Mar 272025
 


Henri Matisse Woman with a hat 1905

 

Trump Admin Hit by Record Number of Injunctions From Partisan Courts (McCarthy)
When Judges Violate the Constitution (Joecks)
President Trump Unleashes 25% Tariffs On Foreign-Made Auto Imports (ZH)
Japanese Carmakers Face Catastrophic Profit Hit From Trump’s Auto Tariffs (ZH)
Goldberg Accidentally Proved His ‘Signalgate’ Narrative Is a Hoax (Margolis)
“Those Are Some Really Sh*tty War Plans”: Hegseth Ridicules ‘Bombshell’ (ZH)
White House Selects Elon Musk To Investigate SignalGate Controversy (JTN)
Distinguishing the Signal From the Noise (Victoria Taft)
Might of the Living Feds: 1,500+ Cash-Sucking ‘Zombies’ (RCW)
“Sometimes a Little Brain Damage Can Help.” (Pinsker)
Trump Declassifies FBI Crossfire Hurricane Files (RT)
US Government is a Big Money Laundering Operation – John Rubino (USAW)
RFK Jr. is Pushing Big Pharma Ad Ban – And Corporate Media is Panicking (Becker)
EU Officials Unhappy With Kallas – Politico (RT)
Moscow Backs Ceasefire Despite Kiev’s Breaches – Kremlin (RT)
Russia Winning In Ukraine, Continually Gaining Leverage: US Intel (ZH)
Ukraine Never Had Nuclear Weapons – Grenell (RT)
US Looking For ‘Proper Way’ To Reconnect Russia to SWIFT – Bessent (RT)
Moody’s Issues Warning On US Finances (RT)

 

 

 

 

Elon why

XO

 

 

Russian steel

2016
https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1904948216447008882

 

 

 

 

 

 

“..69 District Court judges presiding over cases involving the Trump administration..”

Trump Admin Hit by Record Number of Injunctions From Partisan Courts (McCarthy)

Since returning to the White House on Jan. 20, President Donald Trump has unleashed a storm of executive orders, a great many of which have been halted or blocked—not by the now-Republican-controlled Congress, but by federal District Courts. According to numbers compiled by the Harvard Law Review, U.S. District Courts have issued more sweeping injunctions against Trump in the past two months than they have against three former presidents over their entire terms. Since Jan. 20, lower courts have imposed 15 nationwide injunctions against the Trump administration, compared to what the Harvard Law Review recounts as six over the course of George W. Bush’s eight-year presidency, 12 over the course of Barack Obama’s eight years in the White House, and 14 during Joe Biden’s single four-year term.

During his first term, Trump was subjected to 64 nationwide injunctions. If inferior courts continue issuing nationwide injunctions against the Trump administration at the current rate (15 for every two months in office), then the second Trump administration will have accumulated 360 nationwide injunctions by the time the president leaves office—and a grand total of 424 over the course of both of Trump’s terms. However, there have been a total of over 45 rulings or more targeted injunctions leveled against the second Trump administration overall, according to The New York Times.

The Harvard Law Review’s tally (published in 2024) also noted the increased partisanship of the federal judiciary. Of the six injunctions imposed against Republican Bush, half came from judges appointed by Democrats and half from judges appointed by Republicans. Of the 12 injunctions imposed against Democrat Obama, seven (less than 60%) were issued by judges appointed by Republicans. Of the 64 injunctions Trump’s first Republican administration was slapped with, 92.2% were issued by judges appointed by Democrats. All—100%—of the 14 injunctions issued against Democrat Biden came from Republican-appointed judges.

Almost a year before Trump’s return to the White House, the Harvard Law Review also warned against the practice of “judge shopping,” essentially looking at the partisan leanings of various federal judges and bringing a complaint in a given district based on a judge’s presumed political leanings. During the first Trump administration, more injunctions were issued against the president by federal District Court judges in deep-blue California than by judges in any other state.

The second Trump term is seemingly witnessing a repeat of this effect. The Washington Stand conducted an analysis of all the lawsuits either already heard or pending a ruling or injunction at the District Court level against the second Trump administration, disregarding the handful of cases being overseen by federal magistrate judges. Of the 69 District Court judges presiding over cases involving the Trump administration, 21 were appointed by Republican presidents: two by Ronald Reagan, one by George H.W. Bush, eight by George W. Bush, and 10 by Trump himself. Already, several of those Republican-appointed judges have issued injunctions or rulings against Trump’s executive orders and actions. The other 48 District Court judges overseeing complaints against the Trump administration were appointed by Democrats: seven by Bill Clinton, 20 by Obama, and 21 by Biden.

In its analysis, The Harvard Law Review observed that “the extreme use of nationwide injunctions during the Trump Administration could reflect judicial responsiveness to the unprecedented degree to which President Trump tested the limits of presidential power.” However, the legal journal added that “in the Biden years, judges appear to be ordering vacatur in cases where plaintiffs requested an injunction.” An order of vacatur is binding only on the agency to which it is directed—as opposed to nationwide injunctions, which are, as the name suggests, binding nationwide and enforceable by holding violators in contempt—and simply vacates a rule, declaring that it shall have no legal effect.

The Harvard Law Review continued, “Whether the falling rate of injunctions from the Trump to the Biden Administration reflects a decrease in abuses of executive power, judicial responsiveness to growing criticism of the nationwide injunction, or the replacement of some injunctions with the ‘lesser remedy’ of vacatur, the decrease should not mislead: district court judges appear to be striking down executive policies of opposing administrations with unprecedented frequency.”

The growing use of nationwide injunctions by inferior courts, the prestigious legal journal warned, necessarily has a chilling effect on the development of law and precedent. When several inferior courts of different jurisdictions issue conflicting rulings, the matter often winds up at the U.S. Supreme Court, where a definitive standard is set for addressing similar issues going forward. However, nationwide injunctions halt the continued challenging of executive orders, executive actions, or laws, since, as the Harvard Law Review pointed out, various other inferior courts simply refuse to take up related cases, determining that there can be no demonstration of injury in fact while the nationwide injunctions are in place.

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“..Constitution. Article II gives “executive power” to the president, who is also commander in chief of the military. Yet, according to some federal judges, the judiciary is in charge of the executive branch’s military policy, hiring, spending decisions and deportation flights. The Trump administration can’t even take down a website.”

When Judges Violate the Constitution (Joecks)

Leftist judges want to turn President Donald Trump into a president in name only. Look at all the ways that individual judges have hamstrung the Trump administration. A district court judge recently blocked Trump’s executive order removing transgender individuals from the military. Another judge ordered the Trump administration to send two men who are pretending to be women into a women’s prison. One federal judge ordered the administration to restore government webpages that promote the Left’s transgender narrative. A different district court judge stopped the Trump administration from disbanding the wasteful United States Agency for International Development. Secretary of State Marco Rubio appointed Jeremy Lewin to a high-level position in USAID. The judge later ruled that Lewin wasn’t allowed to serve in that role.

Last weekend, another federal judge blocked the Trump administration from deporting illegal immigrant gang members. He even unsuccessfully attempted to force them to turn around flights that were already in the air. These examples are only the tip of the judicial overreach iceberg. Now, all presidential administrations face lawsuits, but what’s happening here is well beyond historical norms. In his four years in office, former President Joe Biden’s administration received 14 federal injunctions. In less than two months, judges have already hit the Trump administration with more than that. These rulings are an affront to the Constitution. Article II gives “executive power” to the president, who is also commander in chief of the military. Yet, according to some federal judges, the judiciary is in charge of the executive branch’s military policy, hiring, spending decisions and deportation flights. The Trump administration can’t even take down a website.

Contrast that judicial activism with what Alexander Hamilton laid out in Federalist 78. “The judiciary is beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of power,” he wrote. And “it can never attack with success either of the other two.” But, Hamilton warned, while “liberty can have nothing to fear from the judiciary alone,” it “would have everything to fear from its union with either of the other departments.” That’s what some district court judges are attempting to do. These unelected, unaccountable judges are attempting to upend the constitutional order. Most people take it for granted that the executive and legislative branches will abide by judicial decisions. And despite Trump’s social media bluster, his administration has been remarkably deferential to the judicial process in its actions.

That’s likely in part due to a belief that higher courts, including the Supreme Court, will largely overrule these individual judges. That’s already happened in one case involving Trump’s push to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion. Republicans in Congress are also working on potential solutions, such as requiring a three-judge panel to rule on injunctive relief. The judiciary is more vulnerable than many activist judges seem to realize. As Hamilton wrote, the judiciary “may truly be said to have neither force nor will, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.” In other words, if Trump tells the court to enforce its own rulings, the court can’t. It can only hope there would be a political price to pay for openly defying a court order.

Public support for the judiciary, however, could collapse quickly. The Left has been attacking it for years. Biden openly disregarded a Supreme Court decision on student loan forgiveness. Some Democrats pushed to pack the Supreme Court, while others have wrongly smeared conservative justices as corrupt. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts needs to stop rogue district court judges from violating the Constitution–and quickly. If he doesn’t, support from the right could evaporate quickly. A diminished court isn’t ideal, but neither is one that flagrantly violates the Constitution.

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There are hardly any American cars in Europe. But the US is full of Mercs and Beamers. The issue is quite obvious.

President Trump Unleashes 25% Tariffs On Foreign-Made Auto Imports (ZH)

Update (1600ET): President Trump has announced a 25% tariff on all cars not made in the US. “This will continue to spur growth,” Trump told reporters. Trump confirmed that these new tariffs are in addition to existing tariffs and are expected to result in $100 billion in revenues. To underscore his seriousness, Trump said, “This is permanent.” In addition to the tariffs, Trump discussed his plan to allow Americans to deduct interest payments on cars that are made in America. If the car is built in the US, there will be no tariffs. “We are going to charge countries for doing business in our country and taking our jobs, taking our wealth, taking a lot of things that they have been taking over the years.” GM and Ford shares are tumbling further on the news…

European and Canadian officials have already thrown their teddy-bears out of the stroller. Ontario Premier Doug Ford (who folded like broken deckchair on his last threat to hike electricity costs to Americans), warned that: “…he’ll “encourage Carney to target US automobiles… and will inflict as much trade pain as possible.” Canadian PM Mark Carney commented that US tariffs are a “direct attack” on Canadian auto workers, adding that the Trump tariffs “will hurt us.” “We will defend our workers, our companies, and our country.” European Commission Chief Ursula von der Leyen immediately posted her disappointment on X:

“I deeply regret the US decision to impose tariffs on European automotive exports. The automotive industry is a driver of innovation, competitiveness, and high quality jobs, through deeply integrated supply chains on both sides of the Atlantic. As I have said before, tariffs are taxes – bad for businesses, worse for consumers equally in the US and the European Union. We will now assess this announcement, together with other measures the US is envisaging in the next days. The EU will continue to seek negotiated solutions, while safeguarding its economic interests. As a major trading power and a strong community of 27 Member States, we will jointly protect our workers, businesses and consumers across our European Union.”

“Our automobile industry will flourish like it’s never flourished before,” Trump commented, seemingly unflapped by the possibility of retaliation.

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“..about 46% of all new cars sold in the US are imported.”

Japanese Carmakers Face Catastrophic Profit Hit From Trump’s Auto Tariffs (ZH)

As the fallout from Trump’s tariff plans comes into relief, a harsh truth is emerging for the automotive industry: there are lots of losers and not many winners. But foreign automakers, those without US facilities, will be hit especially hard. As Bloomberg notes, from South Korea’s Hyundai to Germany’s Volkswagen, and to a lesser extent America’s own General Motors, many of the world’s most prominent carmakers will soon face higher costs from Trump’s new levies on auto imports and key components. That’s because about 46% of all new cars sold in the US are imported.

“There are very few winners,” Sam Fiorani, vice president of global vehicle forecasting for AutoForecast Solutions, said in a phone interview. “Consumers will be losers because they will have reduced choice and higher prices.” One notable winner in the tariff chaos is Elon Musk. His Tesla, which has large factories in California and Texas, churns out all the electric vehicles it sells in the US, although as Elon noted late on Wednesday, the company will also not remain unscathed.

Ford could also face a less-severe impact than some rivals, with about 80% of the cars it sells in the US being built domestically. Others will be less lucky: starting April 2, the new 25% tariffs will apply to all imported passenger vehicles and light trucks, as well as key parts like engines, transmissions. Not surprisingly, the tariffs give automakers that heavily source parts in the US an edge, and Trump also allowed an exemption: the new levies will only apply to the non-US share of vehicles and parts imported under a free-trade agreement with Canada and Mexico. That may soften the blow for vehicles whose supply lines zig-zag across the continent. Tariffs on parts from Canada and Mexico that comply with the trade deal also won’t take effect until the US sets up a process to collect those levies. The US neighbors could use that window to try to stave off full implementation, even if it’s a long shot.

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There are whole lists of Goldberg’s anti-Trump articles.

Goldberg Accidentally Proved His ‘Signalgate’ Narrative Is a Hoax (Margolis)

The Democrats’ latest effort to manufacture a Trump administration scandal blew up in their faces this week after Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, reported that he was somehow included in an encrypted Signal chat group with top administration officials discussing a planned attack on Houthi rebels in Yemen. According to Goldberg, officials discussed classified and/or top-secret war plans. No one disputes that Goldberg was erroneously included in the chat, but the real issue is whether classified or top-secret war plans were actually discussed. CIA Director John Ratcliffe and DNI Director Tulsi Gabbard testified that nothing classified or top secret was discussed in the chat. Others in the administration have said the same thing. Goldberg had been given the opening to release the chats in their entirety to prove them wrong. But he insisted that he wouldn’t.

