theatlantic | After President Vladimir Putin
announced this week that Russia was conscripting some 300,000 reservists
and military veterans to reinforce its war effort in Ukraine,
international flights out of Russian cities quickly sold out. This latest wave of Russia’s exodus included Anton Shalaev, a 38-year-old senior manager at an IT company, and 15 colleagues.
On
less than a day’s notice, these men of military age all left their
relatively comfortable lives in downtown Moscow to fly to Yerevan, the
capital of Armenia. Because of Putin’s war, Shalaev tossed a book, an
iPad, and a laptop in a backpack and got out of Dodge.
Shalaev and his co-workers are true tech geeks, producers of high-value
computer games. They represent their country’s brightest and best,
members of a tech elite that was the economic foundation of Russia’s new
middle class. In a last selfie from Moscow, Shalaev brandished a coffee
mug that bore the slogan Not today, Satan.
Anna Nemtsova: Why didn’t you want to be drafted to fight in Ukraine?
Anton Shalaev:
On the day Putin declared the war, I knew I would never fight on behalf
of this new Nazi Reich. They are my personal enemies: mercenaries who
steal my country from me, occupy foreign territories, and kill innocent
people. Putin’s army commanders have had plenty of time to turn down
their contracts; instead, they are recruiting more cannon fodder now.
So
I chose to help Ukrainians suffering from this horror—pay for shelters
in Kyiv with cryptocurrency and write antiwar posts on social media. To
encourage Russians at home, I said: “Guys, look, I am writing this from
Moscow.”
Nemtsova: What do you think of the Kremlin’s decision making?
Shalaev:
A few old men and an army of zombies are leading us to hell. I say that
because people around me in Russia behaved as if they had been bitten
by a zombie, dragging my entire country into a dreadful war. All I saw
was Russian loser husbands beating their wives, while the entire rotting
house of the state system has turned my people into an army of the
dead.
They are my enemies.
Nemtsova: What do you know of the situation in Ukraine?
Shalaev:
I constantly follow the war news in Ukraine—and I seek out the best,
most objective analysts. My main sources on the atrocities are Ukrainian
refugees from cities bombed by Russian forces.
I
realize that I would rather go to prison than go to fight against the
Ukrainian army. I openly embrace my antiwar position. I urge my
social-media followers to donate to Ukrainians. This entire war is a
crime against humanity.
jonathanturley | One of the most glaring contradictions in the
Mar-a-Lago controversy has been the Justice Department demanding
absolute and unwavering secrecy over the FBI raid while officials have
been leaking details on the raid. The latest example is a report in the New York Times
that the Justice Department recovered more than 300 documents with
classified markings, citing multiple sources connected to the
investigation. Most judges would be a tad annoyed by the contradiction
as the government continues to frame the public debate with its own
selective leaks while using secrecy to bar other disclosures. That
includes sections of the affidavit that detail the communications with
the Trump team, information that is already known to the target.
Someone is clearly lying. The Trump Team
said that it was cooperating and would have given access to the
government if it raised further objections. The Justice Department has
clearly indicated that time was of the essence to justify this
unprecedented raid on the home of a former president. Yet, Attorney
General Merrick Garland reportedly waited for weeks to sign off on the
application for a warrant and the FBI then waited a weekend to execute
that warrant. It is difficult to understand why such communications
could not be released in a redacted affidavit while protecting more
sensitive sections.
Previous leaks discussed various
undisclosed facts that are presumably part of the affidavit, including
the government was seeking vital nuclear weapons materials and then how
video camera evidence outside of the Mar-a-Lago storage area led the FBI
to act without delay.
The latest leak to to the New York Times
offers details on what was gathered from Mar-a-Lago. Officials state
that they collected more than 150 documents marked as classified in
January with another 150 being gathered in June and then in the August
raid.
Washington has long
floated on a sea of leaks but this is notable in that the government is
opposing even modest disclosures from the court while it has steadily
leaked details to its own advantage. It undermines the credibility of
the government and raises questions of the motivations behind the
absolute secrecy claims.
The level of detail is extraordinary
including the very account of past dealings that some of us have argued
could be released in the affidavit as well as the contents of the boxes.
The leaks describe the June meeting in Mar-a-Lago and reveals that Jay
Bratt, the chief of the counterespionage section of the national
security division of the Justice Department, met with two of Mr. Trump’s
lawyers, Evan Corcoran and Christina Bobb. He then went through the
boxes himself to identify classified material. (The Trump motion
this week also described this meeting with Bratt, which again raises
why the same information in the affidavit cannot be disclosed).
This information is likely contained in the
affidavit, which the Justice Department claimed could not be released
without harming its investigation and endangering national security.
americanmind | A week after the invasion and nine-hour
occupation of former President Trump’s home in Palm Beach, Florida, it
is becoming clearer every day that there was no plausible legal reason
for it.
It may have been, as has been widely alleged, a fishing expedition to
try to find something useful for Nancy Pelosi’s January 6 kangaroo
court inquiry into the “insurrection,” but if so, this was a desperation
play, and since no such objective was specified in the warrant nor
presumably mentioned in the affidavit supporting the warrant, such a
fishing expedition is not legal, though on recent precedent, legal
relevance is the last criterion this regime would take into account.
These are, if not the identical authors, certainly kindred spirits in
the law enforcement bureaucracy of those who inflicted upon the
much-wronged and disserved people of the United States the Trump-Russia
collusion fraud, the whitewash of Hillary Clinton’s destruction of
33,000 subpoenaed emails and reckless and illegal use of a home server
for confidential official information, the two spurious impeachments,
and the scandalous mishandling of the Biden family’s financial
shenanigans, and many other triumphs of malice and incompetence.
The burden of the deluge of semi-official leaks pipelined through the
docile Trump-hating media last week gradually back-pedaled from the
lofty insinuations of those elusive “high crimes and misdemeanors”
equivalent to treason, to an archival dispute of the kind that all
departing presidents have. The climb-down spiked briefly with the
absurdity of misuse of nuclear military information in contravention of
the Espionage Act, and wound up the week as a toothless,
general-purpose, normal legal precaution. The normal Democrat practice
in this kind of perversion of the prosecutorial apparatus is to rely
upon the docile and rabidly partisan national political media to
transmit a Niagara of dishonest official leaks. The New York Times, usually reliable as an administration source, has revealed
that President Biden pressured the attorney general to prosecute Trump.
