How Long Did They Believe They Could Keep Up The Charade?

NEW: MSNBC’s finest, Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell and Joy Reid, melt down after the special counsel said that the mentally declining president is mentally declining.

The Three Stooges couldn’t fathom how the special counsel thought Biden had mental issues.

“This line that… pic.twitter.com/AO3XRcpNI3

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) February 9, 2024

outsidethebeltway  | In the comments to yesterday’s post, “Biden ‘An Elderly Man with a Poor Memory’,” my friend and co-blogger Steven Taylor notes that, despite being a quarter century younger than the President, he has long had issues with remembering dates, concluding,

Quite clearly Biden is old, but the reducing of all of his mental faculties down to specific examples is ludicrous. I bet every single person reading this said something yesterday that, if taken in isolation, would make them sound like an dottering fool.

While I’ve always been really good at dates, I’ve long been pretty bad with names—an issue that has increased significantly in recent years. I’m 58 and have no reason to think I’m going senile.

As for Biden, he’s clearly slowing down with age and is having more of these mental lapses. But, while I wish there were a younger option available, I think he’s still mentally up to the job—and light years better than the seeming alternative, Donald Trump.

Alas, this isn’t an objective conversation. People are looking at both candidates through partisan lenses and, like it or not, Biden’s gaffes are judged much more harshly than Trump’s.

NPR’s Domenico Montanaro (“Biden’s rough week highlights his biggest vulnerability — one he can’t change“):

The special counsel report about Biden’s handling of classified material didn’t charge him with a crime, but special counsel Robert Hur, a Republican, seemed to go out of his way to include damning commentary about Biden’s supposedly faulty memory, like referencing that Biden, 81, “did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died.”

That was stinging.

“It clears him legally and kneecaps him politically,” Paul Begala, a veteran Democratic strategist and former Bill Clinton adviser, said of the report.

The 388-page report set off a political firestorm — and an ensuing clumsy response from the White House and the president himself.

Biden angrily rejected Hur’s claim, saying Thursday night in a press conference he felt questions about Beau weren’t “any of their damn business.”

The president got choked up while showing a rosary he was wearing on his wrist in memory of Beau, then thundered, “I don’t need anyone to remind me when he passed away.”

If Biden had left it at that, that might be what people remembered about the news conference.

Instead, Biden wound up walking right into the stereotype laid out by Hur when he mistakenly said that President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi of Egypt was the “president of Mexico” while answering a question about current hostage negotiations with Israel and Hamas.

It’s a mistake. Verbal slips happen. Everyone makes them — including Trump, who is only four years younger than Biden. Trump often meanders, recently appeared to confuse his primary opponent Nikki Haley for former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi; on more than half a dozen occasions in the past year mistakenly referred to former President Barack Obama when he should have said Biden; and while in Iowa, called “Sioux City” “Sioux Falls,” which is 90 miles up the road in South Dakota.

But because more Americans are concerned with Biden’s age and fitness to do the job in a second term than they are about Trump’s age, every time Biden makes a flub it will have more resonance politically.

“It’s certainly true that anything that feeds the master negative narrative is especially harmful,” Begala said. “For [Bill] Clinton, it was cheating, for [George W.] Bush, it was ‘dumb,’ Obama ‘elitist,’ which is why when Obama said 57 states, it didn’t hurt him. If it was Bush, it would have.”

“Obviously with Biden, it’s ‘old.’ So, this really really hurts him.”

[…]

“Fair or not, this just amplified Biden’s greatest challenge,” David Axelrod, a former senior adviser in the Obama White House, said of the special counsel report. “It screams through every poll and focus group.”

Axelrod went viral back in November for raising whether it was “wise” for Biden to run for reelection after a series of swing-state polls showed him losing to Trump.

“Many people have made a judgment about his age and command and discount his accomplishments and attribute every problem to it,” Axelrod said.

The Atlantic‘s Yair Rosenberg (“What Biden’s Critics Get Wrong About His Gaffes“) tries to handwave this away:

[T]he truth is, mistakes like these are nothing new for Biden, who has been mixing up names and places for his entire political career. Back in 2008, he infamously introduced his running mate as “the next president of the United States, Barack America.” At the time, Biden’s well-known propensity for bizarre tangents, ahistorical riffs, and malapropisms compelled Slate to publish an entire column explaining “why Joe Biden’s gaffes don’t hurt him much.” The article included such gems as the time that then-Senator Biden told the journalist Katie Couric that “when the markets crashed in 1929, ‘Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed. He said, “Look, here’s what happened.”’” The only problem with this story, Slate laconically noted, was that “FDR wasn’t president then, nor did television exist.”

In other words, even a cursory history of Biden’s bungling shows that he is the same person he has always been, just older and slower—a gaffe-prone, middling public speaker with above-average emotional intelligence and an instinct for legislative horse-trading. 

But he recognizes that there’s a perception problem and that the Biden team needs to address it head-on:

The president’s staff is understandably reluctant to put Biden front and center, knowing that his slower speed and inevitable gaffes—both real and fabricated—will feed the mental-acuity narrative. But in actuality, the bar for Biden has been set so laughably low that he can’t help but vault over it simply by showing up. By contrast, limiting his appearances ensures that the public mostly encounters the president through decontextualized social-media clips of his slipups.

As Slate observed in 2008, the frequency of Biden’s rhetorical miscues helped neutralize them in the eyes of the public. In 2024, Biden will have an assist from another source: Donald Trump. Among other recent lapses, the former president has called Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán “the leader of Turkey,” confused Nancy Pelosi and Nikki Haley, and repeatedly expressed the strange belief that he won the 2020 election. With an opponent prone to vastly worse feats of viscous verbosity, Biden can’t help but look better by comparison, especially if he starts playing offense instead of defense.

But none of this will happen by itself. If the president and his campaign want the headlines to be something other than “Yes, Biden Knows Who the President of Egypt Is,” they’ll have to start making news, not reacting to it.