During an interview on The Bulwark Podcast with Tim Miller, Goldberg repeatedly evaded calls to produce evidence, raising serious questions about the credibility of his claims. Miller directly challenged Goldberg, pointing out that top Trump administration officials had accused him of lying. “Now, the Secretary of Defense and the White House Press Secretary have said you’re lying, have said there are no war plans there, have said there’s no classified information,” Miller stated. “So the obvious question is, shouldn’t you now demonstrate it? Shouldn’t you publish the text?” Goldberg flatly refused. “No, because they’re wrong. They’re wrong,” he insisted, offering no proof to back up his claims.

Here’s the problem with that claim: In the encrypted chat, National Security Advisor Michael Waltz explicitly mentioned the participants’ “high side” inboxes, a reference to the classified system. This made it clear they knew certain topics couldn’t be discussed on the Signal platform. Miller pressed Goldberg further in the interview, asking whether he would at least provide the alleged messages to congressional intelligence committees. Instead of responding substantively, Goldberg deflected with sarcasm. “Wow. What? You wanna become my lawyer?” he quipped with an annoyed tone. He clearly wasn’t comfortable with the line of questioning, and I got the sense he was hiding something.

As the conversation continued, Goldberg struggled to justify his refusal to produce evidence, resorting to vague justifications. “Just because they’re irresponsible with material doesn’t mean that I’m gonna be irresponsible with this material,” he said. He further attempted to cast doubt on the administration’s credibility, suggesting officials were merely trying to “get out of a jam.” In a final attempt to defend his decision, Goldberg framed it as a matter of principle. “I have a pretty clear standard in my own behavior of what I consider… information that I consider to be in the public interest, even if it’s technically classified or not,” he said, adding that he was “sticking to my principles.”

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“No names. No targets. No locations. No units. No routes. No sources. No methods. And no classified information.” ..”some really shitty war plans.”

“Those Are Some Really Sh*tty War Plans”: Hegseth Ridicules ‘Bombshell’ (ZH)

Update(1326ET): Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has responded to the growing calls among Dems for him to step down. This is hours after The Atlantic published the fuller chat logs, alleging that he’s discussing ‘war plans’ in an unsecure and unclassified setting – also with a journalist inadvertently added to the group chat. Hegseth emphasized on X that there were No names. No targets. No locations. No units. No routes. No sources. No methods. And no classified information.” And he said sarcastically these these make for “some really shitty war plans.”

Still, this is unlikely to appease the Trump White House’s enemies, who are also now claiming that national security officials ‘lied’ before the Senate yesterday.

* * *
The Atlantic has published the fuller chat thread from the Signal group that journalist Jeffrey Goldberg was ‘inadvertently’ included in. This comes after the top Trump officials involved denied that they shared secret “attack plans” in an unsecure, unclassified setting. The President has downplayed it, defending both national security adviser Mike Walz and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, has called for both Hegseth Waltz to either resign or be fired from their top national security posts. “When the stakes are this high, incompetence is not an option,” Warner wrote on social media Tuesday. “Pete Hegseth should resign. Mike Waltz should resign.”And in a a letter to President Trump, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries has urged Hegseth’s termination, calling him “unqualified” and a national security risk.

“The so-called secretary of defense recklessly and casually disclosed highly sensitive war plans — including the timing of a pending attack, possible strike targets and the weapons to be used — during an unclassified national security group chat that inexplicably included a reporter,” Jeffries wrote. “His behavior shocks the conscience, risked American lives and likely violated the law.” The newly published messages were sent on March 15 and purport to be from an account identified as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Amid the ongoing controversy, Golberg and The Atlantic are seeking to present a ‘smoking gun’ of sorts. The messages include times of strikes and the types of aircraft being used in attacks on Yemen’s Houthis, who have for many months been sending drone and missiles against Red Sea shipping, including American warships and even at times a carrier.

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The “chat” group is invite only. It should be simple to see who invited, and then added, the journalist.

White House Selects Elon Musk To Investigate SignalGate Controversy (JTN)

The White House on Wednesday asked Tesla CEO Elon Musk to lead a probe into the so-called SignalGate scandal, which refers to the accidental addition of a journalist to a national security chat on the encrypted messaging app Signal. Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, reported on Monday that he was added to a chain last week containing messages from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, National Security Adviser Michael Waltz, Vice President JD Vance, and 15 other senior national security officials. The discussion regarded the Defense Department’s strike plans on the Houthis. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed to reporters that Musk had been asked to help lead the investigation, along with his team at the Department of Government Efficiency, per The Hill.

“Elon Musk has offered to put his technical experts on this to figure out how this number was inadvertently added to the chat, again to take responsibility and ensure this can never happen again,” she said. The White House Counsel’s office and the National Security Council are also helping with the investigation. President Donald Trump said a staffer on Waltz’s team was responsible for Goldberg’s inclusion, and Waltz has denied ever meeting or talking to Goldberg. The journalist’s invitation allegedly came from Waltz’s account. Waltz has accepted “full responsibility” for the scandal.

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“I won’t make excuses for the security breach, for that’s what you call it when Jeffrey Goldberg is on the text chain hiding under the name “Jeffrey Goldberg.”

Distinguishing the Signal From the Noise (Victoria Taft)

After the hypersonic quickness and near-flawlessness of the first few weeks of the Trump 47 presidency, the mediacrats have seized upon a Signal chat between 17 high-level administration officials and Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg. They’ve attempted to turn a discussion about attacking Houthis into the theft of the Manhattan Project. It won’t work, but it doesn’t mean that between applauding the Tesla showroom fire bombings and threatening the drivers of those cars, the left won’t keep trying to make this fetch happen. The Morning Joe gadflies, endless CNN panels, even Hillary Clinton and everyone at the Trump White House agree on one thing: Jeffrey Goldberg shouldn’t have been on that Signal text chain because no one can trust him.

Financier, Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary, often says, “To be effective you must be able to distinguish the signal from the noise.” The way this issue has been discussed by mediacrats, it’s been all noise. Endless noise. First, Goldberg hates Trump. His wife works for Hillary Clinton, for goodness’ sake. Goldberg is “The Atlantic’s” Bob Woodward: the guy that comes up with all kinds of uncorroborated stories that no one has ever heard of, much less seen evidence for. If it’s true, why is it only stated in front of Bob or Jeffrey and never reported or even alluded to by anyone before or since? Even actor Bill Murray worked out that puzzle. Goldberg put the words “suckers and losers” into Donald Trump’s mouth at the same time he allegedly petulantly refused to go to a World War II cemetery in Normandy. Yeah, that’s totally on brand for Trump. Not.

Of course, it had nothing to do with the weather making it impossible to fly over the French countryside and near the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc to get to the cemetery. I mean, there are never weather problems there. Take the Normandy invasion as an example, the reason why Trump was there. That whole Normandy invasion thing wasn’t beset by weather problems. Dwight Eisenhower had no problems with the weather. He parked those Higgins Boats without an issue, and everyone got to Omaha without a scratch — in Jeffrey Goldberg’s imagination, anyway. Also, do you think a president, especially one who owned his own aircraft, might take the word of a helo pilot when things are too dangerous? Naw. Never happen. The whole thing’s absurd. Matt’s got a nice round-up of the rest of the boneheaded things Goldberg has said about Trump over here.

This isn’t a bash Jeffrey Goldberg session; there are plenty of pieces around here doing that because he makes it so deliciously easy. I must mention, however, that “The Atlantic” editor reported that they discussed war plans on the Signal text chain. Or maybe that’s what he thought this discussion was. Let’s ask Jeffrey. Jeffrey, how did this compare to the last time you were privy to “military plans”? Did you get all the troop movements, LZs, and weapons packages the last time? Were you included in further communications when members of the national security team said on the Signal chat, “we need to move to the high side” to continue the discussion on a more secure apparatus? I won’t make excuses for the security breach, for that’s what you call it when Jeffrey Goldberg is on the text chain hiding under the name “Jeffrey Goldberg.” But who had Goldberg in their contacts, anyway? What the actual hell?

The noise continued with the hilarious and beside-the-point reactions by former Obama and Biden officials. They are pure irony. Honestly, who thought it was a good idea to get Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice’s reactions? That is comedy gold. What, no Tony Blinken to discuss his expertly executed Afghanistan pullout that included an agreement not to kill the terrorists killing innocents in front of American soldiers? Or was it the bug-out at Bagram, giving China a home base? The woman who destroyed documents, emails, phones under preservation orders, and also had her own server, which even Mike Morrell, one of the 51 spies who lied, said was certainly spied on by the ChiComs and Russians, and worse, weighed in. Goldberg’s wife’s boss, Hillary Clinton, said:

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1,500+ organizations that haven’t been (re-) authorized by Congress for 45 years, but should have been. And have kept functioning, and received funding, as if they have been.

Might of the Living Feds: 1,500+ Cash-Sucking ‘Zombies’ (RCW)

In 1974, Congress created the Legal Services Corporation to connect lower-income Americans involved in civil disputes with free legal help. The law that established the agency stipulated that authorization for its funding would expire in 1980, when lawmakers were required to vote on whether to keep it alive. They never did. Still, Congress has funded LSC every year since. In fiscal 2025, its 51st year, LSC’s 135 employees will spend 95% of its now $560 million annual budget paying legal groups to represent Americans in cases such as eviction, domestic violence, and disputes over government benefits, according to Ron Flagg, the agency’s president since 2020. “LSC would welcome reauthorization,” Flagg said. “We haven’t hidden from it. Every budget cycle, we go through an exhaustive process before Congress appropriates funds — dozens of meetings with leaders of both parties. We demonstrate our return on investment, how we help 2 million Americans get life-saving legal help.”

The Legal Services Corp. now stands as America’s oldest “Zombie” program, but it’s far from unique. At a time when the Trump administration is moving aggressively to scale back government, including eliminating the entire Education Department, it’s sobering to note that 1,503 agencies or programs live on despite expired authorizations, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Another 155 will expire on Sept. 30. The Zombies, nearly half of which have been officially dead for more than a decade, persist in a budgetary netherworld. In a deep dive last year, CBO analysts were able to find dollar amounts for 491 of the programs, with total expenditures of $516 billion. They don’t know how much funding the other programs received.

The total federal budget in 2024 was $6.8 trillion, meaning expired Zombie programs take up at least 8% of the budget, and likely much more. “A lot of programs don’t get reauthorized because Congress is okay with how they’re operating,” said Josh Huder, former congressional staffer now at the Georgetown University Government Affairs Institute. “They continue to get annual appropriations because most members think they’re worthwhile.” Many Zombie programs now soak up far more funding than lawmakers originally envisioned. The Federal Election Commission, for example, was expected to spend $9.4 million per year before its authorization expired in 1981. Yet the agency continued to receive funding and spent $95 million in 2024, auditors at government watchdog Open The Books found. The Federal Communications Commission was originally allocated $339.6 million per year. Its funding authorization expired in 2020, yet it spent $28.4 billion last year.

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency hasn’t addressed the Zombies that are prowling the federal spreadsheets. Given DOGE’s headlong push to first root out alleged waste, fraud, and abuse and ask questions later, experts say, Zombies may offer a ripe target. “One could imagine that if DOGE is clued into the notion of expired authorizations, they’ll think a program is defunct,” said Sarah Binder, senior fellow at Brookings and professor of political science at George Washington University. She said this would be a mistake. “If Congress is still appropriating money to the programs, they’re not Zombies. They’re living, breathing agencies.” Binder says the fault lies not with the agencies, some of which have become important enough to be household names, but Congress. Lawmakers have made it so difficult to accomplish their most fundamental tasks, such as funding the government for another year, that they hardly ever get around to doing other important things, such as reauthorizing existing programs.

The Foreign Relations Authorization Act, for example, expired in 2003. Yet in 2024, Congress spent $38.4 billion on 24 of the law’s programs, allowing legislators to influence the White House’s foreign policy and security assistance to other nations. The House Committee on Energy and Commerce, now led by Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-KY), supported the funding of 346 expired programs, more than any other committee, the CBO found. The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, now chaired by Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), spent more identifiable money than any other group: $153.5 billion. “Congress’ job doesn’t stop when they allocate the money,” said Casey Burgat, professor at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management.

“They have to oversee it. And when they fail to do that they open themselves up to somebody else doing that. In this case, an aggressive executive branch in the form of DOGE.” Of the 1,503 agencies or programs, 22 remain alive that required a reauthorization vote as long ago as the 1980s, according to the CBO. In addition to the Legal Services Corp., whose authorization expired in 1980, and the FEC (a 1981 reauthorization deadline), the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, which oversees the country’s power grids (1984) and the Energy Information Administration, or EIA, whose data informs U.S. policymaking (1984), are among the Zombies pushing middle age.

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Fetterman.

“Sometimes a Little Brain Damage Can Help.” (Pinsker)

He might be dead, but George Carlin is having a career year on social media. Seems the 20-something liberal crowd has discovered his standup material, and short clips of him lambasting the establishment are still going viral. Of course, Carlin was also waaaay to the left: In one of his books, he wrote, “Property is theft. Nobody ‘owns’ anything. When you die, it all stays here.” Liberals love that. (Interestingly, clips of his 1990 “Doin’ It Again” HBO concert, where he condemns euphemistic language, censorship, PC gibberish, and even defends the use of the N-word, are seldom shared online. Can’t imagine why.) Whenever Carlin’s clips are uploaded, the youngsters all seem to have the same reaction: “Wow, this guy was REALLY ahead of his time!” And in some ways, he absolutely was. But perhaps he was most notably ahead of his time with his 1984 book, “Sometimes a Little Brain Damage Can Help.”

Because, 40 years later — which sounds almost biblical, an irony Carlin would probably appreciate — an enormously large, brain-damaged Pennsylvania senator named John Fetterman is having a career year, too. I mentioned his size because it’s striking: At six foot eight, he’s the only man left in D.C. who can look Barron Trump in the eye. With his shaved head and “gym bro” sweats, he’s one of a handful of Democrats who wouldn’t be out of place on the set of the “Joe Rogan Experience.” In fact, he’s already recorded one episode with Rogan and will probably be taping more. (Over two million views on YouTube and Spotify.) Meanwhile, the Democratic Party is just beginning to realize that it’s lost an entire generation of young male voters. As we discussed two days ago, “75-year-old white men supported Kamala Harris at a significantly higher rate than 20-year-old white men.”

