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Debt Rattle June 15 2026

Jun 152026
 
 June 15, 2026  Posted by at 10:15 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  25 Responses »


Robert Campin A man 1435


• Trump Announces Peace Deal with Iran Is Complete (Margolis)
• Trump: Hormuz To Reopen Friday After Signing Of “Great Peace Deal” (ZH)
• Iran Reveals Draft Of Trump-Touted MoU To Be Signed Sunday (ZH)
• Scott Jennings Hammers CNN Panel Over Elon Musk Trillionaire Status (Amy Curtis)
• Bakari Sellers Calls Elon Musk a White Supremacist (Margolis)
• Elon Musk and the Politics of Envy (Tim O’Brien)
• Carney: “Middle Powers” Can Collectively Counterbalance U.S. Global Power (CTH)
• Pompeo Unmasked (CTH)
• Buttigieg Joins the Calls to Take Over the Supreme Court (Turley)
• ‘Birth Tourism’ Networks Around the World Exploiting the U.S. (Salgado)
• Puffy Putin Peril: The West’s Latest Attempt To Scare Itself (Amar)
• Thinking for Oneself: Schopenhauer on Reflection vs. Regurgitation (Eskeldson)

 


 

https://twitter.com/BarronTNews_/status/2065789421379572045?s=20

 


 


What a way to spend your 80th birthday! He did it! Hats off. So many people wanted him to fail even if it was against their own interests, just to spite him.

• Trump Announces Peace Deal with Iran Is Complete (Margolis)

On Sunday, President Donald Trump announced that a peace deal with Iran had been finalized, immediately lifting the U.S. naval blockade on Iranian ports and reopening the Strait of Hormuz to global shipping. The region that has defined American foreign policy anxiety for decades just changed dramatically — and it happened on Trump’s watch. “The Deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, offering “congratulations to all!” He followed that up by authorizing what he called the “toll-free opening of the Strait of Hormuz” alongside the simultaneous removal of the naval blockade. Then, in classic Trump fashion, he added, “Ships of the World, start your engines. Let the oil flow!”


Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif confirmed the deal in a statement of his own. He announced that “the Peace Deal between the United States of America and Islamic Republic of Iran has been REACHED” after what he described as “intensive talks.” He continued, “We would like to thank the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran for their commitment to finding a diplomatic solution to the conflict. We would also like to extend our sincere appreciation to our brothers in this mediation effort, the great leadership of State of Qatar, for their support in reaching this agreement. I would also especially thank the visionary leadership of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Republic of Türkiye for their immense contributions in this regard.”

A formal signing ceremony is scheduled for June 19 in Switzerland, with mediators facilitating preliminary technical meetings this week to lay the groundwork.Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi confirmed the deal from Tehran’s side, saying an immediate and permanent halt to war and military operations — including in Lebanon — would begin Sunday. He also made clear that Iran would respond if the other side violates its commitments and that the next phase of negotiations hinges on Iranian assets being unfrozen. Make no mistake about it, Tehran is going to test the limits of this thing. That’s what Iran does. But the framework is there, and the verification mechanisms matter.

Vice President JD Vance laid out the significance on Sunday on Fox News. “Three things that I think are important for the American people just to appreciate about what this deal does for all of us as Americans,” Vance said. “Number one, this is the immediate opening of the Straits of Hormuz and, of course, the lifting of the naval blockade that we’ve had on Iran along with it. The number two thing that it means is that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon, and not just pursue a nuclear weapon, but procure or try to buy a nuclear weapon as well that’s built into this agreement.”

The third element, Vance explained, depends on Iranian compliance. Still, the upside is enormous. “If the Iranians comply with this deal, it is going to fundamentally transform the Middle East for the next 50 years,” he said. “It’s going to end the war. It’s going to make the Middle East more investable. It’s going to mean a lot of prosperity, lower energy prices for the American people. This region of the world has been a basket case for my entire life and longer than that.”

Obviously, there’s still work ahead. And there’s reason to be skeptical of Iran because this is a regime with a long history of buying time while running out the clock. But, we aren’t sending them plane-loads of cash in the dark of night, or giving them a path to nuclear weapons, as Barack Obama did. And that’s the key here. Trump built in verification. Vance was explicit that the benefits flow only if Iran delivers. The approach is trust nothing, verify everything, and tie every concession to compliance. That’s exactly the kind of deal the Obama-era Iran agreement was never structured to be.

Read more …

“Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, also confirmed: “that the Peace Deal between the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran has been REACHED.”

• Trump: Hormuz To Reopen Friday After Signing Of “Great Peace Deal” (ZH)

“This Great Deal will bring Peace and Security to the whole Region. Many presidents have tried to make Peace with Iran, and all have failed before me. The Leaders of the Region have, for the first time, found a President who can help them achieve real Peace. With the opening of the Strait upon the signing of the Deal on Friday, for purposes of mine removal, oil will flow on both ends again for the Region, and the World!” Trump wrote on Truth Social.


The timing of the peace deal is critical. The world was approaching a dangerous energy cliff, with strategic petroleum reserves being quickly drained to offset lost Gulf production and stabilize physical markets. Still, even with a deal in place, energy flows through the strategic maritime chokepoint will not normalize overnight. It will likely take several months, if not quarters, to clear the backlog, restore shipping confidence, de-risk insurance markets, and bring regional production and export flows back to pre-crisis levels. As for damaged energy assets such as those in Qatar, it’ll take years to get production back to pre-war levels.

Deal Confirmed By Trump, Pakistan PM, Just Ahead Of NY Futures Opening. Just 30 minutes before futures open in New York, President Trump announced on Truth Social that a “Deal” with Iran is now complete. “Congratulations to all! I hereby fully authorize the toll-free opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and, simultaneously herewith, authorize the immediate removal of the United States Naval blockade. Ships of the World, start your engines. Let the oil flow!” Trump said.

Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, also confirmed: “that the Peace Deal between the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran has been REACHED.”

Sharif said, “The official signing ceremony will be on Friday, 19 June in Switzerland.”

Israeli journalist and Iran affairs correspondent/analyst for Israel’s Channel 14 reports that hardliners in Iran, including IRGC forces, will not derail the peace deal.

Read more …

From the lead-up to the accord.

• Iran Reveals Draft Of Trump-Touted MoU To Be Signed Sunday (ZH)

Bloomberg and Reuters are reporting Sunday some fresh details on Iran’s version of what the MoU to be signed – which President Trump says will happen today (albeit remotely) will inlcude. “A draft of the US-Iran memorandum of understanding included diluting highly enriched uranium within Iran and the release of $25b of Iran’s frozen assets, Reuters reports citing a senior Iran official it didn’t identify,” writes Bloomberg in the latest. This includes:


• Final deal to be discussed in the 60 days following agreement by the two sides
• Also includes Iran immediately reopening Hormuz Strait to all commercial vessels and US lifting its naval blockade
• Tehran in draft agrees that will neither produce nor acquire nuclear weapons
• To maintain the nuclear status quo until final deal is reached, including by not enriching uranium and not expanding nuclear facilities

One potential major complication to the two sides actually signing is what’s happening in the Beirut suburbs, which the Israeli Air Force has just struck for the first time in about a week:

Provocative Israeli military actions previously effectively torpedoed prior Washington-Tehran attempts to get back to the negotiating table. Will the same hold-up happen again? Pro-Israel supporters and lobbyists in the US have been raging against what they see as a ‘failure’ of a deal, and ‘capitulation’ to Iran on kicking the can on the nuclear issue… not least among them is on display in the following:

The usual caveats which proved all prior ‘deal imminent’ headlines to be premature and wishful thinking still apply. Some latest from Iranian state media according to Al Jazeera: “Iran’s Fars news agency, citing a source close to the negotiating team, is reporting that Iranian officials were discussing the ceasefire points with the Qatari mediators in Tehran. The report added that the deal is yet to be finalised and “no agreement will definitely be signed at the time Trump announced”. The comments were made to the agency prior to Israel’s deadly attacks on Lebanon’s southern suburbs today.

Sunday Iran Deal (or rather: MoU Remote Signing) Expected Sunday, per Trump. President Trump said Saturday that an interim U.S.-Iran deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and wind down the four-month conflict could be signed as soon as Sunday. However, Tehran has pushed back on that timeline, signaling that no final decision has been made while Iranian officials continue to review the terms of a potential memorandum of understanding. “The Deal is scheduled to get signed tomorrow, and immediately after it is signed, the Hormuz Strait is OPEN TO ALL,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Saturday, while claiming that Iran “no longer wants a Nuclear weapon.”

The president continued, “At the appropriate time, when all is calm, we will go in and get the Nuclear Dust, buried deep under the powerful sunken granite mountains, thanks to our beautiful B-2 Bombers and their brilliant pilots, and downblend and destroy it, whether in Iran, or the United States.” Pakistan and Qatar are mediating, with technical talks expected to follow any signing and last up to 60 days. The MOU is structured as a step-by-step framework, meaning the Hormuz maritime chokepoint will reopen first, followed by economic rewards for Iran as conditions are met.

Pakistan, which has served as one of the mediators, is preparing to sign the peace deal electronically, followed by technical-level talks next week, according to Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. He said those talks would last two months and focus on Iran’s nuclear program. Meanwhile, the Iranian media outlet Fars News Agency reported earlier that Iran has not made a final call on a potential MOU with the U.S. Iranian authorities are still reviewing the political, legal, and technical details, with no final decision announced as of Sunday morning.

The urgency behind securing an MOU to reopen the Hormuz chokepoint is clear: the world is drifting dangerously close toward an energy cliff. Strategic petroleum reserves are being drawn down rapidly around the world to offset the loss of Gulf production, while China’s weakening fuel demand is helping to offset some of the broader supply shock. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi made clear Friday that Iran understands that terms related to its nuclear program will be finalized within 60 days of the initial agreement being signed. So in essence, this means Iran could get its wish of pushing nuclear negotiations back, only after the hot conflict has clearly ended. Iran has long sought to separate the issues of a final end to the war from consideration of its nuclear program.

Energy markets priced in de-escalation last week, with Brent crude futures sliding as much as 5.1% Friday and European gas dropped as much as 8.4% after Trump canceled planned new strikes on Iran. IG’s weekend markets are pricing in a 50 bps decline in Brent crude when futures open on Sunday evening. But throughput traffic through the Hormuz chokepoint remains far below pre-war levels, and a vessel was struck off Oman on Saturday. Normalization could take weeks, if not many months. Bloomberg noted, “Roughly 140 ships passed through the narrow chokepoint each day before the conflict erupted.”

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“If Elon Musk had never gotten involved in politics, and never supported Trump, he’d be getting ticker tape parades right now for building this amazing company and sending rockets into space..”

• Scott Jennings Hammers CNN Panel Over Elon Musk Trillionaire Status (Amy Curtis)

While Leftists melt down over Elon Musk becoming the world’s first trillionaire, they’ve demonstrated that they don’t understand how value works, or stocks, or how the economy works. Scott Jennings pointed out a very obvious truth: if Elon Musk were a Leftist, this wouldn’t be an issue.



“Are you saying because Elon Musk exists and is a wild success that that is somehow to the detriment of all the people you’re mentioning?” Jennings asked. “Elon is creating an environment where entrepreneurship, where success, where building is celebrated.” Then came the truth bomb. “The only reason anybody’s mad about this, let’s just be honest, is because he supported Donald Trump for President,” Jennings said.

“If Elon Musk had never gotten involved in politics, and never supported Trump, he’d be getting ticker tape parades right now for building this amazing company and sending rockets into space. It’s all political, and the people who should love Elon Musk hate him for that reason.” “But do you agree that one person should have control of American policy?” asked Gina Hinojosa. “That’s what money does.”

“It’s all about access to the United States,” she continued, “It’s not just about Donald Trump. There are races all across the country where he has access on policy.” “Call me when you’re made about Soros,” Jennings said.Do people with money have more influence in politics? Does CNN have a chyron for this? That’s how it’s always been. If money influenced policy, we’d have President Ross Perot. Hillary Clinton raised $770 million in 2016 and Kamala Harris raised $1.6 billion for her campaign.

Clean vehicles, clean energy sources, space exploration, and Internet access via Starlink. Those are just some of his achievements and contributions. Bingo. If he funded Leftist causes and politicians, this wouldn’t be an issue.

It doesn’t matter what the narrative is today, as long as the Democrats can scream and whine about the “oligarchy” and against Donald Trump, Republicans, and anyone who isn’t their political ally.

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Sure.

• Bakari Sellers Calls Elon Musk a White Supremacist (Margolis)

A CNN panel meant to discuss extraordinary wealth lurched far off the rails Friday night when one commentator went into full-on slander mode on Elon Musk, who became the world’s first trillionaire this week. He’s been getting attacked from the left for his success because that’s what the left does. Well, that and fantasize about spending other people’s money, which is exactly what CNN contributor Cari Champion started with. “If you spent a million dollars every single day, it would take you more than 2700 years to spend a trillion dollars,” Champion said.


“What you could effectively do with a trillion dollars is get rid of global poverty. You could end world hunger, you could cure major diseases like malaria, and you could completely transition the global energy sector to renewables. The fact that he has this type of money only tells me that his power will be more prevalent and that I could not — I cannot guarantee someone like this man would use his power for good.” Then Bakari Sellers took things further. After blaming Elon Musk’s influence for USAID cuts that he claimed killed thousands of women and children, Sellers leveled a charge that sent the panel into a frenzy: “Elon Musk is a white supremacist who believes in things like the —”

Criminal defense attorney Arthur Aidala jumped in. “Oh, boy,” Aidala said. “I wasn’t even finished a sentence,” Sellers shot back. Scott Jennings had a warning ready for Sellers. “You may need a lawyer when this is over,” he quipped. Sellers pressed on. Musk “believes in things like the Great Replacement Theory,” he said. But Aidala pushed back hard. “Considering we have about 12 defamation cases in my office right now,” he said, “before you start throwing things around like someone’s a white supremacist — I would win that case.”

He’s right. Democrats and the media often label mainstream conservative arguments about immigration and electoral incentives as “great replacement theory” and imply racism, but it’s not like Democrats haven’t made the very argument that, because of declining birth rates, the United States needed immigration to sustain population growth and the workforce. “We have a population that is not reproducing on its own with the same level that it used to. The only way we’re going to have a good future in America is if we welcome and embrace immigrants,” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in 2022. But I digress.

In fact, Jennings cut through the whole exercise with a few pointed questions. “I’ve been listening to liberals count and spend Elon’s money for him,” Jennings said. “This envy, jealousy, hatred of success. Why is it immoral? Why is it wrong for somebody in our system — our capitalist system, in the greatest nation on earth, to go out and build a company — build companies, build technologies, go into space, aim to go put a colony on Mars, give internet to half the world. All the things he’s doing. Why is any of this wrong or bad? Why would we want to discourage entrepreneurship? Why would we want to discourage anybody building anything? That is the nature of it.”

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“Since the signs were pre-printed and funded by the usual funders of anything good for America …”

• Elon Musk and the Politics of Envy (Tim O’Brien)

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know by now that with SpaceX’s Initial Public Offering (IPO), Elon Musk has become the world’s first trillionaire. The implications of this for all of us and our grandchildren are many and far-reaching. Of course, the left has found a way to narrow it all down to one simple idea: “His money is our money, or it should be.” That’s not the way they say it. What leftists actually are saying is he doesn’t pay enough in taxes. Why? For the sole reason that he’s rich. If you’re a leftist, rich people are never paying “their fair share.”


This is the politics of envy, and if you study the vast majority of leftist messaging at any time on any topic, envy is a critical component. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that if the Democrats, and the left at large, decided to quit being jealous of the right, the left would die as a movement in less than 24 hours. Envy is the lifeblood of leftist politics, and Musk is merely their latest, biggest, and most convenient target. But it’s worth being reminded that to the left, you are no different than Elon Musk. Let me explain. The left is miserable when you’re happy. It feels entitled to be the only source of your happiness, but it has no desire to make you happy. Rather, it simply wants to control how happy it will allow you to be.

You saw this during the COVD-19 pandemic when the left rationed aspects of your previous life to you in small portions. The desire to control you in this way came from a fear that you might find a way to be happy in spite of conditions, in this case a pandemic. The thoroughness with which arbitrary measures were taken to deny you the simplest of pleasures was rooted in envy. Around the same time and in the same environment, Black Lives Matter (BLM) and the whole entitlement movement accused you, if you were white, of having “white privilege” and and said that you don’t deserve to be happy. Instead, you should feel guilty because some on the left are unhappy.

The “white privilege” guilt trip was not only one of the purest forms of the politics of envy, but it worked to get leftist and otherwise weak white people to voluntarily surrender their happiness. At some point, almost all leftist politics comes back to envy. And so, when Musk took SpaceX public and the company’s value skyrocketed (sorry, I couldn’t help myself), the left fell back on its most core strategy – the politics of envy. Leftist billionaires and their pawns were well prepared to opportunistically try to capitalize on Musk’s good fortune with protest signs, messaging, and rent-a-mobs ready to go.

A union representing leftist college professors showed up alongside all the other envious union members, paid protestors, and disgruntled leftists, complete with their pre-printed signs. They were there to air their grievance that someone was having a good day and just might be happy. Their signs alone showed an extremely high level of financial illiteracy and ignorance regarding just about everything related to the SpaceX IPO. They read: “Billionaires are a scam”; “Elon is stealing your pension”; “Overthrow the oligarchs”; “This billionaire is stealing from you”; “Elon is stealing your 401K”; and, of course, “Stop Elon. No Trillionaires.”

Since the signs were pre-printed and funded by the usual funders of anything good for America, we can only assume that the evil strategists on the left conceived of these messages because they knew the phrases would appeal to their illiterate base. First off, how could Elon making money from willing investors represent him stealing your pension? There is no relationship at all, and there can’t be. The money Musk and everyone else made from the IPO came from the market, not from unwilling American citizens or taxpayers. It came from institutional investors through mutual and index funds, universities, large pension funds, and millions of willing individual investors. People invested because they hoped to make profits at some later point. The protestors either don’t understand that, or they pretend not to.

Another sign that actually sidesteps all rational thought is the one that says Elon is stealing your 401(k). The truth is, the SpaceX IPO very likely already helped your 401(k), and if it didn’t, it soon will. Many, if not most of the big mutual funds are riding on the fortunes of a handful of companies like Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, maybe Tesla, and Alphabet. SpaceX just joined the club. That means if you have a 401(k), it’s in your best interest to want SpaceX to do well. That can only grow your retirement savings. And then there’s that argument the left makes when it has no argument: “Stop Elon. No Trillionaires.” Why? I mean, really, why? What’s the point? If someone else becomes rich and it has no effect on you, why should you even care? I mean, other than pure jealousy.

That post from Rep. Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) is rich, literally. She’s playing upon jealousy and envy to encourage more taxation, but only of the rich, so we’re told (for now). They play this “lower effective tax rate” game to try to pretend Elon doesn’t pay a ton of taxes, which he does. Also, like the financially illiterate protestors in New York, Jacobs is drawing no distinction between income, which is taxed, and assets like stock, which only convert into taxable money if you sell shares. What makes Jacobs’ post curious is that she is one of the richest people in Congress. She’s got an estimated net worth of $76 million, and she didn’t earn any of it. She was born into it.

If ever there is such a thing as privilege, she’s got it. Her father is billionaire Irwin Jacobs, who founded semiconductor company Qualcomm. So, when she demonizes Elon for being a billionaire, or now a trillionaire, she’s pretty much demonizing her own daddy, and she’s not doing herself any favors. She just wants you to think she’s one of the good kind of millionaires. What’s obvious is she wants you to feel like a “have not,” and she wants you to hate Elon simply because he’s a “have.” Something Jacobs did not do and would not do is acknowledge all those who have immediately benefited from the SpaceX IPO. A lot of leftists are making money here. The University of North Carolina, Washington University in St. Louis, and the University of Virginia bought in early and have huge stakes in the company.

According to Fortune, “In total, more than 4,400 current and former SpaceX employees are expected to become millionaires in the IPO.” My colleague, David Manney, reported on how some of Musk’s loyal employees at different levels of the company will be rewarded. SpaceX counts 22,000 employees at the moment, and all of them pay taxes. The average salary of SpaceX employees is $155,000-$176,000, according to the company. All of these people pay local, state and federal taxes. Many, if not most, pay property taxes. Those who just made millions each on the IPO will ultimately pay a collective billions more in federal taxes. That means more money headed into the local, state, and federal piggy banks.

Over time, millions of individual investors will make profits on their SpaceX stock at some point, and they will pay taxes on the profit. The point is, the government will see its share of cash from the IPO, and it didn’t have to do a thing except sit back and wait for the profits to roll in. Yet, Democrats like Jacobs and the rest of the left somehow want you to feel like only Musk is the beneficiary of the IPO. That’s not stopping the left from engaging in envy porn. Check out this post from millionaire Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), decrying the rich as she rides in the back of her limo. Or this common refrain that attempts to blame Musk for people putting themselves on government entitlement programs that you, the taxpayer, pay for anyway.

In other words, people getting free stuff are big mad that Musk is winning. Since he’s making more money, naturally, they want more free stuff…just because. That poster blamed Musk for just about every economic challenge anyone in America could face, but one thing he posted that deserves to be addressed is this notion that Musk is getting federal handouts to make his money at SpaceX. As though he’s running a non-profit that doesn’t reward the federal government. His rockets are the delivery system for satellites that protect our national security, among many other things. Oh, and remember the time NASA couldn’t rescue those astronauts, so Musk had to bail out the government?.

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I feel like I’m in the Shire (but of anti-heroes).

The Little People flock together

“Carney Affirms that “Middle Powers” with Same Ideological Construct Can Collectively Counterbalance U.S. Global Power..”

• Carney: “Middle Powers” Can Collectively Counterbalance U.S. Global Power (CTH)

Making his ninth trip to Europe since become prime minister 15 months ago, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney once again outlined his governing model to combat a U.S. administration that he claims has fractured the globalist norms. During his press conference with Micheal Martin, Ireland’s taoiseach (Prime Minister), Carney once again built upon the idea of “middle powers” uniting together in common ideology against U.S. dominance until such a time as the U.S. government can once again return to a leftist ideology.


The specific objectives become clear about halfway through the presser today as Carney notes the importance of grouping nations together who agree on climate change, energy controls and the green agenda. Canada’s alignment with Europe is seemingly centered on the net-zero carbon model. This perspective makes sense from Carney as it is the same priority he’s carried since his time as governor for the Bank of England. WATCH:

As the former Governor of the Bank of England and Bank of Canada, Carney used his platform to position climate change as a systemic financial risk. He then championed the view that private capital must be the primary tool to force an economic energy transition. [Post-COVID this was known as “Build Back Better.“] President Trump’s perspective and the majority American view on climate change and energy development is against the core professional effort of Carney and the banking interests he has always represented. This becomes very important to understand as the U.S-Canada conflict is about to hit an inflection point.

HISTORY: Through the “Net Zero” Banking Alliance (NZBA) Mark Carney pushed banks to agree with policies and protocols that forced them to set lower lending targets to high-carbon industries and clients. The goal was to force companies to ‘decarbonize’ or find themselves starved of capital. While working at the Bank of England and Canada Carney famously warned multinational interests and insurance companies, most of which were centered in London, that fossil fuel assets that did not fit the net-zero industrial model would become “stranded assets” worth nothing because they could not be capitalized or insured. This threat signaled to multinationals that any investment in a project that was against the “Paris Climate Treaty” was a bad financial risk.

This approach endeared Mark Carney to King Charles III, who is himself a major climate alarmist. Unfortunately, U.S. politicians -particularly during the Trump first term- accused the Carney banking/finance and insurance alliance of operating an illegal banking cartel to choke the larger American energy sector. Facing legal threats over antitrust violations, in combination with obvious violations of fiduciary duty, NZBA has to strip out its strict, mandatory lending restrictions. Slowly banks began retreating from the net-zero alliance.

Regional and national banks began citing the economic necessity of supporting traditional energy companies, and energy security became more important than adherence to voluntary restrictions on carbon emissions. This angered Carney as his life construct was under pressure. Carney then entered Canadian federal politics and sought to downplay his ideological climate agenda. However, all of his energy policies essentially come from the same mindset of opposition to fossil fuels.

The disparity in energy production is the core issue inside the details of the USMCA. The United States and Mexico are both aligned with low-cost fossil fuel use, which is particularly important for large scale industrial manufacturing (steel etc.). Whereas Canada doesn’t want the dirty jobs and wants only to focus on electricity production.

You can make electricity from windmills, solar farms and nuclear power. However, you cannot make iron, steel or aluminum without fossil fuels. In scientific fact, part of the largest global irony is because it’s impossible to make windmill components, solar panels or nuclear power equipment without using fossil fuels.

In the video below, while he was a banker you can see Mark Carney admitting on tape: When voters blocked his ESG plans, “We” (Central Bankers) shifted into the position of “Regulators” to work around the voters through the back door of finance and insurance. They manipulated fossil fuel production and prices by withholding lending and insurance.

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“One month later we were in beginning of SARS-CoV-2, which we now accept in hindsight was a U.S. military and intelligence operation..”

• Pompeo Unmasked (CTH)

Many of you will likely remember December 29, 2019, when Secretary Pompeo, Joint Chief’s Mark Milley and Secretary Mark Esper flew to Mar-a-Lago to inform President Trump about military strikes they had just conducted in Northern Syria and Iraq. At the time of the strike, President Trump was negotiating the exit of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and even having direct talks with the Taliban which was proclaimed as controversial by the traditional war machine elements in DC. The action by Pompeo, Milley and Esper did not align with the moment based on Trump’s ongoing effort.


President Trump made no comments about the strike they carried out, nor did President Trump post anything about the events. In fact, President Trump made Pompeo, Milley and Esper stand at the podium and inform the media and public. CTH said at the time nothing about this made sense. Our suspicion was that Pompeo, Milley and Esper had acted unilaterally without approval. Events later on indicated our suspicion was accurate. One month later we were in beginning of SARS-CoV-2, which we now accept in hindsight was a U.S. military and intelligence operation utilizing a virus created in a Wuhan, China biological lab. The global response to the virus was a combined military and intelligence operation.

The most excessive ‘western’ reactions to the virus were carried out by New Zealand, Australia, the U.K and Canada, all five-eyes countries. The November 2020 election result was specifically an outcome of the virus and fraudulent mail-in ballots. It’s also worth remembering that in 2016 the Trump-Russia collusion material originated from the U.K via former intelligence operative Christopher Steele and the Fusion GPS network in the U.S. That’s the context for last week Mike Pompeo paying tribute to his old friend in British intelligence who worked with him as CIA Director following the 2016 election of President Trump.

Mike Pompeo – Within hours of being announced as the nominee to be the U.S. Director of the CIA, I received a hand-delivered message on MI6 stationery congratulating me on my nomination. It was signed simply “C” in green ink. Legendary. I shared it with my son and even he thought I was now cool! More than that, this note, from Sir Alex Younger, Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service of the United Kingdom, confirmed what I already believed: the work that the CIA and MI6 did together mattered, that the partnership was critical, and that two leaders focused on the mission could save lives and provide tools for our nations to deter our adversaries.

Alex’s passing this week brought back so many memories of our time in service together. He flew to Langley to see me the day I was confirmed. We brought our two senior teams together in the UK to plan and coordinate and build in the first several weeks of my time on duty: making clear to them all that this relationship was more than special – it was critical for the security of our two countries.”

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“Drinking the Court-Packing Kool-Aid..”

“This Nike School of Constitutional Law is catching on with a wide array of pundits and professors. Just do it.”

• Buttigieg Joins the Calls to Take Over the Supreme Court (Turley)

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg apparently got the message this week that he cannot hope to win the Democratic nomination without promising radical measures, including the packing of the Supreme Court. After denouncing the current Court as “rogue” for not ruling as the left has demanded, Buttigieg endorsed the plan of Democrats like Sen. Elizabeth Warren to pack the Court to reverse adverse constitutional interpretations.


For years, the Supreme Court had a liberal majority that overturned dozens of long-standing cases. That was not viewed as the work of a rogue court. Yet, even as President Donald Trump attacks this Court for ruling repeatedly against him, liberals are now demanding court packing. As the party becomes more radicalized, any candidate expressing doubts over radical demands like court packing is unlikely to make it out of the primaries. Accordingly, “Mayor Pete” is reaching for Court-Packing Kool-Aid. In making his pitch to the Rainbow PUSH Coalition convention, Buttigieg knew that he had to offer some radical bona fides. He decided to offer up the Supreme Court:

“We have to do [something] with the Supreme Court, that is now a rogue Supreme Court. To see them eviscerate the Voting Rights Act is to see them reverse some of the most important progress this country ever made, wiping out Black political representation, but also wiping out part of what actually is great within the complex American story.” That description is part of a campaign of disinformation about the Court’s recent decision to end racial gerrymandering. The Court reaffirmed that the Voting Rights Act would be used to prevent any intentional racial discrimination. It banned states (almost entirely Democratic states) from engaging in racial discrimination to guarantee election results based on the race of the candidates.

He then thrilled the crowd by promising to pack the Court to guarantee the results that he and they are demanding. Declaring that it is “time to think big,” Buttigieg explained: “Nowhere in the Constitution does it say that there have to be nine Supreme Court justices. That one doesn’t even take a constitutional amendment. It just takes a readiness to set up a court that fits this country. We could have 13 seats matching the district structure of the federal judiciary, but also a process that makes it less partisan.” Buttigieg appears to be referring to the circuit system, not the district court system. What is most striking is that he promises to reverse decisions on issues like racial gerrymandering by packing the Court, but then says it will make the Court “less partisan.”

The whole point of adding four new justices selected by the Democrats is to create an instant majority to their liking and to reverse past rulings. Years ago, I wrote an academic piece on the possible expansion of the Supreme Court, but there is a world of difference between that and a court-packing plan. Under my proposal, the court’s expansion would take almost two decades to ensure that no president could pack the court. Various Democrats have been pledging to not only impeach Trump (and a long list of other figures), but to pack the Supreme Court as soon as they regain power.

James Carville declared, “If the Democrats win the presidency and both houses of Congress, I think on day one, they should expand the Supreme Court to 13. F— it. Eat our dust. Don’t run on it. Don’t talk about it. Just do it.” This Nike School of Constitutional Law is catching on with a wide array of pundits and professors. Just do it.

Years ago, Harvard professor Michael Klarman laid out a radical agenda to change the system to guarantee Republicans “will never win another election.” However, he warned that “the Supreme Court could strike down everything I just described.” Therefore, the court must be packed in advance to allow these changes to occur.Former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder has put packing the Supreme Court front and center, explaining, “[We’re] talking about the acquisition and the use of power if there is a Democratic trifecta in 2028.”

At base is a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of the Court. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) not only renewed her previous call to pack the court but said the court was illegitimate for rendering decisions against “widely held public opinion.” Former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) said the court “defies the will of the people.” Reporter John Haltiwanger insisted that “the court is clearly not representative of the U.S. public. It’s supposed to be the people’s court.”

In reality, the court was never meant to be that. It was meant to be the Constitution’s court, designed to stand against everyone and everything except the Constitution. In a system designed to protect the minority, the court (like the Constitution) is counter-majoritarian in much of what it does. With the Supreme Court removed as a barrier to the left’s radical agenda, Democrats could indeed fulfill the objectives laid out by figures like Klarman to ensure they never lose power again.

That will make the 2028 election the most consequential election for our constitutional history in decades. The outcome will most immediately decide the fate of an institution that has been a stabilizing force for centuries. Even though this Court has ruled against the Trump Administration on a variety of key issues, the left is still demanding that it either yield to all of their demands or face a hostile takeover. On our 250th anniversary, these reckless and radical voices remind us that (as Benjamin Franklin warned us) this is our Republic if we can keep it.

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” Incidentally, Western and Northern Africa are two areas where Islam dominates the countries.”

“And if the Supreme Court does not make the right decision on birthright citizenship, we might as well kiss our country goodbye.”

• ‘Birth Tourism’ Networks Around the World Exploiting the U.S. (Salgado)

The U.S. State Department has uncovered sophisticated and dangerous “birth tourism” networks from West Africa, Europe, and North Africa exploiting our current unconstitutional “birthright citizenship” system. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is one of the biggest abusers of our idiotic “birthright citizenship” system, but plenty of other bad actors around the world cash in as well. Contrary to the original understanding of the Fourteenth Amendment, America now says any child born on our soil is automatically a citizen, even if his parents just flew into or walked into the country. Unsurprisingly, this has for years encouraged abuses.


Besides the practice of “anchor babies,” where illegal aliens give birth in America and use their new citizen kids to keep the family here, there’s also “birth tourism.” From The Daily Wire: In West Africa, a U.S. embassy uncovered a “sophisticated birth tourism network” wherein more than 100 foreign nationals were using fraudulent documents to obtain visas and secure U.S. citizenship for their children. The State Department shut down this birth tourism network and revoked the foreign nationals’ visas. State is also coordinating with local authorities to “systematically identify and cut off any similar operations.” Incidentally, Western and Northern Africa are two areas where Islam dominates the countries.

“Under President Trump, the State Department is defending the integrity of U.S. citizenship by ending illegal birth tourism schemes,” The Daily Wire quoted the State Department. “No foreigner is permitted to obtain a visitor visa for the primary purpose of acquiring U.S. citizenship for a child by giving birth in the U.S.” This is why the upcoming Supreme Court decision on birthright citizenship is so important. The Daily Wire went on: A U.S. embassy in Europe found that more than 400 suspected birth tourism cases had occurred since 2024.

In this case, investigators traced the birth tourism to at least six companies that were coaching applicants on what to say in their visa interviews, arranging housing, and setting up delivery plans. State again shut down the process, revoked the visas, and permanently banned “several fraudsters from traveling to the United States ever again.” An embassy in North Africa revoked more than 100 visas for “birth tourist” parents who came to the United States specifically to give birth to children who would get U.S. citizenship. State Department consular officers worked with law enforcement and used data analytics to identify the networks abusing the visa system in this case.

“A U.S. visa is a privilege, not a right,” the federal department said. “The State Department is taking action around the world to stop this abuse, dismantle birth tourism networks, and hold accountable those who try to scam our system.” But even all these networks are small beans compared to the vast CCP apparatus for helping loyal party members come to the United States to give birth to kids who become automatic citizens of our country, even though many of them are then raised back in China. You can read more here. Up to a million Communist Chinese could be voting in United States elections by 2030, thanks to this huge “birth tourism” industry.

And if the Supreme Court does not make the right decision on birthright citizenship, we might as well kiss our country goodbye.

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“Headlines about the Russian president’s looks and ‘erratic’ behavior are a symptom of terminal Russophrenia..“

• Puffy Putin Peril: The West’s Latest Attempt To Scare Itself (Amar)

You can’t argue with a man observing the obvious: We are living in unusually perilous times. In the Middle East, for instance, the Israeli-American infernal duo have been on a rampage of war, state terror, all-purpose devastation, and genocide that, as a bonus, has also brought the world economy to the verge of cardiac arrest by clogging one of its vital fossil fuel arteries. Indeed, that particular risk is so obvious that even Germany’s less than brilliant Friedrich Merz has long spotted it.


In the Far East, Taiwan is currently ruled by a government so hell-bent on antagonizing their fellow Chinese on the mainland that Taipei’s political reflexes seem almost as perverse as those of Berlin. In the West, you have the German elite which can’t find enough billions to fork over to Ukraine when Kiev and friends blow up Germany’s vital pipelines and lethally cripple its already ailing economy. In the East, there is Taipei, getting really, really angry when the Philippines and Japan start negotiating away Taiwan’s maritime Exclusive Economic Zone. Angry, that is, at Beijing.

And in the EU, that “garden” of “values” that really is a swampy jungle of eternal confusion and corruption, the catastrophe that in its foreign policy is now obvious enough for several European bigwigs to gang up on the abysmally, ragingly incompetent Kaja Kallas. Her tenure as de facto EU foreign minister has been so breathtakingly blundering that her employers aren’t merely itching to kick her out but thinking about, in essence, abolishing her job.

Being so horrible at something that you won’t just get fired yourself but take it down with you – perhaps only the Baltic Girl Boss Wonder could pull that one off. But then, maybe it’s really all just another power grab by EU’s German queen (of the absolute kind) and US viceroy (of the submissive kind) Ursula von der Leyen. Either way, frightful insanity abides. We could add more scary and grotesque evidence, but things are clear enough: It’s a grim picture all around. So, fair enough if you feel like being a big sad downer and doom monger. Where it gets weird is when you get your scare priorities all upside down.

Granted, from a hapless NATO-EU European perspective, Russia may look a little unsettling: after all, once you have waged years of proxy war, sanctions, and propaganda war against it, who knows what the mood is really like in Moscow? As a good NATO-EU apparatchik, you certainly would not, because you have displayed the foresight of a gnat by proudly not talking – or listening – to the Russians. So, when you feel a little insecure, that might really be your bad conscience calling (in a merely professional, not moral sense, which you are likely to lack).

But, generally speaking, the worse the stupidities and mistakes you have produced but keep repressing, the higher the price. Old Sigmund Freud called it “affective debility.” In essence, it means that lying to yourself makes you dim. And once you are BS’ing yourself for years as if there’s no tomorrow, you’ll turn positively imbecilic.

That’s the only way to explain a fresh wave of transparently hysterical scare mongering about Russia in the West, in particular, this time, in Britain. Thus, on the occasion of the recent St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF), centrist mainstream flagship The Independent came out with a fascinating piece of fiction masquerading as analysis. Under the clickbait title “‘Puffy-looking’ Putin is acting weirder than ever – and that should chill us to the bone,” readers were treated to a highly imaginative horror tale about, in essence, a terrible loose cannon in the Kremlin pondering staged incidents and nuclear terrorism and ready to blow up the world or at least Europe or perhaps just Britain because Russia is losing the war. Also, he looks “puffy”!

All of this backed up (not really) by yet another statement from a high British military officer that things are dire as never before in (his) living memory. He and his comrades in arms – plus a few tweedy spy gents and dames – produce these Cassandra screams at least twice a month; it seems to be a standing order.

Indeed, there is such an inflationary over-production of men and women in khaki and with stiff upper lips crying big bad Russian wolf that even Politico has already produced at least one ‘best of’ collection, gathering “The 5 doomiest Russia warnings from Britain’s military chiefs.” Perish the thought any of this may have anything to do with fattening defense budgets and driving up the obscene profits of His Majesty’s military industrial complex!

Generally speaking, The West has a rich tradition of declaring Russia vanquished, its president Vladimir Putin at death’s door or on the verge of being regime-changed away, and, of course, Ukraine (and, really, the West) on the cusp of winning the war. And, at the same time, of predicting that Russia will attack all of Europe, likely tomorrow. Notwithstanding occasional and intriguing anomalies, when a NATO commander (from Trump’s US, of course) lets slip a fragment of truth, such as that actually Moscow is not looking for conflict.

In short, we are speaking about the severe and very sad but also funny mental condition already well known as Russophrenia: the afflicted live with an imaginary Schrödinger’s Russia occupying their suffering minds, a Russia that is always simultaneously half-dead and yet so alive and kicking, it’s about to roll into their living room on a tank.

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Don’t learn from books, learn from life!

• Thinking for Oneself: Schopenhauer on Reflection vs. Regurgitation (Eskeldson)

Arthur Schopenhauer’s argument is that thinking for oneself is better than regurgitating information from books and that the two produce very different effects in a learner. In the beginning of his essay, he compares the difference between regurgitation and reflection (or critical thinking) to two different libraries. Regurgitation is represented by a disorganized library with books all over the floor, furniture, shelves, or wherever else they have been mislaid. Similarly, someone who exclusively regurgitates information may have jumbled facts in his mind and will not have a clear picture of anything specific, despite learning (allegedly) so much about that thing. In the public domain essay “On Thinking for Oneself,” Schopenhauer shows us some men who appear to know so much about specific countries from travel books, but they cannot form their ideas into a gestalt to describe those countries as a whole. They cannot see the bigger picture because they were habitually exposed to only small bits of information.


Billie Pritchett writes, “Wouldn’t it be better for someone to discipline his mind by being instructed in the fundamentals of a subject, and then begin thinking within that framework?” as he recognizes an objection that Schopenhauer’s readers likely had in his day. The framework of other people’s observations on a given subject appears to be useful and airtight, but Schopenhauer believes it is more rewarding to learn that framework after doing critical thinking of one’s own. As he puts it, “the mind is deprived of all its elasticity by much reading, as is a spring when a weight is continually applied to it,” and “the surest way not to have thoughts of our own is for us at once to take up a book when we have a moment to spare”; furthermore, “the truth acquired through our own thinking is like the natural limb; it alone really belongs to us.”

After being spoon-fed material from book after book, someone will lose the ability to creatively solve problems and will learn to rely on others’ mental pictures exclusively in the effort to comprehend a subject. That person will essentially forget how to figure things out for himself. All of humanity will benefit from spending time reflecting on their thoughts.

Schopenhauer anticipated another likely objection: “What if all you get from your own thinking is the same material that has already been discovered and published by another person, or several other people, many times?” If someone tries hard to solve a problem himself, but finds out later that his solution had already been a well-publicized discovery, Schopenhauer would still appreciate the mental effort the person used to come to that conclusion. He would call that “small volume” of experimentation “valuable.”

Schopenhauer’s broader philosophical point is that the human mind forms a sort of stabilizing structure to make sense of an irrational, crooked world of “vicious little men.” People are so entwined in their self-centered desires that they “commit atrocities” to get their way and generally only use reason to justify their actions. The human mind must form a force of good intellect and strong moral character as a guard against falling into these irrational ways, according to Schopenhauer. Critical thinking is a way to strengthen the mind and develop good character traits (i.e. diligence), so it should be encouraged by all means. Regurgitation may become fuel for selfish desires (i.e. laziness) because of how easy and mentally painless it is, so it must be discouraged.

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Debt Rattle May 15 2023

May 152023
 
 May 15, 2023  Posted by at 9:11 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  38 Responses »


Alessandro Allori Portrait of a Lady c1560

 

• Wagner Chief Offered To Give Russian Troop Locations To Ukraine (WaPo)
• WaPo Deletes Part of Zelensky Interview Accusing It Of Aiding Russia (Antiwar)
• Here Are The Zelensky ‘Treason’ Quotes The Washington Post Deleted (RT)
• Western Pressure Can ‘Screw Up’ Ukrainian Counteroffensive: Ex-US General (RT)
• Ukraine Now De-Facto ‘State-Sponsor Of Terrorism’ – Kremlin (RT)
• White Supremacy Is ‘Most Dangerous Threat’ To US – Biden (RT)
• The Charlemagne Prize for Hypocrisy and Mass Murder (Vogel)
• G7 and EU To Ban Restart Of Russian Gas Pipelines (RT)
• Play it Again Uncle Sam… Debunked Syrian Chemical Weapons Card in Ukraine (SCF)
• Deliver Us from Reality (Kimball)
• The Dynamics Driving The Dollar Down (Macleod)
• Never Forget: A Retrospective On The Media Lies Surrounding COVID (ZH)
• Assange Allies Turn to Squire Patton Boggs to Help Lobby DOJ (BBL)

 

 

 

 

Whistleblowers

 

 

 

 

Soros Ukr

 

 

 

 

Macgregor

 

 

 

 

Prygozhin talks to Kiev. But does he offer to give up military secrets? That’s a stretch.

• Wagner Chief Offered To Give Russian Troop Locations To Ukraine (WaPo)

In late January, with his mercenary forces dying by the thousands in a fight for the ruined city of Bakhmut, Wagner Group owner Yevgeniy Prigozhin made Ukraine an extraordinary offer. Prigozhin said that if Ukraine’s commanders withdrew their soldiers from the area around Bakhmut, he would give Kyiv information on Russian troop positions, which Ukraine could use to attack them. Prigozhin conveyed the proposal to his contacts in Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate, with whom he has maintained secret communications during the course of the war, according to previously unreported U.S. intelligence documents leaked on the group-chat platform Discord. Prigozhin has publicly feuded with Russian military commanders, who he furiously claims have failed to equip and resupply his forces, which have provided vital support to Moscow’s war effort. But he is also an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who might well regard Prigozhin’s offer to trade the lives of Wagner fighters for Russian soldiers as a treasonous betrayal.


The leaked document does not make clear which Russian troop positions Prigozhin offered to disclose. Two Ukrainian officials confirmed that Prigozhin has spoken several times to the Ukrainian intelligence directorate, known as HUR. One official said that Prigozhin extended the offer regarding Bakhmut more than once, but that Kyiv rejected it because officials don’t trust Prigozhin and thought his proposals could have been disingenuous. A U.S. official also cautioned that there are similar doubts in Washington about Prigozhin’s intentions. The Ukrainian and U.S. officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information. In an interview with The Washington Post this month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would not confirm the contacts with Prigozhin. “This is a matter of [military] intelligence,” he said. The Ukrainian leader also objected to airing classified information publicly and said he believed that the leaks had benefited Russia.

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Zelensky doesn’t appear to get it. This is the Discord leaks.

• WaPo Deletes Part of Zelensky Interview Accusing It Of Aiding Russia (Antiwar)

The Washington Post deleted a portion of an interview with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, where he accused the paper of helping Russia by posing a question about information contained in leaked classified documents. The interview was conducted on May 1 and published on Saturday. An archived version of the interview shows a testy exchange between Zelensky and the Post, which was later deleted. The Post asked Zelensky about documents they obtained that they said showed members of Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence, known as HUR, had “back-channel contact” with Yevgeny Prigozhin, the head of the Russian mercenary force Wagner Group. Zelensky appeared to think the Post received the information from a Ukrainian and demanded the paper reveal its source.

“I would also like to ask you a question: With which sources from Ukraine do you have contact? Who is talking about the activities of our intelligence? Because this is the most severe felony in our country. Which Ukrainians are you talking to?” he said. The Post said the information “did not come from Ukraine” and that it was part of the Discord leaks, which revealed information that was obtained by the US spying on Zelensky. The Post said the documents showed Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence, informed Zelensky about a “Russian plan to destabilize Moldova with two former Wagner associates.” The Post added: “Budanov informed you that he viewed the Russian scheme as a way to incriminate Prigozhin because ‘we have dealings’ with him.

You instructed Budanov to inform Moldovan President Maia Sandu, and Budanov told you that the GUR [HUR] had informed Prigozhin that he would be labeled a traitor who has been working with Ukraine. The document also says that Budanov expected the Russians to use details of Prigozhin’s secret talks with the GUR [HUR] and meetings with GUR [HUR] officers in Africa.” Zelensky responded by asking if the paper wanted the help Russia. “You are releasing some sort of information that does not help our state to attack and does not help us to defend our state. So, I don’t quite understand what you are talking about. I don’t quite understand your goal. Is your goal to help Russia?” he said. When the Post responded by saying it didn’t want to help Russia, Zelensky replied, “Well, it looks different.”

It’s not clear why the Post deleted the portion of the interview, but it could have been done at the behest of the Ukrainian government, which had previously pressured CBS News to remove a documentary on military aid to Ukraine. On Sunday night, the Post published a report on the HUR’s alleged contacts with Prighozhin. The report said Prighozhin, who is known to speak out against Russian military leadership, offered to give Ukraine information on Russian troop positions if Ukrainian forces withdrew from Bakhmut. But the report said US and Ukrainian officials thought the proposal was disingenuous. Prigozhin on Sunday made light of the allegations about his contacts with the HUR. According to the Post, he met with Ukrainian intelligence officials in an unnamed country in Africa. “Yes of course I can confirm this information, we have nothing to hide from the foreign special services. Budanov and I are still in Africa,” Prighozhin wrote on Telegram.

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There’s more at the URL.

• Here Are The Zelensky ‘Treason’ Quotes The Washington Post Deleted (RT)

The Washington Post has deleted a large tract of an interview with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky in which he lashed out at alleged “traitors” in his ranks. RT is publishing the entire section that the US newspaper would rather keep hidden. The following section appeared in an interview with the Ukrainian president published on Saturday. By Sunday it had been removed with no explanation. After discussing a trove of recently leaked Pentagon documents, which revealed – among other things – that the US monitors Zelensky’s communications, the newspaper presented him with a fresh allegation that has not yet been reported in the US media. Note that Evgeny Prigozhin is the founder and head of the Wagner Group, a Russian private military company currently fighting in the Donetsk People’s Republic.

WaPo: The documents indicate that GUR, your intelligence directorate, has back-channel contact with Evgeny Prigozhin that you were aware of, including meeting with Evgeny Prigozhin and GUR officers. Is that true?

Zelensky: This is a matter of [military] intelligence. Do you want me to be convicted of state treason? And so, it’s very interesting, if someone is saying that you have documents, or if someone from our government is speaking about the activities of our intelligence, I would also like to ask you a question: With which sources from Ukraine do you have contact? Who is talking about the activities of our intelligence? Because this is the most severe felony in our country. Which Ukrainians are you talking to?

WaPo: I talked to officials in government, but these documents are not from Ukraine, they are from…

Zelensky: It doesn’t matter where the documents are from. The question is with which Ukrainian official did you talk? Because if they say something about our intelligence, that’s treason. If they say something about a specific offensive plan of one general or another, this is also treason. That’s why I asked you, which Ukrainians are you talking to?

WaPo: About these specific documents? You are the first person I am talking to about them.

Zelensky: Okay.

WaPo: And I can read you what information exactly there is about Prigozhin and the GUR. On February 13, Kirill Budanov, chief of Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence, informed you about a Russian plan to destabilize Moldova with two former Wagner associates. Budanov informed you that he viewed the Russian scheme as a way to incriminate Prigozhin because “we have dealings” with him. You instructed Budanov to inform Moldovan President Maia Sandu, and Budanov told you that the GUR had informed Prigozhin that he would be labeled a traitor who has been working with Ukraine. The document also says that Budanov expected the Russians to use details of Prigozhin’s secret talks with the GUR and meetings with GUR officers in Africa…

Zelensky: Listen, to be honest, well, you just read something, you say something. I just don’t understand where you get it, whom you talk to and so on. You talk about how I met with Budanov. This suggests that you – how do you put it? It looks like you have people who have some records or you have some evidence or you have something, because that’s what it looks like. You are again doing, I apologize, what you were doing before. You are releasing some sort of information that does not help our state to attack and does not help us to defend our state. So, I don’t quite understand what you are talking about. I don’t quite understand your goal. Is your goal to help Russia? I mean, that means we have different goals. If I’m not sitting at the same table with them, I don’t quite understand what we’re talking about. Each of these inquiries simply demotivates Ukraine, demotivates certain partners to help Ukraine. Well, one way or another, I just don’t understand your goal.

WaPo: Our goal is not to help Russia.

Zelensky: Well, it looks different.

WaPo: No one gave us this information personally. These were in the leaked documents, which do indicate, as I said earlier, that the United States is listening in on you.

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“..This narrative is promoted by those who “don’t want to see Ukraine win..”

• Western Pressure Can ‘Screw Up’ Ukrainian Counteroffensive: Ex-US General (RT)

The West could sabotage Ukraine’s much-hyped anticipated counteroffensive against Russia by piling up too much pressure on Kiev, a retired US general has warned. In an interview to Business Insider released on Thursday, Ben Hodges, former commander of US Army Europe, cautioned that portraying Ukraine’s push to reclaim lost territories as a make-or-break offensive could set a dangerous precedent and derail it even before its starts. “The only thing I think that can screw this up is if the West exerts so much pressure on Ukraine and it causes them to stop short of a total victory,” he told the outlet. Echoing remarks by some top Ukrainian officials, Hodges went on to say that he would “reject the talk that Ukraine’s only got one shot” at the offensive, and if it fails to “achieve a knockout blow,” then its Western backers would stop supporting Kiev.

This narrative is promoted by those who “don’t want to see Ukraine win,” he added. Hodges also noted that many top White House officials “are not committed to Ukraine absolutely winning,” rebuking the administration of US President Joe Biden for failing to clearly define its strategic objectives in the conflict. With speculation rampant in recent months about an imminent spring push, in late March Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba attempted to downplay its significance, saying that “we should counter by all means the perception of the counteroffensive as the decisive battle of the war.”

Earlier this week, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky claimed that Kiev was ready for the offensive, but still needed a bit more time for the conditions to become optimal and for the groundwork to be laid so as to avoid “unacceptable” losses. However, in late March General Mark Milley, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, voiced skepticism about the planned offensive, warning that Ukraine would have a hard time “kicking every Russian out” of the territories it claims as its own. In April, commenting on the potential move by Kiev, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov said that the Russian military “thoroughly tracks all the relevant information.”

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This implicates us who support them.

• Ukraine Now De-Facto ‘State-Sponsor Of Terrorism’ – Kremlin (RT)

Ukraine has de-facto turned into a “state-sponsor of terrorism,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. The official made the remarks in an interview with journalist Pavel Zarubin that aired on Sunday. The spokesman was asked for comments about a recent pledge by Ukraine’s military intelligence chief Kirill Budanov, who vowed to “keep killing Russians anywhere” across the globe. Despite their explosive nature, the remarks did not face any criticism from Kiev’s Western sponsors, Peskov noted. “The statement is unprecedented in its essence. And of course, it will be strange not to hear any words of condemnation from European capitals and from Washington. Logic says it’s impossible to do without condemnation,” he said. Budanov’s admission was yet further proof that Kiev has been directly orchestrating terrorist attacks against Russians, Peskov added.

The spokesman said that Russia’s “special services know what to do after such statements,” but did not elaborate on the potential countermeasures against such activities. “It’s evident that the Kiev regime is behind the killings, not only sponsoring them, but organizes, incites and carries them out. De-facto, we’re talking about a state-sponsor of terrorism.” The controversial remarks were made last week by the boss of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Main Directorate of Intelligence (GUR) in an interview with Yahoo News. Budanov boasted that “we’ve been killing Russians” and will “keep killing Russians anywhere on the face of this world until the complete victory of Ukraine.” The statement came in response to a question whether the GUR had anything to do with last year’s murder of Darya Dugina, a journalist and daughter of prominent Russian philosopher Aleksandr Dugin. Budanov dismissed accusations of engaging in terrorism, stating that what Russia calls “terrorism, we call liberation.”

The terrorist activities that Moscow has attributed to Kiev have picked up in recent months. In April, for instance, Russian military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky was killed in St Petersburg with an improvised explosive device that had been concealed in a statuette handed to him during an event. The blast killed the blogger on the spot and injured over a dozen others. Russia’s Security Service (FSB) has blamed the blast on “Ukrainian special services and their agents, including fugitive members of the Russian opposition.” Last week, Russian author and political activist Zakhar Prilepin was targeted in a car bombing near the city of Nizhny Novgorod. The blast left Prilepin critically injured, and killed his close associate, who was inside the vehicle at the moment of the attack.

Read more …

Plenty old videos with Joe as supremacist.

• White Supremacy Is ‘Most Dangerous Threat’ To US – Biden (RT)

In a speech to black college graduates on Saturday, US President Joe Biden labeled ‘white supremacy’ the most dangerous terrorist threat to the US. The statement – which is contradicted by crime statistics – was condemned by conservative pundits. “White supremacy… is the single most dangerous terrorist threat in our homeland,” Biden told graduates from Howard University, a historically black university (HBCU) in Washington DC. “I’m not just saying this because I’m at a black HBCU. I say this wherever I go,” Biden continued. “Fearless progress toward justice often means ferocious pushback from the oldest and most sinister of forces. That’s because hate never goes away… it only hides under the rocks.”

Throughout his time in office, Biden has often talked up the threat of white supremacy, claiming that belief in the superiority of the white race motivated former President Donald Trump’s supporters to riot at the US Capitol in January 2021, and declaring last year that black people live in fear of being “gunned down by weapons of war deployed in a racist cause.” In mid-2021, the Biden administration published the US government’s first ever National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism, which named “racially motivated violent extremists” and anti-government extremists as “the two most lethal elements of today’s domestic terrorism threat.”

According to FBI crime statistics, the average Howard University graduate is 11 times more likely to be murdered by a member of their own race than a white perpetrator. While African-Americans commit the majority of all violent crime in the US, most crime – whether committed by white or black Americans – is intraracial. Biden’s statement was condemned by conservative pundits, who accused the president of using divisive rhetoric to solicit votes. “The Democratic Party spent most of the 19th Century and much of the 20th using overt racism to win elections,” libertarian activist Jon Miltimore tweeted, adding that “They are doing it again in the 21st century. The racism just looks a lot different than the 19th century version.” Journalist Julie Kelly called Biden a “pathological liar” and accused him of fueling “dangerous racial division.”

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“exceptional work performed in the service of European unity.”

• The Charlemagne Prize for Hypocrisy and Mass Murder (Vogel)

On Sunday, 14 May 2023, Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky will receive the Charlemagne Prize for “exceptional work performed in the service of European unity.” The Prize will be given to Zelensky himself and to the Ukrainian people. The official citation is full of praise, lofty terms and high ideals, but somehow there is a ring of insincerity about it. Obviously, the Prize is given because eight years after starting a war against what it claims to be its own citizens, the Ukraine is now engaged in a real battle with its Russian neighbor. After shelling cities of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, killing at least some 15,000 civilians and wounding countless others, Ukrainian soldiers and their NATO mentors now have to face a real enemy.

With European nations, as members of NATO and US vassal states, participating in brutal killing sprees in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, and given the violent past of nations like England, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Sweden and Denmark, what right do they have of lecturing Russia? The citation speaks of “an unspeakably brutal Russian war of aggression that contravenes international law, directed against the European Social Order, Security Order and Peace Order, with the objective of destabilising the European community of peoples…” As for upholding the principle of sovereignty that the EU supposedly holds so high and for which Zelensky is being praised to the skies, like everything else in the citation, it is a cynical sham. If the Ukraine is entitled to sovereignty and independence, what about Catalonia?

The last time the Catalans, who since the 17th century have desperately wanted to be sovereign and independent, tried to achieve this peacefully, they were brutally repressed by the government in Madrid and the unelected apparatchiks in the European Commission in Brussels. The European values defended by the guy with the hoarse voice and the olive green t-shirt are actually the same as those of the years 1941-45 when all of Europe was in the East trying to defeat the Red Army. Nevertheless, the Charlemagne Prize citation says about Zelensky and the Ukraine: “His country is defending Western values, unassailable principles of coexistence, peace and freedom, and therefore precisely what the European Union stands for politically.” All of it pure baloney.

Since 1950, the German city of Aachen has been giving the annual prize for helping to promote “European unity.” In 1955, it was given to Sir Winston Churchill who, only eleven years before, had in fact been responsible for flattening the ancient city with all its priceless monuments and killing almost two thousand of its citizens. Apparently, the Prize Committee believed that killing men, women and children with aerial bombardments was “exceptional work performed in the service of European unity.” The Committee still held that view half a century later when it gave the Charlemagne Prize to Tony Blair (1999), Bill Clinton (2000) and Javier Solana (2007). In their respective functions as British Prime Minister, US President and NATO Secretary General, this trio was responsible for destroying the European nation of Yugoslavia and bombing the European nation of Serbia, killing thousands of Serbian men, women and children. Many of those who escaped NATO bombs were contaminated by radioactive material from the depleted uranium munitions dropped on Serbia. Indeed, “exceptional work performed in the service of European unity.”

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Wait till it gets colder.

• G7 and EU To Ban Restart Of Russian Gas Pipelines (RT)

The G7 and EU will ban Russian gas imports on routes where Moscow has cut supplies, according to officials involved in the negotiations, the first time pipeline gas trade has been blocked by Western powers since the invasion of Ukraine, Report informs via the Financial Times. The decision, which is to be finalized by G7 leaders at a summit in Hiroshima next week, will prevent the resumption of Russian pipeline gas exports on routes to countries such as Poland and Germany, where Moscow cut off supplies last year and triggered an energy crisis across Europe. Western powers want to ensure that Russia does not receive a boost to its energy revenues as they attempt to raise economic pressure 15 months after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

One of the officials, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity, said the move was “to make sure that partners don’t change their mind in a hypothetical future”. A draft G7 statement seen by the Financial Times said that the group of leading economies would further reduce their use of Russian energy sources “including preventing the reopening of avenues previously shut down by Russia’s weaponization of energy” at least until “there is a resolution of the conflict”. While the measures are unlikely to affect any immediate gas flows, it underscores a deep determination in Brussels to make permanent the rapid and painful pivot away from decades of reliance on Russian energy. The ban is highly symbolic because, at the start of the war, the EU had avoided targeting pipeline flows given their huge dependence on Moscow’s gas. Russia went ahead and cut supplies anyway, sparking a surge in gas prices to more than 10 times their normal level.

But in recent months prices have fallen substantially as Europe successfully cut demand over winter, accelerated the roll out of renewable energy and sourced alternative supplies such as seaborne cargoes of LNG. Moscow’s share of the European gas imports has fallen from more than 40 percent to less than 10 percent, and a mild winter has boosted gas storage in the EU. Officials are confident that gas storage, which is already some 60 percent full compared with roughly 30 percent at the same time in 2022, will reach capacity long before the next winter arrives. Oil pipelines where Russia has cut supplies, including the northern leg of the Druzhba line that supplies refineries in Germany and Poland, could also be blocked under EU measures to prevent a resumption in flows.

The embargo is being discussed by diplomats as part of the EU’s 11th sanctions package. The commission said it would not comment on sanctions discussions or leaks. One EU diplomat said that the proposal needed more clarification from Brussels to show how the “status quo” would change, particularly as some oil from Kazakhstan flows through Druzhba. “It has to be clear exactly how it would work,” they said. Berlin and Warsaw, despite having an exemption from sanctions on Russian oil, said that they would voluntarily end deliveries of crude through Druzhba last year although Poland continued to receive supplies until Russia cut off flows in February. German refineries stopped ordering Russian crude from the beginning of this year.

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Aaron Maté territory.

• Play it Again Uncle Sam… Debunked Syrian Chemical Weapons Card in Ukraine (SCF)

The CW card is a complete dud. That Western media are playing it shows that their role is as sinister as mass drug-dealing. Western media are now accusing Russian forces of preparing to use chemical weapons (CW) of mass destruction in Ukraine, thereby making the case for greater NATO military intervention. The CW card is a complete dud. That Western media are playing it shows they are also complete duds, and that their role is as sinister as mass drug-dealing. Deliberate provocation by Western powers is the watchword. Britain this week supplying long-range missiles, as well as depleted uranium artillery shells, and drone attacks on the Kremlin are part of a sequence to solicit never-ending escalation. Accusing Russia of planning to use chemical weapons of mass destruction, as with earlier claims of Russia willing to use nuclear weapons, is all part of the orchestrated provocation.

The degradation of Western media standards has become so bad that they can get away with retailing such nonsense to consumers of this “information”. First of all, Russia does not have any chemical weapons. As a signatory to the international treaty known as the Chemical Weapons Convention (1997), the Russian Federation verifiably destroyed all of its arsenals as per its signatory obligations. The complete decommissioning of these weapons by Russia in 2017 was verified by the Organization for the Prohibition on Chemical Weapons (OPCW). The United States is the only major power that has not fully implemented the CW convention by retaining stockpiles of these weapons. Not only is speculation about Russian forces possibly using CW in Ukraine baseless, but the Western media are also deploying the shoddy lie used earlier against Syria. Incredibly, for anyone cognizant of the facts, such calumny is still peddled to blame the wrong people when the real perpetrator in Syria was Western-backed militants and their CIA and MI6-sponsored media accomplices, the so-called White Helmets.

Western media continue to claim that the Syrian government forces of Bashar al Assad used CW against civilians during the decade-old civil war in the Arab country. Russia supported the Syrian army to defeat NATO-backed radical extremists. Now the Western media are moralizing that the United States and other Western powers took no punitive action against Syria over CW which, it is contended, is acting as a precedent for Russia to use these weapons in the Ukraine conflict. Euronews quotes Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former British military intelligence officer, as saying: “The international community needs to reaffirm that any use of chemical or biological weapons would not be acceptable in any shape or form… I’m sure NATO and the West would act if they [Russia] used chemical weapons in Ukraine. But having said that they stood by when Assad used such weapons in Syria and that might embolden Putin.”

This is an outrageous lie being propagated by the Western media. It has been documented by independent investigations that the CW attacks in Syria were actually carried out by NATO-backed mercenaries in false-flag operations to provoke Western military intervention. One of those false flags in the city of Douma in April 2018 succeeded in its nefarious aims. Following the incident – dutifully amplified at the time by Western media for gaslighting the Western public – U.S. President Donald Trump bombed Syria “in revenge” along with British and French allies. However, it turned out later that Syria, Russia and Iran were vindicated in their initial claims that the CW incidents in Syria were false-flag stunts. Indeed, it was shown that personnel in the UN watchdog, the OPCW, engaged in a cover-up to implicate the Assad government when the real perpetrator was the jihadists backed by the West, as reported by Aaron Maté and other independent journalists.

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The defence fund for former Marine Daniel Penny is at $1.6 million.

• Deliver Us from Reality (Kimball)

“Because he can.” That’s the answer one has to give to those who ask how Alvin Bragg, a local district attorney in office by the slimmest of margins—and then only because of a huge subsidy from the anti-American billionaire George Soros—can get away with antics like indicting Donald Trump, a former (and, possibly, future) president of the United States, and, now, with charging former Marine Daniel Penny with manslaughter because he (along with at least two others) intervened to stop Jordan Neely from attacking fellow passengers on a New York subway. Because he can. As a friend remarked when digesting the spectacle of Penny being led away in handcuffs, totalitarian movements often start slowly, almost timidly, but as they gain power, they become more brazen. After a certain point, they do outrageous things just to intimidate the public and demonstrate their power.

We now know that the FBI, the CIA, and other elements of America’s security apparatus intervened directly in the decision making of Twitter and other social media companies to influence the course of the 2020 election. One part of that intervention had to do with organizing 51 senior former intelligence figures to sign a letter declaring that Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation.” That was a lie. They knew it was a lie. It didn’t matter. They did it because they knew they could get away with it. The United States is on the verge of being inundated with thousands upon thousands of illegal aliens. Many are from South or Central America. Hundreds are from China, even though they are crossing that notional line we used to be able to call, without irony, our southern border. Why did the Biden Administration decide to enact a real-life Camp of the Saints invasion of the United States? Because it could. There was no immediate price to pay.

In her classic study, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt makes several observations that bear on our current situation. “There is no doubt,” she observes, “that the elite was pleased whenever the underworld frightened respectable society into accepting it on an equal footing. The members of the elite did not object at all to paying a price, the destruction of civilization, for the fun of seeing how those who had been excluded unjustly in the past forced their way into it. They were not particularly outraged at the monstrous forgeries in historiography of which all totalitarian regimes are guilty and which announce themselves clearly enough and totalitarian propaganda.”

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“..currency as a medium of exchange which allows us to turn our production into our consumption..”

• The Dynamics Driving The Dollar Down (Macleod)

John Maynard Keynes did the world a disservice with his offhand dismissal of Say’s law. Consequently, economists have lost the true relationship between production and consumption. And we have lost our understanding of the true role of currencies as a medium of exchange. Nearly all our economic errors have flowed from this dismissal. In order to understand the seriousness of it with respect to the dollar today, the denial of Say’s law is no less than a denial of the division of labour. Yet, plainly, the division of labour is the basis of all human economic activity. Without having something to sell, we cannot buy the things we need which we are unable to provide for ourselves efficiently or easily. Where we differ from other animals is that we develop our personal skills to maximise the value of our specialised production so that we can increase our wider consumption for the greatest relief of our needs and desires.

Our individual skills are the key that provides our wealth. And it is the role of currency as a medium of exchange which allows us to turn our production into our consumption. Several things follow from this truism. One is that if we reduce our total production, we reduce our total consumption, because the former leads to the latter. No, say the Keynesians, who put it the other way round. They say that if we reduce our consumption there will be a general glut of goods on the market and then prices will fall, leading to unemployment. The error is to not understand that first we must produce in order to consume, so that there cannot be a general glut, only changes in the level of productive output which are broadly matched by changes in overall consumption.

Surely, this can be easily understood even by non-experts. But this deliberate error — for that is what it can only have been — has led to a misunderstanding of the role of the medium of exchange. It provides the means to exchange goods of unequal value: for example, a cobbler makes shoes and boots, whose unit value will be greater than the individual food items he requires daily to feed his family. It also provides producers with the credit required to finance production, paying costs incurred before a final product is sold and creditors repaid. This is the essence of trade. And so long as transacting individuals only produce to consume, the expansion and contraction of the sum total of money and credit purely in connection with that trade cannot alter their value in terms of goods and services generally. Not so, say Keynes’s macroeconomists, now joined in chorus by the monetarists. They claim that expansion of money and credit alters the general price relation. Both believe in manipulating credit to this end.

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“..the most aggressive global propaganda attack in modern history..”

• Never Forget: A Retrospective On The Media Lies Surrounding COVID (ZH)

Lest we get too comfortable once again and forget that only a couple years ago the western world was on the verge of perpetual medical tyranny, it is important to look back at the massive media disinformation campaign concerning the effectiveness (or lack of effectiveness) of the pandemic mandates and the mRNA vaccines. Only two years ago, the public was bombarded by possibly the most aggressive global propaganda attack in modern history. And, this campaign was a conjoined effort between national governments, global institutions and corporations.


Keep in mind, all the hysteria was generated over a virus with a median official Infection Fatality Rate of only 0.23%. That’s right, all the fear mongering featured in the video below was in reaction to a “pandemic” that 99.8% of the population would easily survive, and this death rate was known only months after the spread started. Also keep in mind that essentially every single claim made by the media concerning covid featured below ended up being false. In many cases, the media knew that scientific evidence ran contrary to their narrative, but they promoted that narrative anyway. Enjoy this flashback of corporate media covid fear mongering, and never forget…

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No play no pay?

• Assange Allies Turn to Squire Patton Boggs to Help Lobby DOJ (BBL)

A WikiLeaks fundraising organization has hired Squire Patton Boggs to lobby the Justice Department on behalf of the site’s publisher, Julian Assange, amid his espionage charges, according to public records and three sources familiar with the matter. German foundation Wau Holland has paid Squire at least $1.2 million since last October to push DOJ on journalists’ rights to publish classified information, federal disclosures show. The sources said the global law and public policy firm has been seeking a meeting with the department to discuss how the espionage case against Assange holds up in light of Attorney General Merrick Garland’s recent policy to protect journalists from enforcement actions.

The hiring of one of Washington’s most storied and influential firms marks an escalation of a years-long public advocacy campaign. Advocates haven’t yet succeeded in persuading the Biden administration to abandon the Trump-era prosecution of Assange for publishing classified war documents. There’s no sign the two Squire attorneys listed on the lobbying disclosures—both former government lawyers—have made headway in convening with DOJ officials to understand how Assange’s charges mesh with Garland’s press-friendly approach. But their campaign on behalf of someone condemned by members of both political parties, which hasn’t been previously reported, represents the Big Law firm’s most lucrative federally-disclosed work over the past six months.

Assange is a polarizing figure due to his high-profile national security breaches and publication of hacked Democratic National Committee emails in 2016. He was arrested in 2019 in London on a US warrant and remains detained as he fights his extradition. Squire’s efforts align with press freedom and civil liberties groups, major news outlets, and the House’s progressive wing, who have warned that extraditing Assange from the UK and putting him on trial in US court would threaten First Amendment rights. [..] Squire received $600,000 from the Wau Holland Foundation in each of the prior two quarters starting in October 2022, according to lobbying filings disclosed in mid-April. The foundation, a longtime Assange and WikiLeaks financer, enlisted the firm to lobby DOJ on “First Amendment issues related to the publication by journalists of classified information,” Squire said in the filings.

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Khan

 

 

 

 

Leopard

 

 

 

 

Deepest fish

 

 

Big cats

 

 

Orca
https://twitter.com/i/status/1657400282165448705

 

 

Boobies
https://twitter.com/i/status/1657536293318868993

 

 

 

 

 

 

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