This strikes me as wishful thinking. Few people watch these speeches and interviews in full. If the press seizes on the gaffes—and they will—that’s what most will remember.

Why We Can't Have Nice Things....,

dailysignal  |  President Joe Biden gave a tumultuous news conference hours after special counsel Robert Hur released a report Thursday recommending against charging him for retaining classified documents from his years as vice president and senator, in part because the jury would find Biden sympathetic as an “elderly man with a poor memory” and because his “diminished faculties” make it less likely he intentionally violated the law.

During the news conference, Biden claimed that Hur’s comments about his mental state were “extraneous commentary,” and he attempted to allay concerns. Yet the president blamed his staff for the mishandling of classified documents, insisted that his memory was fine but mixed up the countries of Egypt and Mexico and appeared to forget where his son Beau got a set of rosary beads the bereaved father says he highly values.

House Speaker Mike Johnson responded on X, saying the conference proved Biden is not fit to be president.

“The president’s press conference this evening further confirmed on live television what the special counsel report outlined. He is not fit to be president,” Johnson wrote.

In January 2023, Attorney General Merrick Garland tapped Hur, the U.S. attorney in Maryland appointed by then-President Donald Trump, to investigate Biden’s improper retention of classified documents after he left the Senate in 2009 and the vice presidency in 2017.

The records Biden kept included classified documents regarding military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, along with national security records that implicated “sensitive intelligence sources and methods,” Hur’s report finds.

The special counsel’s report finds a “shortage of evidence” proving that Biden intentionally violated the law and concludes “there are other innocent explanations for the documents that we cannot refute.” Yet the report also finds that Biden “willfully retained and disclosed classified materials.”

An attorney for Biden claimed the classified documents were “unexpectedly discovered” Nov. 2, 2022, at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington, D.C., and that he immediately notified the National Archives and Records Administration. Biden lawyers later discovered a “small number” of additional classified documents in a storage space in the garage of Biden’s private home in Wilmington, Delaware.

These admissions from Biden’s attorneys came after the FBI opened an investigation into Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents in March 2022. Eight months later, Garland appointed former DOJ official Jack Smith to investigate Trump’s retention of classified documents. A grand jury ultimately indicted Trump for his alleged offenses in June 2023.

Hur’s report notes Biden’s willing cooperation with his investigation, saying that cooperation “will likely convince some jurors that he made an innocent mistake, rather than acting willfully—that is, with intent to break the law—as the statute requires.”

Hur’s report also takes Biden’s mental state into account on numerous occasions, finding that his “poor memory” and “diminished faculties” make his defenses plausible and would likely endear him to a jury.

“We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” the report notes. “Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him—by then a former president well into his eighties—of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”

 

Biden Is A Corrupt Putrid Old Sack Of Shit Who Told On Himself

dailycaller  |  Among the documents recovered was a transcript of a Dec. 11, 2015 phone call between then-Vice President Biden and then-Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, according to Hur’s report.

Federal investigators found a handwritten note with a tipsheet for the phone call Joe Biden placed in a red “VP Personal” fold in addition to the transcript. 

“Get [a] copy of this conversation from Sit Rm for my Records please,” the note to Biden’s assistant says. Biden’s signature is at the end of the note.

Biden’s attorneys and the DOJ discovered the documents at his Delaware residence and at his former office at D.C.’s Penn Biden Center between Nov. 2022 and Jan. 2023

At the time of the phone call with Yatsenyuk, Biden’s son Hunter was making more than $80,000 per month as a board member of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings, bank records show. He joined the company in spring 2014 despite lacking experience in either Ukraine or the energy sector. He departed the firm in 2019, when his father was a private citizen and possessed the classified documents.

Ahead of his appointment with Burisma, Hunter Biden sent then-business partner Devon Archer, who served alongside Biden on Burisma’s board, detailed information about Ukraine’s political situation and energy sector.

In Dec. 2015, Joe Biden took a trip to Ukraine and spoke to the country’s parliament, urging them to step up anti-corruption measures, according to an archived transcript of his speech.

A few months later, Ukraine fired its top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, an individual viewed by Burisma as a “threat” to its business, Devon Archer told Daily Caller co-founder Tucker Carlson in August. (RELATED: The Biggest Question From Devon Archer’s Testimony About The Biden Family Remains Unanswered)

Carlson interviewed Archer in the days following his testimony before the House Oversight Committee. Archer told lawmakers the Biden family “brand” protected Burisma from scrutiny and recalled a spring 2015 dinner attended by then-VP Biden and Burisma executive Vadim Pozharskyi.

 

 

Tucker Added To UkroNazi Kill List Myrotvorets...,

Forbes  |  After former Fox News host Tucker Carlson announced his sitdown interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin, viral social media posts began to claim Carlson was added to Ukrainian government “kill list,” though the controversial site is not government-run and has criticized Carlson for earlier remarks made by Carlson about Russia and the war.

Myrotvorets is a running list made in 2014 by an independent organization called the Myrotvorets (or Peacemaker) Center, which keeps track of people it believes have committed crimes against the “national security of Ukraine, human life and health, peace, human security and the international legal order,” including musician and Russia defender Roger Waters and NBC journalist Keir Simmons.

People on the list who have died from various causes are marked as liquidated, including former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who died in 2022 from disease, daughter of Russian nationalist Daria Dugina, who died in a car bomb attack the U.S. believes elements of the Ukrainian government was behind, and Italian journalist Andrea Rocchelli, who died after being hit by mortar fire in Ukraine while covering the conflict.

The site claims that Carlson was added to the list on June 08, 2023, after posting a 10-minute long video to X where he called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “rat-like,” and suggested the destruction of the Kakhovka dam in Ukraine was a Ukrainian terrorist act; Forbes could not independently verify when his name was added.

The site does list Carlson’s interview with Putin as another offense against Ukraine, along with a 2022 statement he made on Fox News, saying Ukraine’s army was too small to win a victory against Russia.

