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Debt Rattle March 11 2024

Mar 112024
 
 March 11, 2024  Posted by at 9:10 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , ,  36 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Femmes d’Alger -Women of Algiers (after Delacroix) 1955

 

• A Trump Criminal Trial Could Run Right Through 2024 Election (Turley)
• Orban Says Trump Pledged Not to Provide Financial Aid to Ukraine (Sp.)
• Old Man Shouting, “The American Empire is Doing Great!” (Patrick Lawrence)
• Can Americans Have Hope? (Paul Craig Roberts)
• No Borders? No America (Justin Smith)
• NATO Can No Longer Hide Its Military Presence in Ukraine – Zakharova (Sp.)
• France Just Can’t Calm Down, Itching to Start World War III (Sp.)
• West Is Conducting ‘All-Out Militarization’ To Defeat Russia – Vucic (ZH)
• ‘We Shouldn’t Have Gone Into Ukraine’ – Biden (RT)
• Islamic World Has Let Palestinians Down – Erdogan (RT)
• Erdogan Among ‘Greatest Anti-Semites In History’ – Israeli FM (RT)
• Harvard University, Formerly Great, now Corrupted by Money (Paul Craig Roberts)
• Special Counsel Files Blistering Reply to Hunter Motion to Dismiss (Turley)
• Open Letter to the People of Switzerland, Federal Council, Parliament (GR)
• UK Ranked Second-Most Miserable Country In The World (RT)

 

 

 

 

Pelosi Schumer

 

 

Obama

 

 

 

 

Zhirinovsky

 

 

Tucker Steve Kirsch

 

 

Tucker Jordan Peterson, Conrad Black

 

 

 

 

 

 

“..Smith insisted that the oft-cited Justice Department policy to avoid such proceedings within 60 days of an election would not be applied in Trump’s case..”

• A Trump Criminal Trial Could Run Right Through 2024 Election (Turley)

“This trial will not yield to the election cycle.” Those words of U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan last year made clear that she will not consider that Donald Trump will likely be the 2024 Republican presidential nominee in setting the schedule for his federal trial in Washington, D.C. Most recently, in the federal prosecution in Florida, Special Counsel Jack Smith declared that he will not consider himself bound by the Justice Department’s longstanding policy of not bringing charges or holding trials of candidates close to an election. With the Supreme Court reviewing the immunity question (and a decision not expected until June), a nightmare scenario is unfolding in which Trump could be tried not just before the general election, but actually through November’s election. Chutkan has insisted that her refusal to consider Trump’s candidacy is simply denying special treatment to the former president.

But there is nothing typical about how she and others have handled the case. The fact that Chutkan was pushing for a March trial date shows just how extraordinary her handling has been. In the D.C. courts, with thousands of stacked up cases, that would be a rocket docket for a complex case of this kind. There are roughly 770,000 pending cases in roughly 100 district courts around the country. The backlog of pending criminal cases in the federal court system increased by more than a quarter in the last five years. Even when defendants plead guilty, criminal cases average 10 months. If a trial is needed, it runs on average to two years, absent serious complications over classified or privileged material. Smith indicted Trump less than a year ago. At every juncture, Smith has tried to expedite and spur the case along. This has included an attempt to cut off standard appellate options for Trump. It seems as if the entire point is to try Trump before the election. Smith has offered no reason, other than that he wants voters to consider the outcome of the trial.

It is a rare acknowledgement of a desire for a trial to become a factor in an election. Chutkan has shown the same determination. The judge was criticized for comments she made before any charges were brought that strongly suggested she thought Trump should be criminally charged. Chutkan told one defendant that he showed “blind loyalty to one person who, by the way, remains free to this day.” In another case, Chutkan told the defendant that it was unfair that he might go to prison but “the architects of that horrific event will likely never be charged.” When asked to recuse herself, Chutkan denied the clear implication of her own words. She stated that she has not expressly stated that “’President Trump should be prosecuted’ and imprisoned… And the defense does not cite any instance of the court ever uttering those words or anything similar.” Of course, neither the court nor the prosecutors seem willing to apply a similarly deferential view of the meaning of Trump’s words within the context of the case.

There, the implications are sufficient for that “one person” described earlier by the court. Chutkan is now reportedly telling parties in other cases that she will be out of the country in August, and that defendants will have to delay any proceedings in light of her plans…unless she can try Trump. She told lawyers that she will stick with her schedule unless “I’m in trial in another matter that has not yet returned to my calendar.” Given the apparent motivation of the trial court to try Trump before the election, the only other source of restraint would be the Justice Department itself. Smith, however, has insisted that he will show no such restraint, even if he tries Trump through the election. In his filings in Florida, Smith insisted that the oft-cited Justice Department policy to avoid such proceedings within 60 days of an election would not be applied in Trump’s case. He insisted that, since everyone knows about the allegations, there would be no harm or foul in holding him for trial for the weeks before the election as his opponent, President Biden, is free to traverse the country campaigning.

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“Trump said that if he returns, he will not do this, [he will] not [allocate] a penny. And then this war will end..”

• Orban Says Trump Pledged Not to Provide Financial Aid to Ukraine (Sp.)

Former US President Donald Trump said that he would not provide financial assistance to Ukraine if elected this fall, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said. On Friday, Trump met with Orban at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida to discuss a wide range of issues of common interest for Hungary and the United States. “If the Americans do not give weapons and money, and the Europeans follow them, then the war will end. If the Americans do not give money, then the Europeans are not able to finance this war themselves, and then it will end.

Trump is not president now, but his party interferes when the Democrats want to send money to the war. Trump said that if he returns, he will not do this, [he will] not [allocate] a penny. And then this war will end,” Orban said in an interview with Hungarian broadcaster M1. Trump and Orban are longtime allies who share conservative political views and have publicly expressed mutual respect and support. Orban has thrown support behind Trump both in the US presidential race and the legal challenges he is facing.

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“These are ideas so old they leave the U.S. in a state of ever more extreme isolation in a world eager to get on with the 21st century..”

• Old Man Shouting, “The American Empire is Doing Great!” (Patrick Lawrence)

Democratic elites and the reporters who clerk for them were effusively approving of Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech last Thursday evening—not so much for what he said, which came nothing new, as for the demeanor of our enfeebled president. Never mind that Biden reduced an occasion intended to address all Americans as to the condition of their nation to a cheap stump speech. He avoided falling down for his hour at the podium while stringing coherent sentences (mostly) together in the cause of his political survival. That is what counted. “This was not Old Man Joe,” Peter Baker fairly ejaculated in Friday morning’s New York Times. “This was Forceful Joe. This was Angry Joe. This was Loud Joe. This was Game–On Joe.” Wow. I seemed to have missed that, Joe.

I saw Joe who trades in hollow appearances. This was Joe urging both houses of Congress and 32 million television viewers to join in making believe we still live in the 20th century. This was Joe pretending America’s global primacy is intact. This was Joe refusing to recognize the emergence of new poles of power and the high cost this refusal exacts. “A nation that stands as a beacon to the world. A nation in a new age of possibilities”: You wouldn’t believe an American public figure, to say nothing of a president, would still trade in this kind of exhausted pabulum. Denial of this kind, we must not fail to remind ourselves, does not come cheap. You have to wonder who is driving the bus after listening to a speech as vapid as Biden’s, and I will attempt an answer to this question in due course. Here is the passage in Biden’s speech that most aroused all the Peter Baker liberals eager to see him reelected in November:

“My fellow Americans, the issue facing our nation isn’t how old we are, it’s how old are our ideas…. [Y]ou can’t lead America with ancient ideas that only take us back. To lead America, the land of possibilities, you need a vision for the future and what can and should be done.” These remarks—Biden rehearsed them severally in preceding days—bring us to some very difficult recognitions, even if Biden’s speechwriters intended them otherwise. No recent president I can think of has proven more abjectly bereft of new ideas than Joe Biden. The reckless support of “the Jewish state,” the proxy war in Ukraine, the obsessive Russophobia, the provocations across the Taiwan Strait, the covert operations in Syria and elsewhere, the sanction regimes imposed on too many nations to count, the vassalization of Europe: There is no new thinking in any of this. These are ideas so old they leave the U.S. in a state of ever more extreme isolation in a world eager to get on with the 21st century. Joseph R. Biden, Jr., is the face of the American imperium as it insists on prolonging itself. This is not a role with any originality or vision to it.

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“..the elites could permit Trump to assume the Presidency because they know that they can prevent him from achieving what those who elected him want..”

“.. If all else fails, the bullets that destroyed JFK and RFK are available.”

• Can Americans Have Hope? (Paul Craig Roberts)

The issue that faces us is: There is no possibility whatever of Biden being reelected. The fool lined up with Israel in the genocide of the Palestinian people. The fool has lost the war in Ukraine that absorbed untold billions of American money. The fool has violated his oath of office and has not only allowed but has actively participated in bringing in during his 4 years 48 cities the size of Pittsburgh full of immigrant-invaders, actually flying in at the expense of US taxpayers 320,000 immigrant-invaders. The fool is signing over to an international bureaucracy, WHO, the determination of your health care, which as of May of this year will be out of your hands. I could go on, but how can a candidate described by his own Department of Justice to be too incompetent to stand trial for his illegal possession of secret national security documents be sufficiently competent to be President of the United States and to have in his incompetent hands, so ruled by his own Justice Department, the nuclear briefcase?

How can the Democrats run a candidate for president who has been ruled incompetent by his own government? How is it that Democrat state judges, attorneys general, and secretaries of state illegitimately rule that Trump cannot be on the Democrat states ballots because he is an “insurrectionist”? Trump has not been convicted as an insurrectionist. Why do these dumbshit Demorats think that their assertion amounts to a conviction? Moreover the 14th Amendment assigns that decision to the US Congress, not to state judges, attorney generals, and secretaries of state. Are the Democrats so utterly stupid and incompetent that they do not understand basic law and cannot understand that they are asserting a power that they do not have? Yes, I believe that is the case. For decades Democrats have been appointing legal and constitutional illiterates to the judiciary, knowing that the only way Democrats can achieve a one-party tyrannical state is by using stupid people to weaponize law.

With polls showing that 90% of the voting population regard Biden as too old or too incapable to serve as president, why are the Democrats running him? Is it because they have no other candidate? Or is it because the Democrats have a plan to move Trump aside and neutralize him? Biden has nonexistent chances of winning. This makes it impossible for the Democrats to steal the third national election in a row. To steal an election the vote count has to be close. Otherwise, it is not believable. Perhaps the Democrats have a plan for derailing Trump? Earlier I suggested that the Democrats would have Biden resign for medical reasons. Kamala would become president. She would be instructed to choose Hillary as her VP and then resign herself. This would leave Hillary and her machine in power prior to the election. Then the border conflict between Washington and Texas would be heated up. There would be talk of civil war, and the prospect would be used by Hillary to declare martial law to put down rebellion and cancel the election.

As much sense as this makes for the Democrats, there is little evidence that they are moving in this direction. So how will they keep Trump out of office? As Trump has declared war on the American ruling elites,they are determined to keep him away from power. Has Trump been re-educated so that he no longer wants normal relations with Russia? We know he is in Israel’s pocket, which is a great gift to the control that the establishment has over Trump. The question before us is: Does Trump want vindication by reelection more than he wants to overthrow the elite and return government to the people as democracy requires? If he hasn’t struck a deal with the elites, why would they allow him, their enemy, be in the Oval Office? Could it be that the elite know how much more powerful they are compared to a mere US president? When it comes down to the question, what can Trump do?

If he is able to understand the situation and to identify people able and willing to help him take power from the ruling elite and to restore power to the people, he still has the problem of getting a bought-and-paid-for US Senate to approve his appointments. Remember, Trump’s appointment of General Flynn lasted two weeks. My updated opinion is that the elites could permit Trump to assume the Presidency because they know that they can prevent him from achieving what those who elected him want, thereby demoralizing the American citizens who had hope that a leader would restore and revitalize their nation. They know that they can orchestrate an economic catastrophe that would destroy Trump’s presidency and keep Republicans out of office for many years. If all else fails, the bullets that destroyed JFK and RFK are available. There is no doubt that the corrupt US media would attribute Trump’s assassination to “a lone gunman.”

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“Don’t let the enemies-from-within end America in so despicable a manner. Don’t let this be how America ends..”

