum court, the county’s governing body.


[..] It is not clear what information inmates who were prescribed the drug have been given about it, including warnings that it is not approved to treat Covid. The US FDA has approved ivermectin in both people and animals for some parasitic worms and for head lice and skin conditions. The FDA has not approved its use in treating or preventing Covid-19 in humans. “Using any treatment for Covid-19 that’s not approved or authorized by the FDA, unless part of a clinical trial, can cause serious harm,” the FDA said in a warning about the drug. Prominent rightwingers have been promoting the drug for Covid and public health officials have come under attack from some Republicans for urging Americans to get vaccinated against coronavirus.

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Zero.

The Cost-Benefit Analysis of COVID (Greenwald)

[..] we employ a rational framework of cost-benefit analysis, whereby, when making public policy choices, we do not examine only one side of the ledger (number of people who will die if cars are permitted) but also consider the immense costs generated by policies that would prevent those deaths (massive limits on our ability to travel, vastly increased times to get from one place to another, restrictions on what we can experience in our lives, enormous financial costs from returning to the pre-automobile days). So foundational is the use of this cost-benefit analysis that it is embraced and touted by everyone from right-wing economists to the left-wing European environmental policy group CIVITAS, which defines it this way:

“Social Cost Benefit Analysis [is] a decision support tool that measures and weighs various impacts of a project or policy. It compares project costs (capital and operating expenses) with a broad range of (social) impacts, e.g. travel time savings, travel costs, impacts on other modes, climate, safety, and the environment.” This framework, above all else, precludes an absolutist approach to rational policy-making. We never opt for a society-altering policy on the ground that “any lives saved make it imperative to embrace” precisely because such a primitive mindset ignores all the countervailing costs which this life-saving policy would generate (including, oftentimes, loss of life as well: banning planes, for instance, would save lives by preventing deaths from airplane crashes, but would also create its own new deaths by causing more people to drive cars).

While arguments are common about how this framework should be applied and which specific policies are ideal, the use of cost-benefit analysis as the primary formula we use is uncontroversial — at least it was until the COVID pandemic began. It is now extremely common in Western democracies for large factions of citizens to demand that any measures undertaken to prevent COVID deaths are vital, regardless of the costs imposed by those policies. Thus, this mentality insists, we must keep schools closed to avoid the contracting by children of COVID regardless of the horrific costs which eighteen months or two years of school closures impose on all children.

It is impossible to overstate the costs imposed on children of all ages from the sustained, enduring and severe disruptions to their lives justified in the name of COVID. Entire books could be written, and almost certainly will be, on the multiple levels of damage children are sustaining, some of which — particularly the longer-term ones — are unknowable (long-term harms from virtually every aspect of COVID policies — including COVID itself, the vaccines, and isolation measures, are, by definition, unknown). But what we know for certain is that the harms to children from anti-COVID measures are severe and multi-pronged.

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This is far from over.

Biden Does Surreal Press Conference, Vows To Hunt Down Isis, Blames Trump (ZH)

President Biden on Thursday vowed to “hunt down” the terrorists responsible for a spate of deadly bombings at the Kabul airport which left 12 US servicemembers dead and 15 wounded. “Know this; We will not forgive. We will not forget. We. will hunt you down and make you pay,” he said. In a surreal press conference that included bible quotes, a moment of silence, and blaming President Trump, Biden said he was open to sending US forces back into Afghanistan to assist with the withdrawal. “Whatever they need, if they need additional force, I will grant it,” he said, adding that the US military can target ISIS-K without “large scale military operations.”


Biden said he was in near ‘constant’ communication with military commanders via letter, and that he’d asked them to draw up plans to retaliate against the terrorist group (via carrier pigeon?). Of note, after reading his speech on the teleprompter, Biden said out loud “The first person I was instructed to call upon…” before taking questions. Trump also said he ‘bears responsibility for all that’s happened,’ before turning around and blaming Trump for the deal he ‘inherited.’ He then gave Trump credit for the only reason there was relative peace in Afghanistan until now. Then, towards the end of the presser, Biden said “I have another meeting, for real” – implying other ‘meetings’ haven’t been?

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“It’s just appalling and shocking and makes you feel unclean.”

US Provided Taliban With Names Of Americans, Afghan Allies To Evacuate (Pol.)

U.S. officials in Kabul gave the Taliban a list of names of American citizens, green card holders and Afghan allies to grant entry into the militant-controlled outer perimeter of the city’s airport, a choice that’s prompted outrage behind the scenes from lawmakers and military officials. The move, detailed to POLITICO by three U.S. and congressional officials, was designed to expedite the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from Afghanistan as chaos erupted in Afghanistan’s capital city last week after the Taliban seized control of the country. It also came as the Biden administration has been relying on the Taliban for security outside the airport.

Since the fall of Kabul in mid-August, nearly 100,000 people have been evacuated, most of whom had to pass through the Taliban’s many checkpoints. But the decision to provide specific names to the Taliban, which has a history of brutally murdering Afghans who collaborated with the U.S. and other coalition forces during the conflict, has angered lawmakers and military officials. “Basically, they just put all those Afghans on a kill list,” said one defense official, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic. “It’s just appalling and shocking and makes you feel unclean.” Asked about POLITICO’s reporting during a Thursday news conference, President Joe Biden said he wasn’t sure there were such lists, but also didn’t deny that sometimes the U.S. hands over names to the Taliban.

“There have been occasions when our military has contacted their military counterparts in the Taliban and said this, for example, this bus is coming through with X number of people on it, made up of the following group of people. We want you to let that bus or that group through,” he said. “So, yes there have been occasions like that. To the best of my knowledge, in those cases, the bulk of that has occurred and they have been let through. “I can’t tell you with any certitude that there’s actually been a list of names,” he added. “There may have been. But I know of no circumstance. It doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist, that here’s the names of 12 people, they’re coming, let them through. It could very well have happened.”

[..] After the fall of Kabul, in the earliest days of the evacuation, the joint U.S. military and diplomatic coordination team at the airport provided the Taliban with a list of people the U.S. aimed to evacuate. Those names included Afghans who served alongside the U.S. during the 20-year war and sought special immigrant visas to America. U.S. citizens, dual nationals and lawful permanent residents were also listed. “They had to do that because of the security situation the White House created by allowing the Taliban to control everything outside the airport,” one U.S. official said. But after thousands of visa applicants arrived at the airport, overwhelming the capacity of the U.S. to process them, the State Department changed course — asking the applicants not to come to the airport and instead requesting they wait until they were cleared for entry. From then on, the list fed to the Taliban didn’t include those Afghan names. As of Aug. 25, only U.S. passport and green card holders were being accepted as eligible for evacuation, the defense official said.

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“The U.S. Government has taken note as new store locations open up for future drone pilot target practice.”

Taliban Opens Chain Of U.S. Army Surplus Stores (BBee)

Now that Allah has seen fit to bless the Taliban with bountiful weapons and equipment from the U.S. Military, terrorists around Afghanistan have built an already thriving chain of U.S. Army Surplus stores. “We need weapons to kill and subjugate the Afghan people under Sharia Law, but there’s just too much gear here!” said local Taliban leader Bob Muhammed. “There’s, like, billions of dollars and 20 years worth of weaponry around here, and now I can build a thriving business out of selling my wares to other terrorist folk who happen to pass through! Allah be praised!”