Ukrainian politician George Tuka told the Times of London the site doesn’t receive government funding and is not government-affiliated, and was created to keep track of Ukrainian political officials, ex-military and ex-police officers who were pro-Russia—Forbes has reached out to the Myrotvorets Center for comment.

Despite not being government-run, Ukrainian secret services reportedly keep “close ties” with the website, and the former Ukrainian Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov supported the site, while former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko condemned it, according to the U.S. Department of State.

Myrotvorets has received criticism from Western countries for exposing journalists. After Western journalists’ personal information was leaked on the site, G7 Ambassadors stated they were “deeply concerned” about the leak. They worried threats made against the journalists were a result of the leak, and called for the personal information to be taken down. The United Nations urged Ukrainian police to investigate personal data leaks on Myrotvorets and remove the data from the site. The U.S. State Department also regularly includes Myrotvorets in its annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, identifying the various times journalists’ personal information was leaked on the site. A Ukrainian journalist’s personal data was leaked after a story she wrote led to the firing of a Ukrainian official, which reportedly led to her receiving threats, according to the State Department’s 2022 report.

Be There Or Be Square

 

Tucker Carlson: Why I'm Interviewing President Vladimir Putin

 

Why I'm interviewing Vladimir Putin. pic.twitter.com/hqvXUZqvHX

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) February 6, 2024

BBC |  The news host has long been a familiar face for Russians, with clips of his critical outbursts on Fox News against US foreign policy aired extensively across Russian state TV.

Kremlin-controlled television continues to dominate the Russian media, with around two-thirds of people receiving most of their news from there.

In Russia, Carlson is frequently cited as an authoritative source of news, particularly when it comes to his views on the war in Ukraine.

In September last year, Russian news channel Rossiya 24 even began airing lengthy excerpts of his "Tucker on X" show, dubbed into Russian.

While Carlson has not spoken directly to any of Russia's TV channels, their shows are revelling in his visit and the US reaction to it.

"In the West they're comparing this visit to actress Jane Fonda's visit to Vietnam in 1972, following which she ended up on the list of America's top ten traitors and the Hollywood blacklist," presenter and pro-Putin politician Yevgeny Popov told viewers of his 60 Minutes talk show.

Popov also jibed that Carlson had managed to experience Moscow's modern public transport system during his visit.

"Americans can't even dream of such wonders of civilisation!" he said.

Before Carlson confirmed plans to interview Mr Putin, NTV, Russia's second most popular channel, promoted a post on X by Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene saying that "Democrats and their propagandists in the media are spasming" at the prospect of Carlson interviewing Mr Putin.

"In Washington they suspect with good reason that the journalist didn't fly to Moscow to sightsee," NTV's presenter commented.

Hearing President Vladimir Putin In His Own Words....,

 

For A Very Modest Fee I'd Be Willing To Solve Your Squatter Infestation Problem....,

NYPost  |  Squatters are ruining entire neighborhoods in Atlanta and police response to evict is so slow, some homeowners have resorted to paying nuisances to leave.

Brazen squatters even opened an illegal strip club on a property they had taken over — one of the 1,200 homes which has been squatted in the city, according to the National Rental Home Council (NRHC) trade group.

“I’d be terrified in Atlanta to lease out one of my properties,” Matt Urbanski, who manages a local home-cleaning company, told Bloomberg.

Urbanski’s company cleans out homes for corporate landlords, and in some cases has to remove squatters’ possessions.

Recently one of his employees was shot after attempting to remove intruders from a property.Simon Frost, CEO of large-scale landlord Tiber Capital Group, said there have been incidents of unlawful occupants brandishing weapons and threatening neighbors, which affects the safety of neighborhoods and other residents, according to Bloomberg.

Evicting squatters in Atlanta is tough, involving negotiating court backlogs and strained police resources.

Meanwhile, online listings and virtual real estate agents make it easy for squatters to identify vacant properties to break into.

Simon Frost, CEO of large-scale landlord Tiber Capital Group, said there have been incidents of unlawful occupants brandishing weapons and threatening neighbors, which affects the safety of neighborhoods and other residents, according to Bloomberg.

Evicting squatters in Atlanta is tough, involving negotiating court backlogs and strained police resources.

Meanwhile, online listings and virtual real estate agents make it easy for squatters to identify vacant properties to break into.

In October, an Atlanta neighborhood found itself at the center of a scandal involving squatters who transformed a home into an illegal strip club, complete with weekend parties and even live horses on the property.

The drama unfolded in the South Fulton area, where four individuals — DeAnthony Maddox, Jeremy Wheat, Kelvin Hall and Tarahsjay Forde — took up residence without permission. Little did the neighbors know that the 4,000-square-foot, five-bedroom home with three bathrooms would become a den of illicit activity.

The squatters ran the clandestine strip club, held noisy parties and even organized car races in the street, ruining the neighborhood for others, according to local reports.

 

 

Forget About Gun Control, Let's Talk About Ammo Control!!!

expats.cz  |  United States Senator J.D. Vance has written a letter to U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen urging her to suspend the sale Sporting Products, the arms and ammunition division of U.S. company Vista Outdoor, to Czechoslovak Group (CSG). According to Vance, there are potential security risks in the sale to the Czech company, including alleged ties to Russia.

CSG, a prominent industrial-technology holding, entered into a $1.91 billion (roughly CZK 44.6 billion) sales agreement with Vista Outdoor earlier this month, marking a significant deal within the arms industry.

Senator Vance, however, has raised concerns about CSG's alleged history of collusion and alleged connections with entities hostile to the United States. In his letter, Vance stressed the need for a thorough assessment of potential risks, stating that the transaction poses clear threats to U.S. national security.

CSG, in response to the senator's claims, has vehemently denied any links to Russian authorities. Andrej Čírtek, a spokesperson for the Czech holding company, emphasized that CSG is a private entity committed to selling its products to partner countries within NATO and the EU.

Čírtek highlighted CSG's collaboration with leading defense companies, including U.S.-based Raytheon and General Dynamics European Land Systems.