• No Borders? No America (Justin Smith)

Former President Donald Trump has promised to start the largest mass deportation of illegal aliens in U.S. history, if he wins the upcoming election, and he plans to use the military to implement it, rightfully so. As reported in the Washington Post [February 21st 2024], Karoline Leavitt, spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, stated: “Americans can expect that immediately upon President Trump’s return to the Oval Office, he will restore all his prior policies, implement brand new crackdowns that will send shock waves to all the world’s criminal smugglers, and marshal every federal and state power necessary to institute the largest deportation operation in American history” as she also added that illegal aliens “should not get comfortable because very soon they will be going home.”

We have the absolute right and a duty as sovereign citizens, living in sovereign states, to defend ourselves and our families, in the wake of a lawless federal government, this lawless Biden regime. The authority rests within the Constitution which has always allowed for the use of the States’ militias or the military to be mobilized for just such circumstances, and although we can be certain that Biden and some state governors will keep refusing to utilize the mechanisms at their disposal to fast-track the removal of these invaders, we have the right to gather ourselves armed with pistols and rifles — those of us able with the time and backbone to do so — to go to the border and tell the Border Patrol to do join us and do their Constitutional duty to stop the millions more who will try to cross between now and January 2025.

I oft suggested in years past, half-jokingly, not so much anymore, that we should put them on a plane, parachutes optional, and shove them out over Mexico. This comment has become so much more full of meaning, now that we know the Biden regime has actively been seeking out these illegal caravans and flying their members into America. No matter how they arrive, by a fast jet, a slow boat or a reliable bus or train, we must send them back on a super-charged bus or jet just as quickly. Set about to deport every last one of them, and then effectively and totally seal the border and place a ten year moratorium on all immigration, legal and illegal, or until we have our nation and our population straightened out in a fashion that puts us back on a path to the same level of exceptionalism that used to be the rule in America and removes or eradicates, with extreme prejudice, those radicals who seek to fundamentally transform America and end our republic.

Don’t let the enemies-from-within end America in so despicable a manner. Don’t let this be how America ends. Fight back like hell, and when the time is right, make the bastards who have committed this treason against America pay with their own lives.

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“..France and Poland have no right to speak on behalf of NATO, and the alliance’s intervention in the conflict would “erase the path to diplomacy.”

• NATO Can No Longer Hide Its Military Presence in Ukraine – Zakharova (Sp.)

Spokeswoman of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova commented on the statement by Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski about the presence of soldiers NATO countries in Ukraine, telling Sputnik: “They couldn’t hide it any longer.” Earlier in the day, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said during a panel discussion at an event dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the country’s accession to the alliance that some NATO countries have already sent their military to Ukraine. The event was broadcasted on the Sejm RP YouTube channel. “NATO soldiers are already present in Ukraine,” Sikorski said. Sikorski added that he is not going to disclose which states sent their military there, “unlike some politicians.” Earlier, the diplomat Sikorski said that the presence of NATO forces in Ukraine “was not unthinkable,” adding that he appreciated Macron’s initiative on the possibility of sending Western troops to Ukraine.

Polish President Andrzej Duda, in turn, expressed his opinion that Warsaw needs to build a large airport to transport NATO troops. At the end of February, Macron said that France would do everything to prevent Russia “from winning this war.” According to him, the leaders of Western countries have discussed the possibility of sending troops to Ukraine and, although no consensus had been reached in this regard, nothing could be ruled out. Later, the French president, who was sharply criticized for his statements, noted that all his words were carefully considered. He also emphasized that Paris “has no limits or red lines” on the issue of assistance to Kiev. At the same time, the authorities of many European countries stated that there is no talk of transferring military personnel to Ukraine. In particular, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Defense Minister Boris Pistorius emphasized that Germany would not send its military personnel to the republic.

In addition, the head of the German government clarified that NATO countries as a whole are not going to do this. Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto likewise said that France and Poland have no right to speak on behalf of NATO, and the alliance’s intervention in the conflict would “erase the path to diplomacy.” Commenting on Sikorski’s revelation, Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told Sputnik that the alliance’s members could no longer hide it. In his annual address to the Russian Federal Assembly in late February, President Vladimir Putin warned that the consequences of a possible NATO intervention in Ukraine would be tragic for the alliance’s deployed troops.

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“It is not for Russia to tell us how we should help Ukraine in the coming months or years..”

• France Just Can’t Calm Down, Itching to Start World War III (Sp.)

France is forming a coalition of nations that are willing to consider the possibility of deploying Western forces to Ukraine, Politico reports. On Friday, French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné travelled to Lithuania to hold a meeting with his Baltic and Ukrainian counterparts to promote the idea that foreign forces might assist Ukraine in tasks such as de-mining. Séjourné repeatedly mentioned mine clearance operations as a potential area of assistance, stating it “might mean having some personnel, [but] not to fight.” “It is not for Russia to tell us how we should help Ukraine in the coming months or years,” Séjourné said at a meeting chaired by Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis and attended by his Ukrainian counterpart, Dmytro Kuleba.

The newspaper recalled French President Emmanuel Macron’s remarks about the possibility of sending servicemen from Western countries to Ukraine. Subsequently most EU members, including Germany, the Czech Republic, and Poland, clarified they had no such plans. However, as Politico writes, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania appeared “much more open to the idea.” Commenting on Macron’s statements, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stressed that NATO troops’ potential boots on the ground in Ukraine will lead to an inevitable conflict between Russia and the alliance. Russia has repeatedly warned NATO countries that arms supplies to Ukraine would be considered legitimate targets. Moscow has accused NATO countries of “playing with fire” by arming Ukraine, emphasizing that such actions hinder the possibility of Russia-Ukraine negotiations.

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“The current trend is toward total militarization and a five-fold build-up in all respects..”

• West Is Conducting ‘All-Out Militarization’ To Defeat Russia – Vucic (ZH)

Last week we detailed that during Ukrainian President Zelensky’s visit to Albania where he appealed for more weapons from Balkan countries, he pushed the idea that all Western-friendly Balkan states should have a pathway to the EU and NATO. And at the same time French President Emmanuel Macron has been busy floating the possibility of Western troops deploying to Ukraine. Albania is of course a chief regional rival to Moscow’s close ally and friend Serbia. Jahja Muhasilovic, a political analyst on the Balkans, had commented of Zelensky’s rare Balkan trip that “Albania is known to be one of the staunchest supporters of limiting Russia’s influence here in the region.” “In a way, Zelensky’s visit in Albania is having that geopolitical connotation. He is probably counting on the Western Balkan countries not to help them militarily because they are limited, but through their lobbying part that they can play in continuing the armament of the Ukrainian troops,” he explained.

In fresh comments this weekend, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has weighed in and responded to ongoing calls from Western officials to urgently send more weapons to Kiev. Vucic has accused the West of pursuing a policy of “total militarization” toward defeating Russian, which puts the region and the world on the brink of disaster and stumbling to WW3. “What is happening now is madness,” he was cited in regional media as saying. “They all thought that Putin would be easily defeated. Now they see that this is not so.” “The current trend is toward total militarization and a five-fold build-up in all respects,” the Serbian president said further during a visit to the Belgrade Military Technical Institute. Vucic has also warned against European countries sending their troops to Ukraine to confront Russian forces, saying this would immediately and unpredictably escalate the war.

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“He didn’t mix it up. He can no longer retain to himself what everyone understands – the US have disgraced themselves in the bloodiest manner with the whole Ukrainian project..”

• ‘We Shouldn’t Have Gone Into Ukraine’ – Biden (RT)

In another of his gaffes, Joe Biden has said that Washington made a mistake by going into Ukraine. The US president was actually talking about a different country in another part of the world. In the course of an interview with MSNBC on Saturday, Biden was criticizing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying that by ignoring civilian casualties during the IDF’s military operation in Gaza, he was “hurting Israel more than he’s helping Israel.” According to the latest data from the Gaza health ministry, 31,045 people have been killed and 72,654 others wounded since October 7, after which the IDF began its attacks on the Palestinian enclave in response to the Hamas incursion into Israel, in which an estimated 1,200 people lost their lives and over 200 were taken hostage. Biden recalled how, during his visit to Israel early in the conflict, he had warned Netanyahu against making a “mistake” that the US made after 9/11.

“America made a mistake. We went after Osama bin Laden until we got him, but we shouldn’t have gone into Ukraine…” the 81-year-old said. The president quickly corrected himself, saying: “We shouldn’t have gone into the whole thing in Iraq and Afghanistan.” Those military campaigns by the US “caused more problems than they cured,” he added. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova infused the subject with a little sarcasm and said Moscow actually disagreed with the reporting in the media, that Biden had simply confused Ukraine with Iraq and Afghanistan. “He didn’t mix it up. He can no longer retain to himself what everyone understands – the US have disgraced themselves in the bloodiest manner with the whole Ukrainian project,” she wrote on Telegram on Sunday.

After repelling Ukraine’s counteroffensive last year, Russian forces have been steadily improving frontline positions, capturing the strategic stronghold of Adveevka in Russia’s People’s Republic of Donetsk last month, and several other settlements. Washington has been Ukraine’s primary backer since the escalation to armed confrontation in February 2022 of long-simmering conflicts between Moscow and Kiev, and has provided over $111 billion in military and financial assistance. However, in recent months, US aid has subsided drastically as the Biden administration struggles to overcome Republicans’ resistance to its efforts at pushing through another $60-billion in aid for Ukraine. It’s not the first time that Biden has confused countries and places. In June, he said that “Putin is losing the war in Iraq.” In a more recent blunder, he said a week ago that the US and partners were discussing “airdrops of food and supplies into Ukraine,” while actually meaning proposed airdrops into Gaza.

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They left it all to the Houthis.

• Islamic World Has Let Palestinians Down – Erdogan (RT)

Muslim-majority countries did not do enough to stop Israeli forces from killing Palestinian civilians in Gaza, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said. He made his comment as the war between Israel and Hamas entered its sixth month. “We have all witnessed together how the Universal Declaration of Human Rights became just a piece of paper when it comes to the right to live for Palestinian children, women and innocent civilians,” the Turkish leader said at an event in Istanbul on Saturday. Erdogan went on to argue that the war in the Middle East “has shown us that the Islamic world still has very significant shortcomings, especially in terms of acting in unity” when attempting to pressure Israel to end its operation in Gaza. Unfortunately, the Islamic world, with its population of nearly 2 billion people, has failed to properly fulfil its brotherly duty to the Palestinians.

The president said that, despite the “hard work and many efforts in the diplomatic field,” the Muslim-majority countries ultimately “could not prevent the deaths of innocent children of Gaza from hunger, bullets and bombs.” Ankara has delivered some 40,000 tons of humanitarian aid to Gaza by air and sea, Erdogan said. The remarks came after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to continue the offensive on Rafah, a major city near Gaza’s border with Egypt. The city and its surroundings became crowded with refugees after the Israel Defense Forces instructed Palestinians to flee the northern part of the enclave. Netanyahu has rejected international calls for a ceasefire, arguing that the IDF must clear out “the last Hamas stronghold” in Rafah. Israel declared war on Hamas after the militant group unexpectedly attacked southern Israeli cities on October 7, killing some 1,200 people and taking more than 200 hostages. More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the fighting began last year, according to local authorities.

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“Netanyahu and his hateful administration have added their names to the list of ‘today’s Nazis’ alongside Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pol Pot, Franco and other assassins of the modern era..”

• Erdogan Among ‘Greatest Anti-Semites In History’ – Israeli FM (RT)

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ranks among the worst anti-Semites in history because of his stance on the Gaza conflict, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz has claimed.In a speech on Saturday, Erdogan compared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Nazi German dictator Adolf Hitler, referring to the relentless IDF attacks on Gaza, which have killed at least 30,960 people and wounded 72,524 others, according to the health ministry in the Palestinian enclave. He also again refused to label Hamas a terrorist organization, saying Ankara “firmly backs” the leadership of the Palestinian armed group. Katz, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud Party, responded to the Turkish president’s remarks a few hours later on X (formerly Twitter), in both Hebrew and Turkish.

Hamas committed “murders and sexual assaults” during its incursion into Israel on October 7, in which more than 1,100 people were killed and some 240 taken hostage, he said, claiming that Erdogan’s support for the group makes him one “of the greatest oppressors and anti-Semites in history. ”Türkiye has become “the largest supporter of terrorism in the world, along with Iran,” which brings “shame” on the country, the diplomat insisted. In his address in Istanbul, Erdogan, who has been among the harshest critics of Israel in recent months, said the leadership of the Jewish state was responsible for “crimes against humanity” in Gaza. “Netanyahu and his hateful administration have added their names to the list of ‘today’s Nazis’ alongside Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Pol Pot, Franco and other assassins of the modern era,” he argued.