As Newsweek described it: “This is the thing I am the most shocked by in the last four years—that young people have gone from being the most progressive generation since the Baby Boomers… to becoming potentially the most conservative generation that we’ve experienced maybe in 50 to 60 years,” Shor [the head of data science at the pro-Democratic polling firm Blue Rose Research] stated. It’s quickly becoming an existential problem for the Democratic Party. This is still a closely divided country; neither party can afford to lose key members of their constituencies. It’s all hands on deck! As professor David B. Cohen told Newsweek: Young voters compose a crucial part of the Democratic base, and if that is eroding, where do they make up for that? Going forward, Democrats will have to figure out how to bring young voters back to the fold — particularly young men — if they want to be competitive nationally.

Enter John Fetterman. He’s been candid about his mental health struggles — something which disproportionately afflicts young men, by the way. When pro-Hamas hoodlums protested outside of his home, he took to the roof and waved the Israeli flag. And he’s had it with the wackjobs in his own party: “I was really the first Democrat to refuse to shut our government down, and my party was so desperate to pander to shut the government down,” Fetterman said. “Absurd, absolutely absurd. Six months ago, we were lecturing the Republicans, ‘You can’t shut the government down.’ Now it’s, ‘Well, yeah, let’s do these things.’” He added, “It’s like that’s part of the problem, to pander, and they want to pander to the extreme parts of our party, to shut the government down. I said I will never burn the village down and claim that I’m saving it.”

Fetterman also pointed to Michigan as an example of political “pandering” that failed, claiming the Democratic Party tried to appeal to the left-wing Arab-American population only to lose the state to President Donald Trump anyway. He specifically called out Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., for refusing to support President Joe Biden and later Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 election because of their support for Israel. Fetterman claimed that she and other far-left Democrats ultimately helped to elect Trump. [Emphasis added] But his stance came at a cost: It put him in the crosshairs of the Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez/Bernie Sanders wing of the party. They hate him! But Big John isn’t backing down:

It’s a power struggle. And it’s one that Fetterman won’t win: He might be big, but his “wing” of the party is puny. The Democratic Party is essentially a coalition party, where the common denominator is that everyone agrees that they’ll work together. For most of the last 50 years, the coalition has been comprised of women, minorities, liberals, young voters, and “left-leaning libertarians” — folks like Bill Maher, who generally lean to the left but mostly want to be left alone. And you could probably include John Fetterman in that group, too.

Read more …

After JFK and MLK, people will be sleptical.

Trump Declassifies FBI Crossfire Hurricane Files (RT)

US President Donald Trump has ordered the declassification of all FBI files related to the agency’s investigation into his first election campaign’s alleged contacts with Russia. The FBI launched the ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ investigation in July 2016 to examine whether Trump – then a presidential candidate – or members of his campaign were colluding or coordinating with Moscow to influence the election. In a memorandum released on Tuesday by the White House, Trump directed the Attorney General to make the materials available to the public “immediately.” Crossfire Hurricane was prompted by the ‘Steele Dossier’ – a compilation of unverified rumors about Trump and his alleged links to Russia. The dossier was compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, and reportedly funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Crossfire Hurricane preceded the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, whose subsequent ‘Russiagate’ investigation found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. In 2023, the US Justice Department’s (DOJ) special counsel John Durham – appointed to review the origins of the Crossfire Hurricane probe – concluded that the FBI and DOJ had “failed to uphold their mission” by relying on biased information to surveil Trump. Durham criticized the FBI for showing a “serious lack of analytical rigor,” particularly when handling information from politically-affiliated sources. It was also revealed that the Steele Dossier had been used by the FBI to obtain court permission to spy on Trump’s campaign. In 2019, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz reported that the FBI had made “basic, fundamental, and serious errors” in its warrant application.

Mike Davis
https://twitter.com/liz_churchill10/status/1904725820863578255

‘Crossfire Hurricane’ and Mueller’s Russiagate investigation cast a long shadow over Trump’s presidency, with allegations of “Russian collusion” persisting in the media even after Mueller’s report found no evidence to back them up. In a video posted on Tuesday on Truth Social, Trump said after signing the order: “This was total weaponization. It’s a disgrace…but now you’ll be able to see for yourselves.” Addressing journalists, he added: “You probably won’t bother because you’re not going to like what you see.” Trump had previously ordered a full declassification of Crossfire Hurricane during the final days of his first term, but the documents were never released. According to a 2023 CNN report, a binder containing highly classified information later went missing.

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“There is a decent chance of instead of having this gigantic collapse because the dollar is basically evaporating, that this government will be smart enough to do the monetary reset. Go back to a gold standard . . . go back to some sort of commodity base standard..”

US Government is a Big Money Laundering Operation – John Rubino (USAW)

Analyst and financial writer John Rubino warned last October that “Chaos is Coming.” With exploding Tesla dealerships, mass deportations of violent gangs, DOGE uncovering massive fraud and waste, and an out-of-control Leftist judiciary trying to stop President Trump at every turn, you could say chaos is here. Rubino contends it’s not going away anytime soon as government grifters are going to try to keep the cash flowing. Now, AG Pam Bondi says her office is going after the fraudsters ripping off America. Rubino explains, “We are finding out that the federal government is a big money laundering operation. There are so many different ways and so many different avenues that take cash from taxpayers or newly created cash . . . and it basically funnels it to political operatives, political class and the ‘expert’ class all around the world. . . . We have created this class of people who are effectively grifters . . . because they don’t do anything worthwhile at all. Do you think that think-tanks produce anything of value, or lobbyists or Washington law firms or regulators? The regulator is basically on a long job interview for the company you are regulating. You prove you are a team player and then Pfizer hires you for 10 times your FDA salary. So, everywhere you look it’s a form of money laundering.”

So, now interest payments are spiraling to infinity with massive amounts of debt and currency creation. Rubino says, “We have hit the death spiral point for the dollar and the other big fiat currencies, which means the cost to maintain this debt starts to spiral out of control and people lose faith in the currency or the currency collapses or you have a currency reset. What is really interesting about the Trump Administration is it contains a lot of gold bugs. . . . There is a decent chance of instead of having this gigantic collapse because the dollar is basically evaporating, that this government will be smart enough to do the monetary reset. Go back to a gold standard . . . go back to some sort of commodity base standard where we peg the dollar to something that is real and cannot be created in infinite quantities on a printing press. It could be we do that without insane amounts of pain and stress, but it would still be painful. Anybody who has dollars will watch those dollars be devalued dramatically.”

In this scenario, the dollar sinks in value. What happens to gold? Rubino says, “Everybody who runs the numbers says gold has to be $10,000 per ounce at a minimum and maybe much higher. Gold has to go way up in price in a currency reset. . . . So, your gold becomes much more valuable, and your silver gets pulled along by gold and goes up by some multiple of gold’s percentage gains. If gold goes up three times, silver will go up five to ten times.” Rubino thinks Europe is headed for war with Russia or civil war. Either way, the Euro will not survive. Rubino says the domestic violence will continue here in America but thinks the Deep State won’t stop President Trump’s agenda. Rubino also says everybody should concentrate on owning real things such as farm land, gold, silver and a good vehicle. Rubino also says some emergency food and a garden are good ideas too.

Read more …

“Nearly 31% of ad minutes on major nightly news broadcasts in 2024 came from pharmaceutical brands.”

RFK Jr. is Pushing Big Pharma Ad Ban – And Corporate Media is Panicking (Becker)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary, is pushing a plan to ban pharmaceutical ads from television. He’s right to push for it—and not just because the U.S. is one of only two countries on earth that allows such advertising (the other being New Zealand). America’s health system isn’t just flawed; it’s harming public health, distorting journalism, and fueling Big Pharma’s malignant influence over our daily lives. Let’s start with the obvious: TV drug ads aren’t designed to inform—they’re designed to manipulate. The formula is always the same. Cue soft lighting and sappy piano music. A sad, listless person pops a pill and suddenly life is vibrant again. They’re running through fields, laughing with family, walking dogs across idyllic bridges. Then, in a breathless voiceover, the side effects come tumbling out like a legal disclaimer roulette wheel—stroke, heart failure, suicidal thoughts. The goal? Make viewers want a drug before they even talk to their doctor. It’s emotional coercion dressed up as health education.

This completely inverts how medicine is supposed to work. Health care decisions should be made inside the exam room, not in a 60-second marketing spot. Patients should go to their doctors with symptoms, and those doctors—armed with clinical training and knowledge of the patient’s full health profile—should decide whether a drug is even necessary. Many issues could be better addressed through lifestyle changes, diet, supplements, or preventative care. But instead, America has normalized a pill-for-everything culture, supercharged by the fact that doctors are often nudged by patients demanding whatever drug they saw advertised last night during a commercial break. This isn’t just bad medicine—it’s dangerous. And it’s no accident.

Big Pharma isn’t spending billions on advertising because it cares about your health. It’s doing it because the return on investment is enormous. Studies estimate the ROI on direct-to-consumer (DTC) drug ads ranges from 100% to 500%, depending on the drug. In 2025 alone, pharmaceutical companies are projected to spend over $5 billion on national linear TV ads, according to iSpot.tv. That number balloons even higher when you include digital and streaming. Just a handful of blockbuster drugs—like Skyrizi, Jardiance, and Ozempic—are burning through tens of millions in TV ads every month. This revenue isn’t just padding Big Pharma’s pockets—it’s quietly buying influence in the media. Nearly 31% of ad minutes on major nightly news broadcasts in 2024 came from pharmaceutical brands.

That means a huge portion of media budgets depend on the very companies they should be holding accountable. And surprise, surprise: when Big Pharma misleads the public, many news outlets are either silent or hesitant to report critically. The financial conflict of interest is baked in. We saw the worst-case version of this during the COVID-19 pandemic. The novel mRNA shots—rushed to market under emergency use—were sold to the public as miracle solutions. Government officials and media outlets claimed these vaccines would “stop infection,” “prevent death entirely,” and “end the pandemic.” Younger, healthy individuals were told they needed them for everyone’s safety, despite already low statistical risk. None of these claims held up. As the data evolved, we learned the vaccines offered some reduction in severe disease, but not sterilizing immunity. Yet the media rarely corrected course.

Why would they? Pharma ads were paying the bills. Meanwhile, federal workers were mandated—and many private sector employees coerced—into getting injections under false pretenses. Billions of dollars flowed to Big Pharma. The American public was misled. This pattern of deception is not new. Pfizer alone has paid billions in legal penalties over the years for unethical marketing, off-label promotion, and other violations. The most infamous: a $2.3 billion settlement in 2009—the largest health care fraud settlement in U.S. history at the time. Yet companies like Pfizer, AbbVie, and Johnson & Johnson still enjoy a polished image on TV, thanks in part to relentless ad spending and regulatory leniency.

Read more …

They hired her for her Russophobia. What did they think they would get?

EU Officials Unhappy With Kallas – Politico (RT)

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has been criticized by nearly a dozen EU officials over her hawkish stance on Russia and leadership style, Politico has reported, citing unnamed sources. According to the outlet, Kallas’ challenges began on her first day in office in December, following her tweet stating, “The European Union wants Ukraine to win this war” against Russia. Several EU officials reportedly felt uneasy that the former Estonian prime minister, within a day of assuming her new role, “felt at liberty to go beyond” established language norms. ”If you listen to her, it seems we are at war with Russia, which is not the EU line,” Politico cited one EU official as complaining on Wednesday.

Kallas has been a vocal critic of Russia and an advocate for increased military support to Ukraine. Her initiative to increase EU military aid to Kiev to up to €40 billion ($43.1 million) this year faced opposition from member states like Italy and Spain, who do not perceive Moscow as an immediate threat to the EU. Kallas, however, still has her defenders among the EU’s northern and eastern states, noted Politico. Russia has openly criticized the top diplomat, labeling her statements “rabidly Russophobic,” and “undiplomatic,” and accusing her of pushing for militarization amid ongoing US-brokered peace talks on Ukraine. She’s also reportedly been criticized for continuing to act like a prime minister by failing to consult diplomats from member countries before making sensitive proposals.

Kallas’ relationship with the United States has been questioned by some officials. After the sudden cancellation of her February meeting in Washington with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, attributed to “scheduling issues,” Politico sources suggested that Kallas had not adequately prepared by providing a clear agenda to US counterparts. After a contentious February Oval Office exchange involving US President Donald Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, and Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky, Kallas tweeted, “The free world needs a new leader.” The apparent jab at Trump reportedly unsettled nations eager to maintain strong ties with the US administration.

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” Moscow suspects that Kiev is attempting to derail Washington’s efforts to mediate a comprehensive truce by continuing its attacks on energy infrastructure.”

Moscow Backs Ceasefire Despite Kiev’s Breaches – Kremlin (RT)

Ukraine’s ongoing attacks on energy infrastructure are in breach of a US-mediated ceasefire but will not dissuade Russia from maintaining its commitment to the pause, Dmitry Peskov stated on Wednesday. The agreement to refrain from attacking such sites was brokered by US President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin during a phone conversation last week. Ukraine launched three separate assaults over two days, aimed at a natural gas reservoir and two segments of the national power grid, the Russian military reported on Wednesday; the latter two resulted in supply disruptions. At a press briefing, Peskov acknowledged Kiev’s “inability to adhere to agreements,” citing the incidents as evidence. Nevertheless, the Russian military is adhering to the suspension of strikes.

