counterpunch | Nations of the world are only too aware that fossil fuels need to be
phased out for two reasons. First, oil is a finite commodity. It’ll run
out in time. Secondly, fossil fuel emissions such as CO2 are destroying
the planet’s climate system.
However, a recent study puts a damper on the prospects of phasing out
fossil fuels in favor of renewables. More to the point, a phase out of
fossil fuels by mid century looks to be a nearly impossible Sisyphean
task. It’s all about quantities of minerals/metals contained in Mother
Earth. There aren’t enough.
Simon Michaux, PhD, Geological Survey Finland has done a detailed
study of what’s required to phase out fossil fuels in favor of
renewables, to wit:
“The quantity of metal required to make just one generation of
renewable tech units to replace fossil fuels is much larger than first
thought. Current mining production of these metals is not even close to
meeting demand. Current reported mineral reserves are also not enough in
size. Most concerning is copper as one of the flagged shortfalls.
Exploration for more at required volumes will be difficult, with this
seminar addressing these issues.” (Source: Simon P. Michaux, Associate
Research Professor of Geometallurgy Unit Minerals Processing and
Materials Research, Geological Survey of Finland, August 18, 2022 –
Seminar: What Would It Take To Replace The Existing Fossil Fuel System?)
Metals/minerals required to source gigafactories producing renewables
to power the world’s economies when fossil fuels phase out looks to be
one of the biggest quandaries of all time. There’s not enough metal.
Michaux researched and analyzed the current status of the internal
combustion engine fleet of cars, trucks, rail, maritime shipping, and
aviation for the US, Europe, and China, accessing databases to gather
information as a starting point for the study.
Michaux’s calculations for what’s required to phase out fossil fuels
uses a starting point of 2018 with 84.5% of primary energy still fossil
fuel-based and less than 1% of the world’s vehicle fleet electric.
Therefore, the first generation of renewable energy is only now coming
on stream, meaning there will be no recycling availability of production
materials for some time. Production will have to be sourced from
mining.
When Michaux presented basic information to EU analysts, it was a
shock to them. To his dismay, they had not put together the various
mineral/metal data requirements to phase out fossil fuels and replaced
by renewables. They assumed, using guesstimates, the metals would be
available.
RT | The US will not be able to replace Russian uranium in the event of an
import ban, Assistant Secretary of Energy Kathryn Huff has warned,
saying Washington must develop enrichment capabilities domestically.
"Worldwide, there's not enough capacity to replace that gap from trusted sources," Huff told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday, adding that it was the US’s responsibility to “encourage and incentivize that enrichment and conversion capability” on American soil.
Huff
told the Examiner that US reliance on Russian-sourced uranium posed
unique energy security and national security risks, and noted that
Russia still provides about 20% of the low enriched uranium at existing
US reactors.
“We have the largest nuclear fleet in the world,
and we currently do not have the capability to provide fuel for all of
our reactors,” she said, claiming that Russia is “no longer a trustworthy source of our fuel, and we need to find alternatives here and build up that supply chain.”
Russia reportedly accounted for 16.5% of the uranium imported into
the US in 2020 and 23% of the enriched uranium needed to power the
country’s commercial nuclear reactors. Currently there is nowhere else
to turn to fill the gap if uranium imports are banned, Huff said.
Legislation
before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee would indeed
ban Russian uranium imports, just as Congress previously banned imports
of Russian fossil fuels following the launch of Moscow’s military
offensive in Ukraine in February.
Huff, who has a PhD in nuclear engineering, said a "tiger team" at the energy department was currently strategizing how to expand the domestic supply chain.
US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm has also previously called Washington's reliance on imports from Moscow a "vulnerability" for economic and national security.
The
US maintains the capacity to mine uranium, but relies heavily on Russia
for enrichment. Kick-starting the domestic uranium industry is not a
simple process, the department said previously, given that the country
has only one commercial enrichment facility remaining — a plant run by
British-German-Dutch consortium Urenco in New Mexico.
Zuckerberg stated on The Joe Rogan Experience that
“The FBI, I think, basically came to us – some folks on our team – and
was like, ‘Hey, just so you know, like, you should be on high alert… We
thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016
election. We have it on notice that, basically, there’s about to be some
kind of dump of that’s similar to that. So just be vigilant.’”