Although the merchandise will not be available to the general public (for obvious reasons), Muhammed’s Army Surplus will feature a full selection of deadly weaponry, ammunition, combat boots, MREs, helmets, hashish, and whatever else a soldier of Allah may need. If successful, Bob Muhammed hopes to open more stores in Iraq and Syria. The U.S. Government has taken note as new store locations open up for future drone pilot target practice.

Read more …

 

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Aug 082019
 


Piet Mondriaan New York City I 1942

 

Globalization As We Know It Will Not Survive Trump (G.)
The Technological Revolution Devours its Children (Dmitry Orlov)
Donald Trump More Popular Today Than In 2016 (Raw)
New York Times Stock Price Has Soared During Trump’s Presidency (R.)
MMT May Be Democrats’ Economic Cure, But Only Trump Got The Memo (R.)
New Rebel Bid To Halt No-Deal Brexit Amid Fury At PM’s Enforcer (G.)
Deal Or No Deal? It’s Not Really Up To Dominic Cummings (G.)
The Super-Rich Have Made Britain Into A Nation Of Losers (G.)
Airlines Complain Boeing’s Production Standards ‘Way Below Acceptable’ (BI)
An Open Invitation to Tyranny (PCR)
Chelsea Manning Jailed For a YEAR For Refusing To Testify Against Assange (RT)
Tightening Nickel Supply Threatens Electric Vehicle Boom (SH)
Apocalypse Now: Final Cut (G.)
Explosion of Toxic Pesticide Use Causes Insect Apocalypse in US (CD)

 

 

“And That’s A Good Thing..”

Globalization As We Know It Will Not Survive Trump (G.)

The significance of the trade war between China and the US goes well beyond the impact of tit-for-tat tariffs, or which of two self-styled strongmen wins the bragging rights. As was the case in the 1930s, the seemingly inexorable drift towards protectionism is part of a deeper crisis of the international status quo. When Beijing this week accused the US of “deliberately destroying the international order”, it was really saying that US hegemony will no longer go unchallenged. Globalisation as we have known it is coming to an end and that’s by no means unwelcome.

Hailed as the ultimate in human progress, a model based on loosening the controls on capital and the construction of global supply chains has spawned recurrent financial crises, fostered corrosive inequality and worsened the climate emergency. True, millions of people have been lifted out of poverty in the past 25 years, but most of them live in a country – China – that has kept the market at arm’s-length. The world’s stock markets see things differently. They tremble every time Donald Trump tweets a paean to protectionism. Likewise, multinational corporations fret about the possible damage that trade barriers might cause to global supply chains. It is clear that those who have done best out of globalisation tend to be the rich and powerful, and they are not going to give up their privileges without a fight. Nothing in this is new.

Throughout history there have been successive waves of globalisation followed by a backlash when the model over-reached itself. This is one of those occasions and all the ingredients are in place for a struggle between the defenders of the status quo and those who say that recent trends in politics, technology and the climate point to the need for a new world order focused more on local solutions, stronger nation states and a reformed international system. It’s quite a stretch to imagine that Trump has this in mind when he is bashing China, but the economic crisis of the 1930s – of which protectionism was one part – led eventually, albeit after the war, to reforms that made the world a sounder and safer place.


Illustration: Thomas Pullin

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“..once your savings are depleted and your debts are maxed out, you are cast out into the howling wilderness roamed by various troglodytes—those the information revolution has already eaten as well as those who were never on the menu.”

The Technological Revolution Devours its Children (Dmitry Orlov)

As the famous movie quote goes, “If you can’t spot the sucker in your first half hour at the table, then you are the sucker” (From John Dahl’s 1988 film Rounders). Another famous quote, all the way back from the French Revolution, is “The revolution, like Saturn, devours its own children” (said by Danton at his trial). If you can’t spot the resource for your next technological revolution, then you are the resource. Look at all the previous technological revolutions. In each case, a new technology opened up for exploitation a new, superabundant resource: agriculture—arable land; mechanical spinning and weaving—water power; steam engine and steelmaking—coal; internal combustion engine—oil; artificial intelligence-based robonanobiotronics—still oil?

Sorry, that’s no longer overabundant by any stretch of the imagination. (If you said “renewable energy” then think again: wind turbines, solar panels and battery banks can’t be made or maintained without oil and natural gas.) Technology without a superabundant resource it can tap into is as useful as a spoon if your bowl is empty. The logic is simple: spot the resource; if you can’t, it’s probably you. Let’s focus on what’s supposed to be the main pillar of the next technological revolution: information technology. Most of us have smartphones, laptops, store our data in the cloud and make use of abundant and free information resources—all the free apps you want, free blogging, free Youtube videos, etc. But what new resource has all this technology opened up for you, the user?

The hardware costs you money (the average iPhone now costs around 800 USD) and the time you spend fiddling around with it is subtracted from all the other, potentially useful and gainful activities. You could try arguing that having an iPhone makes you more efficient because you have all the information and communications technology you could possibly need right at your fingertips. That point is hard to deny. I recently recorded a radio interview for a radio station in upstate New York while strolling about among the potato blossoms on my field in the Novgorod region of Russia via the internet and a 4G connection via a tower in the neighboring village. That’s nothing short of miraculous, and it’s certainly efficient (my smartphone is 7 years old, fully amortized a long time ago and still as good as new now that I’ve replaced every single mechanical component, sometimes twice). But is it effective?

The smartphones are generally effective in making their users spend money that they may or may not have on things they may or may not need. All of the free access to information is paid for by collecting data on users (spying, basically) and using it to create targeted ads that turn users into online shoppers. Everything is highly customized: women look at pictures of shoes; men look at pictures of power tools. Both the shoes and the power tools, if purchased, will be used a few times a year at most, but the money will be gone forever. The limiting factor here, of course, is the resource, which is you: once your savings are depleted and your debts are maxed out, you are cast out into the howling wilderness roamed by various troglodytes—those the information revolution has already eaten as well as those who were never on the menu.

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Depends on who you ask.

Donald Trump More Popular Today Than In 2016 (Raw)

President Donald Trump’s administration has been mired in controversy after controversy, from his racist remarks to the Mueller report–which stopped short of clearing him of obstruction of justice. His policies, such as child separation at the border and his trade wars with China, are divisive. Yet, new numbers seem to show that he’s actually more popular today than he was in 2016, according to polling expert Nate Cohn. “The share of Americans who say they have a favorable view of him has increased significantly since the 2016 election,” Cohn writes. “And over the last few months, some of the highest-quality public opinion polls, though not all, showed the president’s job approval rating — a different measure from personal favorability — had inched up to essentially match the highest level of his term.”