Peskov expressed the Kremlin’s commitment to the moratorium, saying it signifies progress in the improvement of US-Russia bilateral relations. He reminded journalists that Moscow has specified the types of targets protected under the partial ceasefire, which were discussed during consultations in Saudi Arabia earlier this week. Moscow suspects that Kiev is attempting to derail Washington’s efforts to mediate a comprehensive truce by continuing its attacks on energy infrastructure. The Foreign Ministry had previously warned that Russia could withdraw from the agreement in response to Ukrainian “provocations.”

Discussions in Riyadh reportedly focused on reviving the Black Sea Grain Initiative, a defunct security framework under which Moscow guaranteed the safety of civilian transportation to and from Ukrainian ports. Russia turned down the renewal of the agreement in 2023, citing Kiev’s misuse of the arrangement for military goals and the West’s failure to ease sanctions in order to facilitate food and fertilizer exports. Peskov assured that if past commitments made to Russia are finally honored, the initiative would be “reactivated.”

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“..a gradual but steady erosion of Kyiv’s position on the battlefield, regardless of any U.S. or allied attempts to impose new and greater costs on Moscow..”

Russia Winning In Ukraine, Continually Gaining Leverage: US Intel (ZH)

The US government in its 2025 Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community – which was just released by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in conjunction with top officials’ testimony at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Tuesday – has admitted that Ukraine’s battlefield prospects are fading amid the onslaught of superior Russian forces. Currently, Moscow has “seized the upper hand” in the war over the past year, the fresh assessment warns, and “is on a path to accrue greater leverage” as peace talks with Washington are underway. “Even though Russian President [Vladimir] Putin will be unable to achieve the total victory he envisioned when initiating the large-scale invasion in February 2022, Russia retains momentum as a grinding war of attrition plays to Russia’s military advantages,” the report states.

“This grinding war of attrition will lead to a gradual but steady erosion of Kyiv’s position on the battlefield, regardless of any U.S. or allied attempts to impose new and greater costs on Moscow,” it continues. This should come as no surprise to any objective observer; however, what is surprising is the huge amount of Russian losses estimated by US intelligence. While there’s no way of verifying such information, the report claims that there are over 750,000 dead and wounded on the Russian side. Still, the intel community emphasizes the Russian military machine’s ability to quickly replenish personnel while growing its industrial capacity to continually support the war.

On the prospect for achieving a quick peace settlement, the report notes that both Russian and Ukrainian leadership “probably still see the risks of a longer war as less than those of an unsatisfying settlement.” “For Russia, positive battlefield trends allow for some strategic patience, and for Ukraine, conceding territory or neutrality to Russia without substantial security guarantees from the West could prompt domestic backlash and future insecurity.” “Regardless of how and when the war in Ukraine ends, Russia’s current geopolitical, economic, military, and domestic political trends underscore its resilience and enduring potential threat to U.S. power, presence, and global interests,” it adds.

https://twiter.com/yarotrof/status/1904857430925648010?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1904857430925648010%7Ctwgr%5E23ccd6fdd0351c2bcd235f92faf7645aa404b476%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fgeopolitical%2Frussia-winning-ukraine-continually-gaining-leverage-us-intel-community

* * *
A note from UBS … US Intelligence On Russia Nuclear Capacity, China And Taiwan . The US annual threat assessment from the Director of National Intelligence carries warnings about Russia and China. The 2025 edition warned that Russia is developing a satellite capable of carrying a nuclear weapon. It said that China was making aggressive efforts to assert its sovereignty in the south and east China seas, and seems likely to increase its economic pressure on Taiwan. Indeed the report warned that China represented the most comprehensive and robust military threat to US security. The report claimed that both Russia and China are eyeing up Greenland for natural resources.

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“..the weapons remained under Russian operational control and Kiev lacked the technical capability to launch them..”

Ukraine Never Had Nuclear Weapons – Grenell (RT)

The nuclear weapons that Ukraine transferred to Russia under the terms of the Budapest Memorandum in the 1990s were never under Kiev’s control, US Presidential Envoy for Special Assignments Richard Grenell has said. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine inherited a significant portion of the USSR’s nuclear arsenal, temporarily making it the third-largest nuclear power at the time. However, the weapons remained under Russian operational control and Kiev lacked the technical capability to launch them. In 1994, Ukraine signed the Budapest Memorandum along with the US, Russia and the UK, under which Kiev agreed to transfer all of its nuclear weapons to Russia in exchange for security assurances.

In a post on X on Tuesday, Grenell wrote: “Let’s clarify the Budapest Memorandum situation: the nuclear weapons belonged to Russia and were leftovers. Ukraine returned the nuclear weapons back to Russia. They did not belong to Ukraine. That’s an inconvenient fact.” Grenell’s comments come amid renewed statements by Ukrainian officials criticizing the country’s disarmament in the 1990s. Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky recently told British journalist Piers Morgan that Ukraine was “forced” to give up its nuclear weapons and described the Budapest Memorandum as “stupid, illogical, and very irresponsible.” He argued that Kiev should now either be fast-tracked into NATO or given nuclear weapons and missile systems to counter Russia.

Retired US General Keith Kellogg, who serves as Trump’s envoy to Ukraine and Russia, dismissed the proposal. Speaking to Fox News Digital last month, Kellogg said, “The chance of them getting their nuclear weapons back is somewhere between slim and none. Let’s be honest about it, we both know that’s not going to happen.”

Russia has repeatedly stated that Ukraine never possessed any nuclear weapons of its own, as the assets belonged to Moscow as the sole legal successor of the Soviet Union. Russian officials also maintain that the Budapest Memorandum envisioned Ukraine’s neutral status, which has since been undermined by NATO’s eastward expansion and Kiev’s aspirations to join the bloc. Moscow has cited Ukraine’s ambition to join NATO and its threat to obtain nuclear weapons as root causes for the Ukraine conflict. In November, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that if Ukraine were to obtain nuclear weapons, Moscow would use “all the means of destruction at Russia’s disposal.”

Read more …

Major step.

US Looking For ‘Proper Way’ To Reconnect Russia to SWIFT – Bessent (RT)

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has confirmed that all options remain on the table as Washington considers lifting certain sanctions against Moscow, including the possible reconnection of Russian banks to the Belgium-based SWIFT network. The US and EU cut off major Russian banks from the SWIFT messaging system as part of a decade-long sanctions campaign, which was significantly expanded following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. As part of the Black Sea ceasefire initiative discussed in Saudi Arabia earlier this week, Moscow requested that its Agricultural Bank (Rosselkhozbank) and other institutions involved in food and fertilizer sales be reconnected to the international payment system. “There would be a long discussion about many things in terms of the proper way to bring Russia back into the international system,” Bessent told Fox News on Wednesday, emphasizing that it was “premature to discuss the terms of a deal before we have a deal.”

“I think everything is on the table,” he added, noting that “it will be determined by the Russian leadership’s next moves whether the sanctions go up or down, and President Trump, I think, would not hesitate to raise the sanctions if it gives him a negotiating advantage.” Reconnecting Rosselkhozbank to SWIFT was part of the original Black Sea Grain Initiative, brokered in July 2022 by the UN and Türkiye. A Western failure to deliver on that commitment, along with Kiev’s alleged misuse of the arrangement for military purposes, prompted Moscow to reject the renewal of the agreement in 2023. The US and Russia agreed to revive the defunct Black Sea deal following 12 hours of talks in Saudi Arabia on Monday. President Donald Trump confirmed on Tuesday that his administration is considering lifting some sanctions on Moscow. “There are about five or six conditions. We’re looking at all of them,” he said.

The Brussels-based SWIFT system is incorporated under Belgian law and must comply with EU regulations and restrictions. European Commission spokeswoman Anitta Hipper stated on Wednesday that the bloc will not amend or lift its sanctions until Russia “unconditionally” withdraws all forces from the “entire territory of Ukraine.” Russian President Vladimir Putin said last week that Western sanctions are not a temporary measure but a long-term tool used to apply strategic pressure on Moscow, and that Russia’s rivals will always seek out ways to weaken the country. According to Putin, a total of 28,595 sanctions have been imposed on Russian individuals and entities in recent years – more than the total number imposed on all other countries combined – which have only strengthened the national economy by encouraging self-reliance.

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“..without effective policy interventions, America’s debt-to-GDP ratio could rise from the current 124% to approximately 130% by 2035, with interest payments consuming about 30% of federal revenue.”

Moody’s Issues Warning On US Finances (RT)

Ratings agency Moody’s has sounded the alarm on the United States fiscal health, warning of a continued decline due to widening budget deficits and increasing concerns over debt affordability. The warning comes as the national debt surpasses $36 trillion and annual deficits exceed $1.7 trillion, raising concerns about the government’s ability to manage its financial obligations. ”[US] fiscal strength is on course for a continued multiyear decline”, having already “deteriorated further” since Moody’s assigned a negative outlook to America’s top-notch AAA credit rating in November 2023, the agency said in a report on Tuesday, as cited by Financial Times.

US President Donald Trump has advocated measures aimed at stabilizing the nation’s finances, including implementing significant tariffs and proposing tax cuts intended to stimulate economic growth. However, Moody’s has cautioned that extending substantial tax cuts without implementing significant spending reductions could exacerbate the country’s fiscal challenges. ”We see diminished prospects that these strengths will continue to offset widening fiscal deficits and declining debt affordability,” it said, according to Reuters.

Republicans are pushing for a $4.5 trillion extension of tax cuts, which would in turn require significant spending reductions, something that may conflict with Trump’s commitment to protect social programs, the agency noted. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, tasked with reducing wasteful spending, claims to have achieved $115 billion in savings nationwide. However, according to Moody’s, such cuts are relatively minor compared to mandatory spending obligations. The agency projects that, without effective policy interventions, America’s debt-to-GDP ratio could rise from the current 124% to approximately 130% by 2035, with interest payments consuming about 30% of federal revenue.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Tucker cancer

 

 

Change

 

 

IVM

 

 

Water

 

 

Bike
https://twitter.com/buitengebieden/status/1904655016427741277

 

 

Best friend
https://twitter.com/Yoda4ever/status/1904589189267808471

 

 

PB

 

 

Family
https://twitter.com/buitengebieden/status/1904965543695663410

 

 

Herds

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Sep 042023
 


Claude Monet Japanese Footbridge 1899

 

A Comprehensive Ukrainian Defeat Is The Only Possible Outcome (Scott Ritter)
US Intelligence Sending Mixed Messages On Ukraine (Larry Johnson)
About 280,000 Individuals Enlisted By Contract From January 1 – Medvedev (TASS)
Hungary Calls For ‘Security Guarantees’ For Russia (RT)
G20: Last Waltz In A World Torn Apart (Bhadrakumar)
Ex-UK Defense Chief Sparked Rift With US Over Helicopter Deal (RT)
NATO May Collapse By 2025 – Academic (RT)
No Respite For France As A ‘New Africa’ Rises (Pepe Escobar)
US Dollar A ‘Very Problematic’ Currency – Zakharova (RT)
Gold’s Role Rises As Dollar Hegemony Falls (ZH)
Soros Vows to Stop ‘MAGA-Style Republicans’ From Winning 2024 Election (Sp.)
US Congress is Older Than Ever, But Reform is Unlikely (Sp.)
Biden Asserts Executive Privilege on Hunter Emails, But Waived Trump’s (GP)
Fani Willis Possesses Evidence Exonerating Georgia’s Alternate Electors (Fed.)
Ivermectin Is a Proven Cure for Covid (Paul Craig Roberts)

 

 

 

 

RFK BlackRock

 

 

 

 

Fauci masks

 

 

 

 

Macgregor

 

 

 

 

“Having articulated the Russian-Ukrainian conflict as an existential struggle where the very survival of NATO is on the line..”

Russians see an existential threat to their country.

In response, NATO pretends to see an existential threat to their power structure.

Not the same thing.

A Comprehensive Ukrainian Defeat Is The Only Possible Outcome (Scott Ritter)

First and foremost, Ukraine must reflect honestly about the causes of this conflict, and which side bears the burden of responsibility for the fighting. ‘Denazification’ is a term that the Russian government has used in describing one of its stated goals and objectives. President Vladimir Putin has made numerous references to the odious legacy of Stepan Bandera, the notorious mass murderer and associate of Nazi Germany who is feted by modern-day Ukrainian nationalists as a hero and all but a founding father of their nation. That present-day Ukraine would see fit to elevate a man such as Bandera to such a level speaks volumes about the rotten foundation of Kiev’s cause, and the dearth of moral fiber in the nation today.

The role played by the modern-day adherents of the Nazi collaborator’s hateful nationalist ideology in promulgating the key events that led to the initiation of the military operation by Russia can neither be ignored nor minimized. It was the Banderists, with their long relationship with the CIA and other foreign intelligence services hostile to Moscow, who used violence to oust the former president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovich, from office in February 2014. From the act of illicit politicized violence came the mainstreaming of the forces of ethnic and cultural genocide, manifested in the form of the present-day Banderists, who initiated acts of violence and oppression in eastern Ukraine. This, in turn, triggered the Russian response in Crimea and the actions of the citizens of Donbass, who organized to resist the rampage of the Bandera-affiliated Ukrainian nationalists.

Mariupol

The Minsk Accords, and the subsequent betrayal by Kiev and its Western partners of the potential path for peace that these represented, followed. Ukraine cannot disassociate itself from the role played by the modern-day Banderists in shaping the present reality. In this, Kiev mirrors the militarists of Imperial Japan, whose blind allegiance to the precepts of Bushido, the traditional ‘way of the warrior’ dating back to the Samurai of 17th century Japan, helped push the country into global conflict. Part of Japan’s obligations upon surrender was to purge its society of the influence of the militarists, and to enact a constitution that deplatformed them by making wars of aggression – and the military forces needed to wage them – unconstitutional.