It is not clear why the FBI considered this type of media outreach
was part of its responsibility as a law enforcement agency. This was
before the presidential election and actively discouraged a major
platform to allow discussion of major allegations of corruption. The use
of the FBI for such a role gave Facebook officials ample cover to
expand their censorship operations.
The company only recently allowed customers to discuss the lab theory
of the origins of Covid after years of biased censorship. Facebook’s
decision to allow people to discuss the theory followed the company’s
Oversight Board upholding a ban
on any postings of Trump, a move that even figures like Germany’s
Angela Merkel and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) have criticized as a
danger to free speech. Even Trump’s voice has been banned by Facebook.
Trump remains too harmful for Facebook users to hear . . . at least
until the company decides that they are ready for such exposure.
Facebook has tried to get customers to embrace censorship in a commercial campaign despite its long record of abusive and biased “content modification.”
Zuckerberg just shrugged when pressed on his company effectively
joining the effort to kill the story before the election: “Yeah, it
sucks. It turned out, after the fact, the fact-checkers looked into it.
No one was able to say it was false.”
As with the earlier column on the CDC’s work with Twitter, there is a
growing concern over the use of such backchannels for censorship by
surrogates in these social media companies.
DailyMail | The FBI deliberately dragged its feet on the Hunter Biden
investigation and told agents not to look into the Hunter Biden laptop,
according to new whistleblowers who spoke with Sen. Ron Johnson.
Johnson,
R-Wisc., sent a letter to DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz on
Tuesday bringing forth the new whistleblower claims.
'Recently, my office heard from individuals with knowledge of the FBI’s apparent corruption,' Johnson said.
'After the FBI obtained the Hunter Biden
laptop from the Wilmington, DE computer shop, these whistleblowers
stated that local FBI leadership told employees, "you will not look at
that Hunter Biden laptop" and that the FBI is "not going to change the
outcome of the election again,"' Johnson wrote to Horowitz.
Johnson is demanding Horowitz look into the FBI's handling of the Hunter Biden laptop.
'While
I understand your hesitation to investigate a matter that may be
related to an ongoing investigation, it is clear to me based on numerous
credible whistleblower disclosures that the FBI cannot be trusted with
the handling of Hunter Biden’s laptop,' Johnson said.
'I
hope you understand that the longer your office stands on the sidelines
and delays investigating the FBI’s actions, the harder it will be for
you to uncover the truth and hold individuals accountable for
wrongdoing.'
Horowitz told Johnson in
February 2021 that the OIG would not investigate the FBI's handling of
the laptop so as not to interfere with the Department of Justice's
investigation into Hunter Biden's tax affairs.
The new claims come after whistleblower
allegations emerged in July that in the lead-up to the 2020 election the
FBI labeled the laptop as 'disinformation.'
In
October 2020, one month before the election, 'an avenue of derogatory
Hunter Biden reporting was ordered closed' by Timothy Thibault, a senior
FBI agent at the bureau's Washington Field office, Sen. Chuck Grassley,
R-Iowa, who fielded the whistleblower complaints, claimed in a letter
to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Thibault shut down the investigation despite evidence that some of the details were true, according to that whistleblower.
'Allegations
provided to my office appear to indicate that there was a scheme in
place among certain FBI officials to undermine derogatory information
connected to Hunter Biden by falsely suggesting it was disinformation,'
Grassley wrote.
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.
johnmenadue |The world is on the edge of nuclear catastrophe in no small part
because of the failure of Western political leaders to be forthright
about the causes of the escalating global conflicts. The relentless
Western narrative that the West is noble while Russia and China are evil
is simple-minded and extraordinarily dangerous. It is an attempt to
manipulate public opinion, not to deal with very real and pressing
diplomacy.
The essential narrative of the West is built into US national
security strategy. The core US idea is that China and Russia are
implacable foes that are “attempting to erode American security and
prosperity.” These countries are, according to the US, “determined to
make economies less free and less fair, to grow their. militaries, and
to control information and data to repress their societies and expand
their influence.”
The irony is that since 1980 the US has been in at least 15 overseas
wars of choice (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Panama, Serbia, Syria, and
Yemen just to name a few), while China has been in none, and Russia only
in one (Syria) beyond the former Soviet Union. The US has military
bases in 85 countries, China in 3, and Russia in 1 (Syria) beyond the
former Soviet Union.