What is happening in Gaza has “already surpassed the limits of tolerance,” the Turkish leader insisted. “Backed by the unlimited military and diplomatic support of Western powers, Israel, which is a state of terror, is carrying out an all-out policy of genocide against our Palestinian brothers and sisters.” Erdogan noted that Türkiye has already provided some 40,000 tons of humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza by air and sea. He urged the Muslim world to do more to end the hostilities, saying it has so far “failed to properly fulfill its brotherly duty to the Palestinians.” Netanyahu insisted earlier this week that the mounting international pressure for a truce will not make Israel give up on its goal of achieving “total victory in war” against Hamas.

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“..Harvard is devoid of intelligence and of integrity. The reason is that Harvard is flush with Big Pharma research money..”

“..What do we make of a country where money is the only value, where even universities, allegedly centers of learning, prefer money to truth?”

• Harvard University, Formerly Great, now Corrupted by Money (Paul Craig Roberts)

Harvard University has just announced that the university has dropped its Covid “vaccine” mandate that the university has coerced students to accept. It would be interesting to know how many Harvard students the mandate murdered and how many whose health has been ruined by the stupid and irresponsible Harvard administrators’ mandate. It also raises the question of how smart Harvard students really are that they would risk an untested “vaccine.” Harvard says, nevertheless, “We strongly recommend that all members of the Harvard community stay up-to-date on COVID-19 vaccines, including boosters. Additionally, we continue to emphasize the benefits of wearing a high-quality face mask in crowded indoor settings.” The university says it still requires that all students supply evidence that they had the initial jab. The university goes on to say in responding to COVID-19 that “we will continue to monitor public health data and will periodically review requirements.”

Harvard is allegedly an intelligent institution with a medical school and allegedly has a faculty and administrators capable of assessing facts and making intelligent decisions. Yet we see no sign of any intelligence in the university’s much belated dropping of the vax mandate. We have know for a long time that the mRNA “vaccines” do not prevent a Covid vaccinated person from getting infected with Covid and do not prevent transmission of the virus. Big Pharma Covid vaccine makers themselves now admit this, as do medical authorities. Indeed, the evidence is piling up that the vax makes it more likely for a person to catch Covid. We also know and it has now been admitted–that the mRNA “vaccines” have all of the deadly and health damaging effects that the independent medical scientists said they had. These scientists who told the truth were persecuted by the corrupt US medical establishment.

The evidence is in. There is no longer any question that the “vaccine,” which is not really a vaccine, is not only totally ineffective but very dangerous. Evidence mounts that the “vaccine” is a far greater killer than the lab created virus itself. So why is Harvard still “strongly recommending” more jabs that are ineffective and dangerous? Is this a conclusion from evidence that shows any signs of intelligence? With athletes in the prime of life dropping dead on playing fields all over the world, why is an allegedly intelligent university still requiring students to have had the initial “vaccination”?

Why does an allegedly intelligent university, which I am beginning to think Harvard most certainly is not, requiring students to have taken a vaccine known to be ineffective and dangerous? How can such a non-intelligent, non-rational decision be associated with intelligence? My conclusion is that Harvard is devoid of intelligence and of integrity. The reason is that Harvard is flush with Big Pharma research money, and just as Congress and the President have to vote in keeping with the special interests that fund their campaigns, Harvard votes with Big Pharma. What do we make of a country where money is the only value, where even universities, allegedly centers of learning, prefer money to truth?

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The same David Weiss who’s taken 5 years investigating Hunter. Looks like he’s had enough.

• Special Counsel Files Blistering Reply to Hunter Motion to Dismiss (Turley)

Special Counsel David Weiss has filed a blistering opposition to the motion to dismiss by Hunter Biden in California that cites his own book and conflicting statements as creating “nothing more than a house of cards.” The filing (below) shows how Hunter’s claims (repeated by many in the media) collapse under even cursory review in court. Weiss’s filing bulldozes through arguments of selective prosecution and political influence in the case. He specifically notes that Biden repeatedly makes statements without any proof or support in his filings. The filing begins by outright accusing Hunter Biden and his counsel of lying to the court about what occurred after the earlier plea agreement fell apart in court after the judge in Delaware asked about a sweeping immunity clause in paragraph 14. Notably, Weiss said that it was Hunter Biden’s legal team that inexplicably shut down negotiations by playing hardball in seeking to preserve the original agreement:

“The government proposed changes to the agreements that addressed only the issues identified during the hearing. Exh. 3. The defendant rejected these counterproposals on August 7, 2023. Id. Instead, the defendant began insisting that the proposed Diversion Agreement had bound both parties, even though it had not been approved by the Chief U.S. Probation Officer, a condition precedent to formation that would have brought it into effect. Moreover, by taking this position, he chose to shut down any further negotiations that could address the issues raised at the hearing.” It then accuses Biden and his counsel as outright lying to the court:

“In his motion, in multiple places, the defendant falsely states that DOJ ‘inexplicably demanded Mr. Biden plead guilty to felonies with jail time.’ He cites nothing in support of his false claims, which is a consistent theme across his motions. The government attaches as Exhibit 3 a redacted letter from the defendant’s counsel which confirms the defendant understood that the government had proposed changes to only those paragraphs that were at issue during the hearing, not paragraphs regarding the charges the defendant must plead to or any “jail time” the defendant must serve. As shown in Exhibit 3, the government proposed changes to Paragraphs 14, 15 and 17 of the Diversion Agreement, and Paragraph 5(b) of the Plea Agreement. The government proposed no changes to Paragraph 1 of the Plea Agreement, which required the defendant to plead guilty to two misdemeanors. Nor did the government propose any changes to Paragraph 6 of the Plea Agreement, in which the United States had agreed to recommend a sentence of probation. The defendant rejected these counterproposals and refused further negotiations…His newly invented claim in his motion that the government “inexplicably demanded Mr. Biden plead guilty to felonies with jail time” is patently false, unsupported by evidence, and belied by his own letter and representations in his filings in the Delaware case.”

The rest of the filing is equally devastating. Weiss notes that Biden repeatedly misrepresents facts or claims authority that does not exist. He notes that Biden does not cite any cases of similarly situated individuals who were not prosecuted. For example, it notes: “The only attempt the defendant makes to link animus directly to prosecutors is his claim that “reports indicate Mr. Weiss himself admitted [the charges] would not have been brought against the average American.” Motion at 13. However, his citation does not include a reference to reports (plural), rather it includes a single New York Times citation, which includes a denial immediately after the quoted excerpt: “A senior law enforcement official forcefully denied the account.” An anonymous account that is “forcefully denied” is not evidence that can satisfy the defendant’s burden of producing “clear evidence” of discriminatory intent and animus by prosecutors.”

In rejecting the two cases that he references, Weiss takes a swipe at Hunter’s book. When he published the book, some of us noted that he was making statements against his own interest in possible prosecutions. Weiss just made that a reality: “The defendant compares himself to only two individuals: Robert Shaughnessy and Roger Stone, both of whom resolved their tax cases civilly for failing to pay taxes. Shaughnessy failed to file and pay his taxes, but he was not alleged to have committed tax evasion. By contrast, the defendant chose to file false returns years later, failed to pay when those returns were filed, and lied to his accountants repeatedly, claiming personal expenses as business expenses. Stone failed to pay his taxes but did timely file his returns, unlike the defendant. Neither Shaughnessy nor Stone illegally purchased a firearm and lied on background check paperwork. And neither of them wrote a memoir in which they made countless statements proving their crimes and drawing further attention to their criminal conduct. These two individuals are not suitable comparators, and since the defendant fails to identify anyone else, his claim fails.”

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“In Switzerland, such drastic changes to national health legislation would require changes in the nation’s Constitution. According to the very Swiss Constitution, such changes would require approval by the Swiss people by referendum..”

• Open Letter to the People of Switzerland, Federal Council, Parliament (GR)

We, the Swiss, have the Constitutional Right of Initiatives or Referenda. It is high time that We, the People, make use of this opportunity requesting the Swiss Federal Council and Parliament to renounce its membership in the WHO, the organization at the verge of becoming the world’s dictator on issues of health, more brutal and radical than humanity has ever known before. The Covid-mandates imposed by the WHO were just a precursor to what may come. For the last several years, the WHO was preparing mostly behind closed doors what they call a “Pandemic Treaty”, or “Pandemic Agreement”, which would become part of the 2005 established and now being drastically revised “International Health Regulations” (IHR). If these two new “rules-based orders” are approved by the World Health Assembly (WHA – 27 May to 1 June 2024 in Geneva), the WHO’s health dictate would be above every nation’s sovereignty, and would make health self-determination a thing of the past.

If the WHO declares a disease, artificially made or not, as a pandemic, orders would have to be followed. If the WHO decides on general vaccination, orders must be followed. In Switzerland, such drastic changes to national health legislation would require changes in the nation’s Constitution. According to the very Swiss Constitution, such changes would require approval by the Swiss people by referendum – with good chances of a popular rejection. To forego a people’s vote, the Swiss Government – Federal Council and Parliament – are currently working on advance-amending the national Swiss health legislation, so that it would meet the requirements of a potentially impending WHO Pandemic Agreement and the new IHR. A Constitutional amendment may then not be necessary, as the new Swiss health standards would blend in with the potentially new WHO dictate.

This is happening semi-clandestinely. Not known to most citizens. Switzerland is supposed to be – constitutionally – a democracy and a country of political neutrality; a country with self-determination and sovereignty in decision making, and where people’s voice and active participation counts. Those were the days. * This call also goes to the Swiss Federal Council and Parliament. Are you not ashamed after the criminal covid and vaxx-fraud you imposed on the very people that pay your salaries and pensions – to betray Us, the People again – with the behind-our-backs anticipatory acceptance of the new WHO oppressive rules? How is health defined? Under the WHO definition, health includes the “climate change” scam, which is already blamed for causing excess dengue fever in Brazil and malaria in Africa – prompting the WHO and Bill Gates releasing billions of genetically modified (GMO) “vaccinating” mosquitoes. They have so far brought a 400% increase in dengue fever in Brazil, and in Africa, malaria is rampant despite, or because of the GMO-Mosquitos. Any “climate-related health issues”, defined by the WHO, would also fall under the WHO health tyranny.

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“The Dominican Republic topped the list as the world’s happiest country, followed by Sri Lanka in second place and Tanzania in third. All of the top ten countries were African, Asian, or Latin American nations.”

• UK Ranked Second-Most Miserable Country In The World (RT)

Published last week, Sapien Labs’ fourth annual ‘Mental State of the World’ report assessed the mental wellbeing of 419,175 Internet-enabled participants across 71 countries. The results painted a grim picture of the English-speaking world. Out of 71 countries surveyed, the Anglophone nations of the UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand sit in the bottom quartile, with residents of the UK happier only than those of Uzbekistan. The survey ranks the UK eight places behind Yemen and 12 places behind Ukraine in terms of its population’s overall mental health. Some 35% of Britons told Sapine Labs that they were either “distressed or struggling,” a figure down by only 0.7% since last year, when Britain came in last place in the rankings.

To determine each nation’s overall mental health, the foundation asked individuals 47 questions about their “mood and outlook,” “social self,” “drive and motivation,” and “adaptability and resilience,” among other categories. While Sapien Labs noted that answers to these questions are inherently subjective, other reports have come to similar conclusions. Amid a historic decline in living standards, the UK’s Office of National Statistics found in November that Britons experienced a drop in happiness and personal satisfaction in the year ending last March. According to a report published in The Lancet medical journal last month, some 1.8 million people in the UK are currently awaiting mental health treatment.