The best he could do, apparently, was this burlesque of due process,
with a feeble and belated acknowledgment that he had approved the
invasion and that, of course, the fact of an investigation in progress
prevented him from saying anything about it.
In this case, the spigots of leaks shut down after a few days, and in
an agile act of improvisation, the anti-Trump media has taken to
accusing the former president and his followers of inciting disrespect
for the justice system and betraying a sense of unease at having Trump’s
papers and conduct closely examined, thus inciting the inference that
he must have been guilty of something. This is the familiar reasoning of
people so possessed by hate that they wish to charge somebody with
something, and in failing to find any useful evidence, they cite the
absence of the evidence as illustrative of the fiendish cunning of the
targeted person, in hiding or destroying the evidence.
This was the basis of the late Christopher Hitchens’ accusation
against Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger of being responsible for the
death of Chilean president Salvador Allende in 1973. And it was the
essence of journeyman historian Michael Beschloss’ comments that while
it was true that what was being done to President Trump was
unprecedented, that was only because Trump was so obviously more
criminally dishonest in his behavior than any previous American
president, and so there was no need to elaborate upon it.
The fact that there is no evidence against Trump of having done
anything illegal, despite years of obsessive and frequently illegal
official persecution of him to unearth such evidence, merely confirms
the satanic depths of his wickedness. Next we will have
historian-for-hire John Meacham give us another chorus about Joe Biden’s
resemblance to Franklin D. Roosevelt (who in four terms as he led the
country out of the Great Depression and to the brink of victory in World
War II never had one day of a negative public approval rating).
The Wall Street Journal, which has been quite professional
and even-handed in its treatment of Donald Trump as a politician, warned
on the weekend that it would damage his credibility if he objected to
the publication of the warrant for the intrusion at his house. They need
not have worried: Trump was happy to have it made public and the shoe
was now on the other foot, as the Justice Department is reduced to lame
excuses for not releasing the affidavit on the basis of which the
judge-shopped, professedly Trump-hating, magistrate to whom the
affidavit was submitted, authorized the intrusion.
Legally, it need now hardly be pointed out that the execution of the
search warrant at Trump’s home was an outrage. Justice should have
proceeded by subpoena, and cannot explain why it waited for 19 months
since Trump left office, during which Trump claims he cooperated
entirely with it, to take this step. Even if there was some dispute on
the matter of the subpoena, one hardly needs to launch a major raid to
handle the disposition of such a non-urgent matter. Since a president
can declassify anything he wants, the regime’s media apologists are
reduced to claiming he must have declassified some things incorrectly.
justthenews | Long before it professed no prior knowledge of the raid on Donald
Trump's estate, the Biden White House worked directly with the Justice
Department and National Archives to instigate the criminal probe into
alleged mishandling of documents, allowing the FBI to review evidence
retrieved from Mar-a-Lago this spring and eliminating the 45th
president's claims to executive privilege, according to contemporaneous
government documents reviewed by Just the News.
The memos show then-White House Deputy Counsel Jonathan Su was
engaged in conversations with the FBI, DOJ and National Archives as
early as April, shortly after 15 boxes of classified and other materials
were voluntarily returned to the federal historical agency from Trump's
Florida home.
By May, Su conveyed to the Archives that President Joe Biden would
not object to waiving his predecessor's claims to executive privilege, a
decision that opened the door for DOJ to get a grand jury to issue a
subpoena compelling Trump to turn over any remaining materials he
possessed from his presidency.
The machinations are summarized in several memos and emails exchanged
between the various agencies in spring 2022, months before the FBI took
the added unprecedented step of raiding Trump's Florida compound with a
court-issued search warrant.
The most complete summary was contained in a lengthy letter dated May
10 that acting National Archivist Debra Steidel Wall sent Trump's
lawyers summarizing the White House's involvement.
"On April 11, 2022, the White House Counsel's Office — affirming a
request from the Department of Justice supported by an FBI letterhead
memorandum — formally transmitted a request that NARA provide the FBI
access to the 15 boxes for its review within seven days, with the
possibility that the FBI might request copies of specific documents
following its review of the boxes," Wall wrote Trump defense attorney
Evan Corcoran.
That letter revealed Biden empowered the National Archives and
Records Administration to waive any claims to executive privilege that
Trump might assert to block DOJ from gaining access to the documents.
"The Counsel to the President has informed me that, in light of the
particular circumstances presented here, President Biden defers to my
determination, in consultation with the Assistant Attorney General for
the Office of Legal Counsel, regarding whether or not I should uphold
the former President's purported 'protective assertion of executive
privilege,'" Wall wrote. "... I have therefore decided not to honor the
former President's 'protective' claim of privilege."
townhall | As the FBI raided President Trump's Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach,
Florida, the White House was unaware that any federal law enforcement
activity was afoot — or at least that's what unnamed sources were
spinning to mainstream outlets Monday evening.
According
to one of those infamous "source familiar" people who runs their mouth
without any accountability, senior White House officials found out about
the FBI's raid on Trump's "Southern White House" like the rest of us
and had no prior notice. The New York Times described the White House's
discovery of the raid, reporting "Aides to President Biden said they
were stunned by the development and learned of it from Twitter."
Stunned. How convenient.
Suffice it to say, that claim or explanation isn't going to fly with a
lot of Americans. The principal law enforcement agency of the federal
government, the definition of executive power, decided to raid the home
of the former president, and the White House didn't know anything about
it until people started tweeting?
That sounds like either the
White House is lying or the FBI was shielding the White House from prior
knowledge of the raid/scavenger hunt in Palm Beach — neither of which
is a terribly good image for the FBI and Biden administration to be
putting forward.
What's more, if the White House really didn't
know anything about the plans to raid Mar-A-Lago, who is overseeing the
FBI and providing accountability for any of its other actions?