President Joe Biden has promoted this narrative, declaring that the
greatest challenge of our time is the competition with the autocracies,
which “seek to advance their own power, export and expand their
influence around the world, and justify their repressive policies and
practices as a more efficient way to address today’s challenges.” US
security strategy is not the work of any single US president but of the
US security establishment, which is largely autonomous, and operates
behind a wall of secrecy.
The overwrought fear of China and Russia is sold to a Western public
through manipulation of the facts. A generation earlier George W. Bush,
Jr. sold the public on the idea that America’s greatest threat was
Islamic fundamentalism, without mentioning that it was the CIA, with
Saudi Arabia and other countries, that had created, funded, and deployed
the jihadists in Afghanistan, Syria, and elsewhere to fight America’s
wars.
Or consider the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in 1980, which
was painted in the Western media as an act of unprovoked perfidy. Years
later, we learned that the Soviet invasion was actually preceded by a
CIA operation designed to provoke the Soviet invasion! The same
misinformation occurred vis-Ã -vis Syria. The Western press is filled
with recriminations against Putin’s military assistance to Syria’s
Bashar al-Assad beginning in 2015, without mentioning that the US
supported the overthrow of al-Assad beginning in 2011, with the CIA
funding a major operation (Timber Sycamore) to overthrow Assad years
before Russia arrived.
Or more recently, when US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recklessly flew
to Taiwan despite China’s warnings, no G7 foreign minister criticised
Pelosi’s provocation, yet the G7 ministers together harshly criticised
China’s “overreaction” to Pelosi’s trip.
The Western narrative about the Ukraine war is that it is an
unprovoked attack by Putin in the quest to recreate the Russian empire.
Yet the real history starts with the Western promise to Soviet President
Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not enlarge to the East, followed by
four waves of NATO aggrandisement: in 1999, incorporating three Central
European countries; in 2004, incorporating 7 more, including in the
Black Sea and Baltic States; in 2008, committing to enlarge to Ukraine
and Georgia; and in 2022, inviting four Asia-Pacific leaders to NATO to
take aim at China.
Nor do the Western media mention the US role in the 2014 overthrow of
Ukraine’s pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych; the failure of the
Governments of France and Germany, guarantors of the Minsk II agreement,
to press Ukraine to carry out its commitments; the vast US armaments
sent to Ukraine during the Trump and Biden Administrations in the
lead-up to war; nor the refusal of the US to negotiate with Putin over
NATO enlargement to Ukraine.
Of course, NATO says that is purely defensive, so that Putin should
have nothing to fear. In other words, Putin should take no notice of the
CIA operations in Afghanistan and Syria; the NATO bombing of Serbia in
1999; the NATO overthrow of Moammar Qaddafi in 2011; the NATO occupation
of Afghanistan for 15 years; nor Biden’s “gaffe” calling for Putin’s
ouster (which of course was no gaffe at all); nor US Defence Secretary
Lloyd Austin stating that the US war aim in Ukraine is the weakening of
Russia.
At the core of all of this is the US attempt to remain the world’s
hegemonic power, by augmenting military alliances around the world to
contain or defeat China and Russia. It’s a dangerous, delusional, and
outmoded idea. The US has a mere 4.2% of the world population, and now a
mere 16% of world GDP (measured at international prices). In fact, the
combined GDP of the G7 is now less than that of the BRICS (Brazil,
Russia, India, China, and South Africa), while the G7 population is just
6 percent of the world compared with 41 percent in the BRICS.
There is only one country whose self-declared fantasy is to be the
world’s dominant power: the US. It’s past time that the US recognised
the true sources of security: internal social cohesion and responsible
cooperation with the rest of the world, rather than the illusion of
hegemony. With such a revised foreign policy, the US and its allies
would avoid war with China and Russia, and enable the world to face its
myriad environment, energy, food and social crises.
torontosun | Prime Minister Justin Trudeau unveiled plans to create a special team
focused on countering Russian disinformation and propaganda on Tuesday,
as Ukrainians prepared to mark the six-month anniversary of Moscow’s
invasion of their country.
The prime minister announced the new initiative as part of a package of
new Canadian measures designed to support Ukraine and punish Russia for
launching a war that has killed tens of thousands and whose impacts are
being felt around the world.