Sapien Labs noted that levels of mental well-being across the English-speaking world plummeted during the coronavirus pandemic, and that this decline “continues to persist with no sign of recovery.” Furthermore, the report found that mental well-being was lower in countries where processed food was commonly eaten, children were given smartphones at a younger age, and relations between family members were more distant. Wealthy, English-speaking countries scored least favorably across all of these three metrics. The Dominican Republic topped the list as the world’s happiest country, followed by Sri Lanka in second place and Tanzania in third. All of the top ten countries were African, Asian, or Latin American nations.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

Spring
https://twitter.com/i/status/1766784410450333832

 

 

Quoll

 

 

I love you
https://twitter.com/i/status/1766876241078964424

 

 

 

 

Dog

 

 

Ginger cat

 

 

Gull

 

 

Neurogenesis
https://twitter.com/i/status/1766453575616487680

 

 

Eyesight

 

 

 

 

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Debt Rattle August 21 2023

Aug 212023
 
 August 21, 2023  Posted by at 9:16 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , ,  36 Responses »



Ivan Aivazovsky Palace rains in Venice by moonlight 1878

 

• Three More Hunter Biden Attorneys Quit, Bringing Total To Five (ZH)
• Hunter Biden’s Lawyers Vowed To Put The President On The Stand (Pol.)
• RFK Jr. Labels F-16s For Ukraine ‘A Disaster For Humanity’ (RT)
• Zelensky Is Dangerous For Ukraine, Former Aide Warns (RT)
• For NATO and Ukraine, Reality Bites (Scott Ritter)
• US Struggles to Restock Its Own Ammo Arsenal After Aiding Ukraine (Sp.)
• US Officials Admit They Missed Opportunity For Ukraine Peace – Politico (RT)
• Ukraine ‘Running Out Of Options’ – WaPo (RT)
• Ukraine Has Three Risky Options – Bild (RT)
• NATO-Led War Against Russia Has ‘Crushed’ EU Economy, Vucic Tells Tucker (RT)
• UK Eyeing Use of ‘Ukrainian Puppets’ to Secure Global Wins – Zakharova (Sp.)
• Burkina Faso Ready to Back Niger if ECOWAS Launches Intervention (Sp.)
• Why San Francisco Is Dying And What It Has To Do With George Soros (Bridge)

 

 

30,000

 

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1692921944578879505

 

 

 

 

Shapley

 

 

 

 

We don’t seem to know why the three left. Chris Clark left last week because he can be called as a witness. Is that true for them as well? How about the prosecutors? They also signed off on that collapsed deal.

• Three More Hunter Biden Attorneys Quit, Bringing Total To Five (ZH)

Three more of Hunter Biden’s attorneys have filed a motion to withdraw from his ongoing case, after a Delaware judge dismissed his two tax misdemeanors without prejudice at the request of DOJ prosecutors – a move which will allow for the possibility of charging Biden in Washington DC or the Central District of California. Mrian C. McManus Timothy H. McCarten and Matthew S. Salerno of Latham & Watkins LLP filed a motion to withdraw as counsel following US District Judge Maryellen Noreika’s decision to grand the DOJ’s request. Latham & Watkins drew controversy the night before Biden’s late July court appearance because a staffer from the firm allegedly misrepresented her identity to the Clerk’s office and described herself as someone who worked for Theodore Kittila, the attorney for the House Ways and Means Committee.

The Committee was attempting to have Noreika consider testimony from IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler showing “political interference” in the Hunter Biden investigation. Salerno attributed the incident to a “miscommunication” and the staffer said in a sworn affidavit she did not mischaracterize her identity with intent to deceive the court. -Daily Caller The move brings the total number of Hunter Biden attorneys who have quit to five, with the first – Joshua Levy, quitting in March, and Christopher Clark quitting last week because he could be called as a witness in the case after plea negotiations broke down. “Brian C. McManus, counsel for the Defendant, Robert Hunter Biden, and respectfully requests this Honorable Court to withdraw all appearances for the law firm of Latham & Watkins LLP as counsel for the Defendant in the above-captioned matter,” reads Friday’s motion, which doesn’t provide a reason for the move.

“Mr. Biden has been advised of, and consents to, our withdrawal. He also agrees this withdrawal will cause no material adverse effect or prejudice to him and remains completely satisfied with Messrs. Lowell’s and Jones’s continued representation of him.” Hunter will continue to be represented by Abbe Lowell of Winston & Strawn LLP and Richard I.G. Jones Jr. of Berger Harris LLP. Biden’s top defense counsel, according to the Daily Caller. Last month a sweetheart plea deal with the DOJ fell apart after Judge Noreika objected to terms which would have given Hunter broad immunity from future prosecution, even from unrelated crimes.

Read more …

The longer version, from Politico.

• Hunter Biden’s Lawyers Vowed To Put The President On The Stand (Pol.)

It was Halloween of 2022, and Hunter Biden’s lawyer, Chris Clark, didn’t sound happy. Just three weeks earlier, news had leaked that federal agents believed they had enough evidence to charge his client with illegally buying a gun as a drug user. The leak was “illegal,” the lawyer wrote to the U.S. attorney overseeing the probe. The prosecution, he argued, would be seen as purely political, and it might even violate the Second Amendment. Then he issued a warning: If the Justice Department charged the president’s son, his lawyers would put the president on the witness stand. “President Biden now unquestionably would be a fact witness for the defense in any criminal trial,” Clark wrote in a 32-page letter reviewed by POLITICO.

That letter, along with more than 300 pages of previously unreported emails and documents exchanged between Hunter Biden’s legal team and prosecutors, sheds new light on the fraught negotiations that nearly produced a broad plea deal. That deal would have resolved Biden’s most pressing legal issues — the gun purchase and his failure to pay taxes for several years — and it also could have helped insulate Biden from future prosecution by a Republican-led Justice Department. The documents show how the deal collapsed — a sudden turnabout that occurred after Republicans bashed it and a judge raised questions about it. The collapse renewed the prospect that Biden will head to trial as his father ramps up his 2024 reelection bid.

The case has long been defined by politics, including for Biden’s own lawyers. During the private negotiations with prosecutors, the documents show, Biden’s lawyers often invoked the case’s extraordinary political undercurrents. They made clear to prosecutors that they thought pressure from congressional Republicans was improperly shaping the investigation. They name-dropped Donald Trump, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and the failed prosecution of a lawyer for Hillary Clinton. They argued that bringing the case would destroy the Justice Department’s reputation. And they said a trial of the president’s son would create political and constitutional chaos by pitting the president himself against his own Justice Department.

“This of all cases justifies neither the spectacle of a sitting President testifying at a criminal trial nor the potential for a resulting Constitutional crisis,” Clark wrote. Clark’s letter and the other documents were shared with POLITICO by a person with knowledge of the communications between the Justice Department and Biden’s legal team. The documents provide a detailed, behind-the-scenes look at how the two sides came to the brink of a plea deal. But after a judge asked a few simple questions at a hearing last month about the details, it started to fray. And in the weeks after, the whole thing unraveled. Now the prosecutor overseeing the probe has been made a special counsel and says the case is headed to trial. And Clark has stopped representing the president’s son, saying he instead expects to be a witness.

Read more …

Remember: F-16s have nuclear capabilities. Russia will treat every single one as if it carries a nuclear weapon.

• RFK Jr. Labels F-16s For Ukraine ‘A Disaster For Humanity’ (RT)

The looming delivery of US-made F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine will not prevent the “collapse” of the country’s military and will only benefit the military-industrial complex, Democrat presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Junior has claimed.The Ukrainian conflict should be resolved through negotiations, RFK Jr. argued in a thread on social media platform X (formerly Twitter), stating that supplying F-16s to Kiev was a “great decision for the defense industry, but a disaster for Ukraine and humanity.” “F-16s won’t stop the collapse of the Ukrainian military (which some experts say is imminent). These planes require a lot of training and maintenance. This isn’t the movies,” Kennedy stressed.

The presidential hopeful has long-opposed the enduring Western aid to Ukraine, spearheaded by Washington, arguing that the US should admit its “failure” in the country and focus on domestic issues instead. Kennedy’s criticism of the fighter-jet delivery comes after Washington enabled its European allies to re-export older planes to Ukraine, and hours before the move was officially announced by Denmark and the Netherlands. The upcoming delivery was heralded by Dutch PM Mark Rutte on Sunday as he hosted Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky at a military airbase in Eindhoven.“Today we can announce that the Netherlands and Denmark commit to the transfer of F-16 aircraft to Ukraine and the Ukrainian Air Force, including cooperation with the United States and other partners once the conditions for such a transfer have been met,”Rutte said at a press conference.

Simultaneously, the Danish Ministry of Defence released a statement confirming its pledge to provide Kiev with F-16s from its inventory, once certain “conditions” are met. The conditions “include, but are not limited to, successfully selected, tested and trained Ukrainian F-16 personnel as well as necessary authorizations, infrastructure and logistics,” it said. Kiev has long-demanded modern aircraft, as well as other, increasingly sophisticated weaponry, from its Western backers, arguing the planes would help it turn the tide of the conflict with Russia, which has been going on since February 2022. Moscow has repeatedly urged the collective West to stop the military deliveries, arguing they would only prolong the hostilities rather than change their ultimate outcome.

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“Zelensky’s insistence that Ukraine will defeat Russia and his reluctance to acknowledge the actual situation is a sign that the president is “inadequate” both as a manager and a person..”

• Zelensky Is Dangerous For Ukraine, Former Aide Warns (RT)

The “inadequate” leadership of Vladimir Zelensky has caused a national catastrophe in Ukraine and MPs should hold him accountable, according to Oleg Soskin, who served as an aide to two Ukrainian presidents. The country’s economy has been“destroyed” amid the conflict with Russia, he said in a video that was posted on his YouTube channel on Saturday. “There’s no breakthrough anywhere” by Ukrainian forces on the front line, Soskin continued, adding that the public “shouldn’t believe retired colonels,” who are speaking about Kiev’s military gains. Zelensky’s insistence that Ukraine will defeat Russia and his reluctance to acknowledge the actual situation is a sign that the president is “inadequate” both as a manager and a person, he said.

“Zelensky is just dangerous for the country. He’s simply dangerous for the people,” warned Soskin, who served as an aide to Ukrainian presidents Leonid Kravchuk in 1992 and 1993, and Leonid Kuchma between 1998 and 2000.“Something must be done about Zelensky. I’m calling for it again,” he said. “Gather up, somebody has to show initiative. Some conditions must be put forward for [the president],” Soskin insisted, addressing Ukrainian MPs. Earlier this week, Zelensky claimed that his team was “preparing powerful things for Ukraine” in cooperation with their Western partners, saying that the country had “taken another step towards the circle of the strongest states in the world.”

The much-hyped Ukrainian counteroffensive began in early June, with Kiev deploying its best Western-equipped and trained brigades in an attempt to sever Russia’s land bridge linking Donbass with Crimea in the southern province of Zaporozhye. According to Russian estimates, Ukraine has lost more than 43,000 troops and nearly 5,000 pieces of heavy equipment amid the operation, but failed to achieve any significant gains. Kiev has so far reported the seizure of several villages, but they appear to be located some distance away from main Russian defense lines. Earlier this week, the Washington Post cited a classified US intelligence report, which suggested that “Ukraine’s counteroffensive will fail to reach the key southeastern city of Melitopol,” and that Russia’s land bridge to Crimea won’t be severed this year.

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“With the Ukrainian strategic reserve committed and soon to be defeated, there are no more forces of significance available to Ukraine and their NATO overseers..”

• For NATO and Ukraine, Reality Bites (Scott Ritter)

Ukraine has dispatched the last of its strategic reserves, led by the elite 82nd Airlanding Brigade, into the battle for the Zaporozhye village of Rabotino. Here, in fields made fallow by conditions of war, Ukraine’s best fighting forces have been eviscerated by Russian defenders who have refused to yield. Based upon the experience of the lead elements of the 82nd Brigade, this fate awaits them as well. With the Ukrainian strategic reserve committed and soon to be defeated, there are no more forces of significance available to Ukraine and their NATO overseers capable of influencing the conduct of the battles raging all along the 1,000-mile line of contact between the armies of Ukraine and Russia.

Russia, meanwhile, retains an uncommitted reserve of some 200,000-plus fresh, well-trained and equipped forces which are leaning into the bit to be committed to battle. When they are eventually unleashed, Ukraine will lack the resources necessary to fend off their attack, signally the culminating moment in a Russian campaign designed to achieve just this result—the collapse of the Ukrainian ability to sustain large-scale ground combat. Reality bites. The situation had become so dire that Stian Jenssen, the chief of staff to NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, opined in from a Norwegian audience that a solution for the end of the conflict with Russia “could be for Ukraine to give up territory, and get NATO membership in return.”

But even here, Jenssen was delusional. While reality dictates that Ukraine will never get back its former territories of Kherson, Zaporozhye, Donetsk, Lugansk, and Crimea, and that the wisest choice would be to concede the inevitability of a Russian victory while avoiding the potential for the loss of even more territories, Jenssen seemed to forget that one of the primary goals behind the Russian decision to initiate the special military operation was to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO. Only someone totally separated from reality could articulate a scenario that has Russia conceding an issue that is linked to its existential survival (i.e., the expansion of NATO into Ukraine) in exchange for accepting an already accomplished fact—Russian control of the former Ukrainian territories.