Whether the Democrats and mainstream media cheering this on are
excited by the idea that 1) the FBI is going rogue wherever it wants and
returning to some of its J. Edgar Hoover roots or 2) thrilled that a
Democrat administration is using federal law enforcement to target
political adversaries is anyone's guess. Vespa had a great writeup of
their giddiness here.
In
the days ahead, there are sure to be calls for the White House, DOJ,
and FBI to clarify how the raid came to be, who knew about it, and what
its aim was. Certainly Karine Jean-Pierre isn’t looking forward to her
next White House press briefing.
moonofalabama | Over the last months the British MI-6 disinformation service had fun
with strewing rumors over Vladimir Putin's health, mostly via British
tabloids. It used its usual tools - a former MI-6 chief, 'former' MI-6
spies and the ever available 'anonymous' Russian oligarch who lives in
London. Like its other propaganda claims these were obvious nonsense but
found a reliably echo in the gossip media.
CIA Director William Burns finally had enough of it. Getting asked
and having to answer stupid questions about Putin's health is a waste of
time. Official media picked up on it. The narrative is thereby dead.
unz |What
makes Browder so powerful? He invests in politicians. This is probably a
uniquely Jewish quality: Jews outspend everybody in contributions to
political figures. The Arabs will spend more on horses and jets, the
Russians prefer real estate, the Jews like politicians. The Russian NTV
channel reported that Browder lavishly financed the US lawmakers. Here
they present alleged evidence of money transfers: some hundred thousand
dollars was given by Browder’s structures officially to the senators
and congressmen in order to promote the Magnitsky Act.
Much
bigger sums were transferred via good services of Brothers Ziff,
mega-rich Jewish American businessmen, said the researchers in two
articles published on the Veteran News Network and in The Huffington Post.
These
two articles were taken off the sites very fast under pressure of
Browder’s lawyers, but they are available in the cache. They disclose
the chief beneficiary of Browder’s generosity. This is Senator Ben
Cardin, a Democrat from Maryland. He was the engine behind Magnitsky Act
legislation to such an extent that the Act has been often called the Cardin List.
Cardin is a fervent supporter of Hillary Clinton, also a cold warrior
of good standing. More to a point, Cardin is a prominent member of
Israel Lobby.
LinkBookmarkBrowder affair is a heady upper-class Jewish cocktail of money, spies, politicians and international crime.
Almost all involved figures appear to be Jewish, not only Browder,
Brothers Ziff and Ben Cardin. Even his enemy, the beneficiary of the
scam that (according to Browder) took over his Russian assets is another
Jewish businessman Dennis Katsiv (he had been partly exonerated by a New York court as is well described in this thoughtful piece).
Browder
began his way to riches under the patronage of a very rich and very
crooked Robert Maxwell, a Czech-born Jewish businessman who assumed a
Scots name. Maxwell stole a few million dollars from his company pension
fund before dying in mysterious circumstances on board of his yacht in
the Atlantic. It was claimed by a member of Israeli Military
Intelligence, Ari Ben Menashe, that Maxwell had been a Mossad agent for
years, and he also said Maxwell tipped the Israelis about Israeli
whistle-blower Mordecai Vanunu. Vanunu was kidnapped and spent many
years in Israeli jails.
Geoffrey Goodman
wrote Maxwell “was almost certainly being used as – and using himself
as – a two-way intelligence conduit [between East and West]. This
arrangement included passing intelligence to the Israeli secret forces
with whom he became increasingly involved towards the end of his life.”
After
Maxwell, Browder switched allegiance to Edmond Safra, a very rich
Jewish banker of Lebanese origin, who also played East vs West. Safra
provided him with working capital for his investment fund. Safra’s bank
has been the unlikely place where the IMF loan of four billion dollars
to Russia had been transferred—and disappeared. The Russian authorities
say that Browder has been involved in this “crime of the century,” next
to Safra. The banker’s name has been connected to Mossad: increasingly
fearful for his life, Safra surrounded himself by Mossad-trained gunmen.
This did not help him: he died a horrible death in his bathroom when
his villa was torched by one of the guards.
The
third Jewish oligarch on Browder’s way was Boris Berezovsky, the
king-maker of Yeltsin’s Russia. He also died in his bathroom (which
seems to be a constant feature); apparently he committed suicide.
Berezovsky had been a politically active man; he supported every
anti-Putin force in Russia. However, a few months before his death, he
asked for permission to return to Russia, and some negotiations went on
between him and Russian authorities.
His
chief of security Sergey Sokolov came to Russia and purportedly brought
with him some documents his late master prepared for his return. These
documents allege that Browder had been an agent of Western intelligence
services, of the CIA to begin with, and of MI6 in following years. He
was given a code name Solomon, as he worked for Salomon Brothers. His
financial activity was just a cover for his true intentions, that is to
collect political and economic data on Russia, and to carry out economic
war on Russia. This revelation has been made in the Russia-1 TV channel
documentary Browder Effect,
(broadcasted 13.04.2016), asserting that Browder was not after money at
all, and his activities in Russia, beside being very profitable, had a
political angle.
The documents had been doubted for some linguistic reasons discussed by Gilbert Doctorow
who comes to a reasonable conclusion: “Bill Browder[‘s]… intensity and
the time he was devoting to anti-Russian sanctions in Europe was in no
way comparable to the behaviour of a top level international
businessman. It was clear to me that some other game was in play. But at
the time, no one could stand up and suggest the man was a fraud, an
operative of the intelligence agencies. Whatever the final verdict may
be on the documents presented by the film “The Browder Effect,” it
raises questions about Browder that should have been asked years ago in
mainstream Western media if journalists were paying attention. Yevgeny
Popov deserves credit for highlighting those questions, even if his
documents demand further investigation before we come to definitive
answers”.
We
do not know whether Browder is, or had been, a spy. This should not
surprise us, as he was closely connected to Maxwell, Safra and
Berezovsky, the financiers with strong ties in the intelligence
community.