Canada is also imposing sanctions against 62 more people, including
those the government described as several Russian regional governors and
their families, as well as a Russian company whose products include
anti-drone equipment.
Ottawa is also planning to spend
nearly $4 million on two projects to bolster Ukraine’s military and
police services, including training to help Ukrainian police officers
better handle cases involving sexual trauma as well as mental-health
programs.
Trudeau revealed the package during a special meeting of leaders from
countries that have been supporting Ukraine since Russian forces first
crossed into the country on Feb. 24, launching Europe’s largest conflict
since the Second World War.
Notionally intended to discuss Russia’s illegal annexation of
Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014, the meeting also came as Ukrainians
prepared to mark on Wednesday the anniversary of their country’s
independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
Appearing
via videolink from Toronto alongside German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who
is in the midst of a three-day visit to Canada, Trudeau accused Russia
of falsely blaming western sanctions for escalating food prices and
shortages around the world.
While Russian officials have blamed the sanctions imposed in response
to its invasion of Ukraine for the food crisis, Canada and its allies
say Moscow is responsible for having disrupted critical Ukrainian food
production and exports.
“I want to repeat yet again,
that there are no sanctions on food. When the Russian regime blames
sanctions for the food crisis around the world, they’re engaging in
disinformation,” Trudeau said.
“We need to continue
fighting Russian disinformation. That’s why Canada will create a
dedicated team to help increase our capacity to monitor and detect
Russian and other state-sponsored disinformation.”
CTH | Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy previously took control over
all broadcast media discontinuing any media that was not under
government control. Taking the anti-democracy movement another step
further, Zelenskyy then banned any political opposition party and
confiscated the funds of his political opposition.
These totalitarian actions were taken while the U.S. State Department
was simultaneously claiming defense of Ukraine as vital to democracy.
Meanwhile, U.S. taxpayers are being forced by congress to send $60
billion in aid into the corrupt country in order to cover the wages,
salaries and benefits of Ukraine government officials. Apparently, a
strange and twisted definition of democracy exists in the dictionary of
Washington DC.
The latest anti-democracy revelation is even more stark. The U.S. State Dept funded a govt/NGO Ukraine conference on ‘disinformation’.
Representatives of public
authorities, NGOs, the media and international experts took part in a
round table on countering disinformation. The participants
discussed the methods used in Ukraine and abroad, as well as the legal
framework and features of interaction between civil society and
government agencies to counter fakes and disinformation in the context of cybersecurity.
During the discussion, Acting Head of the Center
for Countering Disinformation Andriy Shapovalov insisted that persons
who deliberately spread disinformation are information terrorists. He noted that in order to protect the information space, it is necessary to amend the legislation.
“Information terrorists need to know that they will have to answer to the law as war criminals,” he said.
Also during his speech, the acting Head of the Center noted that Ukraine is confidently winning the information struggle.
The round table was organized by the
National Academy of the Security Service of Ukraine, the US Civil
Research and Development Fund (CRDF Global Ukraine), the NGO
“International Academy of Information”, the coordination platform
“National Cybersecurity Cluster”. The event was supported by the U.S. Department of State.
multipolarista | The Chinese government has announced that it is forgiving 23
interest-free loans for 17 African nations, while pledging to deepen its
collaboration with the continent.
This is in addition to China’s cancellation of more than $3.4 billion
in debt and restructuring of around $15 billion of debt in Africa
between 2000 and 2019.
While Beijing has a repeated history of forgiving loans like this,
Western governments have made baseless, politically motivated
accusations that China uses “debt-trap diplomacy” in the Global South.
The United States has turned Africa into a battleground in its new
cold war on China and Russia. And Washington has weaponized dubious
claims of Chinese “debt traps” to try to demonize Beijing for its
substantial infrastructure projects on the continent.
For its part, China has pushed back against the US new cold war.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi held a meeting with leaders from various African countries and the African Union on August 18.
In the conference, Wang condemned the West’s “zero-sum Cold War
mentality.” He instead proposed a model based on “multi-party
cooperation” with Africa that brings “win-win results” for all sides.
“What Africa would welcome is mutually beneficial cooperation for the
greater well-being of the people, not major-country rivalry for
geopolitical gains,” he said.
Wang revealed that Beijing will support the African Union in its efforts to join the G20.