This doesn’t guarantee Trump re-election. “The increase in his support since 2016, and the possibility that it continues to move higher, does not necessarily make him a favorite to win re-election. His job approval ratings remain well beneath 50 percent, and have never eclipsed it.” It should be noted that Cohn is relying on two polls, Gallup and YouGov, which show that he is more popular today than in 2016. And according to the website fivethirtyeight.com, which aggregates polling data, only 42.2 percent of Americans polled approve of Donald Trump, while 53.1 disapprove.

But, Trump’s surge in popularity since 2016 is clearly something his democratic challengers need to keep in mind. Of course, Democrats might benefit from a more popular candidate than they had in 2016,” Cohn writes. “Hillary Clinton was an unusually unpopular candidate, surpassed only by Mr. Trump in this regard in the modern era of polling. But an analysis that freezes the president’s standing in 2016 but assumes an improvement for the Democratic nominee would be misleading.”

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Cui bono. Inventing Russiagate out of thin air has paid off handsomely.

New York Times Stock Price Has Soared During Trump’s Presidency (R.)

Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore concludes his “Apocalypse Now” soliloquy about the smell of napalm in the morning wistfully: “Someday this war’s gonna end.” The remark suggests the officer played by Robert Duvall is enjoying the conflict in Vietnam. Despite some recent friendly fire, New York Times commander-in-chief Mark Thompson could be forgiven for feeling similarly about his newspaper’s combat with U.S. President Donald Trump. Few companies have so directly benefitted from Trump’s tumultuous first term in office as the Times. Thanks to a boom in digital-subscription sales linked to the paper’s aggressive coverage of the administration’s many foibles, its shares have outperformed those of nearly every company investors pegged as those likely to suffer or benefit from a Trump presidency.

From around $11 at the time of his election, Times stock has soared to more than $35. That trumped the runup in Wall Street firms, such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, whose bottom lines were fattened by tax cuts. Times shares even dusted those of Facebook, the bête noire of all traditional publishers. As of Tuesday, the Manhattan-based company’s $5 billion market value was greater than the combined worth of America’s two biggest for-profit prison operators, whose fortunes were meant to soar under a law-and-order presidency. This background helps in interpreting a set of lousy second-quarter results, and a kerfuffle this week over a poorly conceived front-page headline. The Times added 197,000 net new digital-only subscriptions – bringing total subscribers to 4.7 million, nearly halfway to its 2025 goal of 10 million.

A shortfall in revenue, though, and a warning of greater challenges ahead, took nearly 20% off the Times share price on Wednesday. That came days after amending a headline related to the president’s response to two mass shootings over the weekend failed to stop a barrage of criticism, much of it from Trump’s Democratic opponents, and calls on social media to cancel subscriptions. The top-line miss had nothing to do with the headline skirmish, whose impact would appear in this quarter. But they are not unrelated. The risk for the Times is that any whiff of normalizing its coverage of the president might damage the brand that has fueled its subscription drive since 2016. One dopey headline is survivable, so long as the war shows no sign of ending.

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MMT is not going to go away.

MMT May Be Democrats’ Economic Cure, But Only Trump Got The Memo (R.)

From her home overlooking Setauket Harbor on Long Island’s North Shore, a motorboat bobbing at the dock, Stephanie Kelton hopes to revolutionize how the U.S. government manages the economy. It isn’t always a pleasant task. A key figure in the “Modern Monetary Theory” economic camp, her assertions that the federal government could spend freely for things like a jobs guarantee or Green New Deal without risking runaway inflation, a debt default or a clubbing by global creditors have been Twitter-bombed by mainstream economists as left-wing free lunchism. Proponents of MMT have been called fanciful for the notion that the U.S. Congress, which typically struggles to pass an annual budget, could with smart budgeting and regulation take over the Federal Reserve’s job of controlling inflation.


And even Kelton, an economics professor at Stony Brook University in New York and an adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, is a bit thrown by the fact that the person who appears closest to accepting her argument is President Donald Trump, whose Republican Party has traditionally touted an adherence to fiscal discipline. Trump and Republicans in Congress, she said, “did not allow perceived budget constraints to stand in their way” of a $1.5 trillion tax cut package which was passed in late 2017 and pushed the federal debt beyond $22 trillion. Democrats now seem ready to get in the game. Lawmakers from both parties recently reached a federal spending deal that is expected to raise the federal deficit by $2 trillion over the next two years, and Democrats lining up to run against Trump in 2020 have largely avoided talk of fiscal restraint so far in the campaign.

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Told ya: “One Conservative insider said that Cummings had in effect demanded control over Johnson’s operation as his price for entering government..”

New Rebel Bid To Halt No-Deal Brexit Amid Fury At PM’s Enforcer (G.)

Rebel MPs are working on a plan to thwart Boris Johnson pursuing a no-deal Brexit on 31 October that involves forcing parliament to sit through the autumn recess, amid growing outrage about the power and influence of his controversial aide, Dominic Cummings. The cross-party group of MPs is looking at legislative options with mounting urgency because of the hardline tactics of Cummings, who one Conservative insider described as running a “reign of terror” in No 10 aimed at achieving Brexit on 31 October at any cost. Three MPs have told the Guardian that one method under discussion is for members to amend the motion needed for parliament to break for party conferences in mid-September.

This could give MPs another three weeks of sitting time to stop a no-deal and potentially open the door for days to be set aside for rebels to control parliamentary business. The ultimate aim would be to pass a bill forcing the government to request an extension to article 50 from Brussels. Since joining Johnson’s administration, Cummings has told government advisers that No 10 stands ready to do whatever is necessary to bring about Brexit on 31 October – deal or no deal. This could include proroguing parliament, or ignoring the result of any no-confidence vote in Johnson and calling a “people v politicians” general election – to be held after the UK had left the EU.

However, it is understood that alarm is mounting within No 10, among some special advisers and Tory MPs about the scale of Cummings’ influence and willingness to defy parliament. One Conservative insider said that Cummings had in effect demanded control over Johnson’s operation as his price for entering government and proceeded to sideline more moderate advisers, such as ex-City Hall stalwart Sir Eddie Lister, while installing a team of “true believers” in hard Brexit largely from the former Vote Leave campaign.

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Are you sure?

Deal Or No Deal? It’s Not Really Up To Dominic Cummings (G.)

Yet it would be as much of a mistake to dismiss Cummings as to exaggerate his mastery. He has certainly brought two weeks of focus to the Johnson government by making the Halloween deadline a non-negotiable centrepiece. He has changed the political conversation from Brexit or people’s vote to deal or no deal. Depending on events in the early autumn, he is clearly gearing up for a possible general election shortly afterwards. But Cummings does not control events. He is not Prospero, able to conjure up a tempest that delivers his enemies into his hands. He is having a good run, but he is helped by the most irresponsible parliamentary summer recess of modern times.

Even now MPs should be aiming to get back to Westminster and hold the government to account before the planned return on 3 September. They should scrap this year’s party conferences too. Cummings is also only one player. The idea that he pulls all the strings is lazy and wrong. The Brexit outcome depends on a tangled web of interests and influences beyond his control. These include everything from the role of the Queen to the hoarding of toilet rolls. In particular, it depends on events in the real economy, in parliament, in the courts, in Northern Ireland, Scotland and the Irish Republic, in the EU and in Johnson’s own head.