Senator Vance's letter further referenced CSG's alleged ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin's inner circle, raising concerns about the company's sponsorship of a show in Moscow aimed at facilitating Russian authorities' access to European military technology.

Additionally, the senator pointed to a report by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, which implicated CSG in the violation of the arms sales embargo to Azerbaijan.

CSG has countered these allegations, asserting that their exports have always been conducted with duly granted licenses. The company spokesperson pointed to their previous acquisition of Fiochci, a U.S.-based small-caliber ammunition manufacturer, as well as high-level security clearances, as evidence of their adherence to stringent security protocols.

"Our acquisition of Fiochci, which manufactures small-caliber ammunition in the U.S., has successfully passed the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment's review," Čírtek  states. "Some of the companies owned by CSG have both Czech and NATO security clearances. None of this would be possible for a company with ties to Russia."

 

 

Why Is The Mainstream Media So Quiet About The Southern Border?

FAIR  |  The United States is on the verge of a constitutional crisis, one that enlivens the nationalist fervor of Trump America and that centers on a violent, racist closed-border policy.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (NBC, 1/14/24): “The only thing we are not doing is we’re not shooting people who come across the border, because, of course, the Biden administration would charge us with murder.”

In January, the Supreme Court, with a five-vote majority that included both Republican and Democratic appointees, ruled that federal agents can “remove the razor wire that Texas state officials have set up along some sections of the US/Mexico border” to make immigration more dangerous (CBS, 1/23/24). The state’s extreme border policy is not merely immoral as an idea, but has proven to be deadly and torturous in practice (USA Today, 8/3/23; NBC, 1/14/24; Texas Observer, 1/17/24).

In a statement (1/22/24), Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton decried the decision, saying that it “allows Biden to continue his illegal effort to aid the foreign invasion of America.” Paxton, a Republican, vowed that the “fight is not over, and I look forward to defending our state’s sovereignty.”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, also a Republican, “is doubling down, blocking the agents from entering the area,” the PBS NewsHour (1/25/24) reported. PBS quoted Abbott declaring that the state’s constitutional authority is “the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary.”

University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck (Houston Chronicle, 1/26/24) observed that Abbott’s position “has eerie parallels to arguments advanced by Southerners during the Antebellum era.”

For a great many people, a Southern state invoking its “sovereignty” over the federal government in defense of violent and inhumane policing of non-white people sounds eerily familiar to the foundation of the nation’s first civil war.  And 25 other states are supporting Texas in defying the Supreme Court (USA Today, 1/26/24), although none of them are states that border Mexico.

Texas media are sounding the alarm about this conflict. The Texas Tribune (1/25/24):

From the Texas House to former President Donald Trump, Republicans across the country are rallying behind Gov. Greg Abbott’s legal standoff with the federal government at the southern border, intensifying concerns about a constitutional crisis amid an ongoing dispute with the Biden administration.

Houston public media KUHF (1/24/24) said this “could be the beginning of a constitutional crisis.” University of Texas law professor Stephen Vladeck said in an op-ed in the Houston Chronicle (1/26/24) that Abbott’s position is a “dangerous misreading” of the Constitution.

Other legal scholars are watching with concern. Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the law school of the University of California at Berkeley, told FAIR, “I think that this is reminiscent of Southern governors disobeying the Supreme Court’s desegregation decisions.” He added, “I agree that it is a constitutional crisis in the sense that this is a challenge to a basic element of the Constitution: the supremacy of federal law over state law.”

But the New York Times has not covered the issue since the Supreme Court decision came down (1/21/24). The AP (1/27/24) framed the story around Donald Trump, saying the former president “lavished praise” on the governor “for not allowing the Biden administration entry to remove razor wire in a popular corridor for migrants illegally entering the US.” The Washington Post (1/26/24) did show right-wing politicians and pundits were using the standoff to grandstand about a new civil war. NPR (1/22/24) covered the Supreme Court case, but has fallen behind on the aftermath.

The “legal expert” quoted in Fox News‘ headline (1/25/24) works for America First Legal, a group founded by white nationalist Stephen Miller to “oppose the radical left’s anti-jobs, anti-freedom, anti-faith, anti-borders, anti-police, and anti-American crusade.”

Meanwhile, Fox News (1/25/24, 1/25/24, 1/27/24) has given Texas extensive and favorable coverage of its feud with the White House, citing its own legal sources (from America First Legal and the Edwin Meese III Center—1/25/24) saying that Texas was in the right and the high court was in the wrong.

Breitbart celebrated Abbott’s defiance as a states’ rights revolution, with a series of articles labeled “border showdown” (1/24/24, 1/24/24, 1/24/24, 1/25/24, 1/28/24) and several others about Republican governors standing with Texas in solidarity (1/26/24, 1/28/24).

The white nationalist publication American Renaissance (1/25/24) stood with Abbott but lowered the temperature, saying that it is “unclear whether this could cause a constitutional crisis, but the optics are not great for the White House in an election year.” “This will not be a ‘Civil War’ or anything close to it unless someone on the ground wildly miscalculates by firing on the Texas National Guard,” the openly racist outlet asserted. Rather, the publication saw Abbott as recentering the immigration debate as a way to weaken President Joe Biden’s reelection chances. “We couldn’t hope for a better start to the election-year campaign,” it said.

The National Review (1/28/24) admitted that Abbott is probably wrong on the constitutional question. Nevertheless, it called him the “MVP of border hawks” for orchestrating a public relations coup by forcing the federal government’s hand:

Abbott has managed to get the federal government in the position of actually removing physical barriers to illegal immigration at the border and insisting that it is imperative that it be permitted to continue doing so. This alone is a PR debacle for the administration, but it comes in a controversy—with its fraught legal and constitutional implications—that will garner massive attention out of proportion to its practical importance.

This is impressive by any measure.