BAR | The U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s International Trade Administration encourages U.S. companies to do business in the DRC, citing “tens of trillions of dollars” in mineral wealth.
“The DRC is one of the most blessed places on Earth,” said Taye.
“Sadly, the agents in the neighborhood—Kagame and Museveni—are
facilitating the looting of Congo for the West.”
Non-governmental organization Global Witness reported in April that 90 percent of
minerals coming out of one DRC mining area were shown to have come from
mines that did not meet security and human-rights standards. Companies
relying on minerals from such mines include U.S.-based Apple, Intel and
Tesla.
“Aid that comes in the front door with tens of millions of dollars is a mirage,” Carney said. The United States has disbursed $618 billion in aid to Uganda since 2001. “Billions go out the back door in the form of extractions [of resources].”
‘Africa Is Going to Be Punished’
Conference moderator Joseph Senyonjo said the NUPUSA (the party’s
U.S. arm) has attempted to engage U.S. Representative Karen Bass (D-CA),
chair of the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights
and International Organizations in the House Committee on Foreign
Affairs.
“She has done nothing,” he said.
Senyonjo added Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) has been unhelpful. Meeks
chairs the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and has introduced a U.S.
House bill that
would punish African countries for bypassing U.S. sanctions on Russia.
U.S. Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield said in an August 5 speech in
Ghana that U.S. sanctions are not to blame for the global wheat
shortage, all while threatening action if African countries buy Russian
fossil fuels. However, cutting off Russia from the SWIFT global payments
system prevents it from trading wheat, a major Russian export.
What does that mean for African countries that have relied on Russia for 32 percent of their wheat imports?
“Africa is going to be punished,” Senyonjo told conference attendees.
‘We Can’t Be Timid’
Netfa Freeman, the keynote speaker, warned attendees of approaching
the U.S. government from a weak position and with the intent of
appealing to the conscience. He said the United States cannot recognize
human rights because it was built by violating the human rights of the
Indigenous peoples and enslaved Africans. Now, it holds one-fifth of the world’s prisoners, including the longest-held political prisoners in the world.
“Convincing them cannot be the goal,” said Freeman, an organizer with
Pan-African Community Action, a grassroots organization based in
southeast Washington. He also is a member of the Black Alliance for
Peace Coordinating Committee and hosts a local radio program.
Freeman added officials such as Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. Vice
President Kamala Harris and U.S. Secretary of Defense Austin Lloyd
mirror the comprador class that holds power in various African
countries. A comprador appears to independently operate as a leader, but
answers to colonial powers.
Freeman encouraged conference attendees to widen the scope of their
solidarity to include Afro-descendants in Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and
Venezuela, for example, because they, too, suffer under U.S. sanctions
and threats of invasion. He connected events that took place during the
same timeframe on the continent—the assassination of DRC Prime Minister
Patrice Lumumba and the driving into exile of Ghanian Prime Minister and
President Kwame Nkrumah—with the assassinations of Malcolm X and the
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
stalkerzone | Economist Mikhail Khazin suggested that there is a connection between the shelling of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant
and the searches of former US President Donald Trump. In his opinion,
the American leader Joe Biden can be keeping a dangerous secret at the
facility.
According to Khazin, the shelling of the Zaporozhye NPP by the
Ukrainian Armed Forces may be directly related to the scandalous
searches at Trump’s house. The economist admitted that Biden, during the
period of vice-presidency and overseeing Ukraine under Barack Obama,
could have agreed with Ukraine and, possibly, Turkey to facilitate their
receipt of an atomic bomb. For this purpose, uranium enriched much
higher than the standards could be delivered to storage facilities on
the territory of the nuclear Power Plant. Under Trump, the plan could
have been covered up and its documents could have disappeared from the
White House, which seriously alarmed Biden and forced him to conduct
searches of his predecessor after the release of the nuclear plant by
Russia.
“Then a special operation begins, and the Russian army discovers containers sealed by Westinghouse
in a storage facility in Zaporozhye, where highly enriched uranium is
found. Please note that the IAEA experts have already tried to go there
twice, but the UN is blocking this trip. Russia, of course, could have
stolen this uranium, but then go and prove that it was not it who made
the false seal. And if the IAEA commission arrives, it won’t be possible
to get away with it,” Khazin said.