Banderism, in all its manifestations, must be eradicated from Ukrainian society in the same manner that Bushido-inspired militarism was removed from Japan, to include the creation of a new constitution that enshrines this purge as law. Any failure to do so only allows the cancer of Banderism to survive, festering inside the defeated body of post-conflict Ukraine until some future time when it can metastasize once again to bring harm. This is precisely the message that was being sent by Putin when, during the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum this past July, he showed a video where the crimes of the Banderists during the Second World War were put on public display. “How can you not fight it?” Putin said. “And if this is not neo-Nazism in its current manifestation, then what is it?” he asked. “We have every right,” the Russian president declared, “to believe that the task of the denazification of Ukraine set by us is one of the key ones.”

As the Western establishment media begins to come to grips with the scope and scale of Ukraine’s eventual military defeat (and, by extension, the reality of a decisive Russian military victory), their political overseers in the US, NATO, and the European Union struggle to define what the endgame will be. Having articulated the Russian-Ukrainian conflict as an existential struggle where the very survival of NATO is on the line, these Western politicians now have the task of shaping public perception in a manner that mitigates any meaningful, sustained political blowback from constituents who have been deceived into tolerating the transfer of billions of dollars from their respective national treasuries, and billions more dollars’ worth of weapons from their respective arsenals, into a lost and disgraced cause.

Read more …

“Putin and his team are seen in the West as weak, control freaks who block the military from taking off the white gloves and making the magic happen..”

US Intelligence Sending Mixed Messages On Ukraine (Larry Johnson)

The U.S. Intelligence Community is not a monolith. It is more like a feudal society. The big three Feudal lords for intelligence analysis are the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). All three produce “raw intelligence” — the CIA’s case officers produce reports from foreigners who have agreed to work in secret for the United States, the NSA scoops up all forms of electronic intelligence (e.g., phone calls, emails) and the DIA produces reports from U.S. Defense Attaches assigned to U.S. embassies around the world. Each jealously guards its own product and the employees of these three agencies can be considered the vassals. (Gots to have a vassal if you’re a feudal lord.)

Then there is the Director of National Intelligence (aka DNI). This position/office was created in the aftermath of 9-11 and is supposed to “manage” and “coordinate” all members of the Intelligence Community. The standard solution in Washington, DC is to create another layer of bureaucracy to solve a failure of already behemoth bureaucracies who rarely cooperate. The reality is something else — the Big 3 do not always kow tow to the DNI. I am hearing that the CIA and the DIA are doing a pretty good job of reporting honestly what is taking place on the ground in Ukraine — i.e., Ukraine is suffering terrible casualties and the counter offensive is failing. Unfortunately, as Sy Hersh has reported previously, Biden and his National Security team are ignoring those intelligence reports and are embracing “analysis” coming out of the Office of the DNI.

The DNI reportedly is proffering the meme that Ukraine is grinding down the Russian military and that the United States and NATO only need to be patient and wait for Russia’s inevitable collapse. Some of the U.S. military leaders — who are flat out ignorant of Russia’s recent history in dealing with a domestic radical Islamic insurgency — firmly believe that Russia cannot win a military victory over Ukraine, that the war is a stalemate and the Russia will be bogged down for years battling Bandera insurgents. The leaders of the USIC and the military still believe in their initial conclusion that Russia is weak because it did not steamroll through Ukraine and rout Zelensky off 12 months ago. They attribute Russia’s “failure” to inept and corrupt bureaucrats keen on reining in the Russian military.

Putin also gets a heavy share of the blame by these leaders for allegedly not listening to the Russian military leaders and Wagner chiefs to do what is necessary to achieve victory. Putin and his team are seen in the West as weak, control freaks who block the military from taking off the white gloves and making the magic happen. Because the US intelligence and military leaders are looking at the war in Ukraine through this prism, the analysts and their managers, for the most part, face enormous pressure to conclude that Russia is a feckless and incompetent near-peer adversary and cannot last.

I continue to believe that the assumptions about Russia’s alleged failure is ignoring the contravening narrative:
• The Russian economy is robust and healthy despite Western sanctions.
• Russia’s political influence in the world is growing, not shrinking. BRICS is a case in point.
• Russia is inflicting enormous casualties on Ukraine’s military and decimating infrastructure critical to the Ukrainian military campaign.
• Russia’s defense industry has ramped up to levels of production that the West cannot match.
• Russia’s seemingly unlimited access to natural resources, energy and rare earth minerals strengthens Russia’s military position in the world.
• Russia enjoys a massive technological advantage over NATO in terms of electronic warfare, air defense systems, mine laying vehicles and hypersonic missiles.
• Russian leaders and their people genuinely believe they face an existential threat from the West.
• Ukraine is totally dependent on the West to provide money and weapons to continue to fight.

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No forced conscription.

About 280,000 Individuals Enlisted By Contract From January 1 – Medvedev (TASS)

Around 280,000 individuals were enlisted by contract with the Russian Armed Forces from January 1, 2023, Deputy Head of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev said. “Let us continue discussing the critical topic that gathered us here this time in the Far Eastern District. This time I meet heads of regions of the [Russian] Federation in person, in view of significant of the staffing work,” Medvedev said when opening the meeting. “According to data of the Defense Ministry, about 280,000 persons were enlisted by contracts to ranks of the [Russian] Armed Forces since January 1,” he noted. Some of them were in the reserve and the other ones are volunteers, Medvedev added.

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“..Russia does not pose a threat to Central Europe” because Moscow has not been able to accomplish a quick and resounding victory in the conflict..”

Hungary Calls For ‘Security Guarantees’ For Russia (RT)

A lasting peace following the Ukraine conflict can only be achieved if Russia receives security guarantees from the West, Gergely Gulyas, the minister in charge of the Hungarian prime minister’s office, has said. Speaking at a students’ event on Saturday, Gulyas stated that Kiev has no realistic chance of regaining the territories it claims as its own from Russia. He added that “it is also clear that Russia does not pose a threat to Central Europe” because Moscow has not been able to accomplish a quick and resounding victory in the conflict. According to Gulyas, peace talks between Russia and Ukraine are impossible without the involvement of the US.

He further stated that Kiev’s Western backers “must give security guarantees to Russia, but definitely not NATO membership to the Ukrainians,” adding that in the long run, peace between Moscow and Kiev could be maintained through the deployment of peacekeepers. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban told former Fox News host Tucker Carlson last month that “without involving the Russians in a security architecture of Europe, we cannot provide a safe life for its citizens.” Hungary is not the only Western nation to call for Russian interests to be taken into account. Last December, French President Emmanuel Macron urged the West to think about how to provide security guarantees not only to Ukraine, but also to Russia, arguing that NATO must address Moscow’s concerns about the US-led military bloc “coming right up to its doors and deploying weapons that could threaten Russia.”

The debate over security guarantees for Russia heated up before the start of the Ukraine conflict when in December 2021, Moscow presented a list of demands to the US and NATO, asking the West to impose a ban on Ukraine entering the military bloc, while insisting that the alliance should retreat to its borders as of 1997 before it expanded. The overture, however, was rebuffed by the West. President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said that Ukrainian neutrality is an issue of “fundamental importance” to Russia, arguing that Kiev’s push to join NATO was one of the key reasons behind the military operation in the neighboring country.

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“I am in blood / Stepped in so far, that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er.”

G20: Last Waltz In A World Torn Apart (Bhadrakumar)

The Modi government is not perplexed by the absence of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping in the G20 Summit on September 9-10. Its intuitive cognition helps to be stoical. This is, arguably, a Shakespearean predicament — “I am in blood / Stepped in so far, that, should I wade no more, / Returning were as tedious as go o’er.” [..] One doesn’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that the common thread in the decisions taken in Moscow and Beijing is that their leaderships are not in the least interested in any interaction with the US President Joe Biden who will be camping in Delhi for four days with all the time at his disposal for some structured meetings, at the very least, some “pull asides” and the like at a minimum that could be caught on camera.

Biden’s considerations are political: anything that helps to distract attention from the gathering storm in US politics which is threatening to culminate in his impeachment that might in turn blight his candidacy in the 2024 election. Of course, this is not Biden’s Lyndon Johnson moment. Johnson made the tumultuous decision in March 1968 to retire from politics as a strong step toward healing the nation’s fissures, while agonising deeply that “There is division in the American house now.” But Biden is anything but a visionary. He was setting up a bear trap for Putin to reinforce his false narrative that if only the latter dismounted from his high horse, the Ukraine war would end overnight, whereas on its part, the Kremlin is well aware that the White House continues to be the strongest proponent of the thesis that a prolonged war would weaken Russia.

Indeed, Biden has gone to extraordinary extents that none of this predecessors ever dared to reach — aiding and abetting Ukrainian terrorist attacks deep inside Russia. In a way, Xi Jinping also faces a trap, as Biden administration is going to great extent to project itself as conciliatory toward China, as the beeline of US officials heading for Beijing recently would testify — Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken in June; Treasury Secretary and Climate Envoy John Kerry in July; and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo in August. The New York Times on Tuesday carried a report titled U.S. Officials Are Streaming to China. Will Beijing Return the Favor? It chastised Beijing:

“China has much to gain from dispatching officials to the United States. It would signal to the world it was making an effort to ease tensions with Washington, particularly at a time when China needs to bolster confidence in its shaky economy. A visit could also help lay the groundwork for a potential, highly anticipated meeting between President Biden and China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, at a forum in San Francisco in November. “Beijing, however, has been noncommittal.”

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… and lost his job.

Ex-UK Defense Chief Sparked Rift With US Over Helicopter Deal (RT)

Former UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace tried to derail a major deal to buy heavy military helicopters from the US, triggering a diplomatic row between the two long-time allies, The Times reported on Saturday, citing sources. The incident is said to have occurred after Washington reportedly shunned Wallace’s bid to become the next NATO secretary general, although the outlet’s sources insisted that the two issues were not related. According to the paper, Wallace, who resigned on Thursday, spent his last weeks in office trying to cancel the purchase of 14 Boeing Chinook H-47 two-motor lift helicopters. The former defense secretary reportedly had serious doubts about the £2.3 billion ($2.9 billion) deal and suggested canceling it to ease the pressure on the defense budget.

Wallace argued that Britain already has the largest heavy-lift fleet in Europe and favored investment in medium-lift support helicopters, which would have allowed London to save money, the article said. Another concern, according to the report, was that Britain lacked the communications, satellite technology, and transport means to carry out special operations involving US-designed aircraft. However, the initiative left many UK officials unhappy, with one describing it as “mad.” Another Times source suggested that Wallace “was trying to piss off the Americans.” As the diplomatic row was reportedly brewing, Karen Pierce, the UK ambassador to the US, is said to have warned London that canceling the deal would be a bad idea. UK officials reportedly scrambled to calm down their America counterparts, telling them that the tensions would be defused once Wallace was out of the government.

“There has been a lot of reconciliation, just to keep the US reassured,” a source told the paper. The apparent controversy comes after US President Joe Biden refused to endorse Wallace’s candidacy to succeed long-serving NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. According to a Daily Telegraph report in July, Wallace, who was once considered a front-runner for the job, failed to secure Washington’s backing because the UK announced a coalition to help Ukraine procure F-16 fighter jets without first consulting the US. A Times source categorically rejected the “pathetic” speculation that Wallace’s apparent attempts to cancel the helicopter deal were linked to his NATO ambitions. However, one source said that he was “deeply disappointed” that his aspirations to succeed Stoltenberg had come to nothing, which he is said to have blamed on the White House.

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Funny, Tucker Carlson predicted the demise of NATO just a few days ago…

NATO May Collapse By 2025 – Academic (RT)

The return of Donald Trump to the White House could spell the end for US military aid to Ukraine, leaving a divided Europe to foot Kiev’s bills and ultimately ending the NATO pact, academic Phillips Payson O’Brien claimed in The Atlantic on Saturday. Opposition to arming Ukraine is now the position of Trump’s supporter base, who O’Brien estimated account for three quarters of the Republican Party’s electorate. Trump has repeatedly vowed to use military aid as leverage to force Ukraine into peace talks with Russia “within 24 hours” of his inauguration, while his two nearest competitors for the GOP’s nomination – Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy – have also discussed restricting support for Kiev.

Of the three potential candidates, Ramaswamy has gone the furthest, suggesting that the US recognize Russia’s territorial claims in Ukraine in exchange for Moscow distancing itself from Beijing. “If Trump or one of his imitators wins the presidency in November 2024, Europe could find itself faced with a new American administration that will halt all support for Ukraine,” O’Brien warned. In this scenario, he continued, European nations would be unable to make up for the loss of US military aid, resulting in a military defeat for Ukraine. With the US out of the picture, Europe would be divided on the issue too, he added, with the Eastern and Baltic nations eager but unable to keep the arms flowing to Kiev, and Western nations like France and Germany more likely to seek peace with Russia.

“The result could be a legacy of bitterness and distrust at best, and a permanent fracturing of European cooperation at worst,” he stated. A fervent supporter of Ukraine, O’Brien argued that European countries need to increase military production immediately to prepare for this possibility. However, with the Eurozone entering recession in the first three months of 2023 and industrial production down in Germany, European states are unlikely to be able to sustain the Ukrainian military on their own.

O’Brien’s predictions are based on the assumption that Ukraine will still be able to fight by 2025. According to Russian figures, Kiev lost 43,000 men in the first two months of its ongoing counteroffensive, without managing to penetrate the multiple layers of trenches and fortifications laid by Russia along the entire Kherson-Donetsk front line. Before the operation began in early June, multiple Western media reports suggested that continued US and NATO military aid to Kiev depended on the success of the offensive. Now, almost three months in, the counteroffensive is widely regarded as a failure.

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“..Over 30 percent of the population lives on less than $1 a day, and in over 60 percent of regions have zero access to healthcare and drinking water.”