Both the Ukrainian government and Jenssen’s boss, Stoltenberg, pushed back against the notion of a territory-for-membership swap. “NATO will support Ukraine until it wins the conflict,” Stoltenberg told a gathering of reporters in Oslo a day after Jenssen’s gaffe, implying that Ukraine’s contention that a key condition for conflict resolution remained evicting Russia from all of the former Ukrainian territories liberated by Russian troops and claimed by Russia as a result of referenda held in 2014 (for Crimea) and 2022 (for the other four territories.) But it is becoming increasingly clear that reality is trumping desire. There is no chance for Ukraine to achieve its stated objectives, something Jennsen’s comments reflected, and Stoltenberg’s did not.

NATO struggles to generate new sources of equipment for the rapidly depleting Ukrainian Army, which has lost much of the tanks, armored fighting vehicles, and artillery systems provided by NATO and other nations in preparation for the failed counteroffensive. Equipment previously considered to be too provocative, such as the F-16 fighter, have now been greenlighted for release to Ukraine. But none of this matters — even if Ukraine were to receive everything it wanted, the fact is that Ukraine cannot generate the manpower, either in quantity or quality, necessary to competently operate such equipment on a modern battlefield against a Russian Army which, by any honest measure, has emerged from this conflict as the most lethal, capable fighting force in the world.

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“..even though the US began ramping up ammunition production last year, munitions would still take “years” to mass produce to acceptable levels..”

• US Struggles to Restock Its Own Ammo Arsenal After Aiding Ukraine (Sp.)

With more than two million 155mm shells already sent to Ukraine, the US faces the problem of restocking its arsenal of artillery munitions and building new production lines, an American newspaper has quoted unnamed sources as saying. The sources warned of “major challenges in sustaining an elevated output of arms and equipment needed not just to aid Ukraine but to ensure the US’ own security.” According to the insiders, the problem is complicated by the fact that the US no longer produces TNT, which is needed to make shells. The Pentagon is now collaborating with its allies and partners to increase TNT supplies, “potentially including from Japan,” according to the sources. The remarks come after a US broadcaster reported last week that the US and NATO grapple with the “dwindling supply of artillery ammunition” for Ukraine.

The broadcaster cited unnamed officials as saying that the US “has been nearing that red line as it has continued to supply Ukraine with 155mm ammunition, the NATO standard used for artillery rounds.” National Security adviser Jake Sullivan told the news network that even though the US began ramping up ammunition production last year, munitions would still take “years” to mass produce to acceptable levels. This unfolds amid Kiev’s botched counteroffensive, which was launched by the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) on June 4, after multiple delays. Since the beginning of the counteroffensive, Ukraine has lost over 43,000 troops and 4,900 units of military equipment, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

In the latest development, US veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported earlier this week, citing an American US intelligence official that the CIA has notified Secretary of State Antony Blinken that Ukraine’s counteroffensive is unlikely to yield results. The US and its allies ramped up their military assistance to Kiev shortly after Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine. Moscow has repeatedly warned that NATO countries “play with fire” by supplying arms to Kiev, which the Kremlin said adds to prolonging the Ukraine conflict. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, for his part, underscored that any cargo with weapons for Ukraine will become a legitimate target for Russian forces.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1693009335188938769

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“If we acknowledge we’re not going to do this forever, then what are we going to do?”

• US Officials Admit They Missed Opportunity For Ukraine Peace – Politico (RT)

American officials have told Politico that they may have “missed a window” to push for peace talks between Russia and Ukraine. Speaking anonymously, they conceded that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley “had a point” when he offered a grim pronouncement on Kiev’s chances for victory last year. More than two months into Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Russian forces, Kiev has failed to capture more than a handful of hamlets and villages in Zaporozhye region, and has lost at least 43,000 men and nearly 5,000 pieces of equipment in the process, according to the latest figures from the Russian Defense Ministry. Although the Ukrainian government still insists it can retake all of its claimed territory by force, Washington is increasingly unsure. “We may have missed a window to push for earlier talks,” a US official told Politico on Friday, adding that “Milley had a point.”

Speaking in New York in November, Milley said that a military victory would likely be unachievable for Ukraine, and that Kiev could use the wintertime pause in fighting to enter negotiations with Moscow and avoid any further losses. His comments reportedly angeredKiev and caused panic in the White House, which rushed to reassure the Ukrainian leadership that it would continue to support President Vladimir Zelensky’s maximalist aims – which include retaking Crimea, an historic Russian territory that voted to rejoin the Russian Federation in 2014.

Media reports suggest that Washington has been divided on the idea of peace talks since at least last year, with President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken vehemently rejecting negotiations, against the wishes of some members of the military and intelligence agencies. This split persisted as Ukraine geared up for its counteroffensive, with reports indicating that despite Biden’s and Blinken’s optimism, the Pentagon knew Kiev wasn’t ready for the operation, and the CIA expected it to end in failure. Pessimism is now spreading in the White House, another anonymous official told Politico, saying that the Biden administration is increasingly asking itself “If we acknowledge we’re not going to do this forever, then what are we going to do?”

Milley has continued to suggest a diplomatic solution to the conflict. “If the end state is ‘Ukraine is a free, independent, sovereign country with its territory intact’… that’s gonna take a long, long time, but you can also achieve those objectives — maybe, possibly — through some sort of diplomatic means,” he told the Washington Post this week. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said that any negotiations will be held “not with Zelensky, who is a puppet in the hands of the West, but directly with his masters.” The Kremlin also maintains that any potential peace deal will have to recognize the “new territorial reality” – that the regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye will not be ceded back to Ukraine.

Read more …

“Calls for Washington to cut back on its military and financial aid to Ukraine “are expected to be amplified” in the wake of the US presidential election in 2024..”

• Ukraine ‘Running Out Of Options’ – WaPo (RT)

Ukraine is running out of options in its counteroffensive against Russian forces, as Kiev’s time-window to gain advances is closing, the Washington Post has reported. In an article on Sunday, the US outlet is claiming that Ukraine’s counteroffensive, which was launched in early June and was initially expected to see Kiev taking back significant territory, currently “shows signs of stalling.” “Kiev’s advances remain isolated to a handful of villages, Russian troops are pushing forward in the north and a plan to train Ukrainian pilots on US-made F-16s is delayed,” the newspaper wrote. Ukrainian and Western officials might be calling for patience but “the window of time for Ukraine to conduct offensive operations is limited” because of the “inhospitable weather” in the region in autumn and winter, the article reads.

“Without more advanced weapons slated to bolster the front line or fully committing forces still being held in reserve, it is unlikely that Ukraine will be able to secure a breakthrough in the counteroffensive, according to analysts,” WaPo pointed out. The article also warned that “the inability to demonstrate decisive success on the battlefield [by Kiev forces] is stoking fears that the conflict is becoming a stalemate and international support could erode.” Calls for Washington to cut back on its military and financial aid to Ukraine “are expected to be amplified” in the wake of the US presidential election in 2024, it added.

Earlier this week, the Post also cited a classified US intelligence report, which suggested that “Ukraine’s counteroffensive will fail to reach the key southeastern city of Melitopol,” and that the aim of severing Russia’s land bridge linking Donbass with Crimea in the southern province of Zaporozhye won’t be achieved this year. According to Russian estimates, Ukraine has failed to make any significant gains, but lost more than 43,000 troops and nearly 5,000 pieces of heavy equipment since the launch of its counteroffensive. Kiev has so far claimed the capture of several villages, but these appear to be located some distance away from main Russian defense lines.

Read more …

“..Moscow is supposedly struggling to replenish its own losses..”

What losses?

• Ukraine Has Three Risky Options – Bild (RT)

Ukraine is faced with three possible scenarios amid its faltering counteroffensive, each carrying various degrees of risk, Germany’s Bild newspaper has claimed. In his analysis on Saturday, Deputy Editor-in-Chief Paul Ronzheimer warned that should Kiev’s current efforts fail, Russian forces may mount their own offensive and seize further territory. According to the article, Ukraine can keep trying to breach Russian defenses despite achieving no major breakthroughs so far. Ronzheimer wrote that so far President Vladimir Zelensky’s government remains optimistic and is determined to continue with the campaign. However, if it fails to make any significant gains by the end of the year, Kiev is reportedly planning another counteroffensive in the spring of 2024.

Ronzheimer alleged that officials in Kiev are growing increasingly frustrated at criticism of its counteroffensive tactics coming from the West. Bild quoted one unnamed senior Ukrainian official as insisting that “everything was planned together” with Kiev’s backers. Any new push is contingent on receiving more Western weapons and ammunition, Bild pointed out. On top of that, Russia will likely use the winter respite to beef up its defenses. Another avenue open to Kiev, according to the article, is to continue the counteroffensive while simultaneously engaging in peace talks with Russia. However, such a U-turn on Zelensky’s part would be hard to sell to the population, Ronzheimer predicted. The Bild deputy editor-in-chief emphasized that last October, the Ukrainian head of state signed a decree ruling out negotiations with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, and that recent opinion polls show 72% of Ukrainians are against talks with Russia.

In a worst-case scenario for Ukraine as envisaged by Ronzheimer, the counteroffensive stalls, with Russia launching one of its own and potentially seizing parts of Kharkov Region. According to Bild’s analysis, this is, however, not likely as Moscow is supposedly struggling to replenish its own losses. In early June, the Ukrainian military launched its long-awaited counteroffensive in a bid to reclaim territories in the east and southeast. However, despite massive Western support, Kiev’s forces have not achieved any significant gains. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the operation has already cost Ukraine 43,000 men and nearly 5,000 pieces of military hardware. Top officials in Kiev and some Western capitals have acknowledged that the push has failed to live up to the initial high expectations, and is progressing more slowly than anticipated.

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Wonder why Tucker picked him to talk to..

• NATO-Led War Against Russia Has ‘Crushed’ EU Economy, Vucic Tells Tucker (RT)

Tucker Carlson has shared a preview of his upcoming interview with Vucic, in which he says the Serbian leader shared an “interesting perspective” on what is happening in Ukraine, given that his own country was bombed by NATO almost a quarter century ago. In a brief video shared on his X (formerly Twitter), Carlson unveiled what Vucic had told him during their meeting at the Serbian Embassy in Budapest, Hungary, for an interview that has yet to be released. “One of the points he made is that the war in Ukraine, the war against Russia led by NATO, has crushed the European economy,” Carlson explained. “The destruction of Nord Stream by the Biden administration, either directly or through proxies, is killing the German economy.”

Carlson characterized the situation as “completely crazy,” noting that the German economy is the largest economy in Europe by far “and so the downstream effects of that, one NATO country effectively attacking another NATO country are felt throughout Europe.” “This war is hurting everybody – possibly with the exception in the long term of Russia – and empowering everybody outside of the Gulf States, China, Turkey,” Carlson claimed, describing the ongoing global shift of power away from the United States and the West to the East as a “world reset” that the American public seems to be unaware of

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Very peculiar: “Ukrainian soldiers apparently serve as a kind of payment by Kiev for military aid from the West..”

• UK Eyeing Use of ‘Ukrainian Puppets’ to Secure Global Wins – Zakharova (Sp.)

The NATO-Ukrainian nexus artificially increases the conflict potential in Africa, and Moscow notes the intention of the United Kingdom’s authorities to use “Ukrainian puppets” to achieve goals in other regions of the world as well, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told Sputnik. Zakharova’s comments came on the heels of reports that UK Secret Intelligence Service, known as MI6, was preparing a sabotage unit of Ukraine’s fighters. A military-diplomatic source said earlier this week that MI6 was preparing a sabotage unit of 100 Ukrainian fighters to be sent to Africa to counter Russia-Africa cooperation. The unit would be tasked with “sabotage of infrastructure in African countries, as well as the elimination of African leaders oriented towards cooperation with Russia,” the source then said.

The forces are planned to be sent to Africa by “a chartered civilian ship from the [Ukrainian] port of Izmail to the [Sudanese] city of Omdurman during the second half of August” and will be headed by Lt. Col. Vitaliy Prashchuk, an officer of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, who has experience of “successful liquidations” and participated in MI6 operations in Zimbabwe. “Given that MI6, headed by Richard Moore, has recently been openly bragging about its involvement in the planning and implementation of terrorist attacks by the Kiev regime against our country, we note the intentions of the UK authorities to use Ukrainian puppets to carry out tasks in other regions of the world as well … especially when London’s what it seems to be an unshakable influence in the former colonies is threatened,” the spokeswoman said.

Zakharova recalled that “famous British empire builder Cecil Rhodes once said: ‘The empire is a bread and butter question.'” The spokeswoman said the UK is still guided by that policy in Africa. “It can be said that London continues to cling desperately to its colonial legacy and seeks with all its might to keep the countries of the continent dependent. Britons are unwilling to talk to them on an equal footing and consider it possible, as before, to interfere in their internal affairs,” she said. The Russian figure noted “the regime of [Ukrainian President] Volodymyr Zelensky needs only money.” “In these schemes, Ukrainian soldiers apparently serve as a kind of payment by Kiev for military aid from the West,” she said. “Judging by the already worked out scheme, the NATO-Ukrainian nexus artificially builds up the conflict potential in Africa. At the same time, Africans and Ukrainians will pay for the realization of the ambitions of the UK’s neocolonialists,” Zakharova said.