Perhaps
he outlived his usefulness, Mr Browder did. He started the Cold war,
now is the time to keep it in its healthy limits and to avoid a nuclear
disaster or rapid armaments race. This is the task we may hope will be
entertained by the next US President, Mr Donald Trump.
mises | Under the Great Reset governance model, states and favored
corporations form “public-private partnerships” in control of
governance. The configuration yields a corporate-state hybrid largely
unaccountable to the constituents of national governments.
The cozy relationship between multinational corporations and
governments has even aroused the scorn of a few left-leaning critics.
They note that the governance model of the WEF represents at least the
partial privatization of the UN’s Agenda 2030, with the WEF bringing
corporate partners, money, and supposed expertise on the 4-IR to the
table. And the WEF’s governance model extends well beyond the UN,
affecting the constitution and behavior of governments worldwide. This
usurpation has led political scientist Ivan Wecke to call the WEF’s
governmental redesign of the world system “a corporate takeover of
global governance.”8
This is true, but the obverse is also the case. The WEF model also represents thegovernmentalization of private industry.
Under Schwab’s “stakeholder capitalism” and the multistakeholder
governance model, governance is not only increasingly privatized, but
also and more importantly, corporations are deputized as major additions
to governments and intergovernmental bodies. The state is thereby
extended, enhanced, and augmented by the addition of enormous corporate
assets. These include funding directed at “sustainable development” to
the exclusion of the noncompliant, as well as the use of Big Data,
artificial intelligence, and 5G to monitor and control citizens. In the
case of the covid vaccine regime, the state grants Big Pharma monopoly
protection and indemnity from liability in exchange for a vehicle by
which to expand its powers of coercion. As such, corporate stakeholders
become what I have called “governmentalities”—otherwise “private”
organizations wielded as state apparatuses, with no obligation to answer
to pesky constituents.9 Since
these corporations are multinational, the state essentially becomes
global, whether or not a “one-world government” is ever formalized.
In Google Archipelago,
I argued that leftist authoritarianism is the political ideology and
modus operandi of what I call Big Digital, and that Big Digital is the
leading edge of an emerging world system. Big Digital is the
communications, ideological, and technological arm of an emerging
corporate socialism. The Great Reset is the name that has since been
given to the project of establishing this world system.
Just as Klaus Schwab and the WEF hoped, the covid crisis has
accelerated the development of the Great Reset’s corporate-socialist
statism. Developments advancing the Great Reset agenda include the
Federal Reserve’s unrestrained printing of money, the subsequent
inflation, the increasing taxation on everything imaginable, the
increased dependence on the state, the supply chain crisis, the
restrictions and job losses due to vaccine mandates, and the prospect of
personal carbon allowances.10 Altogether,
these and other such policies constitute a coordinated attack on the
majority. Ironically, they also represent the “fairness” aspect of the
Great Reset—if we properly understand fairness to mean leveling the
economic status of the "average American" with those in less
“privileged” regions. And this is one of the functions of woke ideology11—to
make the majority in developed countries feel unworthy of their
“privileged” lifestyles and consumption patterns, which the elite are in
the process of resetting to a reduced and static new normal.
Greenwald | Last month, the independent journalist Michael Tracey, writing at Substack,
interviewed a U.S. veteran of the war in Afghanistan. The former
soldier, whose job was to work in training programs for the Afghan
police and also participated in training briefings for the Afghan
military, described in detail
why the program to train Afghan security forces was such an obvious
failure and even a farce. “I don’t think I could overstate that this was
a system just basically designed for funneling money and wasting or
losing equipment,” he said. In sum, “as far as the US military presence
there — I just viewed it as a big money funneling operation”: an endless
money pit for U.S. security contractors and Afghan warlords, all of
whom knew that no real progress was being made, just sucking up as much
U.S. taxpayer money as they could before the inevitable withdraw and
takeover by the Taliban.
NYTimes | When asked if he had gotten a Covid-19 vaccine, Lamar Jackson, a quarterback for the Baltimore Ravens, declined to answer. “I feel it’s a personal decision,” he said. “I’m just going to keep my feelings to my family and myself.”
Jackson
echoed another N.F.L. quarterback, Cam Newton of the New England
Patriots, who said much the same a few days earlier. “It’s too personal
to discuss,” Newton replied, when asked if he was vaccinated. “I’ll just keep it at that.”
Jackson and Newton are not the only prominent people to say hey, it’s personal
when asked about the vaccine. It is a common dodge for public-facing
vaccine skeptics or those using vaccine skepticism for their own ends.
“I don’t think it’s anybody’s damn business whether I’m vaccinated or
not,” Representative Chip Roy, Republican of Texas, told CNN last month. Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, wrote similarly
(albeit less abrasively) in May that vaccination was a “personal and
private decision” and that “no one should be shamed, coerced or mandated
to take Covid-19 vaccines that are being allowed under an emergency use
authorization.”
Johnson and all the others are wrong. Wearing a helmet while bike
riding, strapping on your seatbelt in a car — these are personal
decisions, at least as far as your own injuries are concerned.
Vaccination is different. In the context of a deadly and often
debilitating contagion, in which the unchecked spread of infection has
consequences for the entire society, vaccination is not a personal
decision. And inasmuch as the United States has struggled to achieve
herd immunity against Covid-19 through vaccination, it is because we
refuse to treat the pandemic for what it is: a social problem to solve
through collective action.
WaPo | The delta variant of the coronavirus
appears to cause more severe illness than earlier variants and spreads
as easily as chickenpox, according to an internal federal health
document that argues officials must “acknowledge the war has changed.”
The
document is an internal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
slide presentation, shared within the CDC and obtained by The Washington
Post. It captures the struggle of the nation’s top public health agency
to persuade the public to embrace vaccination and prevention measures,
including mask-wearing, as cases surge across the United States and new research suggests vaccinated people can spread the virus.
The
document strikes an urgent note, revealing the agency knows it must
revamp its public messaging to emphasize vaccination as the best defense
against a variant so contagious that it acts almost like a different
novel virus, leaping from target to target more swiftly than Ebola or
the common cold.