Those who take a Cummings-fixated view of the options find it is easier to forget this. They say the government’s aim is to crash out with no deal on 31 October and nothing will stand in the way. But that is not quite what Johnson and some of his ministers say. They say, still, that a deal is one possibility, perhaps a remote one, and that the UK government is even now looking for a deal with the EU in the next 12 weeks.

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“..people whose incomes sit a few zeroes above their value to society.”

The Super-Rich Have Made Britain Into A Nation Of Losers (G.)

Think of a football stadium. Not one of the vast caverns like Old Trafford or Wembley, but somewhere rather smaller and more bijou. Somewhere like Fulham’s Craven Cottage, which, once its new stand is completed, will pack in only about 30,000 fans. Now imagine this stadium of 30,000 souls rising up into the air and hovering unnoticed over central London. Thirty thousand men in late middle-age living the high life with the capital at their feet – and there, stuck way below on terra firma are their 66 million fellow Britons, tearing lumps out of each other. Congratulations: you’ve just pictured the central problem stalking the UK today. Not Brexit. Not the breakdown in civil debate. Not the dark money contaminating Westminster.

These are urgent and vitally important, but there is one big factor that forms a large part of the backdrop to all of them. It can be summed up by that gulf between a mid-sized football stadium of super-rich men in their 50s, and the rest of us spread out across our suburbs, our towns, our unpretty stretches of urban sprawl. That football stadium represents the top 0.1% of earners in the UK. To join their ranks, numbering just 31,000, you’d need a taxable income of at least £650,000 a year – £12,500 per week. In less than a fortnight, you would easily pull in more than the average Briton makes as taxable income over a whole year. But then, those drudges are the earthbound while you, as the old song out of Mary Poppins puts it, live in an entirely different realm: “Up to the highest height! … Up through the atmosphere! / Up where the air is clear!”

The stratospherically rich are among the subjects of a new report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. An analysis of the tax returns of the highest earning Britons, it shows in uncompromising detail just how our money has ended up in fewer and fewer hands based in less and less of the country. Almost half the super-rich live in London and nearly 90% of them are men. What’s more, they often end up paying a lower tax rate than the pay-as-you-earn mugs like you and me. The generous breaks given by politicians to encourage entrepreneurship, innovation and risk-taking are instead exploited by partners in City law firms and big accountancies and at hedge funds – people whose incomes sit a few zeroes above their value to society.

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It’s not just the 737 MAX. It’s Boeing itself.

Airlines Complain Boeing’s Production Standards ‘Way Below Acceptable’ (BI)

Airlines flying Boeing’s 787-10 Dreamliner have complained to the plane maker about “unacceptable” production mistakes and inconsistent quality. The problems center around Dreamliners built at Boeing’s North Charleston, South Carolina, factory, according to a report from The Post and Courier. Issues at the North Charleston plant were reported in April in a comprehensive New York Times investigation, which found evidence of shoddy production, poor oversight, and a culture that “made speed a priority over safety.” The report came a month after Boeing’s 737 Max jet was grounded worldwide after the second fatal crash in five months. The Department of Justice expanded an inquiry into the 737 Max to include issues at the North Charleston factory in June.


The new report surfaced complaints from a global cadre of airlines that fly the jet and have received orders from the South Carolina plant, one of two locations where the Dreamliner is assembled — other orders are built at Boeing’s Everett, Washington, factory. While the issues are not limited to either the South Carolina plant or the 787 — similar problems have been raised in Everett with both 787s and military tankers — the complaints surfaced by The Post and Courier focus on recent deliveries of Boeing’s newest and largest variant of the Dreamliner, the 787-10. It was not immediately clear whether the airlines made similar complaints about other variants of the plane, including the 787-8 and 787-9.

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Paul Craig Roberts on an FBI document that talks about “official” and “prevailing” explanations of events.

“What the FBI report does, intentionally or unintentionally, is to define a conspiracist as a person who doubts official explanations.”

An Open Invitation to Tyranny (PCR)

The FBI document says that conspiracy theories “are usually at odds with official or prevailing explanations of events.” Note the use of “official” and “prevailing.” Official explanations are explanations provided by governments. Prevailing explanations are the explanations that the media repeats. Examples of official and prevailing explanations are: Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, Assad’s use of chemical weapons, Iranian nukes, Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the official explanation by the US government for the destruction of Libya. If a person doubts official explanations such as these, that person is a “conspiracy theorist.”

Official and prevailing explanations do not have to be consistent with facts. It is enough that they are official and prevailing. Whether or not they are true is irrelevant. Therefore, a person who stands up for the truth can be labeled a conspiracy theorist, monitored, and perhaps pre-emptively arrested. [..] Consider Russiagate. Here we have an alleged conspiracy between Trump and Russia that was the official prevailing explanation. Yet, to believe in the Russiagate conspiracy did not make one a conspiracy theorist as this conspiracy was the official prevailing explanation. But to doubt the Russiagate conspiracy did make one a conspiracy theorist.

What the FBI report does, intentionally or unintentionally, is to define a conspiracist as a person who doubts official explanations. In other words, it is a way of preventing any accountability of government. Whatever the government says, no matter how obvious a lie, will have to be accepted as fact or we will be put on a list to be monitored for preemptive arrest. In effect, the FBI’s document reduces the First Amendment, that is, free speech, to the right to repeat official and prevailing explanations. Any other speech is a conspiratorial belief that can lead to the commission of a crime.

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The judge says she can pay the fines, but he’s the only one who thinks that.

Chelsea Manning Jailed For a YEAR For Refusing To Testify Against Assange (RT)

Refusal to testify against WikiLeaks is costing whistleblower Chelsea Manning over $400,000 in fines and another year in jail, after a federal judge ruled that she must pay for what he called contempt of court. Manning was jailed for refusing the subpoena to testify before a federal grand jury seeking additional charges against WikiLeaks and its co-founder Julian Assange, currently imprisoned in the UK. To compel testimony, the government also fined the whistleblower $500 a day, going up to $1000 after 60 days. Judge Anthony Trenga of the federal district court in Alexandria, Virginia shot down Manning’s motion to reconsider sanctions on Monday, the final chance to contest the steep fines.

After a review of “a substantial number of financial records documenting her assets, liabilities, and current and future earnings,” the court found “that Ms. Manning has the ability to comply with the Court’s financial sanctions,” Trenga wrote in his ruling. Though Manning is now deeply in debt and unable to work while in jail, the judge nonetheless concluded the fines were payable and therefore amounted to “coercive” sanctions allowed to compel cooperation or testimony, rather than being a purely punitive measure. “I am disappointed but not at all surprised. The government and the judge must know by now that this doesn’t change my position one bit,” Manning said in response.

She insisted that the fines were in fact punitive, because her inability and unwillingness to pay rendered any “coercive” aspect moot. She has already spent 147 days behind bars and owes $38,000 in fines as of August 7. If she remains jailed for another year, Manning could end up owing $441,000 to the government.

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Not everything scales up.