No Respite For France As A ‘New Africa’ Rises (Pepe Escobar)

Africa still lags far behind its Eurasian cousins on the road toward breaking the shackles of neocolonialism. The continent today faces horrendous odds in its fight against the deeply entrenched financial and political institutions of colonization, especially when it comes to smashing French monetary hegemony in the form of the Franc CFA – or the Communauté Financière Africaine (African Financial Community). Still, one domino is falling after another – Chad, Guinea, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger and now Gabon. This process has already turned Burkina Faso’s President Captain Ibrahim Traoré, into a new hero of the multipolar world – as a dazed and confused collective west can’t even begin to comprehend the blowback represented by its 8 coups in West and Central Africa in less than 3 years.

Military officers decided to take power in Gabon after hyper pro-France President Ali Bongo won a dodgy election that “lacked credibility.” Institutions were dissolved. Borders with Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, and the Republic of Congo were closed. All security deals with France were annulled. No one knows what will happen with the French military base. All that was as popular as it comes: soldiers took to the streets of the capital Libreville in joyful singing, cheered on by onlookers. Bongo and his father, who preceded him, have ruled Gabon since 1967. He was educated at a French private school and graduated from the Sorbonne. Gabon is a small nation of 2.4 million with a small army of 5,000 personnel that could fit into Donald Trump’s penthouse. Over 30 percent of the population lives on less than $1 a day, and in over 60 percent of regions have zero access to healthcare and drinking water.

The military qualified Bongo’s 14-year rule as leading to a “deterioration in social cohesion” that was plunging the country “into chaos.” On cue, French mining company Eramet suspended its operations after the coup. That’s a near monopoly. Gabon is all about lavish mineral wealth – in gold, diamonds, manganese, uranium, niobium, iron ore, not to mention oil, natural gas, and hydropower. In OPEC-member Gabon, virtually the whole economy revolves around mining. The case of Niger is even more complex. France exploits uranium and high-purity petrol as well as other types of mineral wealth. And the Americans are on site, operating three bases in Niger with up to 4,000 military personnel. The key strategic node in their ‘Empire of Bases’ is the drone facility in Agadez, known as Niger Air Base 201, the second-largest in Africa after Djibouti.

French and American interests clash, though, when it comes to the saga over the Trans-Sahara gas pipeline. After Washington broke the umbilical steel cord between Russia and Europe by bombing the Nord Streams, the EU, and especially Germany, badly needed an alternative. Algerian gas supply can barely cover southern Europe. American gas is horribly expensive. The ideal solution for Europeans would be Nigerian gas crossing the Sahara and then the deep Mediterranean.

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“..the US initially proposed the dollar as an international currency “to make everyone’s life better, easier, more comfortable.”

US Dollar A ‘Very Problematic’ Currency – Zakharova (RT)

Ever more countries are turning to national currencies for trade rather than use the US dollar, which has become a “very problematic” means of payment, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova stated in an interview with the Turkish news outlet Aydinlik published on Sunday. According to Zakharova, the US initially proposed the dollar as an international currency “to make everyone’s life better, easier, more comfortable.” “They were very insistent on this, saying that it would bring the world economy to a new level and simplify our transactions and relationships… And at the time, those who made such a policy in the US and abroad… probably wanted to take that first step towards globalization honestly.” Now, according to Zakharova, the dollar is used to pressure Washington’s political opponents.

“What we faced last year is something completely different,” she stated, referring to the numerous Western sanctions placed on Russia over the Ukraine conflict, including an effective ban on Russia using the dollar in international transactions. “There is no simplifying or making our lives easier. The currency is being used as a tool of hegemony and a new kind of colonialism, used to punish, segregate, and make our lives a nightmare.” According to Zakharova, the process of de-dollarization, which Russia and a growing number of other countries have been pursuing in cross-border trade, is not a goal in and of itself but a simple fact of reality.

“They say de-dollarization is a kind of ultimate goal of different organizations or some countries. But it is not. This is not our target. This is just a reality… The dollar is a very problematic currency these days. This is not my political view, it is an objective economic fact.” Zakharova noted that most global economic problems originate in the US, including the 2008 global economic crisis. National currencies, on the other hand, are more stable, which is why an increasing number of countries are opting for them, she believes. They want to establish and create a kind of a guarantee, a financial guarantee system in order not to once again be a victim of an American crisis… It is up to the countries to decide [how to do it], but as I understand it, more and more countries want to do something to avoid becoming another victim of the American financial system,” the official said.

Russia has been reducing the use of the dollar in foreign trade since 2014, but last year’s sanctions forced the country to step up these efforts. For instance, the share of national and ‘friendly’ currencies in the country’s trade with the Eurasian Economic Union grew to nearly 80% in 2022, and is expected to reach 90% by the end of this year. Last week, reports emerged that the BRICS group of emerging economies – which presently comprises Russia, Brazil, India, China, and South Africa, but is due to add six new members next year – is also considering switching all cross-border trade to national currencies.

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“.. this increasingly beleaguered, self-destructive, debased and less popular US currency.”

Gold’s Role Rises As Dollar Hegemony Falls (ZH)

Rickards noted, “It’s the weaponization of the dollar… you’re not just stealing our money with inflation, you’re actually telling us we can’t get it back,” emphasizing that while the BRICS countries might not fully trust each other, they are more likely to trust a “common trading currency backed by gold.” Rule described the U.S. dollar’s previous “exorbitant privilege” advantage is coming to an end, thereby making things more expensive for Americans. “The enemy of the U.S. dollar isn’t in Beijing or Moscow or Riyadh, it’s in Washington.” For Piepenburg, the end-game is clear. Debt drives policy and debt drives current market directions. This debt will not and cannot be sustained by GDP growth or tax revenues,… …which means ultimately money printers will continue to de-value that world reserve currency,… …and hence devalue the once hegemonic respect for the US holder of that currency.

Piepenburg states, “America doesn’t seem to be the America that it was in 1944 or the America that it was under Kissinger in the early 70s,” indicating a significant shift in global economic dynamics. While all experts seemed to agree that gold could play an increasingly important role, Piepenburg was skeptical that national leaders and central bankers would willingly give up their power to print money at will, dubbing this the “Nietzsche thesis,” questioning why leaders would want to “relinquish that ability to print at will.” Overall, the panel agreed that the weaponization and debasement of the dollar have diminished its credibility, setting the stage for other forms of currency or assets like gold to gain importance in protecting investors from this increasingly beleaguered, self-destructive, debased and less popular US currency.

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At your age, you’re supposed to be planting trees whose shade you’ll never sit in.

Soros Vows to Stop ‘MAGA-Style Republicans’ From Winning 2024 Election (Sp.)

The Soros family has waged a years-long political war against Donald Trump and his supporters, with George Soros calling Trump a “danger to the world” and characterizing his ideas as a “threat to democracy.” Trump has alleged that “district attorneys hand-picked and personally funded by” Soros are behind the ongoing effort to put him behind bars. Last month, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations soft power empire announced a dramatic scaling back of funding for operations in Europe, sparking an outcry from liberal activists, NGOs, and think tanks regarding the impact the end of the financial gravy train will have on their operations.

Alexander Soros, the 37-year-old son of the Hungarian-born US billionaire who took the reins at the OSF in June, responded with a manifesto-style appeal this week explaining the shift in focus under his leadership, assuring that the OSF isn’t really “leaving Europe,” and that the region “remains of huge strategic importance.” Rather, Soros indicated, the shift in funding is the result of a shift in focus, from Western to Eastern Europe and the United States. “The future of accountable, democratic government in Europe is now being determined not just in Paris and Berlin but also in Warsaw, Kiev and Prague,” he wrote. “This isn’t about funding levels – it’s about priorities as the focus of funding shifts back to the continent’s east,” Soros Jr. noted, recalling that, after all, his father’s soft power meddling in nations’ political affairs began in Eastern Europe in the 1980s.

Spending in Ukraine won’t be affected by the cuts, Soros assured, recalling with “pride” the $250 million in cash funneled into the country since the 2014 Euromaidan coup, and which played “such an important role in Kiev’s resilience” amid the ongoing NATO-backed proxy war against Russia. The OSF will also continue to “support” operations in Moldova and the Western Balkans, per Soros, and Central European University – the Vienna-based school booted out of Budapest in 2019 amid allegations of meddling in Hungary’s politics. The reorganization will also include a redoubling of Soros foundations’ efforts against Donald Trump and MAGA-style Republicans, Soros indicated, expressing concerns over the impact Trump’s possible return to power in 2024 would have on the OSF’s global agenda.

“As someone who spends up to half their time working on the continent and thinks former United States President Donald Trump – or at least someone with his isolationist and anti-European policies –will be the Republican nominee, I believe a MAGA-style Republican victory in next year’s US presidential election could, in the end, be worse for the EU than for the US. Such an outcome will imperil European unity and undermine the progress achieved on many fronts in response to the war in Ukraine,” Soros opined. Accordingly, he noted, the OSF is being “adapted” to “be able to respond to whatever scenarios might emerge, on both sides of the Atlantic.”

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Same here: plant trees your grandchildren will enjoy.

US Congress is Older Than Ever, But Reform is Unlikely (Sp.)

McConnell is not the only prominent member of US legislature whose health became a point of discussion. Last year, media reported US lawmakers questioning the mental fitness of long-time US senator Dianne Feinstein, who has served as a member of the US Senate since 1992, representing California. In 2023, Feinstein, now aged 90, announced that she will not run for reelection in 2024. This illustrates a trend of US political class becoming older compared with the past, with the 80-year-old incumbent president, Joe Biden, being the most prominent example as the oldest sitting US leader. His predecessor and likely opponent during the 2024 election, Donald Trump, is not that far behind, being 77 years old. According to the FiveThirtyEight polling website, both House and Senate are older than ever before, with the median age for US representatives and senators being 57.8 and 65.3, respectively.

Similar to Feinstein and McConnell, many of those people have been in Congress for decades. “The US Congress and the Presidency constitute a gerontocracy, and I see no chance that such graybeards will reform themselves on that score anytime soon,” John Seery, the George Irving Thompson memorial professor of government and professor of politics at Pomona College, summarized the situation. This development has triggered a conversation about whether it is appropriate for a senior lawmaker to stay in power well into their old age, especially since there is no mechanism to remove them similar to the Constitution’s 25th Amendment, which outlines the procedures for replacing the president or vice president in the event of death, removal, resignation, or incapacitation.

While the both chambers of Congress can expel members with a two-third majority, only 20 lawmakers have been removed this way since 1789, with a majority of those cases involving support for Confederacy during the Civil War.
There have been proposals to introduce age limits for elected officials, which is also not that out of the ordinary, considering there are already minimum age requirements for holding political office. “Now that Americans are living longer, and the consequences of having octogenarians running the country (specifically President Biden and Senator McConnell) are apparent, a conversation around age limits in needed. Public opinion polling has shown that a majority of Americans are in favor of this.

It could also be a consideration for the Supreme Court, as it tends to have the same issues around older justices becoming unwell in post and potentially leaving the bench short of a member,” Clodagh Harrington, a lecturer in US politics at University College Cork, said. When asked whether a version of the 25th Amendment for members of Congress could be passed, the expert noted that even that addition to the constitution has been controversial. “The few times in the modern era that it has been considered in relation to, for example, President [Ronald] Reagan, have caused significant unease. No-one wants to be the person informing the president that they are no longer considered fit for office,” she explained.

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You cannot have two different justice systems for long.

Biden Asserts Executive Privilege on Hunter Emails, But Waived Trump’s (GP)

On Wednesday, America First Legal (AFL) revealed they obtained “over 1,000 emails between Rosemont Seneca and the Office of the Vice (OVP) President” from the National Archives (NARA) via a lawsuit. AFL started the thread on X by saying “The sheer volume of emails exchanged between Hunter and his associates at Rosemont Seneca and the Office of the Vice President is telling in itself.” Joe Biden asserted executive privilege over 200 emails because “release would disclose confidential advice between the President and his advisors, or between such advisors.” Meanwhile, President Trump’s executive privilege was obliterated by Joe Biden. The Biden White House worked directly with the Justice Department and National Archives to facilitate the investigation into Trump’s handling of documents, according to memos reviewed by investigative reporter John Solomon.

Joe Biden’s spokeswoman has repeatedly claimed Joe Biden had no knowledge of the raid and that he found out about it in the media. According to the memos, the Biden White House instigated the criminal investigation by eliminating Trump’s claims to executive privilege. Joe Biden paved the way for his Justice Department to arrest his political opponent after he retroactively revoked Trump’s executive privilege. Biden revoking Trump’s executive privilege opened the door for the former president to be subpoenaed – the subpoena then opened the door for the Justice Department to charge Trump with federal crimes. “By May, [White House Deputy Counsel Jonathan] Su conveyed to the Archives that President Joe Biden would not object to waiving his predecessor’s claims to executive claims, a decision that opened the door for DOJ to get a grand jury to issue a subpoena compelling Trump to turn over any remaining materials he possessed from his presidency.” – John Solomon reported last August.

On May 10, 2022, Acting National Archivist Debra Steidel Wall sent Trump’s lawyers a letter revealing the Biden White House’s involvement. According to John Solomon, within two weeks of Debra Steidel Wall’s letter to Trump’s lawyers, the DOJ sent a grand jury subpoena to Trump’s counsel demanding he return documents stored at Mar-a-Lago. Shortly after Trump was subpoenaed, the feds showed up to Mar-a-Lago and retrieved some documents and told the former president to put an extra lock on the storage locker. Two months later the FBI descended on Mar-a-Lago and rummaged through Trump’s belongings without allowing any of his lawyers in the area.

By November 2022, shortly after the Mar-a-Lago raid, Jack Smith was appointed special counsel to investigate the documents stored at Trump’s Florida residence. By June 2023 Trump was indicted on 37 counts related to Jack Smith’s classified documents case – 31 counts for willful retention and the other 6 counts included conspiracy to obstruct justice, withholding a document or record, corruptly concealing a document or record, concealing a document in a federal investigation, scheme to conceal, false statements and representations. Meanwhile, Joe Biden hasn’t even been interviewed yet by the special counsel investigating his stolen SCIF-designated documents and he was able to assert executive privilege over 200 emails related to his son Hunter.