It cites a combination of recently obtained, still-unpublished data
from outbreak investigations and outside studies showing that
vaccinated individuals infected with delta may be able to transmit the
virus as easily as those who are unvaccinated. Vaccinated people
infected with delta have measurable viral loads similar to those who are
unvaccinated and infected with the variant.
“I
finished reading it significantly more concerned than when I began,”
Robert Wachter, chairman of the Department of Medicine at the University
of California at San Francisco, wrote in an email.
The
data and studies cited in the document played a key role in revamped
recommendations that call for everyone — vaccinated or not — to wear
masks indoors in public settings in certain circumstances, a federal
health official said. That official told The Post that the data will be
published in full on Friday. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky privately
briefed members of Congress on Thursday, drawing on much of the material
in the document.
One
of the slides states that there is a higher risk among older age groups
for hospitalization and death relative to younger people, regardless of
vaccination status. Another estimates that there are 35,000 symptomatic
infections per week among 162 million vaccinated Americans.
The
document outlines “communication challenges” fueled by cases in
vaccinated people, including concerns from local health departments
about whether coronavirus vaccines remain effective and a “public
convinced vaccines no longer work/booster doses needed.”
The
presentation highlights the daunting task the CDC faces. It must
continue to emphasize the proven efficacy of the vaccines at preventing
severe illness and death while acknowledging milder breakthrough infections
may not be so rare after all, and that vaccinated individuals are
transmitting the virus. The agency must move the goal posts of success
in full public view.
pogo | KPMG had been performing disastrously on inspections conducted by the
Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), and it was under
pressure to improve. In the annual inspections, the oversight board
scrutinizes a sample of the audits that major accounting firms perform
on companies listed on U.S. stock markets. Advance word of which audits
the PCAOB planned to inspect would give KPMG an edge.
On Sweet’s
first day at the firm, over lunch at a posh Mediterranean restaurant,
KPMG brass pumped him for information on the PCAOB’s inspection plans.
His second day on the job, in a tête-à -tête in an executive conference
room, as Sweet recalled, his boss’s boss referred to the uneasiness
Sweet had shown divulging such information and told him he needed to
remember where his paycheck came from. His fourth day on the job, while
Sweet and his new boss, Thomas Whittle, walked back to the office from
lunch at a Chinese restaurant, Sweet told Whittle that he knew which
audits the oversight board planned to inspect that year—and that he had
taken PCAOB documents with him.
That evening, “Thomas Whittle
came by my office where I was sitting and he leaned against the door and
asked me to give him the list,” Sweet testified.
Brian Sweet was part of a pipeline that funneled confidential information from KPMG’s prime regulator to KPMG.
The
conspiracy took Washington’s notorious revolving door to a criminal
extreme. According to the Justice Department, KPMG partners hired PCAOB
employees, pumped them for inside information on the oversight board’s
plans, and then exploited it to cheat on inspections. Meanwhile, PCAOB
employees angled for jobs at KPMG and divulged regulatory secrets to the
audit firm.
The case has led to a series of convictions and guilty pleas—and a $50 million administrative fine against KPMG. It also laid bare inner workings of the revolving door in detail seldom seen.
Beyond
the conduct labeled as criminal, in little-noticed testimony the case
revealed a series of side contacts between senior KPMG partners and top
officials of the PCAOB—one, or in some cases two, members of its
five-member governing board. The low-profile meetings at locations such
as the Capital Hilton, which is steps from the PCAOB’s Washington
headquarters, gave KPMG leaders a preview of questioning they would
later face at periodic meetings with the full board.
But all of
that is just part of a larger picture: The supposedly independent
regulator is inextricably tied to the industry it oversees, a Project On
Government Oversight (POGO) investigation found.
Globe | A central pillar of President Trump’s politics is a sustained assault on
the free press. Journalists are not classified as fellow Americans, but
rather “the enemy of the people.” This relentless assault on the free
press has dangerous consequences. We asked editorial boards
from around the country – liberal and conservative, large and small –
to join us today to address this fundamental threat in their own words.
There was once broad, bipartisan, intergenerational agreement in the
United States that the press played this important role. Yet that view
is no longer shared by many Americans. “The news media is the enemy of
the American people,” is a sentiment endorsed by 48 percent of
Republicans surveyed this month by Ipsos polling firm. That poll is not
an outlier. One published this week found 51 percent of Republicans
considered the press “the enemy of the people rather than an important
part of democracy.”
“The press was to serve the governed, not the governors,” Supreme Court
Justice Hugo Black wrote in 1971. Would that it were still the case. Lies are antithetical to an informed citizenry, responsible for
self-governance. The greatness of America is dependent on the role of a
free press to speak the truth to the powerful. To label the press “the
enemy of the people” is as un-American as it is dangerous to the civic
compact we have shared for more than two centuries.
independent | A key feature of modern antisemitism has been the racialised projection
of “the Jew”, an archetype which stands above and in conflict with the
working class. Throughout the history of the left, certain
anti-capitalist visions generated by socialists have overlapped and
combined with this strain of antisemitism. What makes antisemitism
particularly attractive and dangerous for the left is that it can appear
oppositional. It provides an easy personification of oppression in the
face of less tangible, global forms of domination.
Scandals provoked by accusations of antisemitism have become a recurrent
feature of British politics. As the latest tumult subsides we have an
opportunity to reflect on the issues that underlie these controversies
and prepare the way for Labour and the left to do better in future.
theoccidentalobserver | In the months immediately before his coronation in 1189, Richard the
Lionheart became aware of rising anti-Jewish sentiment among the people
of England. This ill-feeling was the result of decades of rampant usury,
property seizures, social disparities, and what historian Robert Chazan
described as the “effective royal protection” of Henry II.[2] Eager to
ally himself with the mood of the nation, particularly in the tenuous
early days of his reign, Richard appealed to the sentiments of the
masses by banning Jews from attending the coronation ceremony at
Westminster Abbey. News of the ban was welcomed by the people, but the
move was deeply unsettling to England’s Jews. The prohibition was
nervously perceived by the nation’s Hebrews as a weakening of the vital
Jewish relationship with the elite. This relationship, particularly the
protection it provided to Jewish loan merchants, had been absolutely
essential to the untroubled continuation of the Jews’ highly
antagonistic financial practices among the lower orders. Without this
protection, the position of the Jews in England would no longer be
viable. Therefore, in a desperate attempt to resist a decline in Jewish
influence, on the day of the coronation a party of senior Jews arrived
at the doors of Westminster Abbey bearing lavish gifts and sycophantic
tongues. The effort was in vain.