The support of Republican states for Abbott elevates the matter further, but this also is a relatively small thing. The backing for Abbott is entirely rhetorical at this point and perhaps not very serious on the part of some Republican governors. It nonetheless serves to elevate a conflict over security on a small part of the border into what feels like a larger confrontation between all of Red America and the federal government.

Getting Warhammer Vibes - We'll See It On European Cops First

new atlas  |  Soldiers and tactical unit police officers often have a lot of heavy gear to carry, including the ballistic body armor that they're wearing. That's where the ExoM Up-Armoured Exoskeleton is intended to come in, as it's load-reducing and bulletproof.

The exoskeleton is manufactured by German company Mehler Protection, which designed the product in collaboration with Canadian biomechanics tech company Mawashi Science & Technology, and French tactical police force GIGN (Groupe d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale).

Body armor panels throughout the full-body exoskeleton provide ballistic protection up to the European standard of VPAM 8. This means that they can withstand being hit by three 7.62 × 39-mm rounds (which AK-47 rifles use) fired from a distance of approximately 10 meters (33 ft).

Additionally, the exoskeleton's titanium frame reportedly redistributes as much as 70% of the overall load from the wearer's shoulders down to the ground (via structural soles inside the user's boots). At the same time, the ExoM's flexible spine, sliding waist belt and articulated hip, knee, and ankle joints are claimed to ensure that the wearer retains up to 99% of their usual range of motion.

Finally, because the ExoM is a passive exoskeleton (meaning it doesn't utilize any motorized actuators), it doesn't have any batteries that add weight or require charging – the latter could definitely prove challenging in remote locations, or on long missions.

We're still waiting to hear back from Mehler regarding information such as the type of ballistic material utilized, and the setup's total weight.

The Mainstream Lie By Omission

 

🚨🇫🇷 Macron - France

The Mainstream Media LIE by Omission

In France MSM are focused on Emmanuel Macrons visit to meet the Swedish Royal Family all the while France is on Fire.

This is brilliant 👏👇 pic.twitter.com/FBIzru0cBt

— Concerned Citizen (@BGatesIsaPyscho) February 3, 2024

I'm A Swiftie Because Of How She Bitch-Slapped The Carlyle Group Over Her Catalog

NTD  |  Taylor Swift has yet to endorse a candidate in the 2024 presidential race. But questions continue to swirl about the potential impact the pop sensation may have on the upcoming November election.

Ms. Swift has remained largely apolitical throughout her career, but chronicled her newfound interest in politics in her 2020 Netflix documentary “Miss Americana.”

In the film, she attributes her former political apathy to her beginnings in country music. “Part of the fabric of being a country artist is don’t force your politics on people,” she says. “Let people live their lives. That is grilled into us.”

However, the singer’s connection to George Soros has been a point of concern for many supporters of former President Donald Trump. In 2019, Ms. Swift, 34, gave a speech at the Billboard Women in Music event, claiming the billionaire Democrat donor helped fund the purchase of her music catalog.

“This just happened to me without my approval, consultation, or consent,” she said. “After I was denied the chance to purchase my music outright, my entire catalog was sold to Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings in a deal that I’m told was funded by the Soros family, 23 Capital, and that Carlyle Group.”

The singer became an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump during his term and publicly endorsed the Biden–Harris ticket in 2020.

“After stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency, you have the nerve to feign moral superiority before threatening violence?” she wrote about President Trump on Twitter, now X, in May 2020. “‘When the looting starts the shooting starts’??? We will vote you out in November.”

She later wrote: “Donald Trump’s ineffective leadership gravely worsened the crisis that we are in and he is now taking advantage of it to subvert and destroy our right to vote and vote safely.”

Many conservatives have speculated about the timing of her interest in politics.

“Thinking about when Taylor Swift called out the Soros family in 2019 for buying the rights to her music and then how she came out a super liberal in 2020,” conservative political activist Jack Posobiec wrote on X on Jan. 28.

The following day, former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy responded to Mr. Posobiec’s tweet. “I wonder who’s going to win the Super Bowl next month,” Mr. Ramaswamy said, alluding to Ms. Swift’s relationship with boyfriend Travis Kelce, a tight end for the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs.

“And I wonder if there’s a major presidential endorsement coming from an artificially culturally propped-up couple this fall,” he continued. “Just some wild speculation over here, let’s see how it ages over the next 8 months.”

Seems Like A Mistake To Me To Think That Taylor Swift Is An NPC

wired  |  Taylor Swift remains inescapable. Tales of her reign are legion, as are her fans. Next to Beyoncé, her power and influence have reached heights so unbridled it’s almost unfathomable. Her Eras Tour made nearly a billion dollars in 2023, and the concert film of that tour has brought in nearly $250 million worldwide. When rumors started swirling in the fall that she was dating Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, they upended American football. Still, when Time named her Person of the Year, conspiracy theorists saw only one explanation. They allege Swift is a psyop.

If you’ve lived on the internet long enough, you will have heard this kind of thing before. Back in 2016, when she was largely apolitical in her public life, Swift was a hero of the so-called alt-right who some believed was actually red-pilling America to further a racist, conservative agenda. When she piped up about politics in 2018, some people online (somewhat jokingly) theorized she’d been replaced by an NPC. The latest twist? “The regime has plans to weaponize her just in time for 2024,” the @EndWokeness account posted on X Wednesday, adding that if you didn’t find this plausible “you clearly have not been paying attention.”

@EndWokeness has 1.9 million followers, and, as of Monday morning, the post had more than 788,000 views. On Telegram, a QAnon influencer account posted that “we need to wake the next generation up to the occult forces colluding with their favorite celebrities.” Right-wing commentator Jack Posobiec posted on X that “the Taylor Swift girlboss psyop has been fully activated.”

Last week’s Person of the Year honor was also followed by resurfaced allegations that Swift is performing witchcraft to further her success and that the left is using her to influence the 2024 US presidential election. Stephen Miller, a senior adviser during Donald Trump’s presidency, posted a message on X saying that “what’s happening with Taylor Swift is not organic.”