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I don’t see Fani last for much longer. What a mess.

Fani Willis Possesses Evidence Exonerating Georgia’s Alternate Electors (Fed.)

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis possesses evidence that exonerates several Republicans she’s targeting in her legal crusade against former President Donald Trump and other Republicans for their lawful contesting of Georgia’s flawed 2020 election. In her Aug. 14 indictment, Willis alleged the existence of Republican electors for Trump constituted an unlawful “conspiracy” to overturn the Peach State’s 2020 election results. Among those charged for partaking in this so-called “conspiracy” are David Shafer, one of Georgia’s 2020 Republican electors, and Ray Smith, who served as one of Trump’s lawyers at the time of the contest. Specifically, Willis claimed Shafer and the other alternate electors “unlawfully falsely held themselves out” as Georgia’s “duly elected and qualified” presidential electors.

She further insisted these electors — with Smith’s assistance — intentionally attempted to “mislead” figures such as then-Vice President Mike Pence and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger “into believing that they actually were such officers.” However, among the documents Willis obtained during her years-long investigation of Republicans was a meeting transcript refuting her allegations. A transcript of the Georgia Republican electors’ Dec. 14, 2020, meeting, obtained by The Federalist, explicitly shows the intent behind casting alternate electors was not to impersonate public officers, as Willis alleged, but to lawfully preserve Trump’s legal challenge to the state’s election results. At the meeting’s outset, Shafer specifically noted how he and his fellow Republicans were acting as “Republican nominees for Presidential Elector,” not as “duly elected and qualified” presidential electors.

“[President Trump] has filed a contest to the certified returns. That contest — is pending [and has] not been decided or even heard by any judge with the authority to hear it,” Shafer said. “And so in order to preserve his rights, it’s important that the Republican nominees for Presidential Elector meet here today and cast their votes.” For context, Shafer and Trump filed a lawsuit against Secretary of State Raffensberger in Fulton County state court on Dec. 4, 2020, alleging tens of thousands of illegal votes had been cast in the state’s presidential election. The suit came after a recount, requested by Trump, deemed Biden the winner of Georgia’s 16 electoral votes by a margin of 11,779. The recount prompted Raffensberger to recertify the election on Dec. 7 while Trump’s legal challenge remained ongoing.

By the time Dec. 14, 2020, arrived — the day on which nominees for presidential electors are required by federal law to meet — Trump and Shafer’s lawsuit was still pending. As such, Georgia’s Republican nominees, including Shafer, cast their electoral votes for Trump while the state’s Democrat nominees cast theirs for Biden. During the Dec. 14, 2020, meeting, Shafer further clarified the legal rationale for filing alternate electors in a conversation with Smith, asking Trump’s then-lawyer: “And so the only way for us to have any judge consider the merits of our complaint, the thousands of people we allege voted unlawfully, is for us to have this meeting and permit the contest to continue?” “That’s correct,” Smith replied.

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Coming from a Reagan economist.

Ivermectin Is a Proven Cure for Covid (Paul Craig Roberts)

The Covid years taught me that relatively few doctors are competent, capable of independent thinking, and have the interest to find approved medicines, such as Ivermectin, that are effective against new pathogens. Those doctors saved patients lives to the great distress of the Medical Establishment, and the doctors who saved their patients’ lives are still being punished for doing so. In September 2021, the corrupt American Medical Association told doctors to stop prescribing Ivermectin for COVID-19. In a statement, AMA, along with the American Pharmacists Association (APhA) and American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP), warned:

“We are alarmed by reports that outpatient prescribing for and dispensing of ivermectin have increased 24-fold since before the pandemic and increased exponentially over the past few months. As such, we are calling for an immediate end to the prescribing, dispensing, and use of ivermectin for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19 outside of a clinical trial.” “In addition, we are urging physicians, pharmacists, and other prescribers — trusted health care professionals in their communities — to warn patients against the use of ivermectin outside of FDA-approved indications and guidance, whether intended for use in humans or animals, as well as purchasing ivermectin from online stores.”

Dr. Joseph Mercola asks. “How many died unnecessarily as a result of these commands?” Mercola’s question is a good one. Those who died from Covid died because of a lack of treatment. For an untested vaccine to be put into use under “emergency use authorization” there must be no cures. Therefore the Medical Establishment, which serves as a marketing agent for Big Pharma, had to deny that there were any cures and to prevent doctors from curing patients with Ivermectin and HCQ before the knowledge of the cure spread. Otherwise the agendas served by the Death Shot would be blocked.

Now that the Medical Establishment has a new Covid variant with which to scare people and an updated dangerous vax, there is talk of a new round of vax, mask, and lockdown mandates. These measures are very dangerous and totally unnecessary. But they maximize profit and control, and that is their purpose. My advice is that if you have a doctor who warns you away from Ivermectin, you have a dumbshit or corrupt doctor who is very dangerous to your life and health. Quickly find another one who has the interest to know the facts and the determination to put his patients ahead of Big Pharma’s profits. And certainly do not trust any corporate hospital.

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Lambs and birds

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Apr 072022
 


Edward Hopper The Sheridan Theatre 1937

 

US Is Using Intel To Fight An Info War With Russia (NBC)
Video Appears To Show Ukrainian Soldiers Executing Russian Soldiers – NY Times (BI)
UK Delays Tariffs On Russian Whitefish (Pol.eu)
America’s Largest Farm Cooperative Warns Sanctions May Spark Fertilizer Shortages (ZH)
US Warns India Faces Significant Long-Term Costs If It Aligns With Russia (ZH)
Whistleblower To Release 450 GB Of Deleted Files From Hunter’s Laptop (DM)
Psaki Says Joe Biden And His Son Hunter ‘Were Not Office Mates’ (Fox)
President Macron Says He is “Opposed to Self-Defense” (SN)
‘Pushed to the Brink of Collapse’: Chaos Behind Shanghai Lockdown Measures (ET)
WHO Will Assume Total Control Of Future Pandemics (Kirsch)
‘Mandatory Vaccination’ For All Germans Over 60 Expected To Pass (ZH)
The Teen Girls Aren’t Going to Forget (Suzy Weiss)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Scott Ritter was banned from Twitter yesterday, and then reinstated.

Ukraine War Could Have Been Avoided, but Here’s Why Putin Will Achieve His Goals

 

 

US intel is very sophisticated and very credible.

US Is Using Intel To Fight An Info War With Russia (NBC)

It was an attention-grabbing assertion that made headlines around the world: U.S. officials said they had indications suggesting Russia might be preparing to use chemical agents in Ukraine. President Joe Biden later said it publicly. But three U.S. officials told NBC News this week there is no evidence Russia has brought any chemical weapons near Ukraine. They said the U.S. released the information to deter Russia from using the banned munitions. It’s one of a string of examples of the Biden administration’s breaking with recent precedent by deploying declassified intelligence as part of an information war against Russia. The administration has done so even when the intelligence wasn’t rock solid, officials said, to keep Russian President Vladimir Putin off balance.

Coordinated by the White House National Security Council, the unprecedented intelligence releases have been so frequent and voluminous, officials said, that intelligence agencies had to devote more staff members to work on the declassification process, scrubbing the information so it wouldn’t betray sources and methods. Observers of all stripes have called it a bold and so far successful strategy — although not one without risks. “It’s the most amazing display of intelligence as an instrument of state power that I have seen or that I’ve heard of since the Cuban Missile Crisis,” said Tim Weiner, the author of a 2006 history of the CIA and 2020’s “The Folly and the Glory,” a look at the U.S.-Russia rivalry over decades. “It has certainly blunted and defused the disinformation weaponry of the Kremlin.”

Four days before the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the U.S. publicized spy plane photos to show the Soviet Union had deployed nuclear missiles not far from Florida’s coast. The Biden administration began releasing reams of intelligence about what it said were Putin’s plans and intentions even before the invasion of Ukraine began. Just this week, national security adviser Jake Sullivan stood at the White House podium and read out what officials said was more declassified intelligence, asserting that Russia’s pullout from areas around Kyiv wasn’t a retreat but a strategic redeployment that signals a significant assault on eastern and southern Ukraine, one that U.S. officials believe could be a protracted and bloody fight. The idea is to pre-empt and disrupt the Kremlin’s tactics, complicate its military campaign, “undermine Moscow’s propaganda and prevent Russia from defining how the war is perceived in the world,” said a Western government official familiar with the strategy.

Multiple U.S. officials acknowledged that the U.S. has used information as a weapon even when confidence in the accuracy of the information wasn’t high. Sometimes it has used low-confidence intelligence for deterrent effect, as with chemical agents, and other times, as an official put it, the U.S. is just “trying to get inside Putin’s head.” Some officials believe, however, that trying to get into Putin’s head is a meaningless exercise, because he will do what he wants regardless. After this story was published, a U.S. official told NBC News that “the U.S. government’s effort to strategically downgrade intelligence to share with allies and the public is underpinned by a rigorous review process by the National Security Council and the Intelligence Community to validate the quality of the information and protect sources and methods.” The official added that “we only approve the release of intelligence if we are confident those two requirements are met.”

US intel

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”Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said it was “precise work” by Ukrainian troops.”

Video Appears To Show Ukrainian Soldiers Executing Russian Soldiers – NY Times (BI)

Video posted on Telegram Monday appears to show Ukrainian soldiers killing captured Russian troops in a village near Kyiv, according to a report from The New York Times. The video was verified by The Times, however, the outlet decided not to publish it due to its graphic nature. Per The Times it shows a Ukrainian soldier shooting a Russian soldier three times while another man says “he’s still alive. Film these marauders. Look, he’s still alive. He’s gasping.” The video, The Times reported, also shows at least three other Russian soldiers dead near the victim — identified by white armbands commonly worn by Russian troops. One of the soldiers has an obvious head wound and his hands are tied behind his back, according to the report from The Times.

The soldiers are surrounded by equipment and are laying on the road near a BMD-2 — an infantry vehicle used by Russia’s airborne units, according to military scholar Rob Lee. In the video, which was not independently verified by Insider, Ukrainian soldiers are identifiable by their blue armbands and repeat “glory to Ukraine” but their unit is unclear. A Ukrainian news agency said the ambush was the work of the “Georgian Legion” a group of Georgian volunteers that formed in 2014 to fight for Ukraine, according to The Times report.

The video was filmed north of the village of Dmytrivka, about seven miles southwest of Bucha, according to the Times report. Earlier this week, graphic videos emerged of at least 300 civilians killed in Bucha during Russia’s occupation of the city. Ukrainian officials say they were attacked as Russian troops were retreating. Ukrainian forces ambushed Russian troops around March 30, according to the Times report. In a tweet, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said it was “precise work” by Ukrainian troops.

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What the sanctions are really worth.

UK Delays Tariffs On Russian Whitefish (Pol.eu)

Plans to impose sanctions on Russian whitefish have been postponed by the U.K. government amid fears over the impact on Britain’s seafood industry. Whitefish was among the Russian exports set to be slapped with a 35 percent tariff by the U.K. in response to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. A U.K. government official said the sanctions have been “delayed while we sort some technicalities,” but stressed that “we are totally committed to them.” Any suggestion the plans had been dropped entirely was “totally untrue,” the official added. Roughly 30 percent of the U.K.’s whitefish originates from Russia, which controls between 40 to 45 percent of the global supply, according to industry body Seafish.


When the measure was first announced, Britain’s seafood processing industry and struggling fish and chip shops, which rely on the supply of Russian whitefish including cod, said they feared price rises as a result of the sanctions could squeeze their businesses. Andrew Crook, president of the National Federation of Fish Friers, said: “I think government wants more time to investigate the impact of sanctions on whitefish so have just held off for the time being. “We of course support any measures they deem suitable to bring the conflict to a speedier conclusion.” The whitefish sanctions were announced on March 15. However, unlike other Russian products targeted including cereal, cement and fertilizer, the tariffs were not imposed on whitefish when they came into force on March 24, according to Seafish, a public body that supports the U.K.’s seafood industry.

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It’s already done. Planting season is now.

America’s Largest Farm Cooperative Warns Sanctions May Spark Fertilizer Shortages (ZH)

America’s largest farmer cooperative sounded the alarm Wednesday about possible disruptions of fertilizer supplies from Russia due to Western sanctions on Moscow. CHS Inc., the largest agricultural cooperative in the US, said in an SEC filing that it’s concerned about obtaining Russian fertilizer because of sanctions making it “more expensive and difficult to do business with Russia.” CHS warned that sanctions could “cause delays with respect to, or prevent, shipments of fertilizer to us, cause inflationary pressures on and impact our ability to purchase fertilizer, disrupt the execution of banking transactions with certain Russian financial institutions and result in volatility in foreign exchange rates and interest rates, all of which could have a material adverse effect on our business and operations.”

The cooperative said it holds no operations in Russia. However, it has $30 million in grain inventories sitting in silos in Ukraine and will have to take an “impairment charge” because of its inability to access those stockpiles. CHS warns there’s a risk the conflict in Ukraine “could lead to a much larger conflict and/or additional sanctions imposed by the United States government and other governments that restrict business with specific persons, organizations or countries or with respect to certain products or services.” And said if such an event did occur, it would wreck more global supply chains and “could materially adversely affect our business operations and financial performance.” For some context, Russia is one of the world’s largest fertilizer exports. Countries already afflicted by food insecurity, such as emerging market economies, will experience some of the first fertilizer and food shortages first. By the way, violent inflation protests are already beginning in Peru.

Famine
https://twitter.com/i/status/1511921482275999754

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The US is blind to its loss of power. Russia, India, the UAE, Brazil and Indonesia, China, that’s way more people than the US can strong-arm in 2022.