The Jewish party were refused entry by nobles and officials, and the
group was then stripped and flogged for their flagrant defiance of royal
orders. Since this punishment was a public display, a story soon
circulated among the peasantry that the new king consented to general
action against the Jews, and that the royal elite was now siding with
the people. In the ensuing days, luxurious Jewish homes were burned, and
castles containing Jewish debt rolls were stormed and their contents
destroyed. These actions, however, were built on an assumption of elite
backing that was in reality non-existent. The expectations of the masses
were soon rudely crushed. The Lionheart’s banning of the Jews had been a
mere measure of propaganda intended to endear him to his subjects, and
the flogging of the intruding party was carried out without his consent.
In truth, the King remained as beholden to the sway of mammon as his
predecessors. When push came to shove, the peasantry, unlike ‘his’ Jews,
were expendable. Richard wasted little time in rounding up and
executing the ringleaders of the anti-Jewish action, even including
those who had damaged Jewish property by accident. He then issued orders
to “the sheriffs of England to prevent all such incidents in the
future.”[3] In the aftermath of this crushing of the people, the Jews of
England would once again remain under high levels of royal protection
until ‘the Lionheart’ left the country for the Third Crusade — a
venture, ironically, to relieve people in foreign nations of the tyranny
of ‘infidels.’ The entire affair remains a perfect illustration of the
centuries-old symbiotic relationship between Jews and our native elites,
and the thread of parasitic capitalism that binds them.
Here we are in 2016, and so little has changed. More than that, we
find that another Lionheart is making the news in Britain in relation to
protected Jews and a suffering peasantry. In one of the more perverse
insults to follow notorious financial parasite Philip Green’s frenzied
feeding on the British Home Stores (BHS) pension fund, it has emerged
that the Jewish billionaire recently purchased his third luxury yacht,
aptly named Lionheart. While Green and the $120 million Lionheart
float serenely on the Mediterranean, more than 20,000 former BHS
workers struggle through the day, wondering if they will ever receive
the pensions they spent their working lives contributing to. Elite
responses to this tragic and incendiary grand larceny have been anodyne
and, much like Richard the Lionheart’s early gesture, limited to tokens
of mere propaganda. Green’s activities have recently been described by a
British Parliamentary committee as the “systematic plunder” of a
formerly thriving business, with the committee’s host of banalities concluding
that the Green saga was the epitome of “the unacceptable face of
capitalism.” In one of the blandest possible statements on the egregious
crimes of this apex predator, the politicians chirped that there was
“little to support the reputation for retail business acumen for which
he received his knighthood.” These insipid chastisements have been
followed by Prime Minister Theresa May’s clownish and empty proclamation that she wants to “reform capitalism.”
Notably absent among these and similar complaints about ‘corporate
largesse’ and ‘the failings of capitalism’ has been any real interest in
the Green case from the Far Left. There are distractions of course, and
these arise chiefly from the current predominance of cultural Marxism
in the Leftist mind rather than its economic counterpart. Western
socialists are now incessantly, and from an economic standpoint
counter-productively, engaged in assisting government efforts to flood
our nations with cheap exotic labor. The modern Left thus plays a
crucial role in depressing the salaries, living conditions, and public
services of the working class they claim to speak for. Other recent
moral-ideological Leftist crusades have included agitation for same-sex
marriage, the opening of various ‘anti-racism’ ventures, and the
creation and expansion of Black Lives Matter militancy — none of which
benefit native workers in any form.
medialens | Elite power cannot abide a serious challenge to its established
position. And that is what Labour under Jeremy Corbyn represents to the
Tory government, the corporate, financial and banking sectors, and the
'mainstream' media. The manufactured 'antisemitism crisis' is the last
throw of the dice for those desperate to prevent a progressive
politician taking power in the UK: someone who supports Palestinians and
genuine peace in the Middle East, a strong National Health Service and a
secure Welfare State, a properly-funded education system, and an
economy in which people matter; someone who rejects endless war and
complicity with oppressive, war criminal 'allies' such as the United
States, Saudi Arabia and Israel.
In a thoroughly-researched article,
writer and academic Gavin Lewis has mapped a deliberate pro-Israel
campaign to create a 'moral panic' around the issue of antisemitism. The
strategy can be traced all the way back to the horrendous Israeli
bombardment of Gaza in the summer of 2014. A UN report estimated that
2,252 Palestinians were killed, around 65 per cent of them civilians.
The death toll included 551 children. There was global public revulsion
at Israel's war crimes and empathy with their Palestinian victims.
Support rose for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement (BDS) which
campaigns 'to end international support for Israel's oppression of
Palestinians and pressure Israel to comply with international law'.
As Lewis observes, BDS came to be regarded more and more as a
'strategic threat' by Israel, and a campaign was initiated in which
Israel and its supporters would be presented as the world's real
victims. In the UK, the Campaign Against Antisemitism was established
during the final month of Israel's 2014 bombardment of Gaza. Pro-Israel
pressure groups began to bombard media organisations with supposed
statistics about an 'antisemitism crisis', with few news organisations
scrutinising the claims.
In particular, as we noted in a media alert
in April, antisemitism has been 'weaponised' to attack Corbyn and any
prospect of a progressive UK government critical of Israel. Around this
time in Gaza, there were weekly 'Great March of Return' protests, with
people demanding the right to reclaim ancestral homes in Israel. Many
were mown down by Israeli snipers on the border firing into Gaza, with
several victims shot in the back as they tried to flee. According
to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, a total of 155 Palestinians were
killed in the protests, including 23 children and 3 women. This is part
of the brutal ongoing reality for Palestinians.