All of this happened the same week WIRED reporter David Gilbert published an investigation into a pro-Russia campaign that used fake Swift quotes in a series of Facebook and X posts attempting to seed anti-Ukraine sentiment, reinforcing—in a totally different way—that celebrity is a powerful tool for manipulation. A few days later, Microsoft researchers revealed a similar effort by an unknown Russian group to alter Cameo videos by celebs like Elijah Wood and Mike Tyson to make it look like they were being critical of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.

Swift exists as a unique example of the intersection of celebrity and politics, and how it operates globally, says Jonathan Dean, a professor of politics at the University of Leeds. “An important feature of culture and politics over the past 10 years, certainly in the UK and the US and I think probably more broadly as well, is that there’s been a significant convergence in the grammar and style and mode, if you like, of pop culture fandom and political citizenship,” he says, referencing the similar ways fandoms and political parties can operate. “Taylor Swift is interesting in that sense because I think she’s a real embodiment of those convergences.”

 

Demented Squawking By A Putrid Old Buzzard..., (Nancy Pelosi)

Watch Nancy Pelosi claim that protestors opposing Israel's genocide in Gaza are spreading "Putin's message," and that she wants them investigated for possibly being on Russia's payroll.

This is what Russiagate has been about since day one: embracing Russia conspiracy theories… pic.twitter.com/YeWsPpLXZX

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) January 28, 2024

TNR  |  Representative Nancy Pelosi accused pro-Palestine protesters of having links to Russia and called for the FBI to investigate them.

During a Sunday interview with CNN’s State of the Union, Pelosi was asked if she was worried that younger voters would abandon President Joe Biden due to his resistance to a cease-fire.

“For them to call for a cease-fire is Mr. Putin’s message,” Pelosi said, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Make no mistake, this is directly connected to what he would like to see.”

“I think some of these protesters are spontaneous and organic and sincere. Some, I think, are connected to Russia.”

When asked if she thought some of the pro-Palestinian protesters were Russian plants, Pelosi said, “I don’t think they’re plants. I think some financing should be investigated. And I want to ask the FBI to investigate that.”

Israel’s constant bombardment of Gaza has killed more than 26,500 people, primarily women and children, since October 7, according to Gaza’s health ministry. The vast majority of Americans, particularly younger voters, support a cease-fire. Growing numbers of lawmakers have also begun to call for an end to the fighting, but the White House continues to back Israel.

Pelosi’s comments sparked immediate backlash. The executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Nihad Awad, called Pelosi’s claim “delusional” and her call for an FBI investigation “downright authoritarian.”

“Sadly, Rep. Pelosi’s comments echo a time in our nation when opponents of the Vietnam War were accused of being communist sympathizers and subjected to FBI harassment,” he said in a statement.

“Instead of baselessly smearing those Americans as Russian collaborators, former House Speaker Pelosi and other political leaders should respect the will of the American people by calling for an end to the Netanyahu government’s genocidal war on the people of Gaza.”

Many people on social media were quick to point out the hypocrisy of Pelosi’s comments. The majority of people who support a cease-fire are politically neutral or left-leaning, including thousands of Black American pastors, Doctors Without Borders, and according to some polls, 80 percent of Democratic voters.

Others pointed out that the specific call for an FBI investigation marked a dangerous shift in the government’s stance on involving law enforcement against anti-war efforts. Widespread crackdowns against pro-Palestine speech have been compared to a new wave of McCarthyism.

Biden’s refusal to call for a cease-fire could well cost him in November. His popularity among young voters has dropped dramatically, primarily due to his stance on Israel. Biden’s campaign manager traveled last week to Detroit, which has a large Arab-American community. Many of the community leaders refused to meet with her over Biden’s Gaza policies.

 

 

"All roads lead to Putin" pic.twitter.com/UcMbnMagpW

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) January 28, 2024

Russia Makes More Artillery Shells In One Day Than The West Can Make In A Month

russiamatters  |  As Russia begins its one-year presidency of the BRICS in a turbulent world, great power competition in the Global South will intensify. The Russia-Ukraine war and the Israel-Hamas war have enabled the Kremlin to solidify and increase its influence in the Global South, or what Russia now calls the “World Majority.” The Global South comprises those developing or less- developed countries in the Southern Hemisphere. The Russian definition of the World Majority, however, is not economic, but political. It refers to a community of non-Western countries that have no binding relationships with the United States and the organizations it patronizes.

While the U.S. and its allies struggled to persuade these countries to support Ukraine and reject the Kremlin’s narrative about the origins and course of the war, Russia has largely succeeded in convincing them that the West is to blame for both the Russia-Ukraine war and the Israel-Hamas wars. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in his December interview with leading Russian TV propagandist Dmitri Kiselev, praised the “World Majority” countries “who have not publicly declared Russia as an enemy.” These countries, he declared, “are ready to work with us honestly, mutually beneficially and mutually respectfully, including in the economy, in politics, in the security sphere,” and he went on to predict that ties with these counties would further intensify in 2024. The West, Russia’s top diplomat proclaimed, does not respect these countries’ interests. In the interview, Lavrov also highlighted the 2024 Russian presidency of the BRICS, which began on Jan. 1, and now has expanded to include Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia and Iran, bringing the group’s share of world GDP and population to 34% and 45%, respectively (see tables 1 and 2 below).[1] 

Why has Russia succeeded in strengthening its standing with many countries in the Global South even as it pursues its brutal war of attrition in Ukraine? Moscow starts out with a major advantage—deep skepticism amongst these countries about the West, especially the United States. Many Global South countries assert that they see no difference between what Russia is doing in Ukraine and what the United States did in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. Russia also taps into the alienation and resentment in many countries that both the war and the West’s rivalry with China are distracting attention and shifting resources away from their own urgent challenges, such as debt, economic growth, food, energy, climate change and health. These countries view the United States and many of its European allies as neo-colonial powers who still treat them with condescension. They do not accept that what Russia in doing in Ukraine is a form of colonialism, because Russia repeatedly invokes the Soviet past and the USSR’s support for anti-colonial liberation movements to prove its bona fides as the leading anti-colonial power. Indian Foreign Minister Jaishankar Subrahmanyam told European ministers that they should “grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems.”[2]

Votes in the United Nations General Assembly tend to reflect these sentiments. In February 2023, the votes in favor of condemning Russia’s invasion as a violation of the U.N. Charter and demanding that Russia withdraw its troops from Ukraine were 141 in favor, 7 against, with 32 abstentions, including China, India and other countries in the Global South. However, a significant number of Global South countries did vote to condemn Russia.