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“It is also shocking that some heads of state want to wage war against other countries under the guise of democracy..”

• Burkina Faso Ready to Back Niger if ECOWAS Launches Intervention (Sp.)

Burkina Faso is preparing for the fact that forces of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) may launch a military intervention in Niger, and the country is ready to support Niamey, Burkinabe Defense Minister Kassoum Coulibaly told Sputnik. “We anticipate aggression [of ECOWAS forces against Niger]. In any case, the head of our state [Ibrahim Traore] said that we are ready for the aggression, we support Niger,” Coulibaly said. He added that Burkina Faso is even ready to withdraw from ECOWAS because it considers the association’s policy towards Niger illogical.

The members of the Economic Community of West African States should not wage wars against each other, and the very idea of such events is shocking, Coulibaly said. “We have no right to fight each other. We are part of a single economic union. The very idea that some states of the association want to wage an internecine war is shocking. It is also shocking that some heads of state want to wage war against other countries under the guise of democracy,” Coulibaly said. He also noted that the organization has a wide network of offices across the region, but its leaders often ignore messages from experts on the ground.

“If they had not ignored the messages from ECOWAS experts, they would have seen the signs [of the coming conflict]. And a lot could have been avoided,” the minister said. Coulibaly additionally called the ECOWAS intention to reinstate the ousted Nigerien president, Mohamed Bazoum, strange, adding that the community itself should help states such as Niger in its fight against terrorism. “Burkina Faso stands in solidarity with Mali and opposes any aggression against Niger because we share a common border. We are waging a war against terrorism and we must continue to wage it,” he said.

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“..75 Soros-backed “social justice” prosecutors overseeing half of America’s 50 most populous cities..”

• Why San Francisco Is Dying And What It Has To Do With George Soros (Bridge)

A friend of mine, Mark, who is employed in San Francisco’s tech industry, described the situation he is confronted with on his daily commute to work by bicycle. “In the past, I’d be able to make the ride into the city in about 20 minutes, but I’m constantly forced to change my route due to the sidewalks being taken over by makeshift shelters and drug addicts,” he said. When I asked if he changes his route out of fear his answer surprised me. “To be honest, the druggies are so out of their minds that they really only present a danger to themselves. I avoid the areas where they congregate because passing through these zombie wastelands is just too depressing.” But there is more to San Fran’s current woes than just tent cities playing host to assorted fentanyl abusers and homeless people, two social ailments in the US that now seem to occur concomitantly.

Many long-term locals are being forced to give up their beloved city due to high rental costs, runaway inflation, a downturn in the tech industry, and big box stores as well as small retailers who are being driven out of town by roaming mobs that act with impunity. It is getting so bad that San Francisco may actually go broke considering that almost a third of its lucrative commercial property is now standing empty. The situation should give local leaders, not least of all California Governor Gavin Newsom, tremendous pause as it appears that even the Biden administration is slowly unfurling the white flag of defeat over the trashed landscape. Earlier this month, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) advised its hundreds of federal employees in San Francisco to work from home “for the foreseeable future” due to rampant crime and safety concerns.

“In light of the conditions at the Federal Building we recommend employees maximize the use of telework for the foreseeable future,” the memo warned. What is doubly embarrassing for the Democratic Party, which largely controls San Francisco, as well as the majority of prime California voting estates, is that the office complex in question, until just recently, was known as the ‘Speaker Nancy Pelosi Federal Building.’ Inside the hollowed-out shell of this 18-story ‘green-building’ disaster is the office of former Speaker Pelosi, manned by five dutiful employees, who said they would hold down the fort and not shift to remote work, in what we can be sure was an absolutely personal decision on their part.

So who’s to blame for San Francisco’s ongoing plight? One needn’t dabble in conspiracy theories to suggest that George Soros, the billionaire philanthropist and financier who has a soft spot in his 93-year-old heart for progressive politicians who promise to go easy on criminals, played a part. Last year, The Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund (LELDF) released a shocking report that showed there were 75 Soros-backed “social justice” prosecutors overseeing half of America’s 50 most populous cities. To put that figure another way, about 1 in 5 Americans are represented by a prosecutor who either received direct financial contributions from Soros or through his vast empire of philanthropic organizations, many of which are exceedingly hard to trace.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1693132150604787886

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Herbie

 

 

 

 

Reflex

 

 

This is the tomb of Marie Sklodowska-Curie, located in the Panthéon in Paris. What sets this tomb apart is its unique reinforcement with an inch-thick layer of lead. This measure was taken to shield the public from the lingering radiation that continues to emanate from her remains. Marie Curie, a French-Polish scientist, achieved remarkable feats in her lifetime. She was the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 and later, in 1911, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Notably, she holds the distinction of being the first woman to ever receive a Nobel Prize, the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two distinct scientific fields, and the first to win two Nobel Prizes.

Despite facing adversity, including being barred from higher education due to her gender, Curie persisted in her pursuit of knowledge. She resorted to attending a clandestine institution known as the “Flying University” to further her education. Marie Curie is renowned for her groundbreaking discovery of the radioactive elements radium and polonium, as well as coining the term “radioactivity.” Unbeknownst to her at the time, her close work with radium led to her inadvertent exposure to harmful radiation, ultimately contributing to her death in 1934 from aplastic anemia.

Remarkably, Curie’s body, along with her personal possessions such as cookbooks, clothing, furniture, and lab notes, is expected to remain radioactive for another 1,500 years.

 

 

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

 

 

 

 

 

Debt Rattle February 12 2023

Feb 122023
 
 February 12, 2023  Posted by at 9:58 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , ,  85 Responses »


Cave of swimmers, Gilf Kebir plateau, Sahara c6000 BCE

 

• Serbian President Sees “Major Escalation” In Ukraine Over Next 6 Months (RT)
• Serbia Responds To ‘Cancel-Russian-Culture’ Calls (RT)
• Censorship: Covid, War, and More (Spruance)
• Who Benefitted From This Chaos? (Tucker)
• The War of Terror of a Rogue Superpower: Cui Bono? (Escobar)
• Russia Ready For Talks With Ukraine, With No Preconditions – Deputy FM (TASS)
• Latest Nord Stream Findings Deserve Emergency NATO Summit – Zakharova (TASS)
• Zakharova Warns Baerbock Against Making Irreparable Mistake On Ukraine (TASS)
• Zakharova Urges To Legally Seal West’s Deceit On Minsk Agreements (TASS)
• IMF To Meet Ukraine Officials In Warsaw Next Week (R.)
• Tulsi Gabbard Slams ‘Dangerous’ Clinton Following India Trip (RT)
• Twitter Censorship Is The Modern-Day Red Scare (Turley)
• Trump & Epstein: The Recycled Smear (Roger Stone)
• UK Has Secret Plans For EU – Bloomberg (RT)
• Estimated 13 Million People Worldwide Killed By The Covid Vaccines (Kirsch)

 

 

 

 

Kirsch JFKjr autism
https://twitter.com/i/status/1624190004950859776

 

 


Lightning struck Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro on February 10, 2023

 

 

Boosted kids
https://twitter.com/i/status/1624434992607535107

 

 

 

 

Mortality rate
https://twitter.com/i/status/1624430874719551490

 

 

Yeadon
https://twitter.com/i/status/1624534926241538050

 

 

Hatay

 

 

 

 

Original title: “Serbia may soon be forced to sanction Russia – Vucic”. The smaller countries that have independent ideas, Serbia, Croatia, Austria, Hungary, are vassals to their allies.

Vucic’s main message: “The fighting to date will feel like “almost nothing, compared to what’s coming..” And then watch Gonzalo’s tweet. The US has sent Samantha Power to Budapest to trip Orban. A literal power game.

• Serbian President Sees “Major Escalation” In Ukraine Over Next 6 Months (RT)

The moment is approaching when Serbia will have no choice but to give in to Western demands to sanction its ally Russia, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has said. In an interview with Prva broadcaster on Friday, Vucic said he expects “a major escalation” in the conflict in Ukraine over the next six months. The fighting to date will feel like “almost nothing, compared to what’s coming,” he warned. This situation “will affect our country as the pressure on Belgrade, in terms of its relations with Russia, will become two or three times tougher – despite already being very strong now,” the president said. Sanctioning Moscow over its military operation in Ukraine and recognizing the independence of the breakaway province of Kosovo have been singled out by Brussels as key conditions for Belgrade’s bid to join the EU.

Vucic, who has been rejecting both demands for months, now says the moment may eventually come when Belgrade would have to join the EU’s curbs on Moscow. “Let us push like this as long as we can, I will know when the moment is right, and I will not hide anything from people. That moment [when Serbia sanctions Russia] has been approaching for a long time, I am afraid that it’s not even months away,” he said. The Serbian president revealed that he used to believe that the West, which is backing the Kiev government with weapons, funds and intelligence, was getting the upper hand in Ukraine. However, “at this moment, it’s no longer entirely clear who is winning in Ukraine,” he added.

Moscow’s chances of succeeding have been boosted by the fact that there is now “unity” among the Russian people regarding the conflict, especially after the announcement by Berlin and some other countries last month that German-made Leopard tanks would be supplied to Kiev, he said. According to Vucic, it’ll be “difficult” for Serbia no matter who prevails in Ukraine. “The West doesn’t want a country allied with Russia in the middle of Europe. On the other hand, Russia doesn’t want to lose everything it has in the Balkans,” he said. That’s why Belgrade remains among the few international players who speak about the need for a diplomatic solution to the crisis, but “no one is allowed to mention peace anymore,” he stated.

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“..the notion that Serbia should “break completely with Russia,” and “throw out Dostoyevsky, Tchaikovsky and Tolstoy” is equally absurd. “That can’t be Serbia, we have to take care of the soul of our people..”

• Serbia Responds To ‘Cancel-Russian-Culture’ Calls (RT)

Serbia will not jump on the Russia-bashing bandwagon and cancel the country’s culture, President Aleksandar Vucic has told media. He explained that preserving the Russian classics in the public domain is as important as guarding national financial interests. In an interview with Serbia’s Prva news channel broadcast on Friday, Vucic acknowledged that his country largely depends on the West in terms of investment. For this reason, the president noted, those who call on Belgrade to cut these ties “don’t know how the country works.” Vucic went on to argue that the notion that Serbia should “break completely with Russia,” and “throw out [novelist] Dostoyevsky, [composer] Tchaikovsky and [writer] Tolstoy” is equally absurd. “That can’t be Serbia, we have to take care of the soul of our people,” the president clarified.

Last month, during a press conference in the Russian embassy in Belgrade, President Vladimir Putin’s special envoy on international cultural cooperation, Mikhail Shvydkoy, announced that Belgrade and Moscow were discussing holding a year of cultural exchange in 2024. Several renowned Russian musicians will visit Serbia already this year. On top of that, a meeting of Russian and Serbian academia is also in the pipeline, Shvydkoy revealed.Following the start of Russia’s military operation against Ukraine in late February 2022, a number of European cultural venues have canceled the staging of artworks which have Russian origins and have also barred some Russian performers who have refused to denounce Moscow’s actions.

Certain politicians in the EU have also spoken in favor of such bans. As recently as early January, Lithuanian culture minister Simonas Kairys spoke in favor of a “mental quarantine” on Russian culture, claiming the latter is being used by Moscow as a “weapon.” Earlier, the Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra in Wales erased music by Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky from a concert program, while Britain’s Royal Opera House called off a tour by the Bolshoi Ballet. Netflix, in turn, put on hold the production of ‘Anna K,’ an adaptation of Leo Tolstoy’s novel ‘Anna Karenina’. Commenting on these tendencies, Russian President Vladimir Putin has drawn parallels between Western efforts to cancel Russian culture to the Nazi practice of book burning.

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“..an inconvenient narrative arises, the government and lemmings in the media slander it as false and dangerous, and, months later, the dispute in question turns out to be true..”

• Censorship: Covid, War, and More (Spruance)

Wednesday morning, Seymour Hersh published “How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline.” The Nord Stream 1 and 2 Pipelines exploded in September 2022. The Nord Stream 1 has delivered natural gas from Russia to Europe for over a decade, and Russia was developing the Nord Stream 2 at the time. Outlets like The New York Times called the explosions “a mystery.” The sabotage presented a major energy crisis for the United States’ European allies. Europe imports nearly 40% of its gas from Russia, and the Nord Stream 1 was responsible for delivering approximately one third of that supply. Now, Hersh reports that “the United States executed a covert sea operation” with Navy divers to sabotage Russia’s pipelines with explosives. For a less obsequious press corps, this should have been an easy story to crack.