Recently, much media attention has focused
laser-like on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)
definition of antisemitism, including 11 associated examples. Labour
adopted 7 of these examples, but dropped 4 because of their implication
that criticism of Israel was antisemitic. As George Wilmers noted in a piece for Jewish Voice for Labour, Kenneth Stern, the US Attorney who drafted the IHRA wording, has spoken out about the misuse of the definition. It had:
'originally been designed as a "working definition" for the purpose
of trying to standardise data collection about the incidence of
antisemitic hate crime in different countries. It had never been
intended that it be used as legal or regulatory device to curb academic
or political free speech. Yet that is how it has now come to be used.'
Examples of the curbing of free speech cited by Stern in written testimony to the US Congress include Manchester and Bristol universities.
WaPo | On the pro-Trump Internet last weekend, the
#WalkAway hashtag was the nexus of an exciting idea: that “millions of
Americans are walking away from the Democrat party,” as one pro-Trump account put it.
Breitbart said that the hashtag had gone viral; the Epoch Times said it
represented a “growing movement” of Democrats — particularly minority
Democrats — abandoning their party, and liberalism.
#WalkAway,
the hashtag, went viral this weekend, as something of a delayed
reaction to a popular video renouncing liberalism by Brandon Straka, who
described himself to the Epoch Times as a New York hairdresser and
aspiring actor. The video, posted in late May, now has more than 1 million views on Facebook. In it, Straka says he was once a liberal, but now he is not.
“If
you are a person of color, an LGBT person, a woman or an American
immigrant, the Democratic Party wants you to know you are a victim,”
Straka says in the video. “This is perhaps the Democratic Party’s
greatest, and most insidious, lie.”
“I
am walking away. And I encourage all of you to do the same. Walk away,”
Straka concludes. The video was meant to spark a movement; this
weekend’s going viral of the hashtag has been cited as proof that Straka
has succeeded.
As the Internet fragments, our understanding of what it means to go
“viral” has become complicated, and increasingly meaningless. A hashtag
claiming to capture a movement among liberals has gone viral, in this
case, almost exclusively on the right-wing Internet, as a reinforcement
of one of its binding ideas.
Counterpunch | Joe: I think you know that the NATO you are talking about was formed
in 1949, four years after the German defeat (at the hands basically, as
you know, of the Red Army), as a U.S.-led anti-Soviet military alliance.
It was part of the Truman Doctrine, which legitimated all efforts to
contain the communist “enemy” whether by military force (the suppression
of the Greek communist partisans who had heroically resisted the
fascists), by rigged elections (in France and Italy in 1946-48), by
espionage, political assassinations, disinformation campaigns and
military alliances.
I assume you know this history anyway. It might have been taught at
Pensacola Catholic High School in the late seventies, or at the
University of Alabama in the early 1980s, or you might have learned it
during your law school years in Florida or during your brief tenure in
Congress.
Anyway (as you know), when NATO expanded in 1956 to include the
U.S.-occupied West Germany, Moscow responded—you might say, somewhat
belatedly—by creating the Warsaw Pact. There were then 15 members of
NATO (Spain joined in 1982). But the Warsaw Pact included only 8 nations
at its height. Its forces were deployed precisely once during its
existence, in Czechoslovakia in 1968 to suppress the Prague Spring
movement. Albania had already been expelled from the pact, and Romania
in this instance refused to participate. (Indeed Bucharest denounced the
Soviet-led intervention in Czechoslovakia and sought closer relations
with both the U.S. and China in its aftermath.)
The Soviets were less interested in “dividing” NATO than in
preserving control over their own cordon sanitaire in “eastern”
Europe—their control over the sphere they had conquered while destroying
the Wehrmacht in 1944-45. (Moscow was no doubt pleased when Charles De
Gaulle pulled France out of NATO’s military structure in 1966, but that
was clearly the French president’s decision based on French
nationalism.) The Soviets of course hoped for allies win in contested
elections and to be appointed to high office in western Europe (although
as you know, Joe, Truman forbade allies from allowing communists into
their cabinets). Of course the Soviets were interested in dividing
NATO—not to invade the NATO countries, but rather to defend themselves.
This remains Russia’s objective.
As the Berlin Wall fell in 1988 Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev
agreed to the expansion of NATO to include East Germany, as it was
reunited with the West; in return he demanded a commitment from George
H. W. Bush that the alliance would not advance “one inch” towards the
east. You know very well that James Baker averred this publicly in
Moscow.
And as you know, Joe, the U.S. has broken this promise since 1999
when Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary (the core of the Warsaw Pact
dissolved in 1991 along with the Soviet Union) joined NATO. And then in
2004 George W. Bush (who had looked into Putin’s eyes and seen his soul,
and welcomed his help after 9/11) further broke it when he expanded the
alliance to include Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania,
Slovakia and Slovenia. And then in 2009 with Albania and Croatia, and
Montenegro last year (so Trump could join in on the process). Look at a
map and see how NATO’s expanded and ask what would you think if you were
watching from Moscow.
The anti-Russian NATO military alliance numbering 16 nations in 1991
now numbers 28, including four that border Russia. It is not your
daddy’s NATO. It’s foolish of you talk about Moscow now using “Soviet
strategy.” What do you mean by that? Do you know yourself? Make a
specific comparison; I challenge you.
Joe, if you do not see why the Russian state (and people) would view
this expanding alliance with anxiety you really are ignorant of history.
The Russians are at once aware that they, not the NATO countries, have
more often been the victims of aggression in the past, and they have no
intentions of invading Europe. The Warsaw Pact has been gone 26 years.
And Russians know better perhaps than people in this country how NATO
has been used since the USSR collapsed. And how U.S. governments and
mass media whip up fears among the people of this country that often
become pretexts for aggression.
How has NATO ever been deployed? Never during the Cold War; it was
not necessary. It was first used in Bosnia in 1994-5, then in Serbia
1999, then Afghanistan, 2001-present, then Libya in that disgraceful war
crime in 2011. As for Russia wanting to divide NATO—well of course! RT
reports positively on the rise of Eurosceptics and nationalists in NATO
member states; the fact is, there is a lot of anti-NATO sentiment in
Europe, especially in some eastern European countries. The anti-Russian
sanctions the EU has adopted under U.S. pressure (exercised largely
through the Brexiting UK) following the Kiev events and Russia’s
re-annexation of Crimea, are not popular among European farmers and
manufacturers. There are internal tensions in NATO that may weaken it.