Tightening Nickel Supply Threatens Electric Vehicle Boom (SH)

For Tesla and its chief competitors in the race for global domination of electric vehicle sales, it ain’t all about lithium ion. There are other valuable metals needed to make the battery packs do what’s asked of them, with nickel being essential. Tesla and its battery producer partners, and other automakers and their suppliers, are worried about the longer-term supply of nickel according to a new study by BloombergNEF. The study predicts that EV makers will be driving demand for nickel about 16 times to 1.8 million tons in the next years. Class-one nickel, a high-purity material used in batteries, is expected to see demand greatly outstrip supply in the next few years. That will be fueled by meeting the large Chinese EV market, and other global markets where demand is expected to grow.


That need for class-one nickel will outstrip supply within five years, according to the study. One problem has been a lack of real investment in new mines for materials including nickel, Tesla’s global supply manager of battery metals, Sarah Maryssael, said at a Washington meeting in May. That could drive up prices as battery demand increases greatly. Tesla CEO Elon Musk is concerned about having enough economically viable — and available — metal to continue meeting its growing electric car demand. That will take off even more as the company taps into China’s booming markets. “They are getting ready to have the new factory in China, and are at full capacity in North America,’’ Peter Bradford, chief executive officer of nickel producer Independence Group NL, said. “They recognize the biggest risk from a strategic supply point of view is nickel.’’

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Kind of mad that this didn’t stop America from sending its young people to be killed and maimed in more jungles and deserts.

Apocalypse Now: Final Cut (G.)

‘Someday this war’s gonna end,” is the sage comment from surf-crazed Wagner enthusiast Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore, brusquely played by Robert Duvall. In fact, when Francis Ford Coppola’s grandiose epic masterpiece Apocalypse Now was first unveiled in 1979, the Vietnam war had only ended four years previously, and the succeeding Cambodian-Vietnamese war (where the film’s climax is set) was in full swing. Coppola’s bad trip into south-east Asia was co-written by John Milius with narration written by Michael Herr. It was inspired by Joseph Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness, Herr’s own Vietnam reportage-memoir Dispatches and maybe at one further remove by Rudyard Kipling’s lines about the US taking up the white man’s imperial burden.


It was famously an ordeal for all concerned. The production involved a filming expedition in the Philippines that felt hardly less colossal and traumatic to the participants than the actual war, though it became commonplace in Hollywood’s Vietnam for the anguish of American soldiers, not that of the Vietnamese people themselves, to be seen as important. (The nearest that Vietnamese people get to actual importance in Apocalypse Now is the four South Vietnamese intelligence officers, executed by ColKurtz as Communist spies, whose ID cards we briefly see.) Like Lawrence of Arabia, moreover, this is a film without women – or mostly.


Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now. Photograph: Allstar/United Artists

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“The study found that American agriculture has become 48 times more toxic to insects over the past 25 years and pinned 92 percent of the toxicity increase on neonicotinoids..”

Explosion of Toxic Pesticide Use Causes Insect Apocalypse in US (CD)

The rapid and dangerous decline of the insect population in the United States—often called an “insect apocalypse” by scientists—has largely been driven by an increase in the toxicity of U.S. agriculture caused by the use of neonicotinoid pesticides, according to a study published Tuesday in the journal PLOS One. The study found that American agriculture has become 48 times more toxic to insects over the past 25 years and pinned 92 percent of the toxicity increase on neonicotinoids, which were banned by the European Union last year due to the threat they pose to bees and other pollinators. Kendra Klein, Ph.D., study co-author and senior staff scientist at Friends of the Earth, said the United States must follow Europe’s lead and ban the toxic pesticides before it is too late.


“It is alarming that U.S. agriculture has become so much more toxic to insect life in the past two decades,” Klein said in a statement. “We need to phase out neonicotinoid pesticides to protect bees and other insects that are critical to biodiversity and the farms that feed us.” “Congress must pass the Saving America’s Pollinators Act to ban neonicotinoids,” Klein added. “In addition, we need to rapidly shift our food system away from dependence on harmful pesticides and toward organic farming methods that work with nature rather than against it.” According to National Geographic, neonics “are used on over 140 different agricultural crops in more than 120 countries. They attack the central nervous system of insects, causing overstimulation of their nerve cells, paralysis, and death.” With insect populations declining due to neonic use, “the numbers of insect-eating birds have plummeted in recent decades,” National Geographic reported. “There’s also been a widespread decline in nearly all bird species.”

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Amazon: ~2,700,000 sq mi (7,000,000 km2)

Contiguous US: ~3,100,000 sq mi (8,000,000 km2)

 

 

 

 

 

Jul 262019
 
 July 26, 2019  Posted by at 8:31 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  4 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Dora Maar with green nails 1936

 

What Mueller Was Trying to Hide (Strassel)
Barr And State AGs Discuss Big Tech Monopolies (ZH)
Tulsi Gabbard Sues Google For Campaign “Interference” (ZH)
Brussels Repels Boris Johnson’s Quest For New Brexit Deal (G.)
Don’t Call It A Coup, You’ll Spoil Boris Johnson’s Big Day Out (G.)
World Trade in Face of Tariffmageddon, Trade Wars & Manufacturing Slowdown (WS)
After Century of Chaos and War, Versailles Treaty Still Haunts the World (Sp.)
The Tyranny of the Police State Disguised as Law-and-Order (Whitehead)
In Roundup Case, US Judge Cuts $2 Billion Verdict To $86 Million (R.)
Florida Senator Says Under Siege For Seeking Epstein Probe (Julie K. Brown)
Boeing Targets October, FAA Official Says No Timeline For 737 MAX (R.)
Jacinda Ardern Accused By Maori Of ‘Lacking Leadership’ In Land Dispute (G.)
The Cheapest Way to Save the Planet Grows Like a Weed (Brown)
Earth, But Not As We Knew It – James Lovelock Turns 100 (G.)

 

 

Horowitz and/or Durham will have to look at Weissmann and the rest of Mueller’s lawyers. As well as the FBI.

What Mueller Was Trying to Hide (Strassel)

Special counsel Robert Mueller testified before two House committees Wednesday, and his performance requires us to look at his investigation and report in a new light. We’ve been told it was solely about Russian electoral interference and obstruction of justice. It’s now clear it was equally about protecting the actual miscreants behind the Russia-collusion hoax. The most notable aspect of the Mueller report was always what it omitted: the origins of this mess. Christopher Steele’s dossier was central to the FBI probe, the basis of many of the claims of conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia. Yet the Mueller authors studiously wrote around the dossier, mentioning it only in perfunctory terms. The report ignored Mr. Steele’s paymaster, Fusion GPS, and its own ties to Russians. It also ignored Fusion’s paymaster, the Clinton campaign, and the ugly politics behind the dossier hit job.


Mr. Mueller’s testimony this week put to rest any doubt that this sheltering was deliberate. In his opening statement he declared that he would not “address questions about the opening of the FBI’s Russia investigation, which occurred months before my appointment, or matters related to the so-called Steele Dossier.” The purpose of those omissions was obvious, as those two areas go to the heart of why the nation has been forced to endure years of collusion fantasy. Mr. Mueller claimed he couldn’t answer questions about the dossier because it “predated” his tenure and is the subject of a Justice Department investigation. These excuses are disingenuous. Nearly everything Mr. Mueller investigated predated his tenure, and there’s no reason the Justice Department probe bars Mr. Mueller from providing a straightforward, factual account of his team’s handling of the dossier.