Although Western countries have much more to offer the Global South economically than does Russia, Moscow does retain levers of economic influence. Energy remains the most important. Europe has largely weaned itself off Russian hydrocarbons, but cheap Russian oil remains attractive to many countries. India, a traditional partner of both the Soviet Union and Russia, has been the second largest  purchaser of Russian oil after China, enabling Russia to continue to earn billions of dollars despite Western sanctions on Russian energy and the oil price cap. Nuclear energy exports, which are not sanctioned, are also growing. Rosatom has a 74% share of the world’s nuclear power plant market, with 73 projects in 29 different countries. Russian fertilizer and grain exports are important for a number of countries. Recently Russia shipped free grain to six African countries, no doubt to counter the fact that its refusal to renew the earlier Black Sea grain deals had harmed its reputation in parts of the Global South. 

Arms sales have been a significant element in Russia’s competition with the United States in parts of the Global South. However, the sub-par performance of the Russia military in Ukraine and the shoddy condition of some of the weaponry made Russia’s customers question the wisdom of continuing to purchase its arms. Western sanctions have also curbed Russia’s ability to export weapons, as Russia needs to use its own weapons in Ukraine. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Russia’s share of global arms exports fell from 22% in 2013-2017 to 16% from 2018 to 2022, while the U.S. increased its share from 33% to 40%.[3] India has cut back on its imports of Russian weapons. Nevertheless, during Jaishankar’s December 2023 visit to Moscow, Lavrov announced that they had made significant progress on plans to jointly produce military equipment. [4]

Russia Inks Expansive New Energy And Weapons Deal With Iran

oilprice  |  Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, gave his official approval on 18 January to a new 20-year comprehensive cooperation deal between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Russia, according to a senior energy source in Iran and a senior source in the European Union’s (E.U.) energy security complex, exclusively spoken to by OilPrice.com last week. The 20-year deal – ‘The Treaty on the Basis of Mutual Relations and Principles of Cooperation between Iran and Russia’ - was presented for his consideration on 11 December 2023. It will replace the 10-year-deal signed in March 2001 (extended twice by five years) and has been expanded not only in duration but also in scope and scale, particularly in the defense and energy sectors. In several respects, the new deal additionally complements key elements of the all-encompassing ‘Iran-China 25-Year Comprehensive Cooperation Agreement’, as first revealed anywhere in the world in my 3 September 2019 article on the subject and analysed in full in my new book on the new global oil market order.

In the energy sector to begin with, the new deal gives Russia the first right of extraction in the Iranian section of the Caspian Sea, including the potentially huge Chalous field. The wider Caspian basins area, including both onshore and offshore fields, is conservatively estimated to have around 48 billion barrels of oil and 292 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of natural gas in proven and probable reserves. In 2019, Russia was instrumental in changing the legal status of the Caspian basins area, cutting Iran’s share from 50 percent to just 11.875 percent in the process, as also detailed in my new book. Before the Chalous discovery, this meant that Iran would lose at least US$3.2 trillion in revenues from the lost value of energy products across the shared assets of the Caspian Sea resource going forward. Given the newest internal-use only estimates from Iran and Russia, this figure could be a lot higher. Previously, the estimates were that Chalous contained around 124 billion cubic feet (bcf) of gas in place. This equated to around one quarter of the gas reserves contained in Iran’s supergiant South Pars natural gas field that account for around 40 percent of Iran’s total estimated gas reserves and about 80 per cent of its gas production. The new estimates are that it is a twin-field site, nine kilometres apart, with ‘Greater’ Chalous having 208 bcf of gas in place, and ‘Lesser’ Chalous having 42 bcf of gas, giving a combined figure of 250 bcm of gas. 

Related: E&P Companies Face Tough Year Despite Oil Patch 'Bumper Crop'

The same right of first extraction for Russia will also now apply to Iran’s major oil and gas fields in the Khorramshahr and nearby Ilam provinces that border Iraq. The shared fields of Iran and Iraq have long allowed Tehran to side-step sanctions in place against its key oil sector, as it is impossible to tell what oil has come from the Iranian side or the Iraqi side of these fields, which means that Iran is able simply to rebrand its own sanctioned oil as unsanctioned Iraqi oil and ship it anywhere it wants, as also analysed in full in my new book on the new global oil market order. Former Petroleum Minister, Bijan Zanganeh, publicly highlighted this very practice when he said in 2020: “What we export is not under Iran’s name. The documents are changed over and over, as well as [the] specifications.” Another advantage of the shared fields is that they allow effectively free movement of personnel from the Iranian side to the Iraqi side, and the utilisation of key oil and gas developments across Iraq is a key part of Iran’s longstanding plan, fully supported by Russia, to build a ‘land bridge’ to the Mediterranean Sea coast of Syria. This would enable Iran and Russia to exponentially increase weapons delivery into southern Lebanon and the Golan Heights area of Syria to be used in attacks on Israel. The core aim of this policy is to provoke a broader conflict in the Middle East that would draw in the U.S. and its allies into an unwinnable war of the sort seen recently in Iraq and Afghanistan, and which may soon be seen as the Israel-Hamas War escalates.