In the weeks leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, President Biden announced his intention to act against the pipelines in the event of war. “If Russia invades… there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2,” he told reporters. “We will bring an end to it.” “How will you do that exactly?” a reporter asked. “I promise you we will be able to do it,” President Biden said with a slight smile. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland was equally as explicit. “I want to be very clear to you today,” she told reporters in January 2022. “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.” In September, Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed “Anglo-Saxons” in the West for “terror attacks” on the pipelines. “Those who profit from it have done it,” Putin told the press.

President Biden chastised Putin’s accusation for “pumping out disinformation and lies.” “Just don’t listen to what Putin’s saying,” Biden added. “What he’s saying we know is not true.” White House National Security spokeswoman Adrienne Watson backed up Biden’s claim, referring to Putin’s accusation as “Russia’s disinformation.” Russia’s U.N. ambassador also implied that the United States had been involved in the sabotage. Richard Mills, U.S. deputy ambassador to the U.N., responded by calling the claims “conspiracy theories and disinformation.” Despite the Commander and Chief’s explicit announcement that he would take action against the Nord Stream pipeline, a credulous press corps has dutifully parotted government talking points that accusations of western involvement in the sabotage are “baseless” “misinformation,” “disinformation,” and “conspiracy theories.”

This all follows a similar pattern to the informational warfare of the Covid era: an inconvenient narrative arises, the government and lemmings in the media slander it as false and dangerous, and, months later, the dispute in question turns out to be true (or at least highly plausible). Arguments over natural immunity, vaccine efficacy, masks, the lab leak hypothesis, school shutdowns, lockdowns, and the scientific basis of social distancing are just a few examples that followed this cycle of reporting. This was the same pattern as The New York Post’s coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop. Now, at hearings to investigate corruption that implicated Big Tech, intelligence officials, and the federal government, Raskin and his cohorts return to their familiar censorship ploys. For censors, augmentation of power, not truth, remains the chief objective. To achieve this goal, they conflate dissent with domestic terrorism.

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Not every point is equally strong.

• Who Benefitted From This Chaos? (Tucker)

Let’s just go through the list of beneficiaries I first compiled two years ago.

1. The tech companies that became so enraptured with the digital world—and we can include online retailers in this—that they forgot all the people who cannot and do not want to live entirely outside the physical world. To be sure, many of these high flying companies are now coming back to earth thanks to higher interest rates. Even Zoom may be falling on hard times. To which I say: Schadenfreude.

2. The pharmaceutical companies with hundreds of billions of investment in labs and distribution circles that wanted to ply their wares in the midst of emergencies, in addition to the PCR testing industry, not to mention mask and ventilator makers and so many other grifting companies in this space. They not only gain from tremendous subsidies and indemnification from damages; they even got governments to conscript their customer base.

3. Public health intellectuals, who for at least a decade and a half had fallen for the romance of computer modeling, were itching to try out a new method for disease mitigation. They must have gotten quite a kick out of watching the experiment tried out in real time. Speaking of: we haven’t heard from these people in a very long time. They seem conveniently very quiet. Notice how the prophets of doom who were all over the news three years ago, with their magic ability to see the future with precision, have completely vanished?

4. The mega-billionaire Bill Gates found himself vexed by computer viruses that were wrecking his Windows operating system and thereby developed a passion for blocking viruses in general, while failing to understand the difference between biology and computer hardware. He seems to have done very well for himself, not only with his investments but now with his new book telling us how he will single-handedly change the path of the global climate.

5. Government officials certainly had a field day trying out new uses of power. My goodness, they even got their mitts on social media, scripting who gets to speak and who cannot. The national security state hasn’t had this much fun since the Cold War. It was, in short, the most successful ramp up of government power the world over in modern times or maybe ever. Disease panic proved more advantageous to them than ever war and economic depression.

6. Media companies, who live on clicks and know with certainty that public panic is the best way to guarantee consumer attention, did especially well, given that millions were locked at home with nothing else to do. Talk about a captive audience!

7. The Chinese government, which was supremely annoyed at the Trump administration’s trade policies, successfully trolled the West into believing that China nixed the virus through totalitarian controls. It can now brag to have scripted the pandemic response for the whole world, and is now goading the World Health Organization into doing ever more of it.

8. Rabid opponents of the Trump administration, who had failed to wreck it through accusations of Russian collusion and then impeachment over a phone call to Ukraine, finally turned to creating tremendous social, economic, and political chaos by massively overblowing the severity of a widespread viral pathogen, which itself became a metaphor for the political infection they believed afflicted the country. This was the final undoing of the administration, much to the celebration of his political opponents.

9. School teachers’ unions that have been wanting to strike for years in order to extract pay and benefits from the taxpayer, worried that doing so would turn their public against them; for them, lockdowns were the perfect excuse to find another way. They abandoned their jobs and got paid anyway. Then they tried to make the racket last as long as possible.

10. A ruling-class population that has lost touch with people who cannot live on their computers, had become increasingly detached from the flow of life as it exists in the physical world, utterly failed to empathize with the suffering of others under lockdown. But they rather warmed up to the mess they had created because it meant they could make the big bucks while never changing out of their PJs.

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War OF terror vs war ON terror.

“A positive screamer is that Hersh – rather, his key source – had the MI6 completely vanish from the narrative..”

• The War of Terror of a Rogue Superpower: Cui Bono? (Escobar)

When it comes to the Global South, what the Hersh report imprints is Rogue Superpower, in giant blood red letters, as state sponsor of terrorism. Everyone with a brain already knew the Empire did it. Now Seymour Hersh’s bombshell report not only details how Nord Stream 1 and 2 were attacked, but also names names: from the toxic Straussian neoliberal-con trio Sullivan, Blinken and Nuland all the way to the Teleprompter Reader-in-Chief. Arguably the most incandescent nugget in Hersh’s narrative is to point ultimate responsibility directly at the White House. The CIA, for its part, gets away with it. The whole report may be read as the framing of a scapegoat. A very fragile, shoddy scapegoat – what with those classified documents in the garage, the endless stares into the void, the cornucopia of incomprehensible mumbling, and of course the whole, ghastly, years-long family corruption carousel in and around Ukraine, still to be completely unveiled.

Hersh’s report happened to pop up immediately after the deadly earthquakes in Turkey/Syria. This is an investigative journalism earthquake in itself, straddling over fault lines and revealing countless open air fissures, nuggets of truth gasping for air amidst the rubble. But is that all there is? Does the narrative hold from start to finish? Yes and no. First of all, why now? This is a leak – essentially from one Deep State insider, Hersh’s key source. This 21st century “Deep Throat” remix may be appalled at the toxicity of the system, but at the same time he knows that whatever he says, there will be no consequences. Cowardly Berlin – ignoring the nuts and bolts of the scheme all along – will not even squeak. After all the Green gang has been ecstatic, because the terror attack has thoroughly advanced their medieval de-industrialization agenda.

In parallel, as an extra bonus, all the other European vassals receive further confirmation this is the fate that awaits them if they don’t follow His Master’s Voice. Hersh’s narrative frames the Norwegians as the essential accessory to terror. Hardly surprising: NATO’s Jens “Peace is War” Stoltenberg has been a CIA asset for perhaps half a century. And Oslo of course had its own motives to be part of the deal; to collect loads of extra cash selling whatever spare energy it had for desperate European customers. A little narrative problem is that Norway, unlike the U.S. Navy, still does not have any operational P-8 Poseidon. What was clear at the time is that an American P-8 was commuting back and forth – with mid-air refueling – from the U.S. to Bornholm island.

A positive screamer is that Hersh – rather, his key source – had the MI6 completely vanish from the narrative. SVR, Russian intel, had focused like a laser on MI6 at the time, as well as the Poles. What still cements the narrative is that the combo behind “Biden” provided the planning, the intel and coordinated the logistics, while the final act – in this case a sonar buoy detonating the C4 explosives – may have been perpetrated by the Norwegian vassals. The problem is the buoy may have been dropped by an American P-8. And there’s no explanation of why one of the sections of Nord Stream 2 escaped intact.

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“..talks that should be based on the existing reality..”

• Russia Ready For Talks With Ukraine, With No Preconditions – Deputy FM (TASS)

Russia is ready to engage with Ukraine, but there should not be any preconditions for talks that should be based on the existing reality, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin said in an interview with Zvezda television. “Yes, according to the classics, any hostilities end up in talks, and, naturally, as we have said before, we will be ready for such talks, but only if those are talks with no preconditions, talks that would be based on the existing reality,” the senior Russian diplomat said, according to a fragment of the interview posted on the TV channel’s website. However, it is not Kiev, but Washington and Brussels who make the decision on talks with Moscow, Vershinin said.


“First of all, there have been [talks] before – you remember Minsk and you remember Istanbul. And you remember that those were broken off by Ukraine, but you are well aware that decisions are being made not in Kiev, decisions are being made in other capitals, primarily in Washington and Brussels. So, inquiries should be sent there,” he added. Commenting on whether such talks could be held under the current US president, Joe Biden, Vershinin said, “This does not depend on us, we have made our position clear, and if only Mr. Biden were cautious and wise enough, I mean him and his entourage,” he added.

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UN summit perhaps?

Is Russia pushing Zakharova forward? See her a lot.

• Latest Nord Stream Findings Deserve Emergency NATO Summit – Zakharova (TASS)

The Russian Foreign Ministry’s official spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said the latest findings about explosions at the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, published by US journalist Seymour Hersh, deserve to be discussed at an emergency NATO summit. “There have been a plenty of facts: pipeline explosions, [clear] motives and indirect evidence obtained by journalists. So when will an emergency NATO summit gather to analyze the situation?” she asked rhetorically. On February 8, Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published an article where he said, citing a source, that explosives were planted under the Russian Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines by US Navy divers under the guise of the Baltops exercise in June. The story stated that US president Joe Biden personally authorized the operation.


US State Department Spokesman Ned Price said earlier that the US denies they were involved in the explosions on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines and believes its explanations on the matter are credible. He called the theory laid out by Hersh complete and utter nonsense. On September 27, 2022, Nord Stream AG reported unprecedented damage that occurred the day before on three strings of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 offshore gas pipelines. On September 26, Swedish seismologists registered two explosions on the pipeline routes. The Russian Prosecutor General’s Office launched a criminal case based on charges of international terrorism.

Mao Ning

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Baerbock swallowed her words. “..if you are hypocritical again, you are making an irreparable mistake this time,” Zakharova wrote..”

• Zakharova Warns Baerbock Against Making Irreparable Mistake On Ukraine (TASS)

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has warned German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who admitted that her words about Europe being at war with Russia had been a mistake, against making irreparable mistakes concerning Ukraine, Zakharova wrote on her Telegram channel on Saturday. Earlier on Saturday, Baerbock admitted that she had made a mistake claiming in late January that the European Union “is fighting a war with Russia.” “The one who doesn’t make mistakes, doesn’t live,” Baerbock quoted this saying in an interview with Der Tagesspiegel newspaper, explaining her words. According to Zakharova, it was a pivotal statement of Baerbock.


“Once you realize your mistake sincerely, you will understand this. You have to. However, if you are hypocritical again, you are making an irreparable mistake this time,” Zakharova wrote. The Russian diplomat called on the German foreign minister “if you believe that everyone has the right to make mistakes because it is part of human life, stop engaging in escalating the crisis that leads to killings of people with Western weapons.” Zakharova recalled that Germany had been supporting the Ukrainian regime, which was killing people in Donbass, for eight years, and that Russia had launched its special military operation to stop the bloodshed and curb the threats of its escalating into another world war. “And then NATO criminals started pouring fuel on the fire, turning it all into a massive carnage,” she added.

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“There was a [malicious] intent that dealt a blow to global security..”

• Zakharova Urges To Legally Seal West’s Deceit On Minsk Agreements (TASS)

The Western nations’ deceit regarding the Minsk agreements on Ukrainian reconciliation needs to be formally sealed and qualified within the legal framework, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s official spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said. “The fact that those countries, those politicians deceived the international community, and the people of Ukraine were the first to suffer from their deceit, deserves to be formally sealed within the framework of the law,” she told the Right to Know TV show on Russia’s TVTs television. “Instead of talk, there must be a [legal] qualification, and it must be made by law experts.”