The Biden administration is very afraid of revealing the truth about
the storage facility at the Westinghouse nuclear power plant, so it
blocks any trip there by IAEA experts and tries to wipe the object off
the face of the earth with the hands of the UAF. If the theory is
confirmed, the US president will not be saved from impeachment even by
his Democratic supporters, the expert is sure.
“Somewhere,
Trump may have pieces of paper that were worthless until the
information about this uranium was widely available, but which will
become very expensive if this information gets out. If it turns out that
Biden violated the nuclear non-proliferation Treaty with his decision,
even the Democrats will vote for impeachment, because this is a thing
that the American establishment is terribly afraid of,” Khazin said on the “Interpretation” YouTube channel.
indianpunchline | Meanwhile, from the US perspective, Kiev’s drone attacks on Crimea already serve three purposes.
First,
this is meant to be a blow to the Russian morale. Indeed, Putin’s
towering popularity within Russia has become an eyesore for the Biden
Administration. Putin’s masterly navigation of the Russian economy out
of crisis mode is an incredible feat that defied all logic of power in
the American calculus — inflation is steadily falling (in contrast with
the European countries and the US); the GDP decline is narrowing;
foreign reserves are swelling; the current account is on the plus side;
and lo and behold, the Biden Administration’s so-called “nuclear option”
— Russia’s removal from the SWIFT messaging system — failed to cripple
foreign trade.
Second,
both Washington and Kiev are desperately scrambling for “success”
stories to distract attention. The Times playing up the story speaks for
itself. In reality, Russia’s Donbass offensive has created a new
momentum and is steadily grinding the Ukrainian forces. Within the week,
Russian forces will have encircled the lynchpin of the Ukrainian
defence line, Bakhmut city, which is a communication hub for troop
movements and supply logistics in Donbass. Russian forces have reached
the city outskirts from the north, east and south. The fall of Bakhmut
will be a crushing defeat for Zelensky.
On
the other hand, even after two months after Zelensky promised a
“counteroffensive” on Kherson near Crimea, it is nowhere in sight. Even
his most ardent votaries in the western media feel let down. To be sure,
there is growing disenchantment in Europe.
The
Hungarian PM Viktor Orban, undoubtedly the smartest European politician
today (with an economy registering over 6% growth when the rest of the
continent is mired in recession), told German magazine Tichys Einblick in an interview
last week that this war marked the end of “western superiority.”
Interestingly, he named Big Oil as “war profiteers” and singled out that
Exxon doubled its profits, Chevron quadrupled, and ConocoPhillips’
profits have shot up manifold. (Of course, all three are American
companies.) Orban’s message was clear: America has weakened the EU. This
thought must be troubling many a European politician today.
Third,
Washington has thrown down the gauntlet in a measured way. But there is
no way the war can be brought into the drawing rooms of the average
Americans the way Times says is happening in Russia. Twenty Americans
were killed in Kharkiv two days ago in a high-precision Russian missile
strike, but there aren’t going to be any body bags returning to
Arlington Cemetery; nor does it make headline in the cooperative
American media.
The US
plans to go further up on the escalation ladder. Escalation is the
Biden Administration’s last chance to stall a Russian victory. The
American strategic thinker and academic John Mearsheimer has written
that the risk of a disastrous escalation is “substantially greater than
the conventional wisdom holds. And given that the consequences of
escalation could include a major war in Europe and possibly even nuclear
annihilation, there is good reason for extra concern.”
Moscow’s
preference is to avoid any escalation, since the special military
operation is achieving results. Whereas, it is the US that is in some
visible despair, and in immediate terms, Russia’s plans to hold
referendums in Kherson and Zaporozhye in September must be stalled.
Herein lies the danger.
The US’ current build-up over Zaporozhye
Nuclear Power Plant points toward a hidden agenda to intervene in the
war at some point directly. Kiev’s attempt to arrange a nuclear
explosion in Zaporozhye can only be seen in this light. Moscow seems to
anticipate such an eventuality.
Defence Minister Sergey Shoigu disclosed yesterday
that Russia has begun mass production of Tsirkon hypersonic cruise
missiles and is already deploying them. The US lacks the capability to
counter Tsirkon, which is estimated to be 11 times faster than Tomahawk
with far superior target-penetration characteristics. Shoigu may have
given a stark warning that Russia will not be cowed down if there’s a
NATO intervention in Ukraine.