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The pushback intensifies. They’re going to have to find a way out. Even if the CIA likes things just the way they are.

Barr And State AGs Discuss Big Tech Monopolies (ZH)

A bipartisan group of eight state attorneys general met with US Attorney General William Barr on Thursday to discuss “the real concerns consumers across the country have with big tech companies stifling competition,” according to Politico. “Our bipartisan coalition of eight state attorneys general was pleased with the opportunity to meet with U.S. Attorney General Barr to talk about the real concerns consumers across the country have with big tech companies stifling competition on the internet,” reads a joint statement from the state AGs, which include Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana.

“The potential state action adds yet another layer to the growing scrutiny of the power of online platforms. In announcing its antitrust review this week, the DOJ said it will consider “widespread concerns” expressed about search, social media and online retail services.” -Politico. Meanwhile, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes is has been meeting with regulators to make the case for breaking up the social media giant, according to the New York Times. In recent weeks, Mr. Hughes has joined two leading antitrust academics, Scott Hemphill of New York University and Tim Wu of Columbia University, in meetings with the Federal Trade Commission, the Justice Department and state attorneys general. In those meetings, the three have laid out a potential antitrust case against Facebook, Mr. Wu and Mr. Hemphill said.

“For nearly a decade, they argue, Facebook has made “serial defensive acquisitions” to protect its dominant position in the market for social networks, according to slides they have shown government officials. By scooping up nascent rivals, they assert, Facebook has thwarted potential competitors, making it easier for the social network to charge advertisers higher prices and to offer a worse experience for users.” -New York Times

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Barr can start right here.

Tulsi Gabbard Sues Google For Campaign “Interference” (ZH)

Progressive Democrat presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, who has long been under fire from mainstream media and establishment voices in her own party for her vehemently anti-war and anti-interventionist stance, is suing Google, The New York Times reports, in what is said to be the first time in history a presidential candidate has sued a major technology firm. It must be remembered that though considered a “long shot” by party insiders based on her outlier stances (for which she’s been called a popular Ron Paul type unorthodox figure among the Dems), from criticizing the Democrats’ ‘Russiagate’ fixation to calling for an end to “regime change wars” abroad to being willing to meet with Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, Google searches for her named surged across the US during last month’s first round of presidential nominee debates.

And now, as the Times reports, she says Google infringed on her free speech by suspending her campaign’s ability to get its message out: “Tulsi Now Inc., the campaign committee for Ms. Gabbard, said Google suspended the campaign’s advertising account for six hours on June 27 and June 28, obstructing its ability to raise money and spread her message to potential voters.” Google and other major US tech companies like Facebook have faced an avalanche of scrutiny and criticism of late for censoring and/or manipulating the visibility of those with unorthodox political views. The new lawsuit claims Google took steps to “interfere” with Gabbard’s chances in the upcoming 2020 presidential election.

“Google’s arbitrary and capricious treatment of Gabbard’s campaign should raise concerns for policymakers everywhere about the company’s ability to use its dominance to impact political discourse, in a way that interferes with the upcoming 2020 presidential election,” the lawsuit stated. Specifically the lawsuit suggests Google diverted Gabbard campaign emails to be sent to spam folders on Gmail at “a disproportionately high rate” compared to her Democratic rival candidates.

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No-deal Brexit was voted down in London multiple times. What are the odds it won’t be if Boris tries again?

Brussels Repels Boris Johnson’s Quest For New Brexit Deal (G.)

Brussels has roundly rebuffed Boris Johnson after he laid down tough conditions for the new Brexit deal he hopes to strike over the summer. Speaking to the House of Commons for the first time as prime minister on Thursday, Johnson reiterated his campaign pledge of ditching the Irish backstop and promised to ramp up preparations for a no-deal Brexit immediately. “I would prefer us to leave the EU with a deal,” he said. “I would much prefer it. I believe that it is possible even at this late stage, and I will work flat-out to make it happen. “But certain things need to be clear: the withdrawal agreement negotiated by my predecessor has been three times rejected by this house; its terms are unacceptable to this parliament and to this country.”


In a phone call later in the day, the European commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, signalled the EU27’s determination to stick with the deal negotiated with Theresa May’s government – which includes the backstop. “President Juncker listened to what Prime Minister Johnson had to say, reiterating the EU’s position that the withdrawal agreement is the best and only agreement possible – in line with the European council guidelines,” a commission spokesperson said. Juncker told Johnson the EU was willing to “add language” to the political declaration – the non-binding document that covers the future relationship – but would only consider any other proposals “providing they are compatible with the withdrawal agreement”.

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“When you haven’t got a principle left to betray, such displays of craven loyalty come as second nature.”

Don’t Call It A Coup, You’ll Spoil Boris Johnson’s Big Day Out (G.)

If a developing country had just changed its entire government without an election, we’d be calling it a coup. And if that coup had been led by a man clearly unfit for office, whom even his own family can’t trust to tell the truth, we’d be calling that country a failed state. But as this is the UK and the leader in question is Boris Johnson, we plead the exceptionalism of a first-world democracy. No matter that no one voted for a de facto Vote Leave government of shits and charlatans, that is what we now have. Taking Back Control is far too precious a virtue to be entrusted to the people. For now at least. When he had made his first speech as prime minister outside Downing Street, Johnson had briefly tried to present himself as a serious figure.

Even if the content of what he was saying was still basically the same divisive doggybollocks. It hadn’t gone down that well. Because if there was one thing more terrifying than Boris acting the fool, it was Boris pretending to be serious. A carapace of sincerity that dissolves on contact with reality. Everyone knows Boris is serious about only one thing: the fulfilment of his own delusions. Other people only exist as satellites to his own ego. Useful idiots in the service of World King Idiot. A man who can go toe to toe with Donald Trump in any dysfunctionality contest. Someone who believes he is an innocent victim, misunderstood by the entire world, but who is actually a sociopath only misunderstood by himself. Someone deserving of the undying gratitude of a nation for taking a pay cut to enter Downing Street.

For his first outing in the Commons, Johnson had gone back to his more familiar default setting. The Fool. The court jester from whom no one expects the truth, so long as they are entertained. “Pifflepafflewifflewaffle,” he began. The script remains the same, even if the persona changes. Dominic Raab, Sajid Javid, Priti Patel and the dozen or so other members of the recently appointed cabinet on the frontbench roared their approval. When you haven’t got a principle left to betray, such displays of craven loyalty come as second nature.

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No collapse yet, but a plateau.

World Trade in Face of Tariffmageddon, Trade Wars & Manufacturing Slowdown (WS)

World trade volume – imports and exports of merchandise across the globe – increased 0.3% in May from April, after falling 0.6% in the prior month, according to the Merchandise World Trade Monitor, released today by CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis. On a year-over-year basis, the index fell 0.4%. And it is down 2.1% from the peak in October 2018. This isn’t exactly stellar, compared to 2017 and 2018, when the world trade index increased between 2% and 6% year-over-year.