“The thing is that they deceived the UN Security Council,” she said.According to Zakharova, from the very outset, Germany, France and Ukraine implied something totally opposite to what they had openly pledged to their people, to Europe and the world in general. “They <…> gave the Kiev regime time to rearm. This means that they planned to deceive the international community from the very start. The intentions that they declared were totally different from what they had in mind,” she added. The diplomat described this as a real sham and a global-scale fraud. “There was a [malicious] intent that dealt a blow to global security,” she added.

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Signed, sealed, delivered. No longer your country.

• IMF To Meet Ukraine Officials In Warsaw Next Week (R.)

International Monetary Fund staff will meet with Ukrainian officials in Warsaw next week, a source familiar with the plans said on Friday, as Ukraine presses for a multi-billion dollar borrowing program to cover its funding needs given Russia’s war. The Interfax Ukraine news agency earlier this month quoted Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko as saying that Ukraine hopes to start negotiations with the IMF during the second quarter of 2023. The IMF had no immediate comment on the staff mission, which comes two months after the IMF’s board approved a four-month monitoring program for Ukraine that is aimed at maintaining economic stability following Russia’s invasion, and at helping promote donor financing.


At the time, the IMF said “program monitoring with board support”, or PMB, “should help pave the way toward a possible full-fledged IMF-supported program.” The scope of that program is a source of ongoing debate, given existing IMF constraints on lending to a country at war. Ukrainian government officials have said the country will need $38 billion this year to cover the budget deficit and another $17 billion for urgent energy repairs and reconstruction of critical infrastructure. Experts say the country’s needs could be far higher, given the extent of damage caused by Russian attacks in recent months.

Fierce mother Ukraine
https://twitter.com/i/status/1624190239488061441

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“..if there’s a war to be fought, she wants to be the one with her finger on that proverbial trigger.”

• Tulsi Gabbard Slams ‘Dangerous’ Clinton Following India Trip (RT)

Former Democratic US Representative Tulsi Gabbard has continued her long-running feud with Hillary Clinton following the ex-Secretary of State’s recent visit to India. She told Fox News that the trip served little purpose, and shows that former presidential candidate is a “dangerous character” who is “envious” of Joe Biden. Clinton arrived in India on February 5, visiting salt pan workers in Gujarat where she announced a $50-million initiative intended to empower women and communities to fight against climate change. However, Gabbard – who left the Democrat Party last year – has since said that Clinton’s visit to drum up support for alternative clean energy shows that she still covets diplomatic authority and is “envious” of Joe Biden’s presidency.

“Her desire to be commander-in-chief that she’s had for a very long time has nothing to do with ensuring the safety and security of the American people,” Gabbard said on FOX News’ ‘Jesse Watters Primetime’ show Thursday. “It has everything to do with the fact that if there’s a war to be fought, she wants to be the one with her finger on that proverbial trigger.” She added that she believes Biden to be “channelling her warmongering ways.” Clinton has previously referred to Gabbard as a “Russian asset,” which prompted the former Hawaii Democrat to launch a defamation lawsuit. Gabbard also stated that Clinton’s visit to India did nothing to address India’s more pressing issues, such as tensions with its neighbor Pakistan, and that its only benefit was to increase her own public profile.

“This is what makes her such a dangerous character,” Gabbard said. “She feels that she’s not accountable to anyone because she’s not suffering those consequences.” While in India, Clinton said that the country was ideally positioned to implement clean energy methods, which, she claimed, would increase economic growth. She referenced solar power facilities at a salt pan farm she’d visited in Surendranagar as evidence of this. Clinton also used the visit to praise self-employed Indian women who have chosen to work in roles such as street vendors, farmers and laborers.

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“While some like McCaskill yell “Russians!” others use more modern labels, such as “conspiracy theorists.” That notably includes the FBI itself..”

• Twitter Censorship Is The Modern-Day Red Scare (Turley)

“The Democratic Party [is] the bedfellow of international communism.” Those words from Sen. Joe McCarthy captured the gist of the Red Scare and the use of blacklists and personal attacks to silence critics. The Democrats this week appear to have taken up the same cudgel in labeling opponents and critics Russian sympathizers and fellow travelers in opposing government involvement in a massive censorship system. The Red Scare is back and it is going blue. I testified this week in Congress on the Twitter Files and how they suggest what I have called “censorship by surrogate” or proxy. The files show dozens of FBI and government employees actively seeking the censorship of citizens and others for their viewpoints.

In my testimony, I warned that this was reminiscent of the McCarthy period where the FBI played a role in the establishment of blacklists for socialist, communists, and others. I encouraged Congress not to repeat its failures from the 1950s by turning a blind eye to such abuse. This view was amplified by former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who became persona non grata for her anti-war sentiments in Congress. She was later labeled a “Russian asset” by Hillary Clinton, who has refused to support that scurrilous claim of a former member. For years, the Democrats pushed a Russian collusion theory that collapsed. It was later disclosed that the Clinton campaign hid and then lied about funding the infamous Steele Dossier. Nevertheless, people like Carter Page were falsely accused of being Russian agents and critics labeled as Russian apologists.

Ironically, the FBI was warned that the dossier appeared to be the result of Russian disinformation and relied on a presumed Russian agent. If anything, my warning of McCarthy-like attacks and measures seemed to be taken more as a suggestion than an admonition by some. Yet soon after the end of the hearing, MSNBC contributor and former Sen. Claire McCaskill appeared on MSNBC to denounce the member witnesses (Sen. Chuck Grassley, Sen. Ron Johnson, and former Rep. Gabbard) as “Putin apologists” and Putin lovers. She exclaimed, “I mean, look at this, I mean, all three of those politicians are Putin apologists. I mean, Tulsi Gabbard loves Putin.” (For the record, she also attacked me as not being “a real lawyer.”)

[..] In the 1950s, it was easy for politicians to avoid discussing underlying views by just labeling their opponents as fellow travelers. We are watching the same use of personal attacks today as a way to evade the troubling disclosures in the Twitter Files. While some like McCaskill yell “Russians!” others use more modern labels, such as “conspiracy theorists.” That notably includes the FBI itself. When criticized for the role FBI agents played in secretly targeting citizens for censorship, the FBI called critics “conspiracy theorists . . . feeding the American public misinformation.”

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Roger Stone did a lot of research on the topic for his book.

• Trump & Epstein: The Recycled Smear (Roger Stone)

Trump turned down numerous invitations to Epstein’s hedonistic private island and his Palm Beach home. There is no evidence Trump did anything improper. Norma Foerderer, Trump’s longtime personal assistant, told me that Trump thought Epstein was “creepy.” “The one time I visited his Palm Beach home, the swimming pool was full of beautiful young girls,” Trump told a member of his Club, Mar-a-Lago. “‘How nice,’ I thought, ‘he let the neighborhood kids use his pool.’” According to his personal security guard, Trump left Epstein’s home within 15 minutes of arrival, feeling uncomfortable with the strange ratio of men to much younger women. Many of the Epstein-based smears against Trump that are now recycled by Ron DeSantis’ organized flying monkeys on the internet, originated with the Clinton campaign.

Epstein provided millions in seed funding for the Clinton Global Initiative, was a heavy donor to the Clinton Foundation. Bill Clinton visited Epstein’s island on at least 17 occasions, as well as being identified by FAA records as having been on Epstein’s plane on at least 26 occasions. The Clinton Foundation provided one-hundred percent of the funding for TerraMar, a nonprofit controlled by Epstein pimp Ghislaine Maxwell, which was utilized to hire young female interns to allegedly work on environmental projects while actually constituting a grooming pool. Unlike the Clintons, Trump cut Epstein off after he heard about an inappropriate advance by Epstein toward a young woman who worked at the Spa at Mar-a-Lago, and Trump told security that Epstein was barred from the property. The Clintons continued to socialize and fundraise with Jeffrey Epstein after his state conviction.

The Clinton Foundation actually took a donation from Epstein after he had a probable cause affidavit filed on him by Palm Beach Police in May of 2006. Trump cut Epstein off well before state charges were brought against the sex-trafficker. The Clintons were desperate to distract from their own relationship with Epstein by trying to throw shade on Trump. Now, the “influencers” propping up Ron DeSantis are recycling the same trash. Recent weeks have seen this vicious assault on President Donald Trump; distorting the facts about his “connection” to Jeffrey Epstein, which, as I have stated above, is an obscene distortion of the facts. The repetitive drumbeat of their talking points are obviously prepared by Governor DeSantis’ Ukrainian handler bleed through in the posting of her internet-based corp of flying monkeys. The uniform language blows the op. It was a smear in 2016 and it’s a smear today.

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Brexit Lite.

• UK Has Secret Plans For EU – Bloomberg (RT)

British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has privately asked members of his cabinet to work out ways of rebuilding connections with the EU that had been severed after Brexit in 2020, government sources have told Bloomberg. Plans are currently being put together at 10 Downing Street to boost ties between London and Brussels in such areas as defense, migration and the economy, including trade, energy and international standards, the agency reported on Saturday. According to British ministers, diplomats and officials, who all spoke on condition of anonymity, the rapprochement is being prepared in order to compensate for the fallout of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, in which London positions itself among the prime backers of the Kiev authorities.

In the coming days, Sunak’s government is hoping to announce a solution to the longstanding dispute with the EU over post-Brexit trading arrangements for Northern Ireland. London’s plan is to capitalize on this development and make it the basis for further improving ties with the 27-member bloc. Bloomberg pointed out that by moving in this direction, the PM is risking causing anger among the anti-EU lawmakers from his ruling Conservative Party. Another challenge for Sunak would be overcoming the skepticism of European leaders, who got tired of top British politicians using the bloc as a “punch bag for their domestic audience” since the Brexit vote in 2016, it added. One of the sources assured Bloomberg that the alleged turn towards Europe didn’t mean that Brexit was a mistake but was merely a reflection of the changing geopolitical situation.

According to another official, Sunak’s subordinates were able to persuade the Prime Minister, who has been in office since late October, that in the current reality of “a more dangerous world, rising authoritarianism and protectionism,” closer cooperation with allies was absolutely essential for the UK. Achieving this would require Britain to give up on its “madman strategy” of resisting the EU, in favor of a stable relationship with the bloc as critical friends, he said. By standing together, London and Brussels would be able to withstand economic turbulence and threats posed by Russia and China more effectively, the source explained.

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And counting.

• Estimated 13 Million People Worldwide Killed By The Covid Vaccines (Kirsch)

The paper suggests you can take the number of vaccine doses delivered, divide by 1,000 to get an estimate of the number of people killed by the COVID vaccine. The tweet directly from the author sums it up:

The paper: Age-stratified COVID-19 vaccine-dose fatality rate for Israel and Australia


The paper finds that the vDFR (vaccine-dose fatality rate) is exponential with respect to age.

The paper points out that “it is not unreasonable to assume an all-population global value of vDFR = 0.1 %”. For the US, 670M doses have been given, so the estimate is 670,000 people have been killed by the COVID vaccines in the US. I have said for a long time that the URF in VAERS is 41, and there are 16,300 excess US deaths in VAERS (subtracting 250 background deaths per year which gets reported into VAERS) which comes to 668K.668K is very close to 670K, isn’t it? What an amazing “coincidence”!The paper gives a simple way to estimate the number of people a country has killed by deploying the COVID vaccines: 0.001*# of doses. In short, you can just take the number of vaccine doses in millions and just change “millions” to “thousands” to estimate the number of people killed by the vaccine.


Using data from Israel and Australia, the paper estimates 13 million deaths worldwide from the COVID vaccines: The COVID-19 vaccines did not only not save lives but they are highly toxic. On the global scale, given the 3.7 million fatalities in India alone, having vDFR = 1 % (Rancourt, 2022), and given the age-stratified vDFR results presented in this work, it is not unreasonable to assume an all-population global value of vDFR = 0.1 %. Based on the global number of COVID-19 vaccine doses administered to date (13.25 billion 24 doses, up to 24 January 2023, Our World in Data), this would correspond to 13 million deaths from the COVID-19 vaccines worldwide. By comparison, the official World Health Organization (WHO) number of COVID-19 deaths to date is 6.8 million (6,817,478 deaths, reported to WHO, as 3 February 2023), which are not detected as COVID-19 assignable deaths in ACM studies.

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Pi

 

 

Triangular impossible object, devised in the 1950s by Lionel Penrose and his son, Nobel Prize-winning mathematician Sir Roger Penrose
https://twitter.com/i/status/1624400863732047873

 

 

 

 

Woodcock
https://twitter.com/i/status/1624096393156521984

 

 

Wonderful world

 

 

 

 

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