The Russians can try to exploit and exacerbate the contradictions but
they can’t create them.
theburningplatform | Putin moved against the so-called “oligarch’s, a mainly Jewish gang
of ex-Communists who were in the forefront of looting the country.
Those he did not chase off to London (where you can see their greasy
mugs swilling in the best restaurants, hookers on each arm) he placed
under firm control. He reorganized the economy for Russia’s benefit,
not ours. Meddling? The United States and various European countries
sent in armies of international do-gooders and busy bodies to undermine
the Russian government and, among other things, promote the homosexual
agenda and corrupt Russian youth. Loudmouth journalists, the Russian
equivalents of Bill Maher, Rachel Maddow, Anderson Cooper, Trevor Noah
and similar troublemakers (“pro-democracy” activists, all of them) were
put on a leash. Most surprisingly for me, and effectively for Putin, he
restored the Russian Orthodox Church to its former importance and
influence, a very Russian thing to do. Is Putin a real Christian? I
don’t know. Go ask him. If it is merely a cynical ploy it has worked.
I might add that I admire the Russian Orthodox Church. It is one of
the few Christian churches that has rejected the filth and garbage of
the modern world and remains focused on its real job, saving souls.
There are no faggot priests in it, I can tell you that. Orthodox
priests marry.
Putin shrewdly decided to focus on quality rather than quantity in
his rebuilding of the Russian military. If news reports are accurate
(and I sure as hell hope they are not) the Russians have developed new
generations of weapons against which we have no real defense. China has
done exactly the same thing.
There is no reason at all to believe that Russia has any intention of
actually using those weapons against us in some new Pearl Harbor. That
being the case, Putin has made it crystal clear that he will not allow
Russia to be pushed around. Where is his redline? Who knows? I don’t
want to find out.
The sight of a rejuvenated Russia, proud, controlling its own
economy, conducting its won foreign policy in what it believes to be its
own interests, throwing pedophiles and other perverts in jail, running
foreign subversives out of the place, arresting or exiling Jewish
gangsters, well, all of this is just too much for the globalists and the
Neo-Con’s to take.
Then comes Trump! Who woulda thunk it? I seriously doubt if a
single senior Russian ever imagined that Trump would emerge as a
presidential candidate. Did you?
This man, seen by the self-proclaimed elites of the U.S. and Europe
as a turd in their punchbowl, is by any measure the most extraordinary
person ever to occupy the White House.
Trump is not a Russian agent, he has not been blackmailed, he is not
selling out the U.S., his interest in improving ties with Russia has
nothing to do with his personal business empire, he did not have two
Russian whores do pee-pee on Obama’s mattress. Any person who claims
to believe any of these things should be immediately marked down as
either a fool, a Jew with an irrational ancestral hatred of Russia, a
globalist, a Neo-Con, a leftist angry that Putin and Trump are both
standing up for traditional culture (though neither are saints
themselves), or somebody who either lost out on the Great Russia Piñata
of the early 1990’s or fears that Russia will in some way hit them in
the pocketbook, directly or indirectly.
There are several interest groups desperate to stop the building of a
rational, normal, civilized relationship between the United States and
Russia. They include:
unz |Putin’s
problem is the hybrid warfare carried out by the United States against
Russia. Despite accusations you hear in your media (alleged Russian ads
in the Facebook and Twitter influencing voters), American pressure on
Russia is very real and very painful. American officials try to wreck
every international deal Russia attempts to clinch. It is not only, or
even mainly about weapons. If a country A wants to sell Russians, say,
bananas, the US ambassador will come to A’s king, or his minister, and
will expressly forbid him to sell bananas to godless Russians.
Otherwise, do not expect the US aid, or do not count on US favours in
your disputes with your neighbours, or the US won’t buy your production,
or US banks will take another long and jaundiced view at your financial
transactions. You witnessed the scene,
when the crazed Nikki Haley, the US Ambassador to the UN, threatened
sovereign nations with severe punishment for voting against the US
desires, so you have an idea of American delicacy and caution while
pushing their will through.
Perhaps our colleague Mr Andrei Martyanov is right and the US can’t destroy Russia militarily; perhaps Immanuel Wallerstein
is correct and American power is in decline; but meanwhile the US is
perfectly able to make life hard and difficult for any state. It made
life unbearably hard for North Korea, extremely hard for Iran. Russia is
not doing half as good as she could do without ceaseless American
meddling.
President
Putin would like Trump to relent. There is no reason for this incessant
picking on Russia; it is not Communist anymore; it is much smaller and
less populous than the former USSR; it wants to live in peace as a
member of the family of nations, not as a great alternative. The
anti-Russian offensive began in earnest in the days of previous US
presidents, namely Obama and Clinton; so it would make sense for Trump
to stop it.
Problem
is, President Trump is also actively engaged in war against Russia.
Just a few days ago he pressured the German Chancellor to give up on the
North Stream-2, to stop buying Russian gas. His advisers demanded that
Turkey desist from buying a Russian antimissile system. The US Air Force
bombed Russian troops in Syria.
Still
Putin made a good try. He proposed to hold a referendum in the Donbas
area of Eastern Ukraine which is presently independent though lacking
international recognition. The people of Donbas had their own referendum
in 2014, and voted for independence; Kiev regime and its Western
sponsors denied its validity as it was done under Russian army’s
protection, they claimed. Now Putin proposed a re-run under
international auspices.
A Foundation of Joy
-
Two years and I've lost count of how many times my eye has been operated
on, either beating the fuck out of the tumor, or reattaching that slippery
eel ...
April Three
-
4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
4 to the power of 3 is 64
64th day is March 5
My birthday
March also has 5 letters.
4 x 3 = 12
...
Return of the Magi
-
Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
New Travels
-
Haven’t published on the Blog in quite a while. I at least part have been
immersed in the area of writing books. My focus is on Science Fiction an
Historic...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
-
sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...