But it isn’t a “collapse” either. A collapse of world trade occurred during the Global Financial Crisis when companies shut down their ordering process – not knowing if the banking system would still be there the next morning – and when consumers closed their wallets, particularly American consumers who provide much of the oomph behind world trade, given their penchant for imports, but they were losing their jobs by the millions. From September 2008 through the trough in May 2009, the World Trade Monitor plunged 17.5%.


In the Eurozone, there has been some decline in both imports and exports in recent months. While Germany is heavily exposed to the automotive sector and is getting hit harder, other countries such as Greece, Italy, Portugal, and France, are not. Especially in Southern Europe, food exports – such as olive oil, wine, salami, cheese, and other specialty foods – play a larger role among their exports, and there is no slowdown in food products. Also note the impact of the euro debt crisis on imports (red line):

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“A new world seemed to have been created.”

After Century of Chaos and War, Versailles Treaty Still Haunts the World (Sp.)

A century ago, in July 1919, Germany began its journey to the lowest reaches of Hades. Another 26 years would pass before a previously civilized, enlightened people finally emerged, their nation in ruins, its cities bombed and its countryside occupied. Another four decades would pass before their country was reunited, and even then some of Berlin’s neighbors, convinced that Germans possessed a double dose of original sin, preferred a divided Germany. In 1919, World War I formally came to an end. The victorious allies dictated a peace that humbled Germany, formalized the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires, created a gaggle of weak ethnically based states, and shared the geopolitical spoils among the victors. A new world seemed to have been created.

The treaty signed on June 28 in the famous Hall of Mirrors at the Versailles palace, however, proved to be but a brief interlude of peace. Germany remained recalcitrant. The myth had emerged that the German military had been defeated by the Dolchstoss, or “stab-in-the-back,” at home. But the reality was unpleasant enough: the peace settlement made no pretense of applying Woodrow Wilson’s famed Fourteen Points to Germany as the surrendering Germans had expected. The first democratically elected German government resigned rather than signing what became known as the Versailles Treaty. After being threatened with invasion, the successor leadership submitted. Not until two weeks later, in July, did the reluctant Reichstag ratify the pact.

The Deutsche Zeitung inveighed against the “disgraceful treaty” and promised, “We will never stop until we win back what we deserve.” Versailles almost immediately began radicalizing politics in the Weimar republic, encouraging violence, assassinations of left-wing politicians, and extremist bids for power, including by an army veteran and surprisingly effective rabble-rouser named Adolf Hitler. The sense of crisis gradually receded, however, only to have the Great Depression destroy much of the middle class, the mainstay of any democratic order. Hitler gained power, and a little more than two decades after losing one war Germany plunged into another one…

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“America’s expanding military empire is bleeding the country dry at a rate of more than $15 billion a month (or $20 million an hour)..”

The Tyranny of the Police State Disguised as Law-and-Order (Whitehead)

Having been co-opted by greedy defense contractors, corrupt politicians and incompetent government officials, America’s expanding military empire is bleeding the country dry at a rate of more than $15 billion a month (or $20 million an hour)—and that’s just what the government spends on foreign wars. The U.S. military empire’s determination to police the rest of the world has resulted in more than 1.3 million U.S. troops being stationed at roughly 1000 military bases in over 150 countries around the world. That doesn’t include the number of private contractors pulling in hefty salaries at taxpayer expense. In Afghanistan, for example, private contractors outnumber U.S. troops three to one. No matter how we might differ about the role of the U.S. military in foreign affairs, surely we can agree that America’s war spending and commitment to policing the rest of the world are bankrupting the nation and spreading our troops dangerously thin.

All of the imperial powers amassed by Barack Obama and George W. Bush—to kill American citizens without due process, to detain suspects indefinitely, to strip Americans of their citizenship rights, to carry out mass surveillance on Americans without probable cause, to suspend laws during wartime, to disregard laws with which they might disagree, to conduct secret wars and convene secret courts, to sanction torture, to sidestep the legislatures and courts with executive orders and signing statements, to direct the military to operate beyond the reach of the law, to operate a shadow government, and to act as a dictator and a tyrant, above the law and beyond any real accountability—were inherited by Donald Trump.

These presidential powers—acquired through the use of executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements and which can be activated by any sitting president—enable past, president and future presidents to operate above the law and beyond the reach of the Constitution. Yet no matter how we might differ about how success or failure of past or present presidential administrations, surely we can agree that the president should not be empowered to act as an imperial dictator with permanent powers.

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Trying not to say Monsanto. And why have a jury system when judges keep overruling them? Doesn’t that make it all a mockery?

In Roundup Case, US Judge Cuts $2 Billion Verdict To $86 Million (R.)

A California judge on Thursday reduced a $2 billion jury verdict, slashing the award for a couple who blamed Bayer’s glyphosate-based weed killer Roundup for their cancer to $86.7 million. Superior Court Judge Winifred Smith of the California Superior Court in Oakland said the jury’s billion-dollar punitive damages awards were excessive and unconstitutional, but rejected Bayer’s request to strike the punitive award outright. Under Smith’s final order, California couple Alva and Alberta Pilliod would receive roughly $17 million in compensatory and $69 million in punitive damages, down from $55 million and $2 billion, respectively. The plaintiffs still have to formally accept the reduced award. Bayer in a statement on Thursday said Smith’s decision to slash the award was a step in the right direction, but added it would file an appeal.


“We continue to believe that the verdict and damage awards are not supported by the evidence at trial and conflict with the extensive body of reliable science and conclusions of leading health regulators worldwide that confirms glyphosate-based herbicides can be used safely and that glyphosate is not carcinogenic,” the company said. [..] The company had asked Smith to strike the punitive damages award in the Pilliods’ case, arguing that hundreds of studies and assessments by regulators worldwide concluded the herbicide to be safe for human use. But the judge in her Thursday order rejected those arguments.“In this case there was clear and convincing evidence that Monsanto made efforts to impede, discourage, or distort scientific inquiry and the resulting science,” Smith said.

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Typical: sheriff is very powerful. Not so typical: Senator Lauren Book’s dad is a very powerful lobbyist.

Florida Senator Says Under Siege For Seeking Epstein Probe (Julie K. Brown)

Florida Sen. Lauren Book has reached out to Capitol police after receiving an anonymous warning connected to her demand for a state inquiry into Palm Beach Sheriff Ric Bradshaw’s handling of accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein’s lenient work release program, the Miami Herald has learned. Book, a vocal advocate for child sexual assault survivors, said she also received more than a dozen calls from Bradshaw’s political supporters asking her to back off on her call for an investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement into Bradshaw. On Monday, Book, a Democrat, wrote a letter to Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis asking him to authorize a probe into how Epstein, accused of molesting dozens of underage girls and a registered sex offender, was permitted to leave the Palm Beach County Jail and spend much of his 2008-2009 incarceration in an office in West Palm Beach.