The price of all manufactured items traded between Russia and Iran, including military and energy hardware, has been formalised in the new deal, although also not in Iran’s favour. For Iranian goods exported to Russia, Tehran will receive the cost of production plus 8 percent. However, these export sales to Russia will not be transferred to Iran, but rather they will be held as credit in the Central Bank of Russia (CBR). Moreover, Iran will receive a huge markdown on US dollar/Rouble or Euro/Rouble exchange rates used to calculate its credits in the CBR. Conversely, for Russian goods exported to Iran, Moscow will receive the payment in advance of delivery and at a much stronger exchange rate that benefits Russia. Moreover, the base price before any exchange rate calculations are made, will be founded on the highest price that Russia has received in the previous 180 days for whichever product it is selling Iran. This system has informally been in place for several weeks now, and according to the senior energy sector source in Tehran exclusively spoken to by OilPrice.com last week, Russia has ensured itself the highest possible price by selling to Belarus at a very large premium whichever product it intends to sell later to Iran, so establishing the required pricing benchmark. Payments for goods and services falling outside the direct finance route between the central banks of the two countries can now be done through interbank transfers between Iranian and Russian banks. Those also involving renminbi can also be done through China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) system, its alternative to the globally-dominant Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) system. 

In many cases, the expansion of military cooperation between Iran and Russia is tied into the energy sector elements of the new 20-year deal. Progress is earmarked to be made on upgrading the facilities at the key airports and seaports that have long been targeted by Russia as being especially useful for dual-use by its air force and navy, and which are also close to major oil and gas facilities. Top of the list of Iranian airports that Russia regards as the best for dual-use by its air force are Hamedan, Bandar Abbas, Chabahar, and Abadan, and it is apposite to note that in August 2016, Russia used the Hamedan airbase to launch attacks on targets in Syria using both Tupolev-22M3 long-range bombers and Sukhoi-34 strike fighters. Top of the list of seaports for use by its navy are Chabahar, Bandar-e-Bushehr, and Bandar Abbas. Similarly linked to Russia’s gaining the first right of extraction in the Iranian section of the Caspian Sea is that it will also be given a joint command capability over the northern aerospace defense section of Iran’s Caspian area.

Valodya Launched The Most Powerful Icebreaker In The World (Brandon Shit Himself And Got Lost)

Vladimir Putin visited St. Petersburg. Yesterday at the Baltic Shipyard the laying of a new nuclear icebreaker took place.

“Today, together we are taking another step towards strengthening the technological and industrial potential of our country.

The powerful, modern nuclear icebreaker Leningrad will become the fifth ship in its series.
 

Russia today has a unique, I want to emphasize this, unique, the largest icebreaker fleet in the world.

And this is our huge competitive advantage, enormous opportunities for the development of logistics, industry, the creation of new jobs, for the integrated development of Arctic cities and towns, the implementation of truly global-level projects, for international cooperation with our partners, friends, with everyone who wants and is ready work with Russia."

— V. Putin: It will bear the name “Leningrad”.

“Tomorrow we celebrate a special, sacred date in the history of the Northern capital, and the entire country - the 80th anniversary of the complete liberation of Leningrad from the enemy Nazi blockade.

And the new mighty icebreaker will be another tribute to the memory of the immortal feat of Leningrad, the courage and unbending will of the defenders, the inhabitants of the city, who did not submit, overcame everything, withstood everything and crushed the Nazis.

The life, unity, cohesion of the generation of winners will always be a great moral example for us and in the struggle for sovereignty, for freedom, for our Motherland, they will be a good example both in work and in battle.”

The series of nuclear-powered ships, to which Leningrad belongs, are the largest and most powerful icebreakers in the #world.

The giant, as tall as a 16-story building, is a true all-rounder: it can both break through heavy ice and carry out tasks at the mouths of polar rivers.

Thanks to the most modern power plant, it is capable of operating for more than a year without calling at a port. And next year another icebreaker of this class will be laid down at the Baltic Shipyard. The name they chose for it was also symbolic.

“In 2025, we will lay down another ship, an icebreaker of the same class, and we will call it “Stalingrad” - Putin.

Because I Love You I Get The Least Of You..., (Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin)

 

Kansas City Star Depicted Burleson As More Grounded And Hard-Nosed

kansascity  |  Under federal law, Burlison is not permitted to reveal classified information to the public. But after the classified briefing, he still appeared frustrated with how little the federal government is revealing about what it knows.

“Regardless of what it is – aliens, angels, or just us, right?” Burlison said. “Regardless of what it is, I think that Grusch, what he said in the public hearing, that we are being blocked from information, that the information is being specifically compartmentalized, that’s violating federal law.”

He’s not alone. Earlier this year, a bipartisan group of representatives including Burlison and Moskowitz formed the Congressional UAP Caucus. The caucus wrote a letter to Monheim in August seeking more answers about the government’s UAP program.

In the Senate, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, attempted to get a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act allowing the National Archives to collect information on UAPs and reveal it to the public after a certain period of time – similar to how the government handled information about former President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

But the provision was weakened in the final version of the NDAA. The National Archives can still collect the information, but there will be no committee to go through the papers and authorize what can and can’t be revealed.

“It is really an outrage the House didn’t work with us on adopting our proposal for a review board, which of course by definition here is bipartisan in the Senate,” Schumer said in December. “Now it means that declassification of UAP records will be largely up to the same entities that have blocked and obfuscated their disclosure for decades.”

Burlison said he believes the public has a right to know more about UAPs – or at the very least the representative the public elected to Congress has a right to know. He compared it to the development of the nuclear bomb during World War II, saying some information should be private, but the basic information should be available to the public.

“You can go study nuclear physics, you can go study how power plants operate, but at the end of the day if you are interested in making a bomb, that is top secret information and we should hold that information to the highest level of security,” Burlison said. “But I think the same thing should apply to any of this UAP technology.”

In the meantime, he plans to push to get stronger language in next year’s NDAA and to keep pushing for briefings from people with better knowledge of the UAP program.But he was tight lipped as to whether people will soon learn whether aliens exist and have visited Earth. “If you believe that aliens existed, there’s nothing that I’ve seen or heard that proves that,” Burlison said. “Also, I’ve not seen anything that proves that it’s not.”