US Warns India Faces Significant Long-Term Costs If It Aligns With Russia (ZH)

Given that a handful of countries that rank among the top largest economies in the world have thus far been reluctant to firmly condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, this could prove the significant monkey wrench in US-EU plans to severely isolate and wreak havoc on global Russian exports. Among these include the obvious – China, but also there’s India, the UAE, Brazil and Indonesia. India for example – standing just behind the UK as the 6th largest economy – remains the the single largest buyer of Russian weapons. India is also reportedly seeking more discounted Russian oil, in what looks to be a potential move away from Saudi crude. In early March, The New York Times noted that India was among those countries dependent on many Russian imports that’s attempting to “stay above the fray”.

“When India abstained from a United Nations vote and the chorus of Western condemnation against the Ukraine invasion, it appeared to be taking sides: offering tacit support for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia,” the Times emphasized previously. And now Washington is putting New Delhi on notice that it faces ‘significant costs’ should it become aligned with Russia, and as a major export destination allowing Putin to side-step sanctions effects. The Biden administraiton’s Director of the National Economic Council of the United States Brian Deese has said the US remains “disappointed” with aspects of the Indian government’s reaction to the Ukraine crisis. “There are certainly areas where we have been disappointed by both China and India’s decisions, in the context of the invasion,” he said a Wednesday event in D.C.

He was cited as saying in Bloomberg: The US has told India that the consequences of a “more explicit strategic alignment” with Moscow would be “significant and long-term,” he said. India has so far rejected falling in line with the West’s anti-Russia sanctions, instead continuing to import Russian oil, which remains at an estimated 2% of its total oil imports.

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‘Very dear friends of mine, the sharp tip of the spear, were making welfare calls to me every day, basically to see if I was still alive.’

Whistleblower To Release 450 GB Of Deleted Files From Hunter’s Laptop (DM)

The source who distributed Hunter Biden’s laptop to congressmen and media has fled the US to Switzerland, saying he fears retaliation from the Biden administration. Jack Maxey gave DailyMail.com a copy of the hard drive from Hunter’s abandoned laptop in the spring of 2021. He also gave copies and material from it to the Washington Post, New York Times, and Senator Chuck Grassley in his role as ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee – but he claims they all sat on it for months. For the past two weeks, Maxey has been in hiding in Zurich, working with IT experts to dig out more data from the ‘laptop from hell’. Maxey, a former co-host of ex-Donald Trump advisor Steve Bannon’s podcast the War Room, claims he and his colleagues have found ‘450 gigabytes of deleted material’ including 80,000 images and videos and more than 120,000 archived emails.

He said he intends to post them all online in a searchable database in the coming weeks. Hunter abandoned his laptop at a Delaware computer store in 2019. The owner, John Mac Isaac, gave a copy to Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who passed it on to Maxey. ‘I came here so that we could do a forensic examination of Hunter’s laptop safely in a country that still respects human liberty and the ideals of liberal democratic principles,’ he told DailyMail.com. ‘I do not believe this would have been possible inside the United States. We had numerous attempts on us from trying to do things like this there.’ Maxey said that after contacting DailyMail.com about the laptop last year, black suburban SUVs appeared outside his house, and former US intelligence officer friends he shared copies with told him they received strange calls.

‘I showed this to a friend of mine in desperation in February [2021] because nobody would listen to me. No news organizations would take it. In fact, the very first major news organization to take it was the Daily Mail,’ he said. ‘Very dear friends of mine, the sharp tip of the spear, were making welfare calls to me every day, basically to see if I was still alive.’

Darryl Cooper

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She’s openly calling Hunter a liar now. Shouldn’t Joe stand up for “the smartest man I know”?

And also:

“In the email, Hunter Biden also requests keys for Gongwen Dong, whom he describes as an “emissary” for Ye Jianming — the chairman of CEFC Chinese Energy Co.”

Psaki Says Joe Biden And His Son Hunter ‘Were Not Office Mates’ (Fox)

White House press secretary Jen Psaki denied on Wednesday previous reports that claimed Hunter Biden and his father, President Biden, were “office mates.” Asked by Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy about “evidence that the president, at one point, was office mates with Hunter and his brother Jim here in D.C.,” Psaki said the reports were “not accurate.” Hunter Biden requested in 2017 that keys be made for his new “office mates,” listing his father, Jill Biden, and his uncle Jim Biden, for space he planned to share with an “emissary” for a chairman of a Chinese energy company, according to an email obtained by Fox News.


A Sept. 20, 2017 email obtained by Fox News shows Hunter requesting keys for Joe and Jill Biden, along with Jim Biden, for space he planned to share with an “emissary” for a chairman of a Chinese energy company. The email was sent to the general manager, Cecilia Browning, at the House of Sweden — a building in Washington, D.C., that contains multiple office suites and a number of embassies. “Please have keys made available for new office mates: Joe Biden, Jill Biden, Jim Biden,” said the email, with the subject “507.” In the email, Hunter Biden also requests keys for Gongwen Dong, whom he describes as an “emissary” for Ye Jianming — the chairman of CEFC Chinese Energy Co.

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“..because otherwise the country becomes the Wild West..”

Actually, that is what it is without self-defense…

Idiot.

President Macron Says He is “Opposed to Self-Defense” (SN)

After a farmer was charged with murder for shooting a man after four burglars broke into his home, French President Emmanuel Macron said people should not have the right to self-defense. Yes, really. “According to the initial investigation, the farmer fired twice with a large caliber rifle at a group of four burglars, killing one of them. The self-defense shooting took place last Friday, between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m., and the man was alone with his 3-year-old daughter at the time,” reports Remix News. However, Macron responded to the story by asserting that the 35-year-old farmer had no right to defend himself or his daughter in such a manner. “Everyone must be safe, and the public authorities have to ensure it,” Macron told Europe 1.


“But I am opposed to self-defense. It’s very clear and undisputable because otherwise the country becomes the Wild West. And I don’t want a country where weapons proliferate and where we consider that it’s up to the citizens to defend themselves,” said Macron. Presumably, the farmer should have just allowed the four burglars to ransack his home and potentially harm his young daughter without doing anything to intervene. Macron insisted that the farmer should have called the police, who in many areas of France are already stretched to the limit thanks to criminal gangs of migrants youths being in a perpetual state of war with them. “I’m not going to judge this news. I convey the rules,” said Macron, whose weak record on security and crime is under scrutiny.

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“Let me reiterate, do not bother checking your health cloud, it’s all a negative result. Only we will notify you when you have tested positive.” The caller responded, “So what we see is all fake?” She said, “That’s right.”

‘Pushed to the Brink of Collapse’: Chaos Behind Shanghai Lockdown Measures (ET)

While Shanghai continues its lockdown and massive PCR testing campaign as COVID-19 surges through the city, a CDC expert’s complaint about chaotic PCR test reports that have confused people was recently exposed online. Shanghai CDC issued a notice demanding staff answer public inquiries “in line with the policy.” There have been complaints about the conflicting PCR test results on Chinese social media because people receive a negative test result on their cell phones but then receive a positive test result from the CDC. Shanghai adopted the Healthcare Cloud app as its integrated Internet and Healthcare services platform. Locals register through the app for a PCR test and receive the test result on their cell phones.

However, many people received a negative test notice via the app but still were then notified by CDC that they had tested positive and were thus subject to quarantine. Complaints have flooded the Shanghai CDC hotline. A recently leaked recording of a CDC expert responding to a caller revealed how the app has been problematic, how overloaded health workers have been stymied by a lack of transparency in pandemic prevention, and how the pandemic has become a political issue. In the recording, the expert said, “We have received hundreds of calls every day, but our jobs are epidemiological investigations. We can’t solve your problem.” She said, “Let me tell you the facts: There’s no ward, the quarantine sites are filled, and there’s no ambulance.”

A male was heard complaining, “But we have no way to address our issue, even Weibo is blocked.” The expert said, “I have brought this up too many times; as an expert, I have suggested that the mild to no symptom patients stay at home. Does anyone listen? No!” She continued, “Let me reiterate, do not bother checking your health cloud, it’s all a negative result. Only we will notify you when you have tested positive.” The caller responded, “So what we see is all fake?” She said, “That’s right.”

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No, they won’t. Wanna bet?

WHO Will Assume Total Control Of Future Pandemics (Kirsch)

Thanks to Mike Yeadon for alerting me to this. Here’s Mike’s message to me (excerpt): “Steve, I’ve heard about this from half a dozen sources & I’m sorry to say that the concerns expressed are wholly justified. It’s a mad idea, but since certain individuals & nations have pretty much taken over the WHO, I think it’s a certainty that, if this new treaty gets signed, within a few years at most, a “public health emergency of International concern” will be declared, and all currently sovereign nations will become controlled subsidiaries of WHO. … No government should even have the power to throw their country over to a third party. If that happened, they’d never give it back. U.K. parliament signed up to emergency powers on the occasion of the first lockdown over two years ago. That temporary bill has never been repealed. We have no rights whatsoever if they decide we don’t. This is the main reason we emigrated.

Here’s the best practical reason not to sign such a treaty, aside from its anti-democratic central problem: Imagine there’s a new pathogen spreading across the world. Nobody, anywhere, knows what the best response should be. By definition it’s not known. History teaches us that we alight most rapidly upon probable best courses of action, not from modeling, but from empirical evidence. Running a large number of experiments, based on the smartest public health, medical & scientific brains, will quickly tell us what kinds of responses are helpful & which are not. Maintaining very good communication makes sure lessons learned are shared quickly. The worst conceivable response would be to place the decision making power in the hands of a single body. They’ll likely run one experiment. We’ll never learn the counterfactual. On this basis, I don’t even understand why anyone would fall for the idiotic notion that letting WHO have the controls would be a great idea. Even if they were honest & competent.

Please let me know if I can help in any way.

Best wishes

Mike

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Mandatory adverse effects.

‘Mandatory Vaccination’ For All Germans Over 60 Expected To Pass (ZH)

The COVID pandemic has largely subsided in Europe (although health authorities have warned about an uptick in cases caused by subvariants and hybrid variants of the omicron strain). But this hasn’t stopped German lawmakers from pushing for a new law that would legally require people age 60 and older to be vaccinated. But that’s not all. The deal struck by members of Germany’s ruling “stop sign” coalition, which includes Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party, the Greens and the ‘classical liberal’ Free Democrats, also includes an option for making COVID shots mandatory for everybody age 18 and older. That second provision will depend on how the next wave of the pandemic develops during the fall, according to Bloomberg, which cited a local report.


According to other provisions in the proposed law, the government would initially try to “encourage” the unvaccinated to voluntary submit to inoculation (Germany still has millions of unvaccinated citizens, not unlike the US). Fortunately, even if the proposal becomes a law (it’s due for a vote on Thursday), it will also include provisions that would reverse the situation if enough people receive their COVID shots voluntarily before the summer. Lawmakers told Bloomberg that the goal of the proposal is “effective prevention.” “We are united by the goal of effective prevention through the highest possible level of basic immunity for all adults for the fall, because in this way we can prevent the health system from being overwhelmed,” they added. Germany is still recording more than 200,000 cases and more than 300 deaths from the virus on most days. But with more than 75% of its population vaccinated, the pressure on the country’s health-care system has significantly lessened since the depths of the pandemic.

UK jab effectiveness

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“it’s like a sci-fi show where people went to sleep and woke up two years later, and the world has moved on but they haven’t.”

The Teen Girls Aren’t Going to Forget (Suzy Weiss)

Lily May Holland, 16, remembers the long, lonely days during lockdown when her parents, both doctors, were at work. She’d watch “Gilmore Girls” and “Gossip Girl” and “Grey’s Anatomy” over and over. She stopped eating and started doing Chloe Ting workouts. “I’d have gum and a smoothie all day,” she said. They lived in the sticks north of Charlottesville, Virginia, on a dirt road between farms and trailer parks and the occasional Baptist church, and she didn’t have a license, so she couldn’t go anywhere or meet any friends. Teachers would post assignments online, but it was like—who cared? Everything happened in isolation, like they were atoms. “I would’ve gone to parties, and me and my friends were planning to go to concerts, and homecoming,” Lily said. “I had crushes freshman year. But all that fell away.”

Teenagers need a social life. Every single study and report and piece of data tells us so. But we don’t need studies to tell us what we all already know. Ask yourself: What would it have been like if you had spent your thirteenth year in solitude? It was more than a year, actually. Millions of American kids had gone a year-and-a-half mostly alone. And every single girl I spoke to said the same thing about the experience: They felt like they were sinking, or being swallowed up. So it almost seemed like an understatement when, in December 2021, the Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, said the effect of the lockdowns had been “devastating” for young people’s mental health. “Usually, kids would be learning to disobey their parents and stay out late and figure out the consequences, but there was just none of that,” said Regine Galanti, a clinical psychologist in New York who specializes in adolescents with anxiety disorders.

The impact of all that emptiness—the zig-zagging from one hazy, blue-ish screen to another and then to another—was starting to come into focus, and it was scary. Lily said that, at some point mid-lockdown, she got sick of communicating with other human beings via iPhone. So then she stopped communicating at all. Galanti said, “It’s almost like a volcano that we set ourselves up for.”It was an unprecedented volcano. In the past, Earth-shaking events—the Great Depression, World War II, Vietnam—had forced kids to grow up. Teenagers got jobs or were deployed overseas, and when they came back they settled down and had kids or left home and fled to the big city. The point is that they started their lives.

Covid did the opposite. Instead of nudging young people out the door, it anchored them to their parents, to their bedrooms and to their screens. And now that the madness is finally ebbing, they’re unsure how to proceed. Galanti said, “it’s like a sci-fi show where people went to sleep and woke up two years later, and the world has moved on but they haven’t.”

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Tsernigov

 

 

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