DeSantis said Thursday after a Cabinet meeting that he would “certainly consider” an investigation but that he has yet to decide how the state should respond. [..] the Palm Beach Sheriff’s Office issued a new statement that its previously announced internal affairs investigation of the deputies who guarded and supervised Epstein during his work release had become a criminal investigation as well. No further elaboration was provided. Meanwhile, Book, in an interview with the Herald, said she had asked the Capitol police, who handle security for state lawmakers, to look into claims made on a Russian website alleging that Bradshaw was behind an effort to access her phone and emails by using the pretext of “imminent danger’’ to obtain her personal information.

“I’ve received countless phone calls saying ‘Little girl you don’t know what you’re getting into,’ and telling me that I should just stop,’’ said Book, a child sexual abuse survivor herself who has worked to pass strict sex offender laws in Florida. In a statement, PBSO said it had no knowledge of anyone trying to threaten or pressure Book.

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Southwest has already cancelled flights till 2020, and they far more 737 MAXs than anyone else. Even closed down Newark operations because of it.

Boeing Targets October, FAA Official Says No Timeline For 737 MAX (R.)

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration distanced itself on Thursday from suggestions by Boeing that its grounded 737 MAX could resume flying passengers in October, saying regulators do not have a timeline for vetting safety upgrades. Boeing Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg told analysts on Wednesday he was confident the MAX would be back in service as early as October after a certification flight with regulators in September. But the FAA’s top official declined to be pinned down on Boeing’s target of October or any other timeline for clearing the plane, which was grounded in March after two fatal crashes.


“We don’t have a timeline. Don’t have October. Don’t have August. Don’t have 2021,” Acting Administrator Dan Elwell told reporters at the EAA AirVenture air show in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. “We have one criteria. When the 737 MAX has been – when the complications to it have been satisfactorily assessed, and the MAX is safe to return to service, that’s the only criteria,” Elwell said. [..] U.S. airlines are cancelling thousands of monthly flights due to the grounding and have warned of an increasing financial toll in the second half of the year. Southwest Airlines, a top customer, said on Thursday it was scheduling without the MAX until early January and ending operations at Newark Liberty International airport due to a scarcity of planes.

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Not looking good, Jacinda.

Jacinda Ardern Accused By Maori Of ‘Lacking Leadership’ In Land Dispute (G.)

New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, is being accused of a “lack of leadership” over an escalating land dispute between Maori and a construction company which plans to build 500 homes on sacred land in south Auckland. Opposition to the project boiled over this week over when a group that had been illegally occupying the land was served an eviction notice. The protest group has grown into about 300 people with police also increasing their presence. Seven protesters were arrested on Thursday night after they linked arms and chained themselves to a van to block part of the motorway near the city’s airport. The site, called Ihumatao, is home to New Zealand’s earliest market gardens as well as being a significant archaeological site on land considered sacred by local Maori.


Fletcher Building is looking to develop around 500 homes on the land, which local Maori say was stolen from them after land wars with the British dating back to the 1860s. The protest group want the land given back to local Maori. Protesters have implored Ardern to step in, including sending a letter directly to her. However, she has so far said the government will not get involved. “This is something obviously everyone wants to see resolution around, no one wants to see the kinds of disruption and outpouring of emotion [we have seen],” Ardern said. “Everyone wants a resolution but ultimately it will have to come from mana whenua (Maori). Protest leader Pania Newton told media that Ardern’s words showed “a lack of leadership” and showed “ignorance” about its treaty obligations. “This is the revolution of our generation,” Newton said.

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How much industrial hemp can we plant? Pretty sure if we do it, it’ll be for money.

The Cheapest Way to Save the Planet Grows Like a Weed (Brown)

Planting billions of trees across the world is by far the cheapest and most efficient way to tackle the climate crisis. So states a Guardian article, citing a new analysis published in the journal Science. The author explains: As trees grow, they absorb and store the carbon dioxide emissions that are driving global heating. New research estimates that a worldwide planting programme could remove two-thirds of all the emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere by human activities, a figure the scientists describe as “mind-blowing”. [..] The July analytical review in Science calculated how many additional trees could be planted globally without encroaching on crop land or urban areas.

It found that there are 1.7 billion hectares (4.2 billion acres) of treeless land on which 1.2 trillion native tree saplings would naturally grow. Using the most efficient methods, 1 trillion trees could be restored for as little as $300 billion—less than 2% of the lower range of estimates for the Green New Deal introduced by progressive Democrats in February. The Guardian quoted Professor Tom Crowther at the Swiss university ETH Zürich, who said, “What blows my mind is the scale. I thought restoration would be in the top 10, but it is overwhelmingly more powerful than all of the other climate change solutions proposed.” He said it was also by far the cheapest solution that has ever been proposed. The chief drawback of reforestation as a solution to the climate crisis, as The Guardian piece points out, is that trees grow slowly.

The projected restoration could take 50 to 100 years to reach its full carbon sequestering potential. Fortunately, as of December 2018, there is now a cheaper, faster and more efficient alternative—one that was suppressed for nearly a century but was legalized on a national scale when President Trump signed the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018. This is the widespread cultivation of industrial hemp, the nonintoxicating form of cannabis grown for fiber, cloth, oil, food and other purposes. Hemp grows to 13 feet in 100 days, making it one of the fastest carbon dioxide-to-biomass conversion tools available. Industrial hemp has been proved to absorb more CO2 per hectare than any forest or commercial crop, making it the ideal carbon sink. It can be grown on a wide scale on nutrient-poor soils with very small amounts of water and no fertilizers.

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A formidable mind. And one not shy about contradicting himself.

Earth, But Not As We Knew It – James Lovelock Turns 100 (G.)

James Lovelock, the scientist and writer, is 100 years old on Friday and remains a combination of environmental Cassandra and Old Testament prophet. Unlike them, though, he changes his mind about what the future holds. Foolish consistency, Emerson wrote, is the hobgoblin of little minds, and Mr Lovelock’s mind is not little. More than 10 years before the record high July temperatures, Mr Lovelock flatly told the Guardian that 80% of human life on Earth would perish by 2100 because of the climate emergency. He imagined a dystopian end of humanity where “the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable” by the end of the 21st century.

As a scientist (his first letter to Nature was published in 1945, on the subject of writing on petri dishes), Mr Lovelock’s life has been studded with insight. He invented an electron capture detector that could pick up minute traces of pollutants – such as the pesticides that spurred Rachel Carson to write the 1962 book Silent Spring. At home he built instruments that ended up on Mars, helping Nasa to establish that the red planet was lifeless.

Mr Lovelock’s imagination has not narrowed, but his vision has become bleaker with time. His new book Novacene: The Coming Age of Hyperintelligence proposes that the 300,000-year Anthropocene era of Earth’s human domination is ending. Novacene is a new age where our species is doomed to a worse fate than clinging on for dear life at the north pole as previously imagined. Instead we will become lackeys of cyborgs able to think 10,000 times faster than humans. We will be kept on to ensure there are habitable temperatures for these superior intelligences.

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How the Mueller people -and the Senate, let’s not forget them- kept Russiagate alive all that time: