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Debt Rattle October 25 2024

Oct 252024
 
 October 25, 2024  Posted by at 8:51 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  68 Responses »


Rembrandt van Rijn Study of the Head and Clasped Hands of a Young Man as Christ in Prayer 1655

 

• Harris Claims Trump Is Literally Hitler As Dems Enter Election Panic Mode (ZH)
• Dems: Trump Was Going To Be Hitler During His First Term, But He Forgot (BBee)
• Trump Responds To Harris Over Hitler Comment (RT)
• The Press and Pundits Face Devastating Polls on Threat to Democracy (Turley)
• Word Salad City (ZH)
• Kamala’s Inane Talking Points (Victor Davis Hanson)
• Why is Bill Gates Backing Kamala Harris Using Shady Super PAC? (Sp.)
• ‘No Justice In The West’ – Putin (RT)
• Russia To Seize Income From Frozen Western Assets – Finance Minister (RT)
• US Making ‘Big Mistake’ By Weaponizing Dollar – Putin (RT)
• West’s Belief It Can Defeat Russia ‘A Mere Illusion’ – Putin (RT)
• Seven NATO Members Against Ukraine Membership – Politico (RT)
• Is Western Civilizational Decline Too Advanced to Be Reversed? (PCR)
• EU President Likens Free Speech to Infectious Disease (Leake)
• F-35’s Ascent and Nosedive: Costliest Weapon in History Hits Fresh Turbulence (Sp.)
• Boeing Workers Reject Wage Deal To End Strike (RT)
• Fighting for More Evidence of Assange’s Political Prosecution (Lauria/Elmaazi)

 

 

 

 

CCR

 

 

Vessel
https://twitter.com/i/status/1849277732653355421

Trump ad
https://twitter.com/i/status/1849117459585925514

RFK

Kirk

ID

Baris

Slain soldier

Calley Means

10 days

Jack Smith
https://twitter.com/i/status/1849198408898388084

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Almost everyone expects a civil war to break out over the 2024 election. Trump was commenting on that possible scenario..”

• Harris Claims Trump Is Literally Hitler As Dems Enter Election Panic Mode (ZH)

No president should be trusted to operate outside the bounds of the US Constitution, this is a lesson that has been repeated on multiple occasions throughout American history. Each president should be held accountable for direct violations of their oath of office and each president should be scrutinized by the American public. With that ideal in mind, it’s interesting that the establishment has devoted so much time and energy to pursuing only one president in recent memory for supposed constitutional violations, and that man is Donald Trump. The numerous trespasses perpetrated by the Clintons, the Bush family, Barack Obama, and the Biden/Harris team have gone completely ignored. Why is it that they get a pass while Trump is placed under an electron microscope? Keep in mind, only a couple years ago the American public was embroiled in a life-or-death battle to stop their constitutional rights from being erased forever by the Biden Administration and their globalist handlers.

Biden’s vaccine passport efforts were particularly troubling; if they had been successful the Bill of Rights would be effectively dead and the federal government would have total control over every detail of civilian life. Good luck keeping a job, going to public places, keeping your kids and staying out of a covid camp should you refuse to take the latest mRNA booster shot. That’s the future Americans were facing under Biden/Harris and the Democrats. Covid hysteria and the government response is exactly what fascism looks like, and a large number of Democrats cheered for these policies. This is why the accusations by the political left calling Donal Trump “literal Hitler” ring rather hollow. They’ve been acting like authoritarians for the past four years they’ve been in power and the hypocrisy is steaming.

Kamala Harris recently held a press briefing to make a statement comparing Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler, an action which smacks of panic in the midst of polling numbers which increasingly show Trump winning by a landslide in November. In only two weeks, the Democrats face a conservative red wave the likes of which hasn’t been seen in decades. It’s obvious they’ve run out of ideas on how to counter this outcome. Harris’ accusation that Trump “wants generals like Hitler had” is based on a hearsay claim from Gen. John Kelly. This is the same man that Trump fired while in office for incompetence. The same man that claimed in 2023 that Trump called military casualties “suckers” and “losers”. There is no proof to verify any of Kelly’s assertions.

[..] It is true, though, that Trump suggested using the National Guard to stop leftist riots. Trump noted in an interview with Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo in an interview on “Sunday Morning Futures” that: “I think the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people. Radical left lunatics…” “I think it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen…”

The corporate media has latched onto this narrative, suggesting that this is a precursor to a fascist future. But if one remembers back to the days of the BLM riots and burning cities, the idea of National Guard intervention makes perfect sense. Military intervention is another matter and it’s fair to debate such a premise. However, let’s not forget that there have been at least two separate and nearly successful assassination attempts against Trump by leftists (both donators to ActBlue). It’s not crazy to suggest that extreme violence on the part of the political left is possible in the event of a Trump win. They’ve proven capable of it on numerous occasions. Almost everyone expects a civil war to break out over the 2024 election. Trump was commenting on that possible scenario.

It’s also unlikely that Americans today are as willing to tolerate mass political violence from leftists the way they did four years ago. Trump addressing the issue bluntly is not an endorsement of Hitler or fascism, its a recognition of the instability of our times. The political left is well aware that they are likely to lose in November; they might be giving their devout followers the green light to become violent post-election using the Hitler narrative as a rationale. If Trump is “literally Hitler” then all violence is justified, is it not?

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“..Trump would have seized the military to install himself as Emperor God during his first term, but luckily he got distracted by making red hats.”

“Babylon Bee CEO Seth Dillon Explains the Challenges of Satire in Today’s Climate — ‘Imagine if Your Job is to Write Jokes That Are Funnier Than a Kamala Harris Speech'”.

• Dems: Trump Was Going To Be Hitler During His First Term, But He Forgot (BBee)

Democrats have warned that if elected a second time, Donald Trump will be an evil dictator just like Adolf Hitler. When asked why Trump didn’t become Hitler during his first term, Democrats explained that he simply forgot. “Trump meant to be Hitler, but he forgot,” explained Vice President Harris in a press conference at the White House. “Being Hitler just totally slipped his mind. Make no mistake, if Trump is elected again, he absolutely plans to turn into Hitler and probably will write himself a reminder this time.” According to retired General John Kelly, former President Trump often talked about how he kept meaning to find time to be Hitler, but he kept getting distracted by other things.

“On several occasions, Trump told me word for word, ‘This is it. This is the week I’m going to go be Hitler.’ But then, Trump would get started doing something like handing out candy to Minions and he would completely forget,” explained Kelly. “This time he has written himself lots of notes telling himself to not forget to turn into literal Hitler. It’s terrifying.” At publishing time, Democrats had warned that Trump would have seized the military to install himself as Emperor God during his first term, but luckily he got distracted by making red hats.

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“This is the type of disgusting rhetoric that led to two assassination attempts against President Trump..”

• Trump Responds To Harris Over Hitler Comment (RT)

The increasingly over-the-top rhetoric of US Vice President Kamala Harris proves she is losing and is unfit for the White House, Republican candidate Donald Trump has said. On Wednesday, Harris attacked Trump as a fascist, would-be dictator and admirer of Adolf Hitler, citing reports from Democrat-party linked media based on claims by his former chief of staff. The Atlantic magazine – owned by Democrat mega-donor Lauren Powell Jobs – published a story by Jeffrey Goldberg suggesting that Trump had expressed admiration for Hitler and his generals during his 2017-2021 term in the White House. Goldberg cited retired US Marine General John Kelly, who served as Trump’s second chief of staff, dredging up claims by two New York Times journalists from their 2022 book. Trump’s team have denied the allegations outright.

“Comrade Kamala Harris sees that she is losing, and losing badly, especially after stealing the Race from Crooked Joe Biden, so now she is increasingly raising her rhetoric, going so far as to call me Adolf Hitler, and anything else that comes to her warped mind,” Trump said on X on Thursday. “She is a Threat to Democracy, and not fit to be President of the United States — And her Polling so indicates!” he added. With less than two weeks to go before the November 5 election, both Harris and her running mate Tim Walz and Democrats in down-ballot races have seen their polling lead evaporate, while Trump and the Republicans have picked up steam. Harris then quoted Goldberg’s report to claim that Trump’s alleged admiration for Hitler was “deeply troubling and incredibly dangerous” and “a window into who Donald Trump really is.” Harris also accused her rival of having “vowed to be a dictator on day one and vowed to use the military as his personal militia to carry out his personal and political vendettas.”

Earlier this week, the Atlantic published another article comparing Trump to Hitler – as well as to Benito Mussolini and Joseph Stalin – written by Anne Applebaum, the wife of Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski. The Trump campaign dismissed Applebaum’s piece as “fake news by a third-rate media outlet.” They argued that Kelly “beclowned himself with these debunked stories he has fabricated” and accused Harris of spreading “outright lies and falsehoods” by treating Goldberg’s allegations as legitimate. “This is the type of disgusting rhetoric that led to two assassination attempts against President Trump,” the campaign wrote. Trump narrowly escaped death at a July 13 rally in Pennsylvania. Another would-be assassin, a pro-Ukrainian activist, was caught last month by the Secret Service lurking at Trump’s golf course in Florida.

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“..this would require federal judges to sign off on the rounding up of MSNBC personalities, all gay people, all reporters, and, of course, Whoopi Goldberg.”

• The Press and Pundits Face Devastating Polls on Threat to Democracy (Turley)

“Democracy dies in darkness” is the Washington Post’s slogan, but can it handle the light? The Post has been doggedly portraying the election between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris as a choice between tyranny (Trump) and democracy (Harris). Yet when it commissioned a poll on threats to democracy shortly before the election, it did not quite work out. Voters in swing states believe that Trump is more likely to protect democracy than Kamala Harris, who is running on a “save democracy” platform. The poll sampled 5,016 registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. When asked whether Trump or Harris “would do a better job” of “defending against threats to democracy,” 43% picked Trump while 40% picked Harris. Notably, this was the same result when President Biden was the nominee.

While over half said that threats to democracy were important to them, the voters trusted Trump (44%) more than Biden (33%) in protecting democracy. Even with the slight improvement for Harris, the result was crushing for not just many in the Harris campaign but the press and pundits who have been unrelenting in announcing the end of democracy if Harris is not elected. Former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) has declared with authority that either you vote for Harris, or this “may well be the last real vote you ever get to cast.” I have long criticized the apocalyptic, democracy-ending predictions of Biden, Harris and others as ignoring the safeguards in our system against authoritarian power. Nevertheless, Harris supporters have ratcheted up the rhetoric to a level of pure hysteria. Recently, Michael Cohen, a convicted felon and Trump’s disbarred former lawyer, told MSNBC that if Trump wins the election, he will “get rid of the judiciary and get rid of the Congress.”

Recently, MSNBC host Al Sharpton and regular Donny Deutsch warned viewers that they will likely be added to an enemies “list” for some type of roundup after a Trump election. MSNBC host Rachel Maddow also joined in the theme of a final stand before the gulag: “For that matter, what convinces you that these massive camps he’s planning are only for migrants? So, yes, I’m worried about me — but only as much as I’m worried about all of us.” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was quick to add her own name to a list that seems to be constantly updated by the media. She told podcast host Kara Swisher, “I mean, it sounds nuts, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this guy threw me in jail.” On ABC’s “The View,” the hosts are becoming indistinguishable from tinfoil-hatted subway prophets. Whoopi Goldberg even explained how Trump is already committed to being a dictator who will “put you people away … take all the journalists … take all the gay folks … move you all around and disappear you.”

Of course, assuming that Cohen is wrong that there will be no courts after a Trump victory, this would require federal judges to sign off on the rounding up of MSNBC personalities, all gay people, all reporters, and, of course, Whoopi Goldberg. All that is required is for over two centuries of constitutional order to fail suddenly, and for virtually every constitutional actor in our system to suddenly embrace tyranny. Those pushing this hysteria often curiously cite the January 6 riot as proof that the end is near. Yet that horrible day was the vindication, not the expiration, of our constitutional system. The system worked. The riot was put down. Congress, including Republicans, reassembled and certified Biden as the next president.

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“Voters asked direct question. Harris gave circular answers.”

• Word Salad City (ZH)

Kamala Harris’ completed another descending spin around her doom loop on Wednesday night: Lagging Trump in battleground states and therefore under pressure to increase her interactions with voters, she participated in a prime-time town hall that only further exposed her as one of the most superficial politicians of our time…with more poll damage sure to follow. The town hall was hosted by CNN and took place in Delaware County. Along with Chester, Bucks and Montgomery, it’s one of four Philadelphia “collar counties” that have traditionally played an outsize role in determining who wins Pennsylvania’s electoral votes. . You know things went bad when even the New York Times raked Harris over the coals for being evasive, saying: “Voters asked direct question. Harris gave circular answers.”

After the event, CNN’s Dana Bash said, “What I’m hearing from people who I’ve been talking to … if her goal was to close the deal, they’re not sure she did that.” Seasoned Democratic operative David Alexrod called out Harris’ signature flaw: “The things that would concern me is when she doesn’t want to answer a question, her habit is to kind of go to Word Salad City.” Harris’ worst sequence of the night came when host Anderson Cooper called out her flip-floppy hypocrisy on the issue of border security. Noting that Harris now supports a bill that would allocate $650 million toward a border wall, Cooper said, “Under Donald Trump, you criticized the wall more than 50 times. You called it stupid, useless and a ‘medieval vanity project.’ Is a border wall stupid?”

By this point, even Cooper had to wonder why he was even bothering to ask questions, given Harris’ refusal to answer them in any kind of straightforward way:

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“..only two criteria matter: Which candidate’s past record and current agenda best appeal to voters? And which candidate seems the most authentic and genuine?”

• Kamala’s Inane Talking Points (Victor Davis Hanson)

As Vice President Kamala Harris slips in the polls, the Democratic National Committee/Harris Campaign/mainstream media fusion talking points become even more absurd. Claiming that J.D. Vance and Donald Trump were “weird” did not work—especially given the genuinely odd behavior of vice presidential candidate Tim Walz and would-be First Gentleman Doug Emhoff. Nor was the next Harris meme convincing that the frenetic and non-stop Trump was somehow “exhausted,” “senile,” and “confused.” Voters know the workdays of the younger Harris are usually far shorter—or sometimes not workdays at all. But Harris also falsely claimed the physically and mentally challenged Biden was, in her words, “absolutely authoritative” and “very bold and vibrant.” Now Harris asserts that Trump is a “fascist,” a “dictator,” and “unfit” for office. But this new talking point will also not stop the Harris campaign’s hemorrhaging—and for a variety of reasons.

First, voters see the election as a conflict of two absolutely antithetical visions. On the one hand, is the prior Trump 2017-20 concrete record: border security, no major wars abroad, calm in the Middle East, a deterred Russia, Iran, and China, low inflation, low interest rates, lower crime, lower taxes, strong deterrent military—and opposition to mandatory electric vehicle mandates, biological males competing in women’s sports, and the woke/DEI agenda. On the other hand, is the Biden-Harris 2021-2024 record: the unchecked entry of 12-20 million illegal aliens and a destroyed border. People still struggle under Biden-Harris’s earlier hyperinflation and high interest rates. The horrific regional wars in Ukraine and the Middle East continue. Biden-Harris embraces the unpopular DEI/Woke agenda. Harris herself knows that the Biden-Harris years were a failure. That is why she has shed almost all of their hard left-wing agendas—policies she has embraced for much of her adult life.

So suddenly, in the last 90 or so days, Harris has completely flipped and flopped. Now she is for more of, not defunding, the police. She pivots for a secure border, not 20 million illegal aliens pouring across it. Harris brags about fossil fuel energy, not banning fracking, and for increasing, not cutting, defense. In fact, several endangered incumbent Democrat senators in swing states are claiming more allegiance to Trump’s issues than identifying with Harris and her unpopular record as vice president. Voters likely conclude that if Trump doubles down on his record, while even Harris and many senators temporarily piggyback on it, then it must be more effective and popular than Harris’s own. Second, Harris now claims Trump is a fascist and insurrectionist. But mouthing ad nausaem “January 6th” no longer persuades voters that Trump is a danger to anyone.

They recall that Harris bragged of the far more violent demonstrations of 2020—35 killed, $2 billion in damage, 1,500 law enforcement officers injured, 14,000 arrested—that the unrest would not and “should not” stop, while drumming up support to bail out jailed violent protestors. Nor does the slur that Trump is a fascist resonate. The Obama and Biden-Harris administrations weaponized the CIA and FBI to interfere in the 2016 and 2020 elections by peddling the fake Steele dossier and suppressing all the embarrassing news about Hunter Biden’s incriminating laptop. Trump certainly did not coordinate, as Biden did, with local, state, and federal prosecutors to wage lawfare prosecutions to destroy his political opponents. He did not use the FBI to partner with social media to suppress the news. Neither Trump nor his supporters tried to remove Biden from state ballots.

The Republican House majority did not impeach Biden twice despite the Biden family’s corruption and Joe Biden’s unlawful, decades-long removal of classified papers to several insecure private residences. Trump and the Republicans never coercively removed the party’s primary-winning nominee. They did not nullify the will of 14 million primary voters. And in backroom fashion, they did not anoint a candidate who had never entered a single primary in her life. Nor did Trump support packing the Supreme Court. He does not seek unconstitutional means of destroying the Electoral College. He is not demanding an end to the Senate filibuster or the creation of two new states to obtain four partisan senate seats. Third, as for Trump being “unfit” and lacking “decorum,” it depends on what were the Biden-Harris standards?

Having a trans activist reveal his breasts on camera at a White House “pride party?” Biden’s reportedly calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a f—ing idiot” and “son of a b—ch?” Bragging about locking Trump up, while waging lawfare against him? Unleashing son Hunter Biden with impunity to shake down foreign governments? The election will not be decided on these empty talking points or fake media-generated narratives. Instead, only two criteria matter: Which candidate’s past record and current agenda best appeal to voters? And which candidate seems the most authentic and genuine?

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“Gates enjoyed a profits bonanza off mRNA coronavirus vaccines mandated by the Biden administration…”

• Why is Bill Gates Backing Kamala Harris Using Shady Super PAC? (Sp.)

Tech billionaire, philanthropist and WEF cheerleader Bill Gates has given Kamala Harris’s campaign a $50 mln boost using dark money super PAC Future Forward. The donation was intended to remain secret, but was uncovered by NYT this week. Set up in 2018 by former Obama campaign staffers and coming out of left field in the final weeks of the 2020 race to fund a massive pro-Biden media blitz, Future Forward is a super political action committee funded mostly by Big Tech and venture capital firms, including Meta*, Google, disgraced crypto financier Sam Bankman-Fried, Bain Capital and Bridgewater Associates. The super PAC has raised a whopping $700 mln for the 2024 election cycle, rolling out $75 mln in pro-Harris ads last week. 2024 is at least the second election cycle where Gates has used a dark money vehicle to support the Democratic Party’s candidate.

In 2020, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation contributed nearly $70 mln to the New Venture Fund, a nonprofit belonging to DC consultancy Arabella Advisors, which bankrolls the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a goliath of undisclosed donations for Democratic politicians and liberal causes which raised nearly $390 mln four years ago. Publicly, Gates and his now former wife also gave $500,000 to Biden’s inaugural committee. Mr. Gates has been an active supporter of Democratic candidates since at least 2008, contributing financially to and praising the campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Gates’ ties to the Clintons are deeply rooted, with the billionaire becoming a top donor to the Clinton Foundation, and forging partnerships with the organization for global projects since at least 2013. In a telling interview in 2016 in which he explained his preference for Clinton, Gates said “there have been questions about vaccines in general where some of the candidates have shown that they’re not as up to date about vaccines in general, and that’s got to be a concern.”

“Science in general, whether it’s GMOs or vaccines, there’s a lot of people out there who don’t give science the benefit of the doubt. In terms of experience, Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton have more experience in global health,” Gates said at the time. With Harris’ presidential bid expected to broadly continue the Biden/Clinton line on foreign and domestic policy, it makes sense for Gates to throw his influence behind the VP, given the perceived threat of the Trump brand of red-pill MAGA Republicans and their anti-vax, anti-tech, and anti-interventionist leanings. “This election is different, with unprecedented significance for Americans and the most vulnerable people around the world,” Gates said this week after info about his $50 mln donation leaked out. “I think it’s great to have somebody who’s younger, who can think about things like AI and how we shape that in the right way, and I certainly offer up my opinions to the politicians who are interested,” Gates said this summer after Biden dropped out and named Harris his successor.

The Gates Foundation’s fortunes got a big boost under Biden, with its endowment growing from $69 bln in 2020 to $75.2 bln in 2023. Gates enjoyed a profits bonanza off mRNA coronavirus vaccines mandated by the Biden administration. In 2022, he sold off shares of BioNTech stocks he bought in 2019 as sales slowed. His foundation has also owned shares in Pfizer, CureVac and Vir Biotech going back to well before the pandemic. The billionaire’s foundation supports the Global Virome Project – an ambitious initiative created in 2018 to predict pathogens that could trigger lethal pandemics, but accused of weaponizing viruses from a network of 150 biolabs worldwide. Gates has also backed a broad array of World Economic Forum-affiliated initiatives, including projects to reduce emissions and create synthetic meat and dairy. In 2022, The Seattle Times revealed Gates’ secret lobbying to save Biden’s signature $2+ trln Build Back Better social and climate spending package.

Gates has also been a top backer of the Biden administration’s battle against media and online ‘misinformation’, with an explosive MintPress investigation from 2021 revealing that his foundation had bankrolled some $319 mln in media, including CNN, the BBC, Le Monde, the Financial Times, Der Spiegel and others to ensure favorable coverage of his agenda and that of his allies.

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“Is this just? There is no justice here,” Putin said. “We want to change this. And we will.”

• ‘No Justice In The West’ – Putin (RT)

Moscow has had enough of the West’s impunity and hypocrisy and intends to ensure that there is justice in the world again, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said. Putin spoke to journalists, including many from Western outlets, at the end of the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia on Thursday. “Is it just to lie to our faces that NATO will not expand, and then [expand] it?” Putin asked BBC’s Steve Rosenberg, in response to his inquiry. “Is it fair to carry out a coup d’etat, spitting on all principles of law, and funding a coup in Ukraine?” he added, referring to the 2014 Maidan ‘revolution’ backed by Washington.

“Is this just? There is no justice here,” Putin said. “We want to change this. And we will.” The Russian president also dismissed as “nonsense” the claims that Moscow was somehow behind “mayhem” on British streets. Whatever may be happening in the UK is the result of London’s own policies, Putin said. The head of the British Security Service (MI5), Ken McCallum, claimed earlier this month that the UK support for Ukraine has made London a target of Russian propaganda and subterfuge, seeking more power and government funding to deal with the alleged threat.

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“..The US and its allies have blocked an estimated $300 billion in assets belonging to the Russian central bank..”

“..total foreign direct investments in the Russian economy by the EU, G7, Australia, and Switzerland amounted to $288 billion as of the end of 2022..”

It all adds up to zero AND you’re no longer the reserve currency. Well done.

• Russia To Seize Income From Frozen Western Assets – Finance Minister (RT)

Russia will respond in kind to the West’s use of the income generated by its frozen central-bank reserves, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov has said. The US and its allies have blocked an estimated $300 billion in assets belonging to the Russian central bank since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022. The bulk of the funds, around €197 billion ($213 billion), are being held at the Brussels-based clearinghouse Euroclear. On Wednesday, Washington announced a decision to use the proceeds from the frozen assets to repay a multibillion-dollar loan to Kiev. “If Western countries have begun utilizing the income from the frozen Russian reserves, we will do exactly the same,” Siluanov told reporters on Thursday. “We have frozen money from ‘unfriendly’ companies and organizations. We keep this money in our accounts in the same way and will use the income from these assets similarly,” he elaborated.

The income from these funds will be allocated to “the needs of the economy, the needs of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation,” the minister added, noting that the corresponding decisions have already been made. The US said on Wednesday that it will provide Kiev with a $20 billion loan as part of a broader $50 billion G7 package. The use of windfall profits from the blocked Russian assets will provide Ukraine assistance “without burdening taxpayers,” US President Joe Biden stated. A day earlier, the European Parliament backed allocating a loan of up to €35 billion ($38 billion) for Kiev using the immobilized Russian assets as collateral for the repayments. According to Euroclear, the frozen funds had generated €3.4 billion ($3.6 billion) in interest as of mid-July.

Russia has repeatedly warned that seizing its assets would amount to “theft” and would violate international law and undermine reserve currencies, the global financial system, and the world economy. The International Monetary Fund has also been raising concerns that such actions could undermine trust in the Western financial system. Siluanov earlier warned that global players are closely following the story involving the Russian assets and are drawing their own conclusions. While the finance minister did not elaborate on the amount of Western assets currently held in Russia, previous calculations by RIA Novosti put the figure at roughly equal the size of the Russian funds frozen abroad. The news agency reported that total foreign direct investments in the Russian economy by the EU, G7, Australia, and Switzerland amounted to $288 billion as of the end of 2022.

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“Russia does not seek to drop the dollar or defeat it, but instead is being “prevented from working with it..”

• US Making ‘Big Mistake’ By Weaponizing Dollar – Putin (RT)

Weaponizing the US dollar is a big mistake, Russian President Vladimir Putin told a session at the BRICS Summit in Kazan on Wednesday. He made the remark following a harsh assessment on the currency’s use as a political tool by the New Development Bank’s (NDB) president, Dilma Rousseff. According to Rousseff, the global geopolitics is being adversely affected by the use of the US dollar “as a weapon to change the living conditions of the population.” The vast wave of sanctions against Russia have forced many Western companies from various industrial sectors including food, clothing, and car manufacturing to leave the country, and have severely restricted people’s ability to travel and make international bank transfers, she noted. Putin agreed with Rousseff’s assessment.

”Yes, indeed, we can see that this is true. In fact, I think it is a big mistake by those who do this. The dollar remains the most important instrument of world finance and using it as a means of achieving political goals undermines confidence in this currency and reduces its capabilities,” the Russian president said. Russia does not seek to drop the dollar or defeat it, but instead is being “prevented from working with it,” Putin added. “Then we are forced to look for other alternatives, which is what is happening.” Many Russian financial institutions were cut off from the Western financial system in 2022 in response to Russia’s military operation in Ukraine. As a result, Moscow has accelerated trade with international partners using their national currencies. The trend has been increasingly supported by BRICS members, which have shifted from using the dollar and euro for trade settlements.

In August, Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said that over 95% of mutual settlements between Russia and its biggest trading partner, China, are carried out using the ruble or yuan. Putin previously stated that the use of local currencies instead of the dollar or euro “helps to keep economic development free from politics as far as possible in the context of today’s world.”

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“.. they don’t take into account the unity and the strength of spirit of Russians forged over the centuries..”

• West’s Belief It Can Defeat Russia ‘A Mere Illusion’ – Putin (RT)

The West is using Ukraine to threaten Russia’s security while believing in the “illusion” that it can inflict a strategic defeat on Moscow, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said. Speaking at the extended Outreach/BRICS Plus format session in Kazan on Thursday, Putin stated that the emergence of a “more just world order” is being hampered by “forces accustomed to thinking and acting in the logic of domination over everything and everyone.” According to Putin, the West’s “unlawful unilateral sanctions” and interference in the affairs of other countries under the pretense of “concern for democracy and human rights” are actively undermining regional and global strategic stability, as well as encouraging “interstate strife.”

Putin pointed to Ukraine as an example, stating that it is being used to “create critical threats to Russia’s security” while Moscow’s vital interests, as well as its “just concerns about the infringement on the rights of Russian-speaking people,” are being ignored. Kiev’s foreign backers “do not even hide any longer their goal of inflicting a strategic defeat on our country.” Putin said, adding that the West’s belief that it can achieve its goals is “a mere illusion.” “Only those who don’t know the history of Russia can believe in this, because they don’t take into account the unity and the strength of spirit of Russians forged over the centuries,” Putin stated.

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“..Kiev would become a part of the bloc later when certain conditions are met..”

• Seven NATO Members Against Ukraine Membership – Politico (RT)

A sizable group of NATO members led by the US and Germany are reluctant to extend an invitation to Ukraine anytime soon, Politico reported on Wednesday, citing sources. Last week, Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky presented his ‘victory plan’, which included a demand to be immediately invited into the US-led military bloc. However, the Politico article, citing four unnamed US and NATO officials, said that Berlin and Washington are “slow-walking” this request, adding that “key alliance members are worried about getting ensnared in a war with Russia.” US Ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith told Politico that the bloc “has not, to date, reached the point where it is prepared to offer membership or an invitation to Ukraine.”

Meanwhile, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz earlier said that it was his duty to prevent the Ukraine conflict from spiraling into a full-scale war between Russia and NATO, adding that Kiev would become a part of the bloc later when certain conditions are met. Hungary and Slovakia – which have been critical of the Western approach to the Ukraine conflict and have insisted on an immediate ceasefire – are two other holdouts. Politico described their leaders as following “a generally pro-Kremlin line.” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban called Zelensky’s plan outright “terrifying,” while his Slovak counterpart Robert Fico warned that Ukraine’s accession to NATO could lead to World War III.

Furthermore, one NATO official told Politico that “countries like Belgium, Slovenia or Spain are hiding behind the US and Germany” when it comes to the issue of Ukraine’s membership, describing them as “reluctant.” Another source noted that while those nations support Kiev’s NATO aspirations “in the abstract,” they would voice their opposition when push comes to shove. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Kiev’s desire to join NATO – which Moscow has described as an existential threat and an “enemy” – was one of the key reasons for the current conflict in the first place. Officials in Moscow have also said that Ukraine’s membership in the bloc “in any territorial form is absolutely unacceptable to Russia and cannot be part of any peace plans or mediation initiatives.”

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“..turning America into a Sodom and Gomorrah Tower of Babel..”

• Is Western Civilizational Decline Too Advanced to Be Reversed? (PCR)

Trump says he intends to make America great again, and his supporters believe him. I also believe it is Trump’s intent. The question is if there is enough left of America to restore. Trump, if he is careful about his appointments, could make a good stab at restoration: Robert Kennedy as the head of the Food and Drug Administration. General Flynn as head of the CIA. Elon Musk as Secretary of State. John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute as Attorney General. Michael Hudson as Secretary of the Treasury. Edward Snowden as Director of the National Security Agency. A number of the police state agencies, such as Homeland Security, could be abolished. So, yes, in theory, Trump could have a go at restoring America. But is Trump capable of even imagining these appointments, and if so could he get them confirmed by the US Senate? I have no confidence that Trump would acquire the human capital his administration would need to do the job he has assigned to himself.

Perhaps his advisors again are serving the establishment, not Trump, telling him that he needs to moderate his attack on the establishment in order to make himself more acceptable to the ruling elite and less of a target for the presstitute media. This is how potential leaders are brought to heel. Among the problems Trump would face is the erosion of the US Constitution with Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, the Wall Street Journal editor, law school deans, and the Woke Left calling for the Constitution’s overthrow because the First Amendment prevents the Ruling Elite from controlling the population by controlling the narrative. The United States is the Constitution. Overthrowing the Constitution is the same as overthrowing the United States. It is treason. Would Trump’s Justice Department arrest these people for treason? The First Amendment prohibits the government from prohibiting the freedom of speech and guarantees the freedom of assembly.

These Constitutional Rights were violated by the Democrats who turned free speech and assembly into an “insurrection.” Democrats, led by the Jew Biden appointed as Attorney General and by the FBI director appointed by Trump, ruled that attending a rally to support a president constituted “insurrection.” One thousand American patriots who attended the Trump Rally are wasting away in prison for no other reason than law was used against them as a weapon. The destruction of the rule of law is the Democrats and the American left-wing’s main achievement. In “free America” law is no longer a shield of the people. Law is a weapon in the hands of those in power to decimate the political opposition. President Trump’s two loyal appointees–General Flynn and Steve Bannon–were both sentenced to prison. Another problem Trump would face is that the liberal-left have turned education into indoctrination. Education is no longer the function of American schools and universities.

Students are brainwashed that Western Civilization has no achievements except racism and exploitation of people of color, that whites are racists, that people can be born into the wrong bodies, that the Constitution is in the way of progress. The normalization of sexual perversity, the sexualization of young children, and open borders are turning America into a Sodom and Gomorrah Tower of Babel. This is the accomplishment of the Democrat Party and the liberal-left. So we have in America a system in which the rulers are aligned against America. America, with its Constitution, its separation of powers, its traditions, is in their way, as Hillary, John Kerry, the Wall Street Journal editor, CNN, and law school deans have made clear. One might think that Americans might notice that those who believe in America are being marginalized by those who believe in the Constitution’s overthrow.

There are some Americans who are beginning to realize that truth is being denied them, but are enough catching on in time to prevent the termination of their rights? When we witness the determined illegal persecution of truth-tellers such as Julian Assange, Edward Snowden, Reiner Fuellmich, and one thousand American patriots sent to prison by Democrats for protesting a stolen election, we find ourselves up against a government with a totalitarian agenda. The Republicans are doing nothing about this. What has the Republican Party done to ensure that the November election is not again stolen? In America today it is becoming a felony to even present evidence that an election ( “won” by Democrats ) was stolen. Some of the swing states in which elections are most often stolen by Democrats have not only legalized all of the theft mechanisms but also have made it a felony to challenge the vote count.

The question before us is what does an American election mean other than another stolen election? I agree with Elon Musk. If the Democrats are returned to power in 2024 there will never again be an honest American election. The odds are against the Democrats and the Ruling Elite permitting Trump to become President. If he prevails against the odds and regains the office, it is unlikely he will be staffed with sufficient determined and intelligent appointees to reverse American societal, economic, political, moral, and spiritual decline. Nevertheless, we must vote for Trump or never again will anyone challenge in our name the Ruling Elite’s control over our lives. Every future potential leader will know that Trump stood up to the elite but the people did not stand up for Trump, and they will dismiss the American people as a losing cause.

Read more …

“Ursula von der Leyen advocates “pre-bunking” in the public forum to “vaccinate” people against “disinformation.”

• EU President Likens Free Speech to Infectious Disease (Leake)

EU President Ursula von der Leyen just joined the ranks of former Senator John Kerry and other globalist ghouls in declaring war on free speech by perversely proclaiming that the EU citizenry needs to be “vaccinated against disinformation.” Like every censor in history, she characterizes her censorship program as a means of expunging erroneous information and ideas from public discourse. By using the word “disinformation,” she implies that she and her clique are already the sole possessors of the truth about everything, and that everyone who has and shares heterodox ideas is necessarily in error. Her entire premise is FALSE for the following reasons:

1). Knowledge about the world is constantly evolving through constant inquiry, discussion, and dissemination. Knowledge is NOT a static thing. This is why countries with stifling censorship regimes have experienced intellectual, scientific, and artistic stagnation. Their rulers try to freeze the human mind in its state at their moment in history.

2). NO state, university, or ecclesiastical committee has ever been in possession of the full truth of any matter. Official orthodoxies have always been challenged by heterodox thinkers. Indeed, virtually every major advance in human insight has been performed by heterodox thinkers.

3). As John Milton observed in his 1644 pamphlet, Areopagitica, contending with error is an intrinsic part of learning and discovery. We literally learn by making mistakes and correcting them. If free speech is suppressed for the objective of preventing the propagation of erroneous thought—or “vaccinating against it”—it will become extremely difficult if not impossible for people to learn and discover.

4). Without a single exception in history, the people who hold power always advocate the orthodoxy that sustains and extends their power and that of their friends and supporters.

Ursula von der Leyen is the quintessence of this principle. As president of the EU, she conducted secret negotiations with Pfizer CEO to purchase a 20 billion Euros of Pfizer’s fraudulent and dangerous vaccine so that it could be inflicted on all the citizens of the European Union. She is currently under criminal investigation for her conduct in this affair that has come to be known as Pfizergate. It takes a special kind of chutzpah for a powerful state official who is probably guilty of committing a major crime—a crime that has been systematically and ruthlessly concealed—to lecture the public about the need for censorship. The time has come for the citizens of Europe to rid themselves of Ursula von der Leyen and her clique of corrupt tyrants. To be sure, there is increasing evidence that the Biden Administration has been exerting pressure on Germany—which remains an American vassal state—and the EU to step up its censorship regime. I will cover this strange development in a subsequent post.

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“..faulty landing gear and vibrating fuel tubes, to fragile electro-optical targeting equipment, canopy delamination issues and weather sensitivity, engine heat issues adding to wear and tear, cabin over-pressurization, night vision problems, corrosion, radar reset issues, ejection seats which can snap pilots’ necks, and inability to fly in lightning..”

• F-35’s Ascent and Nosedive: Costliest Weapon in History Hits Fresh Turbulence (Sp.)

Conceived as the Pentagon’s next-gen do-it-all strike jet for the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps, the F-35 has proved a budgetary nightmare, set to consume more resources than the GDP of a major G20 economy over its lifetime. The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II fifth-gen supersonic stealth strike fighter just can’t seem to catch a break, with a new report released Monday by the Government Accountability Office finding the jet woefully below mission-ready status for six straight years – i.e. every year that the Congressional watchdog has conducted its reviews. The GAO blamed the readiness shortfall on “challenges with depot and organizational maintenance,” and over-reliance on contractors who essentially hold the Pentagon hostage with astronomical sustainment costs (which jumped from $1.1 trillion in FY2018 to $1.58 trillion in FY2023).

The Navy and Air Force are set to take control of sustainment to get a grip on the situation, but not until FY2027. The GAO estimates that only about 55% of the F-35’s three variants are mission ready at any given time, with mission readiness requiring the ability to “fly and perform at least one mission.” With a per unit cost of nearly $100 mln and a projected lifetime cost of over $2 trln, the F-35 program is by far the most expensive military project in history.
Lockheed proceeded with the F-35’s development by taking cues from the Yak-43/141 VTOL jet – a Soviet carrier strike aircraft project scrapped in 1991. The X-35 first flew in 2000, and the F-35A in 2006. But the F-35’s makers have proven unable to work out all the kinks in the plane, with the GAO issuing report after report citing hundreds of flaws, including mission critical defects which could injure or kill pilots, or otherwise jeopardize the aircraft’s safety.

These problems range from faulty landing gear and vibrating fuel tubes, to fragile electro-optical targeting equipment, canopy delamination issues and weather sensitivity, engine heat issues adding to wear and tear, cabin over-pressurization, night vision problems, corrosion, radar reset issues, ejection seats which can snap pilots’ necks, and inability to fly in lightning. To add insult to injury, all three of America’s major potential adversaries have reportedly found the means to nullify the F-35’s stealth advantage, with Russia, China and Iran announcing sophisticated radar technologies not only able to detect the F-35 at long ranges – but even identify the distinct radar signature of individual F-35 planes.

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” The strike has halted production of the best-selling 737 MAX and 767 and 777 wide-body models.”

Which were full of flaws.

• Boeing Workers Reject Wage Deal To End Strike (RT)

Boeing workers have rejected the US aerospace giant’s latest contract offer, extending a nearly six-week strike which has crippled the already struggling planemaker. Some 64% of workers voted to reject the new contract, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), the union representing 33,000 Boeing staff in Washington, Oregon and California, said on X (formerly Twitter) on Wednesday. “We remain on strike,” IAM District 751 President Jon Holden said after the votes were counted. “Our members deserve more and have spoken loudly.” The latest deal included a 35% wage increase over the four-year contract and a restoration of incentive bonuses, but did not reinstate the pension plan sought by many employees.

Workers with the IAM have been striking since September, when they overwhelmingly rejected Boeing’s previous offer of a 25% cumulative pay raise. Employees had initially sought a 40% pay increase, arguing that their wages had lagged behind inflation for years while the company spent millions of dollars on record executive bonuses. “After 10 years of sacrifices, we still have ground to make up, and we’re hopeful to do so by resuming negotiations promptly,” leaders of the union said in a statement. “This is workplace democracy and also clear evidence that there are consequences when a company mistreats its workers year after year.” The strike has halted production of the best-selling 737 MAX and 767 and 777 wide-body models.

Earlier this month Boeing also announced plans to cut 17,000 jobs over the coming months, representing nearly 10% of its workforce, as the aerospace giant’s losses continue to mount. Boeing reported a $6.2 billion third quarter loss on Wednesday, largely due to costs associated with the strike. Days before the workers voted to extend the strike, Boeing announced that its 777X widebody aircraft will be postponed to 2026, nearly six years after the aircraft was due to reach customers. The embattled aviation giant has also been under increased scrutiny in recent years due to various flaws discovered in its aircraft, leading to safety concerns and investigations.

Read more …

“Don’t you dare get cold feet!!!”

• Fighting for More Evidence of Assange’s Political Prosecution (Lauria/Elmaazi)

A tribunal in Britain is set to decide whether to order the government’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to prove it deleted emails that may have covered up more evidence of a politically motivated prosecution of Julian Assange. The three judges heard arguments on Sept. 24 in the nearly decade-long freedom of information saga regarding the emails that top British prosecutors say were deleted. They involved an exchange with Sweden during a Swedish prosecutor’s attempt, beginning in 2010, to extradite the WikiLeaks publisher from Britain. Assange was wanted in Sweden for questioning during a preliminary investigation into allegations of sexual assault, which was dropped three times, definitively in 2017. He was never charged. After losing his battle against extradition to Sweden at the U.K. Supreme Court, Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in June 2012, fearing that Sweden would send him to the United States.

Assange spent seven years in the embassy protecting himself from arrest by British police until April 2019, when police dragged him from the diplomatic mission and threw him into London’s maximum security Belmarsh prison. It was only when the U.S. realized it would lose on appeal after a four-year extradition battle that the Department of Justice cut a plea deal with Assange who was released on June 24 and returned to his native Australia. Assange had been charged in the United States under the Espionage Act for possessing and publishing defense information, which revealed evidence of U.S. war crimes. Britain took an active role in Assange’s prosecution. Its Crown Prosecution Service sought to stop Sweden from going to the embassy to question him. Seeking to learn more about Britain’s role against Assange, Italian investigative journalist Stefania Maurizi first made a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in 2015 for all emails between the British and Swedish governments concerning Assange.

Some of the emails she obtained showed political motivation on the part of the lead British prosecutor, Paul Close. One email Maurizi obtained from the Swedish Prosecution Authority (SPA) revealed that Close appeared to be pressuring Swedish prosecutors to continue seeking Assange’s extradition instead of dropping the case or questioning him at the Ecuadorian embassy, where Assange had been granted asylum. “My earlier advice remains, that in my view it would not be prudent for the Swedish authorities to try to interview the defendant [Julian Assange] in the UK,” Close wrote to the SPA, in 2011, according to one of the emails obtained by Maurizi. “Don’t you dare get cold feet!!!,” he wrote to Marianne Ny, Sweden’s director of public prosecutions, in 2012. A year after that, Close wrote, “Please do not think this case is being dealt with as just another extradition.” After Maurizi noticed a sizeable gap in the emails released to her she filed another FIOA seeking to obtain the missing emails.

The CPS first claimed that it had destroyed the emails. It said that when Close retired, his account along with his emails, were automatically destroyed. But Maurizi did not buy it. She asked the court at the hearing last month to order the CPS to turn over “metadata” — data about data, such as file creation and modification dates, email sender and recipient addresses, timestamps, email routing information, keywords, and subject lines — proving the emails really were deleted and when. “We have NO certainty whatsoever” that the emails were destroyed, Maurizi wrote in a message to Consortium News. Maurizi is in court because she believes the allegedly deleted emails could provide additional evidence of a politically motivated prosecution of Assange. She also wants metadata on a CPS document that it says is from 2012 explaining the CPS’ email deletion policy, which was only sent to her in 2023.

Read more …

 

 

 

 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1849481946994295174

 

 

 

 

 

 

Urbanism

 

 

Starship
https://twitter.com/i/status/1849381012146442723

 

 

Collie

 

 

Wood
https://twitter.com/i/status/1849322564264382794

 

 

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Debt Rattle October 12 2024

Oct 122024
 
 October 12, 2024  Posted by at 8:46 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  47 Responses »


Jean-Francois Millet In the Auvergne 1869

 

• Suspicions Grow That Some Polls May Be Masking True Size Of Trump’s Lead (JTN)
• ‘60 mInutes’ Airs Two Different Answers From Harris To Same Question (RT)
• US Media Regulator Comments On Trump’s CBS Demand (RT)
• Biden Ordered Trump To Be Protected As A ‘Sitting President’ (RT)
• Judge Agrees To Release More Trump Material Before the Election (Turley)
• Elon Musk Predicts Joe Rogan Will Interview Donald Trump (ZH)
• Democrats, Media Misrepresent Abortion Policies On Both Sides (JTN)
• US Weaponizing Dollar – Jeffrey Sachs (RT)
• Zelensky Is Making Enemies In America (Lolaev)
• Raytheon Making Billions From Weapons for Ukraine (Sp.)
• In The War Economy Russia Has Taught The Pigs To Sing (Helmer)
• International Law Does Not Exist (Pacini)
• Could Palestine Be The Catalyst For An Islamic Renaissance? (Pepe Escobar)
• Timetable Announced For UK Novichok Trial In Kangaroo Court (Helmer)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We Robot

FSD

 

 

Tips

What can be

The President
https://twitter.com/i/status/1844442775745634513

Cellphones
https://twitter.com/i/status/1844085783516545366

Appellate

 

 

“..it’s simply not possible for her to win the PV if she is running this poorly in NY, MD, NJ, CA, etc. Not possible math..”

• Suspicions Grow That Some Polls May Be Masking True Size Of Trump’s Lead (JTN)

A string of polls from legacy outfits has pointed to a shift toward former President Donald Trump in most of the major battleground states while Vice President Harris maintains a national lead, but some analysts see a critical disconnect between state and national polling that could suggest the Republican is on even stronger footing. Harris currently leads Trump by 2.0% in the RealClearPolitics polling average, with 49.1% support to his 47.1%. That figure includes a Rasmussen Reports survey showing Trump with a two-point lead, a Reuters/Ipsos survey showing Harris up two, a Morning Consult poll with Harris up five, a Yahoo News poll with the race tied, and a number of other surveys. A New York Times/Siena College survey showed Harris up three points. But pollsters have pointed to an apparent disconnect between state and national level polls, with state-level surveys increasingly shifting toward Trump while Harris seemingly holds steady at the national level.

They have further observed two consistent patterns of national polling that appear to vary widely due to methodology.Dominating headlines this week was a bombshell Quinnipiac University survey, which is typically favorable to Democrats, that showed Trump leading by 2% in Wisconsin and 3% in Michigan. “The Harris post-debate starburst dims to a glow as Harris enters the last weeks slipping slightly in the Rust Belt,” Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Tim Malloy wrote. Far from an outlier, other surveys have followed those results, showing Trump either tied or leading Harris in those battlegrounds. A survey from The Hill/Emerson College, for instance showed the Michigan race tied at 49% each. That survey found the same result in Wisconsin. Polling averages currently show Trump poised to take Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Arizona. Harris, for her part, holds narrow leads in Minnesota and Nevada. Should such results hold, Trump would handily carry the Electoral College, barring major upsets.

The campaign released its own internal polling in a Thursday memo, showing Trump winning all seven of the key battleground states it tracked. Betting markets have also shifted decidedly in favor of Trump. Polymarket currently assigns him a 55.3% chance of winning, compared to 44.3% for Harris. The vice president was the race’s favorite just days ago. “People want America to be strong, and there really is no comparison between what Donald Trump showed us in his four years and what Kamala Harris has shown us [in] her four years as Vice President, and, you know, her tenure in the Senate,” Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley said on the “John Solomon Reports” podcast. “And so I think as people are looking at the world through that prism, it’s not surprising that we’re starting to see the polls kind of shifting our way.”

Compared to his prior elections, Trump is in a far more favorable position at this stage in the race. Against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016, he trailed by 5.8% on Oct. 10. Against President Joe Biden in 2020, he trailed by 10.0%. But that aggregate includes a handful of polls showing either a tied race or moderate Trump lead and a slew showing Harris with a 3-5% edge. “There have been two universes. 1) A close race with a marginal Trump edge. 2) Ridiculous leads for Harris larger than Obama that are never going to happen,” posted Big Data Poll Director Rich Baris in response to an Emerson College poll showing Trump ahead in Pennsylvania. NYT/Siena pollster Nate Cohn this week outlined a key methodological divide leading to some of the apparent polling conflicts, that of “weighting on recalled vote.” In that method, polls ask respondents for whom they voted in 2020 and weight those results to ensure a sample that matches the outcome of the prior election.

Polls that use such a weighting method, he asserted, tend to more closely resemble 2020 election results, while those that don’t, seem to mirror the 2022 midterms. The NYT/Siena College poll does not “weight by recalled vote.” While the issue of “weighting by recalled vote” might explain a chasm between different national polls, it would not explain the apparent disconnects between state and national data from the same outlets. Harvard CAPS/Harris poll director Mark Penn, for instance, highlighted what he called a “polling paradox,” noting that “[t]he Times/Siena poll shows Harris up 3 nationally (within their margin of error) but losing to Trump by 14 in Florida.” “Newsflash — they can’t both be right. It would be paradoxical for Harris to be up with seniors nationally and down with Floridians,” he added. “Florida has high concentrations of seniors and Latinos and if Trump is winning those groups he is sweeping Pa.,Nv and Az. The state polls and national polls have to be in sync and I can’t say which is right but one or both are off base.”

Baris also pointed to an apparent split, with polls showing Harris poised to win the popular vote despite faring significantly worse in deep-blue states such as California and New York. Baris, like Penn, pointed to the NYT/Siena poll, but notably pointed to a drop in Harris’s support in Democratic bastions. He further accused the Times of “giving their readers bipolar results for copium.” “More polls today showing Harris down in key states but also running way behind Clinton and Biden in another blue state. To the point I made yesterday, it’s simply not possible for her to win the PV if she is running this poorly in NY, MD, NJ, CA, etc. Not possible math,” he wrote. “I’m watching this being covered as a good thing for Harris. It’s an absolute catastrophe for her,” Baris wrote, in response to Mason-Dixon/Telemundo data showing Harris leading Trump among California Hispanics 55% to 35%. Biden, by contrast, won that bloc 75% to 23%. Those figures mark a 32% swing in one of the state’s largest voting blocs toward Trump.

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“Why did 60 Minutes choose not to air Kamala’s full word salad, and what else did they choose not to air?”

• ‘60 mInutes’ Airs Two Different Answers From Harris To Same Question (RT)

The ‘60 minutes’ program on CBS has broadcast two different answers to the same question from US Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee, Kamala Harris. During the segment, interviewer Bill Whitaker asked Harris if she believed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not listening to the US amid an escalation in the Middle East. The vice president’s reply to that question was not the same in the preview that aired on Sunday as it was in the actual show that was broadcast on Monday. In the preview, which was shown as part of the ‘Face the Nation’ program, Harris said: “Well Bill, the work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by, or a result of, many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region.” However, when the actual ‘60 minutes’ episode aired the next day, the Democratic presidential nominee’s answer was changed to a completely different one, which was shorter and more clear.

“We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end,” Harris said during the program. On Tuesday, the campaign of former US president and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump urged CBS and the producers of ‘60 minutes’ to release the full interview with Harris. “On Sunday, 60 Minutes teased Kamala’s highly-anticipated sit-down interview with one of her worst word salads to date, which received significant criticism on social media. During the full interview on Monday evening, the word salad was deceptively edited to lessen Kamala’s idiotic response,” Trump campaign national spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, said.

“Why did 60 Minutes choose not to air Kamala’s full word salad, and what else did they choose not to air? The American people deserve the full, unedited transcript from Kamala’s sit-down interview… What do they, and Kamala, have to hide?” Leavitt insisted. The Harris campaign insisted that it had nothing to do with the changes made to her interview. “We do not control CBS’s production decisions and refer questions to CBS,” a campaign aide told several outlets, including Fox News and Variety. Trump took to his Truth Social platform on Thursday, accusing ‘60 minutes’ of replacing Harris’ answer with another in order to “make her look better,” and labelling CBS itself a “a giant Fake News Scam.” “CBS should lose its license, and it should be bid out to the Highest Bidder, as should all other Broadcast Licenses, because they are just as corrupt as CBS – and maybe even WORSE!” he wrote.

Read more …

Fake news is protected as free speech?!

• US Media Regulator Comments On Trump’s CBS Demand (RT)

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s criticism of the way CBS edited its interview with his Democratic rival Kamala Harris is a threat to free speech and democracy, the head of the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has stated. Trump had accused CBS of perpetrating “the Greatest Fraud in Broadcast History” by rearranging the ‘60 Minutes’ interview with Harris, aired earlier this week, to make her look more coherent. He called for the network to lose its license. ”While repeated attacks against broadcast stations by the former President may now be familiar, these threats against free speech are serious and should not be ignored,” FCC chair Jessica Rosenworcel, a Democrat, said in a statement on Thursday. “The FCC does not and will not revoke licenses for broadcast stations simply because a political candidate disagrees with or dislikes content or coverage.”

According to Rosenworcel, “the First Amendment is a cornerstone of our democracy.” That particular section of the US Constitution prevents the government from infringing on freedom of speech, the press, assembly or religion. Harris recorded the ‘60 Minutes’ interview as part a media blitz, trailing Trump in many polls as the November 5 election approaches. A preview of the interview, aired on Sunday, showed her giving a confusing and convoluted response to a question about Israel. The full show, however, contained a completely different response – leaving viewers baffled as to what Harris actually said and when. Trump responded with several posts on his Truth Social platform, accusing CBS of having “sliced and diced” Harris’ “virtually incoherent” answers to make her look good, in what he called a stain on the reputation of both ‘60 Minutes’ and the network.

“It is the very definition of FAKE NEWS! The public is owed a MAJOR AND IMMEDIATE APOLOGY!” he posted on Thursday. The former and aspiring future US president suggested that other broadcast networks weren’t any better and should get their licenses pulled as well. Rosenworcel’s statement comes amid a widespread push by Democrats to censor social media in the name of combating “disinformation” to “protect our democracy.” Meanwhile, the FCC has voted along party lines to fast-track the purchase of over 200 radio stations in more than 40 markets across the US by a group backed by Democrat mega-donor George Soros. Republican commissioner Brendan Carr has called the decision “unprecedented” and said it did not follow the requirements and procedures codified in federal law.

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“President Joe Biden promised to provide everything needed, “as long as he doesn’t ask for F-15s.”

• Biden Ordered Trump To Be Protected As A ‘Sitting President’ (RT)

Former President Donald Trump’s campaign has requested additional resources, including military aircraft, to protect the Republican candidate in the final weeks before the election. President Joe Biden promised to provide everything needed, “as long as he doesn’t ask for F-15s.” Following two assassination attempts against Trump in recent months, his campaign has been in contact with the White House and the Secret Service to request military assets for added protection, according to multiple US media reports on Friday. President Biden stated that he had ordered his administration to provide Trump “all that he needs” when asked about these reports. ”As long as he doesn’t ask for F-15s,” he told reporters, before adding that he “was being facetious.” “Look, I’ve instructed the department to give him every – every single thing he needs for his… as if he were a sitting president. Give him all that he needs. If it fits within that category, that’s fine. But if it doesn’t, he shouldn’t,” the US leader explained.

The request for military assets includes aircraft and vehicles to transport Trump between campaign events and expanded flight restrictions over his homes and rallies. However, reports from the New York Times, Washington Post, and CNN did not mention whether the Republican campaign sought fighter jet escorts. Trump’s presidential rival, Kamala Harris, receives protection from the US Marines as Vice President and travels on a US military aircraft designated as Air Force Two. The Secret Service, responsible for protecting presidential candidates, confirmed that it received requests for increased protection but did not disclose details. “The former president is receiving the highest levels of protection,” said a representative for the agency, noting that the Secret Service would continue to adjust its protective posture as needed to address evolving threats.

The agency faced criticism after the first assassination attempt against Trump in July, which resulted in the resignation of its director. Since then, it has increased its defensive measures for Trump, including the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, counter-drone technology, and other protective and surveillance systems. Last month, Trump claimed there are “big threats” to his life from Iran after he and his team met with representatives from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). The agency declined to disclose details of the meeting, although the Trump campaign stated it focused on “real and specific threats from Iran to assassinate him in an effort to destabilize and sow chaos in the US.” Trump narrowly escaped death on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania, after a 20-year-old man fired shots from a rooftop, grazing Trump’s ear and killing one audience member.

The would-be assassin, Thomas M. Crooks, was killed by the US Secret Service, and his body was quickly cremated; his social media accounts have since been scrubbed. Another would-be assassin, 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh, was arrested by the Secret Service on September 15 after being spotted near a Trump-owned golf course in Florida, apparently attempting to take a shot. Routh, a convicted felon, spent much of the past three years in Ukraine, claiming to various Western media outlets that he was fundraising and recruiting for Kiev’s war effort. The FBI is investigating both incidents as attempted assassinations, but authorities have yet to provide any information about possible motives and have not revealed any evidence linking to an Iranian plot.

Read more …

“Many are left with a Ned Flanders moment of “well, if that don’t put the “dink” in co-inky-dink.”

• Judge Agrees To Release More Trump Material Before the Election (Turley)

It appears that U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan and Special Counsel Jack Smith are not done yet in releasing material in advance of the election. In a previous column, I criticized the release of Smith’s 180-page brief before the election as procedurally irregular and politically biased, a criticism shared by CNN’s senior legal analyst and other law professors. Nevertheless, on Thursday, Judge Chutkan agreed to a request from Smith to unseal exhibits and evidence in advance of the election. The brief clearly contains damning allegations, including witness accounts, for Trump. The objection to the release of the brief was not a defense of any actions taken on January 6th by the former president or others, but rather an objection to what even the court admitted was an “irregular” process.

As discussed earlier, Smith has been unrelenting in his demands for a trial before the election. He has even demanded that Donald Trump be barred from standard appellate options in order to expedite his trial. Smith never fully explained the necessity of holding a trial before the election beyond suggesting that voters should see the trial and the results — assaulting the very premise of the Justice Department’s rule against such actions just before elections. To avoid allegations of political manipulation of cases, the Justice Department has long followed a policy against making potentially influential filings within 60 or 90 days of an election. One section of the Justice Department manual states “Federal prosecutors… may never select the timing of any action, including investigative steps, criminal charges, or statements, for the purpose of affecting any election.”

Even if one argues that this provision is not directly controlling or purely discretionary, the spirit of the policy is to avoid precisely the appearance in this case: the effort to manipulate or influence an election through court filings. With no trial date for 2025, there is no reason why Smith or Chutkan would adopt such an irregular process. The court could have slightly delayed these filings until after the approaching election or it could have sealed the filings. If there is one time where a court should err on the side of avoiding an “irregular” process, it is before a national election. What may look like simply an adversarial process to some looks like oppo research to others. Delaying the release would have avoided any appearance of such bias.

For Smith, the election has long been the focus of his filings and demands for an expedited process. Smith knows that this election is developing into the largest jury verdict in history. Many citizens, even those who do not like Trump, want to see an end to the weaponization of the legal system, including Smith’s D.C. prosecution. Trump has to lose the election for Smith to be guaranteed a trial in the case. Chutkan has given the Trump team just seven days to oppose her order. That would still allow the material to make it into the public (and be immediately employed by the media and Harris campaign) just days before the election. The move will only increase criticism that this looks like a docket in the pocket of the DNC. It is telling that, once again, the timing just works out to the way that is most politically impactful. Many are left with a Ned Flanders moment of “well, if that don’t put the “dink” in co-inky-dink.”

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“I have had the opportunity to have him on my show, more than once, and I have said no every time. I don’t want to help him, I’m not interested in helping him.”

• Elon Musk Predicts Joe Rogan Will Interview Donald Trump (ZH)

Just minutes before the scheduled start of the much-anticipated Robotaxi event on Thursday night, Elon Musk took to Twitter to tell the world an interview between Joe Rogan and Donald Trump “will happen”. Musk made the post responding to our article, “Joe Rogan Has 25 Days To Interview Donald Trump”, submitted by Zero Hedge contributor Quoth the Raven, who wrote on Tuesday: “I can’t listen to another 4 years of Rogan bitch about how bad things have gotten if he won’t talk to Trump.” Rogan has been notoriously uninterested in the interview, which he has been asked about multiple times over the last half decade. Back in June 2023, when asked about the idea, Rogan said to Lex Fridman: “I have had the opportunity to have him on my show, more than once, and I have said no every time. I don’t want to help him, I’m not interested in helping him.”

By August 2023, it looked like Rogan might be changing his tune, as he told Valuetainment’s Patrick Bet-David: “I don’t know. Maybe. At a certain point in time. Just like, it would be interesting to hear his perspective on a lot of things.” Since then, Rogan has stated his admiration for RFK, Jr., who is now supporting Trump. He has also given a platform to Tulsi Gabbard, who is campaigning with, and for, Trump. The idea that Rogan wouldn’t interview Trump, who has recently done podcasts with Theo Von and Andrew Schultz, to name a few, seems bizarre. QTR wrote on his blog Tuesday night that “If anything, an interview would give Rogan an opportunity to push Trump on the things that he disagrees with him on. Bring him on and give him hell if you want, Joe. Rogan could even extend an invitation to the Harris campaign and invite her on for a separate appearance if she wants.”

“I don’t want to pretend to understand what the problem is that Rogan has with Trump, but all I know is that it’s not bigger than the potential consequences of this election,” he wrote. “After listening to Rogan’s podcast for nearly 2,000 episodes, I’m confident in my assessment that he’s a person of integrity and a man of character. The truth is, whether he likes it or not, putting his personal animus aside and getting Trump on the largest media platform in the world can only make an impact for the next month or so.” He concluded: “After the November election, especially if Trump loses, there will be no point — and it’ll be impossible to listen to Rogan crow about the lunatics on the left any further, knowing he didn’t talk to Trump when he had the chance. So let’s get real, Joe: what the hell are you waiting for?”

QTR first predicted the interview would happen in September 2023: “To me, this meeting seems inevitable over a long enough timeline. There’s sufficient positive motivation for both parties to make it happen before the 2024 election, which is why I predict the interview will likely air before the end of the first quarter of 2024.” He’s got about 3 weeks left…

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This for me goes much too far.

“In Walz’s state and on his watch, five infants were “born alive” in 2021 during failed abortions, and none received life-saving care, though two got “comfort care..”

• Democrats, Media Misrepresent Abortion Policies On Both Sides (JTN)

Democrats and the media have misrepresented the abortion policies of Republicans and the Democratic vice presidential nominee, claiming that the former are secretly much more strict than they are and arguing that the latter is not as liberal as he appears. From Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz’s abortion policies as Minnesota governor to Republicans’ stance on a national abortion ban, Democrats have distorted both their own record and their opponents’ on abortion in the months leading up to the presidential election. Following the reversal of Roe v. Wade in 2022, which returned the abortion question back to the states, Democrats have made abortion a top priority in their campaigns. According to a Gallup poll from May, 50% of U.S. adults said that abortion should be legal only under certain circumstances, while 35% believe it should be legal under any circumstances, and 12% said it should be illegal in all circumstances.

Abortion was a discussion topic in both the presidential and vice presidential debates. Former President Donald Trump said in the last presidential debate in September that Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ “vice presidential pick says abortion in the ninth month is absolutely fine. He also says execution after birth — it’s execution, no longer abortion, because the baby is born is okay, and that’s not okay with me.” ABC News’ Linsey Davis pushed back on Trump’s statement during the presidential debate, saying, “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born.” NPR also said that abortions after birth are currently illegal in all 50 states. “Nowhere in America is a woman carrying a pregnancy to term and asking for an abortion,” Harris said during the presidential debate. “That isn’t happening; it’s insulting to the women of America.”

However, the states of Alaska, Colorado, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, and Washington, D.C., allow abortion through the ninth month of pregnancy, according to the National Catholic Register. During the vice presidential debate earlier this month, Walz was put on the defensive when asked about his state’s law on babies surviving botched abortions and Trump’s statement. “The question got asked and Donald Trump made the accusation that wasn’t true about Minnesota,” Walz said. Later on in the debate, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, said, “[a]nd maybe you’re free to disagree with me on this and explain this to me, but as I read the Minnesota law that you signed into into law, the statute that you signed into law, it says that a doctor who presides over an abortion where the baby survives, the doctor is under no obligation to provide life-saving care to a baby who survives a botched late-term abortion.”

Walz pushed back, claiming, “[t]his is a very simple proposition. These are women’s decisions to make about their healthcare decisions, and the physicians who know best when they need to do this. Trying to distort the way a law is written to try and make a point, that’s not it at all.” When Vance asked Walz if what he said was incorrect, Walz responded, “That is not the way the law is written.” “In Walz’s state and on his watch, five infants were “born alive” in 2021 during failed abortions, and none received life-saving care, though two got “comfort care,” the Minnesota Department of Health reported on July 1, 2022. Three other infants were “born alive” during abortions in 2019, Walz’s first year as governor, and they too perished without life-saving care, according to a July 1, 2020, report from the same state agency.

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‘Stop doing it, this is crazy, it will destroy trust in the dollar.’ You can’t go on with the system like this, it’s not just Russia.”

• US Weaponizing Dollar – Jeffrey Sachs (RT)

The US government has weaponized the dollar rather than having it serve as a medium of exchange or a store of value, award-winning American economist and public-policy analyst Jeffrey Sachs has said. Sachs made the remark on Thursday in his address via video link to a meeting of BRICS ministers of finance and central bank governors. The officials were meeting in Moscow to discuss the improvement of the international monetary and financial system, ahead of the BRICS 2024 summit in Kazan later this month. According to the economist, the weaponization of the dollar was obviously happening through the seizure of frozen Russian assets. He also mentioned the freezing by the US government of Iranian, Venezuelan, Afghan and other state funds. The US and its allies have frozen around $300 billion in Russian central bank assets, around $5 billion of which is sitting in American banks, as part of its Ukraine-related campaign of sanctions.

In April, President Joe Biden signed a bill allowing the seizure of Russian funds held in the US and their transfer to a Ukraine reconstruction fund. “You can’t use the dollar as a payments mechanism,” Sachs said, when a president alone can sign orders and seize essentially billions of dollars in Russian assets. The US currency has become “an instrument of aggressive form of policy,” he concluded. “I’ve said to my own government for the last 15 years ‘Stop doing it, this is crazy, it will destroy trust in the dollar.’ You can’t go on with the system like this, it’s not just Russia.” He pointed out that China wants to have normal trade without threats of US sanctions but, although Chinese banks are part of the SWIFT system, they have to abide out of a fear of being cut off the international financial network.

“So, the point is we need alternatives, this is clear,” Sachs stated. “Of course, countries need non-dollar payment mechanisms. We are going to need some quick, special-vehicle entities that are not also engaged in the dollar payment systems… entities that cannot be directly sanctioned…” The economist stressed that “the best alternative would be if the US recovers sense, decency and legality and stops imposing unilateral sanctions.” US actions are “absolutely incorrect” and illegal by the standards of international law and the UN Charter, said Sachs, who is also president of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.

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“Vance, known for opposing aid to Kiev, has consistently argued for negotiating an end to the war, even if it involves ceding territory..”

• Zelensky Is Making Enemies In America (Lolaev)

The US presidential election campaign is entering its final stretch ahead. The outcome is crucial to many of Washington’s foreign partners but particularly for the current government in Kiev. At the end of September, Vladimir Zelensky made another visit to America. Officially coinciding with “UN Week” and a speech at the General Assembly, Zelensky’s six-day trip was primarily focused on one existential issue for his administration – securing continued financial and military support from Washington, regardless of the election results in November. However, achieving this goal proved far more challenging than anticipated. Even Ukraine’s well-oiled PR machine, honed over a decade, struggled to navigate the increasingly polarized American political landscape without incurring damage. Issues arose even before Zelensky touched down on US soil. In an article published in The New Yorker, he described Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance as “too radical” for suggesting that US support for Ukraine should be reconsidered and that a peace deal might require territorial concessions to Russia.

Vance, known for opposing aid to Kiev, has consistently argued for negotiating an end to the war, even if it involves ceding territory. In response to Zelensky’s comments, the former president’s son Donald Trump Jr criticized the Ukrainian leader for meddling in US domestic affairs, asserting that it is unacceptable for a foreign leader dependent on American taxpayers’ support to speak out against Republican candidates. Things only worsened from there. Zelensky’s first stop was a defense manufacturing plant in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he thanked workers for churning out the 155mm artillery shells that are critical to Ukraine’s military. The facility had significantly increased production over the past year, shipping over three million shells to Ukraine. Throughout the visit, Zelensky was heavily protected, with law enforcement patrolling the area.

His trip to Pennsylvania, accompanied by the state’s Democratic governor, led to a backlash from Republicans. Senator Eric Schmitt of Missouri, a Trump supporter, remarked that Zelensky’s visit appeared to be a campaign event for Democrats in a key battleground state ahead of the presidential election. Sean Parnell, a former Senate candidate from Pennsylvania and also a Trump supporter, labeled Zelensky’s visit as “foreign interference in our election,” citing the visitor’s criticism of Vance, as well as his closeness to Democrats. The Republican Majority Leader in the House Mike Johnson went even further, refusing to meet with Zelensky and demanding that he dismiss his ambassador in Washington for organizing a visit to Pennsylvania without Republican participation. Johnson characterized the event as “an obvious partisan effort to assist Democrats before the election.”

Following this rocky start, Zelensky found himself with one last chance to salvage his image among conservative audiences – a face-to-face meeting with Trump. Negotiating this encounter proved to be extremely difficult, with the Republican occasionally agreeing, then backing off again. In the end, the conversation that extended Zelensky’s stay by an extra day finally took place. During the meeting, Trump expressed his willingness to work toward ending the war between Russia and Ukraine, aiming for a “fair settlement for both sides.” He emphasized that Ukraine has “been through hell.” He also voiced his support for maintaining good relations not only with Zelensky but also with Russian President Vladimir Putin, believing this could facilitate finding common ground. However, when reporters pressed him to clarify what he considered a fair outcome, he suggested it was too early to define, as the conflict remains a complex “puzzle.”

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“..five consecutive quarters of sales growth since the fourth quarter of 2022, after struggling with sales decline for four consecutive quarters before that..”

• Raytheon Making Billions From Weapons for Ukraine (Sp.)

US defense contractor Raytheon, the world’s largest producer of guided missiles, has been profiting from Ukraine-related military supplies despite previously struggling with sales up until the start of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022, a Sputnik correspondent’s analysis of the company’s earnings reports showed. Raytheon Missiles & Defense (RMD), the subsidiary specializing in missile production under the RTX Corporation, has produced the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS) directly for Ukraine, while the Stinger and Javelin missiles manufactured by the company have been sent to the conflict zone since early 2022. As a manufacturer of air defense systems such as the Patriot and the missiles used by such systems, RMD has received new orders for these missile systems after such weapons were sent to Ukraine by other Western countries.

Russia has repeatedly stated that arms supplies to Ukraine lead to further escalation of the conflict and directly involve NATO countries in it. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that any cargo containing weapons for Ukraine would become a legitimate target for Russia. The United States and NATO are directly involved in the conflict, including not only by supplying weapons, but also by training personnel, Lavrov said. Raytheon has seen five consecutive quarters of sales growth since the fourth quarter of 2022, after struggling with sales decline for four consecutive quarters before that, the company’s latest earnings report showed. Details from the earnings reports of Raytheon illustrate how the US defense contractor has been able to make billions from continued US military aid to Ukraine and turn its business prospects around by taking advantage of the new demands.

Raytheon’s backlog, which refers to signed but unfilled defense contracts, also expanded from $63 billion at the end of 2021 to $77 billion at the end of the second quarter of this year, according to the latest earnings report. New orders for RMD began to dry up from the fourth quarter of 2021 with an 8% year-on-year drop, the company’s earnings reports showed. By the second quarter of 2022, RMD had experienced a third consecutive quarter of sales decline, with an 11% drop from the same period of the previous year. However, RMD’s new orders in the second quarter of 2022 had already begun to show signs of increasing demand for its products following the escalation of the military conflict in Ukraine in early 2022.

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“In Russia, meat consumption is rising per capita to a level never recorded before in Russian history..”

• In The War Economy Russia Has Taught The Pigs To Sing (Helmer)

If you want to understand who is winning the American war against Russia on the Ukrainian battlefield, and also in the world’s commodity trade markets, you can start by calculating the life expectancy of a NATO-trained Ukrainian soldier on the front line, or of a NATO staff officer in a command bunker he thought was safe. Then you can check the life expectancy of a Russian pig. The losses of the former are Russia’s tactical gains; they aren’t yet victory in the war. But it’s the latter, the Russian pig who, upon turning into pork, is breaking through the enemy’s defences towards strategic victory of Russian economic power to capture a world market. This means defeat – unrecoverable loss of market share – for the hostile states led by the once powerful pork exporters, Germany, Spain, Denmark, Canada, and the US.

As the most recent European Union (EU) pig and pork slaughter data show, the war is pushing up the energy and feed costs of pig farming, and drastically cutting European exports of pork to the Asian consumer market, the biggest in the world. There, Russia’s strategic ally China has cancelled the closure of its market in effect for Russia since 2008, and simultaneously has begun pork trade restriction moves against Spain, Denmark and The Netherlands, the principal European exporters of pork to China. In trade war retaliation, China is also steadily reducing the volume and value of its pork imports from the US since 2021. Behind the Ukraine front, the test of who is winning the war against Russia is also who puts their money and their meat where their mouth is. In Russia, meat consumption is rising per capita to a level never recorded before in Russian history. At the same time, the country has become the world’s fifth largest pork producer.

From self-sufficiency in pork production in 2018 to the export of market surplus, this industry achievement has been based on direct and indirect state support measures, including retaliation against EU imports which followed the start of the EU’s anti-Russian sanctions in 2014. “Practically speaking,” says Yury Kovalev, “we no longer have imports, but not because this is closed, but because over the past fifteen years an entire industry has been created, production has grown every year, and we have almost completely abandoned import dependence.” Kovalev is general director of Russia’s National Union of Pig Breeders (NSS). Kovalev is also forecasting that Russian pork exports will soon capture about 10% of the Chinese import market – about 300,000 tonnes per annum – displacing the Europeans.

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“This macabre and dark “new normality” is an antidote to the lies of International Law..”

• International Law Does Not Exist (Pacini)

The assumption of benign global hegemony, that economic and political liberalism was a silver bullet to transcend power politics, turned out to be a liberal illusion fueled by hubris. New international geometries have taken hold. NATO expansion predictably inflamed tensions with Russia as Moscow reasonably perceived it as an existential threat, while China’s simple economic rise became a challenge to U.S. global primacy. Globalization as a neoliberal, Westernized-centric process has become unsustainable, in fits and starts with the U.S. stock market crisis. The excesses of liberalism are now repudiated within the West and outside it, causing polarization within societies and the international system. In all of this, International Law has always been seen as a kind of “guarantee” above the parties, to be appealed to indiscriminately, a kind of neutral power that could settle disputes… or play in favor of the stronger.

Ipso facto, International Law in the twentieth century became United Nations Law, with the UN as the macroscopic entity capable of imposing its dominance. But this hierarchical advantage was not the subject of democratic discussion, let alone confrontation among the various world players: it was an arbitrary and unilateral choice, that of the United States of America, which enjoyed the advantage of victory in World War II, rapidly and effectively expanding its hegemony, both military, cultural, political and especially economic, through the extension of the dollar as the global currency of comparison. An intentional choice? Perhaps. A fluke of history? Equally likely. What is objectively detectable is that we have arrived at the present day with an American-centric International Law, with transnational organs deputed to various functions all reporting to the main Organization, headquartered in New York. Even the various European international institutions and courts have a dependence on Lady USA.

And we come to the present day From here it is easy to see why, today, we have a crisis of International Law and an obvious problem of trust in its so-called institutions. Equally complicated is the transition to an International Law of a multipolar character. Are the events themselves that have caused people to lose confidence in this branch of Law. For there is very little of “law” left. In Kosovo, NATO was allowed to do whatever it wanted, violating Serbia’s territorial sovereignty and creating the puppet “state” of Kosovo; the U.S. can “export democracy” with bombs by attacking in the Middle East whenever it wants, because it is done in the name of “civilization.” in Ukraine, human rights were valid until a few years ago, when the Kiev regime was put on trial for child trafficking and a fratricidal coup, then once the new “villain” was found magically those rights disappeared and the perspective was reversed; Netanyahu can safely make phone calls from UN headquarters and order a carpet bombing of a city in a country, declaring a war, without anything happening to him, despite the fact that he is a proponent of a genocide that has been going on ruthlessly for more than a year. This macabre and dark “new normality” is an antidote to the lies of International Law – or at least how we have been made to believe and practice it for a century to date.

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“The U.S. may opt to remove Netanyahu”, as in the Democrats terrified of losing because of the Netanyahu cabinet’s war spiral.”

• Could Palestine Be The Catalyst For An Islamic Renaissance? (Pepe Escobar)

Of all the countless analyses across the lands of Islam about the profound significance of fateful Al-Toofan (Al-Aqsa Flood) on October 7, 2023, this one stands out: a cycle of conferences in Istanbul earlier this week, including October 7, titled Palestine: the Lynchpin of Civilizational Renaissance, linked to the Kuala Lumpur Forum for Thought and Civilization.Call it a Malaysia-Turkiye partnership: Southeast Asia meets West Asia, a graphic illustration of the multi-nodal world that will be congregating in less than two weeks in Kazan, capital of Muslim Russia, for the long -awaited BRICS summit under the Russian presidency. Significantly, the centrality of Gaza was not debated in Doha, Riyadh, or Abu Dhabi, all of which would have unlimited funds to host such discussions. Istanbul was a unique opportunity to compare insights by Osama Hamdan, representing the whole Palestinian Resistance; Numan Kurtulmus, the speaker of the Turkish Parliament; Hamas top diplomat Khaled Meshaal, speaking from Doha on the “strategic victory” of the Resistance.

And all that compounded by a strong message by Dr. Mahathir Mohammad, former Malaysian Prime Minister and president of the Kuala Lumpur Forum. Dr. Mahathir emphasized that a sound solution would be “a UN peace-keeping force in Gaza protecting them”. The main problem is the Ummah “not having an alternative to UN veto powers”. Hence “Muslim countries must team up – as there are no means of applying pressure to Israel.” Illustrating Mahathir’s call, Muslim-majority nations are responsible for only 6% of global GDP and 6% of investments, while harboring 25% of the world’s population. Mahathir boldly proposed, “we can deny our oil to the rest of the world” and “take back funds invested in dollar bonds, thus forcing the West to take action” in Gaza. Now try to convince MbS in Riyadh and MbZ in Abu Dhabi about it. “Focus on popular organizations. Forget about governments”

The redoubtable Sami al-Arian, Kuwaiti-born Palestinian, director of the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) at the Sabahattin Zaim University in Istanbul, and whose astonishing life story includes being persecuted and thrown in solitary confinement in the U.S. as a “suspected terrorist” summed up the impotence of Arab political elites when it comes to Palestine: after all the Arab world “is the weakest link on global terms” – with 63 military bases only in West Asia controlled by CENTCOM. And still, “what other cause can galvanize the whole world apart from Palestine?” Al-Arian stressed that Al-Aqsa Flood “exposed the Arab world”, as the destruction of Palestine was “imposed to make Israel the regional hegemon”. There is a glimmer of hope though: “Look at all those things that divide us. We should focus on popular organizations. Forget about governments.”

Al-Arian, who lives and works in Istanbul, tackled head on one of the key running themes of the conference: the complex relationship between Turkiye and the West: “Turkiye is with the West, basically. There is no 100% support for Palestinians. Many are still subject to notions of Orientalism.” He also evoked how 35 then future nations lived in peace within the borders of the Ottoman Empire, which spanned 35 million square kilometers. In Palestine, Al-Arian sees three possible scenarios ahead:

1.The continuity of “Netanyahu’s delusions”. There is “no evidence” that the U.S. is opposing any of them. There is “no deterrence apart from the Axis of Resistance.”

2. Denying these delusions is hard as “Israel has [Arab] regimes on its side. Yet Israel must be engaged on all fronts.” Palestine “is the symbol of all that is just”, and “not a symbol only for Palestinians.” It is imperative to “dismantle the Zionist structure, and Palestine cannot do it on its own.”

3.The third scenario is not so far-fetched anymore – considering the looming U.S. presidential elections: “The U.S. may opt to remove Netanyahu”, as in the Democrats terrified of losing because of the Netanyahu cabinet’s war spiral.

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“The six-year proceeding is due to close by Christmas. By then it will have violated every rule in British court practice on the admissibility of evidence..”

• Timetable Announced For UK Novichok Trial In Kangaroo Court (Helmer)

The timetable for public hearings has been announced by the British government and its judge, Lord Anthony Hughes, to repeat the official allegations of Novichok attacks by Russian agents against Sergei and Yulia Skripal on March 4, then Dawn Sturgess on June 30, 2018. The first hearing will open on next Monday, October 14, in Salisbury, the Wiltshire county town where the Skripal attack first occurred. The hearings will then move to the International Dispute Resolution Centre in London. On November 25, a session has been scheduled for Hughes to hear police, intelligence agents, and government lawyers argue the agenda item, “Russian state responsibility”. That session will then be followed in early December by closing statements.

The six-year proceeding is due to close by Christmas. By then it will have violated every rule in British court practice on the admissibility of evidence. . No testimony by the Skripals has been allowed by Hughes. Instead, he has decided that the police, MI5 and Secret Intelligence Service will publish their version of what the Skripals said during interviews they were obliged to give without legal representation in 2018.

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Debt Rattle August 3 2024

Aug 032024
 
 August 3, 2024  Posted by at 8:46 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,  52 Responses »


Pablo Picasso Science and Charity 1897 (he was 16)

 

• Men Beating Women For Medals Is ‘Madness’ – Serbian President Vucic (RT)
• Second Olympic Boxer Who Failed Gender Test Beats Woman To Tears (ZH)
• The Passage of Time (Jim Kunstler)
• Trump Says He’s Agreed To Fox News Debate On September 4 (CNN)
• Biden Victim Of ‘A Coup’ – Trump (RT)
• Unburdened: Kamala Harris Dishes Fresh Word Salad During Prisoner Swap (ZH)
• The DEI Trap (Porter)
• Harris and the Bouncing Balloon Campaign (Trende)
• EU Sets Up Trump Working Group – FT (RT)
• Kremlin Reveals Details of Prisoner Swap With Western Countries (Sp.)
• An Empty White House Gives Netanyahu Free Reign (Sp.)
• Biden Angry Over Being Kept In The Dark On Israel Killing Hamas Chief (ZH)
• Hungary Rejects Croatian Oil Route Over High Fees (Sp.)
• US Trying to ‘Teach’ Russia, China ‘Proper Behavior’ in Nuclear Sphere – Envoy (Sp.)

 

 

 

 

Rasmussen

 

 

Elon
https://twitter.com/i/status/1819530943847153931

 

 

Secret Service

 

 

JD Vance
https://twitter.com/i/status/1819132419066548379

 

 

Trump Meta

 

 

Susan Rice

 

 

Kamala spending

 

 

Tulsi

 

 

Shapiro

 

 

 

 

The Olympics are suffering incredible damage. The Games are for the whole world. Most of which simply can’t understand why men are celebrated for beating women, and want nothing to do with that.

• Men Beating Women For Medals Is ‘Madness’ – Serbian President Vucic (RT)

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has said “madness rules the world” in response to a transgender athlete defeating a woman in a boxing match at the Paris Olympics on Thursday. Italian boxer Angela Carini faced off against Algeria’s Imane Khelif in the welterweight category, but resigned after just 46 seconds. After taking a series of crushing blows from her Algerian opponent, who was barred last year from the World Championships after failing a gender eligibility test, the 25-year-old from Naples forfeited the bout, saying, “this is unjust!” Carini said she was hit harder than she ever has and feared that her nose was broken. The fight sparked strong reactions worldwide, with the Serbian president denouncing the match in which a “biological male” was allowed to compete against a woman.

“Imagine this disease and madness that began to rule the world, when men come, beat women, and get medals. Madness began to rule the world, and everyone went crazy,” Vucic told reporters on Thursday. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said the fight “did not seem on an equal footing,” adding that “Athletes who have male genetic characteristics should not be admitted to female competitions.” Russian-Australian boxer Konstantin Tszyu, a former world light-welterweight champion, also condemned the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) clearance for Khelif. “It’s not normal when a man performs in a boxing match against a woman! And if the IOC allows such cases, then what can we say about them? The IOC has completely lost its mind!” Tszyu told RBC.

The head of the coaching council of the Russian national boxing team, Eduard Kravtsov, said, “everyone understands perfectly well that this is a man.” “And a man whose testosterone is through the roof has an immediate advantage over women. This is both physical strength and speed,” Kravtzov told reporters on Thursday. “Khelif was disqualified at the World Championships, but The IOC has its own rules. The fact that men enter women’s sports is disgusting.” Khelif was disqualified by the International Boxing Association (IBA) in 2023 as a biological male. The boxer appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport but “withdrew the appeal during the process,” the IBA said on Wednesday. The association protested the IOC’s decision to allow Khelif to compete in Paris, arguing that its rules “raise serious questions about both competitive fairness and athletes’ safety.”

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“The IOC’s differing regulations on these matters, in which IBA is not involved, raise serious questions about both competitive fairness and athletes’ safety..”

• Second Olympic Boxer Who Failed Gender Test Beats Woman To Tears (ZH)

On Thursday we reported that one of two boxers banned from competing by the International Boxing Association (IBA), Algerian Imaine Khelif, brutalized a female opponent at the 2024 Olympics in Paris – hitting her so hard that she quit the match just 46 seconds in after taking two massive shots to the head. Now, the second boxer banned by the IBA, Taiwan’s Lin Yu-Ting, easily dispatched with another female boxer – Uzbek Sitora Turdibekova, similarly reducing her to tears. Yu-Ting was disqualified from last year’s World Championships, and had a medal stripped after failing a gender test.

“Based on DNA tests, we identified a number of athletes who tried to trick their colleagues into posing as women,” International Boxing Association (IBA) President Umar Kremlev said at the time, Outkick reports. “According to the results of the tests, it was proved that they have XY chromosomes. Such athletes were excluded from competition.” The IBA also directly criticized the IOC, saying “The IOC’s differing regulations on these matters, in which IBA is not involved, raise serious questions about both competitive fairness and athletes’ safety,” however the IOC position is that Khelif, and Chinese transgender athlete Lin Tu-ting of Taipei, “are women according to their passports,” who had qualified under the rules of elligibility.

From the IBA: “IBA Secretary General and CEO explained that testing was conducted upon the request of the Technical Delegate and Medical Jury of the Championships. The results became available in seven days and the IBA Secretary General and CEO, acting on behalf of IBA, notified the athletes immediately about their disqualification, giving them twenty-one days to appeal the decision to CAS. Mr. Yerolimpos confirmed that similar testing was conducted by a different independent laboratory with the same athletes at the previous edition of the IBA Women’s World Boxing Championships in Istanbul, Turkey in 2022. However, the results were received only upon conclusion of the event, hence the athletes were not disqualified back then. The IOC, meanwhile, defended its decision to allow both IBA-disqualified boxers to compete, suggesting they’ve met all the requirements.

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Sorry Jim, changed your title. “The Passage of Time” is a classic.

• The Passage of Time (Jim Kunstler)

Have you noticed yet? — the weird thing about Veep Kamala Harris is how weirdly brisk her transfiguration was from a sit-com character to Wonder Woman, overnight in the reality-optional news media. In a party burdened with complex ideology, she was known only for tautology: “The significance of the passage of time, right? The significance of the passage of time,” she repeated solemnly on a tour of a Louisiana library in 2022. “So, when you think about it, there is great significance to the passage of time.” Yes, ma’am. You nailed that ol’ coonskin to the wall, all righty! Suddenly her time has come! Everything is Kamala Kamala Kamala. Lights! Camera! Action! But, as you have already been informed, time does not stand still. If it did, then everything would happen at once, which would be a great inconvenience to all. In what seems like a magically extended moment since someone told “Joe Biden” to go dangle, Kamala acquired a lance and halo and rode forth to save our democracy.

Yet, it’s a long way to the grand meet-up of Democratic Party delegates in Chicago, August 19, and that journey is cluttered up with long moments like the one we’re in now, moments when delegates are liable to stew, and maybe even think about more moments to come when the magic of the current moment has passed — because that, after all, is the significance of the passage of time! Here today, gone tomorrow! Hope and change! Go through enough passages of time and things can happen, or even un-happen, such as, perhaps, the rise and fall of the Veep as the champion of this figment known as our democracy. It’s kind of like what they used to say sixty years ago in Vietnam about having to destroy the village in order to save it. Only this time around, it’s democracy in America.

At the convention in Chicago, apropos of whoever selected Kamala Harris, someone might blurt out: “Say, who elected you boss of this outfit?” The answer, of course: nobody. Delegates may share their gnawing doubts in the hallways and state caucus breakout rooms. Metaphysical conundrums will arise. All that sub rosa chatter might even coalesce into. . . a movement! In the name of democracy, someone screeches, a public roll-call vote must be taken! Say, what? We thought that was settled two weeks ago when the virtual roll call happened. Nuh-uh, nah, no way, more delegates chime in. Here is your teachable moment: the virtual is not an adequate substitute for the authentic.

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“..BUT WITH A FULL ARENA AUDIENCE!….” It’s unclear whether Harris would agree to those new terms..”

• Trump Says He’s Agreed To Fox News Debate On September 4 (CNN)

Former President Donald Trump said he has agreed to participate in a debate hosted by Fox News on September 4 and will no longer participate in the debate he previously agreed to hosted by ABC, when President Joe Biden was the presumptive Democratic nominee. Trump said the new debate would be hosted in Pennsylvania with a live audience and that the moderators would be Fox News hosts Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum. It is unclear whether Vice President Kamala Harris has accepted the invitation from Fox News. “I have agreed with FoxNews to debate Kamala Harris on Wednesday, September 4th. The Debate was previously scheduled against Sleepy Joe Biden on ABC, but has been terminated in that Biden will no longer be a participant,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

Trump said: “The FoxNews Debate will be held in the Great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, at a site in an area to be determined. The Moderators of the Debate will be Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, and the Rules will be similar to the Rules of my Debate with Sleepy Joe, who has been treated horribly by his Party – BUT WITH A FULL ARENA AUDIENCE!….” It’s unclear whether Harris would agree to those new terms. The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to CNN’s request for comment.

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“I think she’s easier than he is. I always felt he was incompetent but he had a certain base, and no matter how bad he was, people were going to vote for him. She doesn’t have that base.”

• Biden Victim Of ‘A Coup’ – Trump (RT)

The Democratic Party “staged a coup” against US President Joe Biden, former President Donald Trump has claimed. Trump has previously alleged that Barack Obama orchestrated Biden’s withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race. Biden suspended his reelection bid last month, after a weeks-long pressure campaign in which senior Democrats – including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former President Barack Obama – and party donors convinced the 81-year-old that he could not defeat Trump in November. “They staged a coup against the President of the United States,” Trump told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham in an interview this week. “They went in and they told him ‘you’re leaving, you’re way down in the polls’, 17 points, I think.” “It’s like you’re in a fight with somebody, and you’re really winning, and they take him out and they put somebody else in,” he continued. “Nobody ever heard of this before. This is a coup.”

Speaking to the New York Post last month, Trump claimed that Obama “can’t stand” Biden, and played a leading role in ousting his former vice president from the race. “They all dumped him, and they said, ‘Either you get out nice or we’re going to go after you.’ And that’s what happened. And he had no choice. There’s no question about it,” Trump told the newspaper. Biden, who at the time was quarantined at home with Covid-19, announced his withdrawal on social media. The president did not appear in public until three days after the announcement, and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to run in his stead in a short post on X (formerly Twitter). “I would rather run against her than him,” Trump told Ingraham. “I think she’s easier than he is. I always felt he was incompetent but he had a certain base, and no matter how bad he was, people were going to vote for him. She doesn’t have that base.”

Harris ran for her party’s presidential nomination in 2019, but withdrew from the primary race that year with less than 900 popular votes and her polling numbers in the low single digits. Despite being an historically unpopular vice president, Harris is currently polling better against Trump than Biden was before his withdrawal, although analysts have cautioned that she is likely benefiting from a “bump” in enthusiasm that will subside as the campaign drags on. Trump has focused his attacks on Harris’ liberal record and her role as Biden’s “border czar,” blaming the vice president for record levels of illegal immigration seen since 2021. Trump has also lobbed more personal attacks at Harris, telling a panel of black journalists on Wednesday that she promoted her Indian heritage until “she happened to turn black and now she wants to be known as black,” and telling Ingraham that she has “the laugh of a crazy person.”

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“This is just an extraordinary testament to the importance of having a president who understands the power of diplomacy and understands the strength that rests in understanding the significance of diplomacy..”

• Unburdened: Kamala Harris Dishes Fresh Word Salad During Prisoner Swap (ZH)

Ever since Democrats coup’d Joe Biden into stepping aside, they’ve done their best to shield frontrunner Kamala Harris from opening her mouth (a difficult ask), lest she remind everyone that she’s actually an idiot whose vocabulary relies on a very limited random word generator. Point in case – Harris was caught on camera in the wild – where she gave an unscripted answer while she and President Joe Biden greeted three American citizens and one permanent resident who arrived home after a prisoner exchange with Russia on Thursday. “This is just an extraordinary testament to the importance of having a president who understands the power of diplomacy and understands the strength that rests in understanding the significance of diplomacy,” said Harris, using so many words to say so little.

Thursday’s exchange of 24 prisoners was the largest such swap since the Cold War, and included Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former Marine Paul Whelan and 14 other individuals who were being held in Russia, in exchange for 8 held by the west – including a Russian assassin and two hackers being held in the US, Germany, Norway, Slovenia and Poland. The plane carrying the formerly detained Americans landed at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland at around 8PM local time. “Whelan, a 54-year-old ex Marine, was sentenced to 16 years in 2020 after being detained two years earlier on suspicion of spying. Both were freed Thursday as part of the East-West prisoner swap – the largest since the Cold War. After being freed from their Russian cells, the former prisoners took a four-hour flight from Moscow to Ankara. They then boarded a plane for a 10-hour trek back to the US.

She was seen running into the arms of her family Thursday, after embracing both Kamal Harris and Joe Biden upon exiting the plane. But it was Whelan who disembarked first, followed by Gershkovich, and then Kurmasheva. All three were seen giving Harris and Biden handshakes before blissfully running into the arms of their respective families.” The prisoners were seen speaking with the president and vice president on the landing strip as onlookers cheered, in a display that, instead of occurring in private, was aired for the world to see. -Daily Mail.

On Friday, former President Trump said that the swap marked a victory for Russian President Vladimir Putin, and said he would have cut a better deal if he was in the White House. “Well, as usual, it was a win for Putin…But we got somebody back. So, I’m never going to be challenging that. It wouldn’t have happened with us,” Trump told Fox Business. “We wouldn’t have had to let some of the great killers of the world go.”

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“Biden burnished his own “antiracist” credentials at the expense of his choice. He implicitly diminished her, whoever she might have been, in order to prove that he’s neither a racist nor a sexist.”

• The DEI Trap (Porter)

Americans universally believe that everyone should have a fair shot at opportunities regardless of sex or race, which is why the kind of racism and sexism that was once so prevalent is so rare today. Americans in 2024 embrace multiculturalism and diversity. This is the reason diversity and inclusion programs became ubiquitous. There’s virtue and no harm in gentle reminders to be sensitive and inclusive in light of our diversity. After all, our national motto is e pluribus unum. Today’s Democratic Party, however, rejects this positive view of American progress. Democrats claim that America remains institutionally racist and paternalistic – a credo that provides the intellectual justification for identity politics and the grievance-based race-conscious demand for equity that animates the DEI movement.

Employers sensitive to the left’s narrative on race and sex and leery of claims made in litigation seek to prove and protect their own virtue by hiring on the basis of race or sex. But doing so not only disadvantages whites or males wholly blameless for the sins of the past, it also diminishes the minority hire whose qualifications are doubted by some of their peers – even when they are the best person for the job. The disconnect between the DEI narrative and the modern cultural reality regarding racism and sexism creates the DEI trap: DEI injects racism and sexism into a culture that rejects racism and sexism, making things worse and hurting those it purports to help. Joe Biden’s 2020 selection of Kamala Harris as his running mate and his appointment of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the U.S. Supreme Court only highlighted the DEI trap. “I commit that if I’m elected president and I have an opportunity to appoint someone to the courts, I’ll appoint the first black woman to the court,” Biden vowed.

“If I’m elected president, my cabinet and my administration will look like the country, and I commit that I will in fact pick a woman to be vice president. There are a number of women who are qualified to be president tomorrow. I would pick a woman to be my vice president.” He didn’t say he would pick the best person – he said he would pick a woman and that there are a number of women who are “qualified” to be president. Biden burnished his own “antiracist” credentials at the expense of his choice. He implicitly diminished her, whoever she might have been, in order to prove that he’s neither a racist nor a sexist. Then, after securing the nomination, Biden chose Sen. Kamala Harris, whose own campaign for president was a surprising disappointment and unambiguous failure. A star in her home state of California, she turned out to be a bust as a national candidate.

Choosing her over Elizabeth Warren or Amy Klobuchar, both of whom performed better in the 2020 primaries, had the perverse effect of highlighting the importance of race and sex in Biden’s selection, further bolstering his image with those in his party who value DEI, at the expense of further diminishing Harris. Now, the liberal legacy media would have us all make believe that none of this happened – and make believe that Kamala Harris is the next great Democratic Party leader, despite a lackluster record as vice president and without competing against other rising stars in her party. Now, Harris further diminishes herself as she conducts her own search for a running mate: Democrats have quietly made it known that only white males are under consideration. Really? Kamala, who should not be called a DEI candidate, needs a white guy by her side to win? Is this really where Democrats want to be?

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It’s so much harder to build up someone that people really don’t like.

• Harris and the Bouncing Balloon Campaign (Trende)

We all know that this election will be different than any other election we’ve had in recent decades – how could it not be? This is a 100-day campaign through Election Day, and a 45-day campaign until early voting begins. The dynamics are fundamentally different than your average modern campaign. I’ve been struggling to characterize exactly how the dynamics animating this campaign are different. What I’ve come up with is this: This campaign is a lot like the old kids’ game of “don’t let the balloon touch the ground.” In the event you aren’t familiar with that competition, the rules of the game are remarkably straightforward: Kids bounce a balloon around, and they do so until the balloon touches the ground. In the long run, kids can’t really win the game, as gravity inevitably wins out. But if the goal is to pass time while parents pull together some last minute aspect of the party, the kids can theoretically win.

Right now, Kamala Harris is in her honeymoon phase. She’s been elevated from the vice presidency to presumptive Democratic nominee. This has been accompanied by an improvement in her job approval as she rides a groundswell of good press and has the opportunity to re-introduce herself to the American public. Her stock has risen accordingly. At the same time, she is probably too far to the left to win a general election. She hasn’t really shown Barack Obama’s knack for knowing when he needed to hedge his position or even rule out something to his left because it would alienate a key electoral constituency. To be sure, there are people who don’t really believe that “too far left” is a category that exists (a lot of people on the right believe something similar); if you’re one of them then the entire frame of this article and theory of the campaign are incorrect.

But within that frame, having the election turn to a referendum on Harris’ positions and record, which really have been on the left flank of the Democratic Party, is the equivalent of the ball touching the ground. If those positions are what the election is about, her path to victory becomes much more complicated. As I’ve written before, I don’t think Harris is probably viable over the course of a year-long campaign. There’s a reason she was polling at 3% (barely ahead of Andrew Yang) in the 2020 Democratic primary when she dropped out. She doesn’t have to run a year-long campaign, though. As it turns out, events line up in the political calendar in such a way that it really is possible to keep the balloon bouncing. Consider: Harris will almost certainly pick her vice presidential candidate this week. She has a large number of attractive choices from which to select, which will earn her another week or two of positive press.

That gets us to mid-August, when the Democratic National Convention begins. It will likely be a carefully scripted, well-managed event. There’s little doubt that Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and Hillary Clinton will all deliver well-crafted prime-time addresses to rally the party behind its new nominee, as will Harris and her running mate. She might not receive a bounce, since she’ll still be in her honeymoon phase, but the balloon will be saved from the floor once again. Then, in mid-September, Trump will be sentenced following his conviction in the New York fraud/hush money case. Regardless of whether or not he receives jail time, it’s another distraction from any substantive discussion of the issues in 2024. The attention is diverted from Harris and falls on Trump in a relatively unflattering light. The ball is kept off the ground again; the election actually shapes up as a referendum on Trump at this point.

At that point, we begin to vote. With extended early voting timelines, Pennsylvania starts voting in mid-September, followed by Minnesota, New Mexico, and Virginia starting a few days later. At the beginning of October, Arizona, Georgia, and Ohio start accepting ballots. In short, we can’t think of this campaign as a traditional campaign. It’s a sprint, and a shorter sprint than people acknowledge. Harris might not be able to keep the ball bouncing through November, but she might not have to. Events are lining up to at least keep things going through a sizeable chunk of what has now become an election season.

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As I wrote yesterday: “Among the plans the commission will focus on is the need for EU taxpayers to potentially contribute more to Ukraine’s defense..”

• EU Sets Up Trump Working Group – FT (RT)

The EU has set up a dedicated team of officials to prepare for the potential return of Donald Trump as US president, the Financial Times has reported, citing sources. The European Commission is seeking to assess the implications of possible policy changes that could ensue after the US election in November, especially on the issue of support for Ukraine, three people briefed on the matter told the outlet. The team will also determine what impact a victory by the Democratic Party’s presumed nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, could have on aid for Ukraine, FT writes. Brussels believes that Harris’ policies “may not represent complete continuity” with those of current US President Joe Biden, it adds. EU leaders have pledged to continue to provide military and financial support to Ukraine. Nearly €108 billion ($116.5 billion) has already been allocated to Kiev via the Solidarity with Ukraine fund since the start of Russia’s military operation in February 2022.

The Biden administration has so far committed more than $55 billion in security assistance to Kiev. Trump, the Republican nominee, has, however, repeatedly threatened to scale back aid to Ukraine if elected. He has also proposed structuring the aid as a loan. Additionally, he has pledged to end the conflict within 24 hours of returning to office. Russian President Vladimir Putin said last month that he took Trump’s pledge “seriously.” EU countries are also concerned about Trump’s previous threats to pull the US out of NATO or significantly undermine the mutual defense clause for countries that do not meet the organization’s contribution targets, FT said. Trump’s advisers floated the idea of demanding that NATO allies spend 3% of their gross domestic product on defense, a higher target than bloc members have agreed to, Bloomberg reported in July.

“It’s a discreet discussion forum to think about how best to prepare for Trump,” the outlet quoted one of its sources as saying. “It’s just plain smart to do so.” Among the plans the commission will focus on is the need for EU taxpayers to potentially contribute more to Ukraine’s defense, FT wrote. After Biden dropped out of the presidential race last month and endorsed Harris as his replacement, she and Trump were polling neck and neck. Some of the latest polls this week, however, show Harris leading by a narrow margin. Commenting earlier this year on the upcoming US election, Putin said that Russia was ready to work with any American president. Russia has also repeatedly warned that no amount of foreign aid and weapons is capable of changing the situation on the battlefield and that such deliveries simply prolong the conflict.

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“When they give ours back, then we can talk about it..”

• Kremlin Reveals Details of Prisoner Swap With Western Countries (Sp.)

Negotiations for the Russian-US prisoner exchange were primarily conducted between Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) and the CIA, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Friday. The FSB confirmed on Thursday that eight Russians detained and held in custody in a number of NATO countries had been returned home. A plane carrying the freed prisoners arrived at Moscow’s Vnukovo-2 airport from Ankara late on Thursday, where they were greeted by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Russia, in turn, has released 16 people, including seven Russians and five German citizens. “Negotiations for this complex exchange were conducted through the FSB and CIA. This was the main channel through which the agreement was reached,” Peskov told journalists. Peskov highlighted that Moscow’s firm stance on prisoner exchanges has been effective, resulting in the return of Russian citizens.

When US journalist Tucker Carlson asked Putin to extradite the convicted Americans as a gesture of goodwill, “Putin answered him that there can be no goodwill gestures here,” Peskov told reporters. “When they give ours back, then we can talk about it,” he continued. “This tough position nevertheless yielded results, and our people returned to their homeland thanks to this position.” The fate of all Russians imprisoned in the US is a subject of constant concern, the presidential spokesman stressed, adding that the relevant departments will continue their work. Peskov also dismissed accusations that Moscow is replenishing the “prisoner exchange pool” for bargaining with the West, calling them absurd and unjustified. “Here we can answer the question with a question – what about those who make accusations against Russia, how do they respond to the constant arrests of Russians abroad, the constant arrests of Russians by the United States?” Peskov asked.

“What are the goals of the United States? Therefore, of course, these are completely unjustified and absurd accusations,” he insisted. Peskov revealed that US agents had attempted to influence a jailed Russian intelligence officer’s father to persuade his son to betray his country — but the father instead validated his son’s actions. “According to one of the intelligence officers, the US, of course, tried to influence this officer employee who was imprisoned there, and they found the father of this employee here, and a phone call was organized,” Peskov said. “During the phone call, the father, contrary to what was expected of him, actually said ‘Son, you are doing the right thing, hold on.’ It is also a very interesting case.”

The negotiation process for prisoner exchanges and that for the Ukrainian issue involve different principles and areas of work, the spokesman noted. “These are different areas of work and completely different situation,” Peskov explained. “This work, which was carried out through the FSB and the CIA, of course, required very difficult negotiations, drawing up very complex schemes, agreements, and the involvement of a number of countries.” “If we talk about Ukraine and more complex international problems, this is a completely different matter,” he stressed. “There are completely different principles there — these are the principles of our country’s national interests, the interests of national security. The work there is conducted in a slightly different mode and according to different principles.”

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“The attacks could not “happen without the approval of the Americans unless Benjamin Netanyahu believes there is nobody in the White House..”

• An Empty White House Gives Netanyahu Free Reign (Sp.)

At around 2 am local time on Wednesday, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated in Tehran in an apparent attack by Israel. The attack came hours after an Israeli strike killed Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in Beirut. The United States denied foreknowledge of either attack and had previously warned Israel against striking Beirut. The United States is either a party to the recent assassinations by Israel or Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu believes there is no one behind the wheel in the White House freeing him to take any action without repercussions from the United States, veteran war correspondent Elijah Magnier told Sputnik’s Fault Lines on Wednesday. The attacks could not “happen without the approval of the Americans unless Benjamin Netanyahu believes there is nobody in the White House,” Magnier explained. “Which most probably in some cases is the reality, because we don’t know who’s leading America today.”

After concerns over his mental acuity became too large to ignore, US President Joe Biden ended his campaign for reelection but said he planned to finish his current term in office. The President was silent for three days following that announcement then gave an 11-minute speech that appeared to not include any press. He has only made sporadic appearances since and has not taken questions from the media. On Sunday, it was reported that US officials warned Israel against attacking Beirut, saying that it may be a “red line” for Hezbollah. A few days later, Israel not only struck southern Beirut but assassinated a guest of the Iranian government following President Masoud Pezeshkian’s inauguration. “It is obvious that Netanyahu wants a wider war. He wants to force the Americans to come in because America cannot leave Israel on its own because it’s part of its doctrine,” explained Magnier.

“They have to support the Israelis by all means, even if they disagree with the way Benjamin Netanyahu is conducting the war.” “Either [the Americans] cannot control Netanyahu and he’s doing whatever he wants and is dragging the US administration behind him, or, they know, and they are saying they don’t know,” explained Magnier, noting that either way they are complicit. “If they really don’t want the war, why do they continue supplying the Israelis with tens of thousands of [munitions]? Without this ammunition, Israel cannot go to war. So, there’s a big difference between what they are saying and what they are doing.” While Iran showed extreme restraint after Israel bombed its consulate in Syria, Israel is giving them no choice but to respond. “Today, we have Netanyahu cornering everybody – the Americans, the Iranians, the Syrians, the Lebanese, the Yemeni and the Iraqis – and saying ‘Come to the battlefield, I want a bigger war.’ That’s the message we understand.

“If they don’t respond, he’s going to continue hitting them. If they respond – this is what he wants – then they have to play in his field. So what is the solution? This is where everybody is stuck now. They have to respond.” On Tuesday, the Iranian mission to the UN warned that its response will be “special operations.” “The response to an assassination will indeed be special operations– harder and intended to instill deep regret in the perpetrator,” the mission wrote on X. “This is going to be a very difficult 24 to 48 hours that the Middle East is going to [experience] and we’re going to see the result very shortly,” Magnier concluded.

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Do I believe any of this?

• Biden Angry Over Being Kept In The Dark On Israel Killing Hamas Chief (ZH)

Fresh reporting by Barak Ravid of Axios has revealed that President Biden held a “tough” phone call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Thursdsay wherein the Israeli leader was urged to stop stoking tensions in the region which puts any potential hostage deal in extreme jeopardy. Israel’s Wednesday assassination of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh has put the whole region on a war footing. But Netanyahu and his government without doubt sees this as justified and necessary revenge for the Oct.7 terror attacks on southern Israel. Biden officials are said to be deeply frustrated at the ripple effects from both the Haniyeh killing and the assassination of Hezbollah’s top military commander in Beirut this week. The White House, through Secretary Antony Blinken, has insisted that it was kept in the dark concerning the Israeli Mossad operation to kill Haniyeh. This after Iran issued a formal condemnation alleging Washington’s involvement in the plot.

The whole Axios report paints a picture of Biden being played by America’s closest Mideast ally, even after Washington has injected billions into Israel’s defense. Biden and his officials “feel that Netanyahu kept Biden in the dark over his plans to carry out the assassinations, after leaving the impression last week that he was attentive to the president’s request to focus on getting a Gaza deal.” Or to translate: the White House is belatedly catching up to what most of the world including the Israeli domestic opposition already understood very well – that Netanyahu has prioritized the military fight to eradicate Hamas over the return of the hostages.According to Ravid’s reporting, “One U.S. official said Biden complained to Netanyahu that the two had just spoken last week in the Oval Office about securing the hostage deal, but instead Netanyahu went ahead with the assassination in Tehran.”

And apparently Biden got angry: “At the end of the meeting with Netanyahu in the Oval office last Thursday, Biden became emotional, raised his voice and told Netanyahu he needs to reach a Gaza deal as soon as possible, three Israeli officials with knowledge of the meeting told Axios,” per the report. Yet once again this is a US administration pursuing two contradictory polices at once, allowing the US to get bogged down in escalation messes of Israel’s own making. On the one hand Biden is angrily demanding that Tel Aviv get serious about a ceasefire and hostage exchange, but on the other is vowing to defend Israel if it gets attacked by Iran. In addition to a potential Iran conflict, it remains to be seen if and when PM Netanyahu orders an attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon amid the ratcheting daily tit-for-tat:

Israeli ministers authorized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defense chief Sunday to decide on the “manner and timing” of a response to a rocket strike in the Golan Heights that killed 12 children and teens, and which Israel and the United States blamed on Lebanese terror group Hezbollah. According to The Washington Post the US has already assembled 12 warships in Middle East regional waters prepared to respond to any attack on Israel. Currently the USS Theodore Roosevelt and six US Navy destroyers are in the Persian Gulf. An additional five Navy ships are currently patrolling the Eastern Mediterranean, including two destroyers.

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“..Croatia has increased the price of oil transit fivefold compared to the average market price..”

• Hungary Rejects Croatian Oil Route Over High Fees (Sp.)

Croatia is not a reliable partner for oil transit, since it has raised the duty fivefold since 2022, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Friday, commenting on Brussels’ proposal to replace the Russian oil supplies stopped by Kiev with transit through Croatia. Earlier in the day, the Financial Times reported, citing a letter from EU Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis, that the European Commission had advised Hungary and Slovakia to abandon Russian oil and seek alternative sources in response to a complaint that Ukraine has blocked the transit of oil from Russia. “Croatia is simply not a reliable transit country,” Szijjarto wrote on social media, adding that since the start of the conflict in Ukraine, Croatia has increased the price of oil transit fivefold compared to the average market price. Last month, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said that Ukraine had stopped the transit of Lukoil’s oil.

The Slovak Economy Ministry confirmed that the country was no longer receiving oil from the Russian oil giant, which was sanctioned by Ukraine. On July 22, Szijjarto said that Hungary and Slovakia had launched consultations of the European Commission with Ukraine due to a stop in the transit of oil from Russia through the Druzhba pipeline. On Thursday, EU Commission spokesman Balazs Ujvari said that Kiev’s decision shows no energy supply risks for Hungary or Slovakia, so the Commission will not hold urgent consultations on the issue. Dombrovskis said in the letter to Budapest and Bratislava that “diversification away from Russian fossil fuels should be actively pursued,” the report read on Thursday. He reportedly added that at a meeting of representatives of all EU member states last week, “a significant number … questioned why Hungary and Slovakia had apparently not yet explored alternatives so far”.

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“Medvedev has said that extending the arms reduction treaty is possible only after the United States stops supplying weapons to Ukraine and blocks that country’s accession to NATO..”

• US Trying to ‘Teach’ Russia, China ‘Proper Behavior’ in Nuclear Sphere – Envoy (Sp.)

The United States is trying to teach Russia and China how to behave in the nuclear sphere, Russian Ambassador to Washington Anatoly Antonov said. “Today we heard regular insinuations about Russia’s allegedly irresponsible behavior in the nuclear sphere. With a persistence worthy of a better use, they are again trying to teach our country, just like China, ‘proper behavior,'” Antonov told reporters. He said that otherwise, Washington says the United States will not restrain the growth of its own nuclear arsenal. Acting US Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy Vipin Narang said on Thursday that the United States might be forced to reconsider its nuclear size and posture in the absence of a change in the nuclear trajectories of Russia, China and North Korea.

The New START treaty between Russia and the United States is set to expire in 2026. Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev has said that extending the arms reduction treaty is possible only after the United States stops supplying weapons to Ukraine and blocks that country’s accession to NATO. “Our country will continue to be guided exclusively by national interests, without account for which building a Russian-American dialogue on arms control is impossible,” Antonov told reporters. The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty, signed between the Soviet Union and the US in 1987, banned the countries from developing and possessing ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges from 500 to 5,500 kilometers. In 2019, then-President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the treaty, accusing Russia of non-compliance. In response to the US decision, Russia suspended its participation in the Cold War-era accord.

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The Actor

 

 

Trump loan
https://twitter.com/i/status/1819519750659264984

 

 

Rogan Jones 2003

 

 

Dog Ball Puppy

 

 

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