TASS | The murder of Russian journalist Darya Dugina has been solved,
Russia’s federal security service FSB has said. It was prepared by
Ukrainian secret services. The perpetrator - a citizen of Ukraine
identified as Natalia Vovk - escaped to Estonia, the FSB’s public
relations center stated.
"As a result of urgent detective measures, the federal security
service has solved the murder of Russian journalist Darya Dugina, born
in 1992," the FSB stressed. The special service found that "the crime
was prepared and committed by Ukrainian secret services." Its
perpetrator was identified as a citizen of Ukraine, Natalia Vovk, born
in 1979.
She had arrived in Russia on July 23, 2022, together with her
daughter Sofya Shaban, born in 2010. "On the day of the murder, Vovk and
Shaban attended the literary and music festival Tradition, where Dugina
was present as an honorary guest.
On August 21, after a remote-controlled explosion of the Toyota Land
Cruiser Prado car Dugina was driving, Vovk and her daughter left through
the Pskov Region to Estonia," the FSB said.
To
plot the murder and gather information about Dugina’s lifestyle, Vovk
and her daughter rented an apartment in Moscow in the same building
where the victim lived. To spy on the journalist, the criminal used a
Mini Cooper car. When entering Russia, the vehicle carried a license
plate of the Donetsk People's Republic - E982XH DPR, in Moscow - a
license plate of Kazakhstan 172AJD02, and when leaving - a Ukrainian
license plate AH7771IP. "The materials of the investigation have been
handed over to the Investigative Committee," the FSB said.
They’re excited about the arctic being open for shipping and drilling.
They’re excited about future archeological expeditions to places that will become accessible due to climate change.
Like all the land below the ice in Antarctica.
They’re excited about their investments in farmland and water rights paying off.
They’re excited about water becoming more valuable than oil.
In fact, quite a few large companies are positioning themselves to profit off of “big water”.
They’re excited about Montana becoming great wine country.
They’re excited about the coast line changing and creating more opportunities for development.
They’re excited about public private partnerships for the infrastructure to protect the places they decide to protect.
They’re excited about the opportunities to redesign cities to handle “chronic inundation”, “induced seismicity” and “heat challenged districts”.
These people absolutely see themselves as winners in climate change. They see no reason to stop making profits off the activities that are driving climate change because they see no reason to stop accelerating climate change. They’re looking forward to the world to come.
They might acknowledge that there isn’t as much room for people like us in the future. But as long as they can keep shifting the idea of responsibility to suburban moms and soy eating college activists they’ll be happy to continue funding environmental goals that don’t achieve anything for the environment.
They’ll always be able to find another Greta Thunberg to scold them while looking suitably young and idealistic. And most people will fall for it because they want their actions to mean something. Because who could believe that our leaders know they’re destroying our world and that they don’t care.
caityjohnstone | Wealth
is a zero-sum game, as is its good friend power. The more power
everyone else has, the less power our current rulers would have over us.
This is why so much energy goes into ensuring that votes have as little
effect as possible on the operations of the state and making sure
everything stays the same no matter what the public wants.
Imagine
if ordinary people started having as much influence over the direction
human civilization will take as war profiteers, oil tycoons, globalized
wage slavers and Silicon Valley plutocrats. Imagine if the working class
had enough disposable income to begin funding grassroots political
campaigns, building their own media networks, or even funding think
tanks and NGOs to advance their own interests like plutocrats do today.
Imagine if everyone could afford to work less and relax more, and
finally start learning about what’s really going on in the world.
Wealth is meaningless if everyone is wealthy. Power is meaningless if everyone has power. The kings of our day have a vested interest in keeping everyone poor and powerless, because if everyone is king, then no one is king.
This
is why our status quo systems work the way they work, and this is why
you see a convergence of interests from such groups as corporate
plutocrats, plutocrat-owned politicians and media, the arms industry,
and military and intelligence agencies. These groups all have a vested
interest in preserving the status quo and the ability to put that agenda
in place, so they’ve fallen into a natural, de facto alliance with each
other toward that end.
It’s why we’ve seen a historic upward transfer of wealth
during the Covid pandemic, with billionaires raking in trillions while
ordinary people struggle with unemployment and soaring prices. And it’s
why that transfer of wealth has been happening for decades
since long before Covid. In a system where money is power and power is
relative, a ruling class naturally emerges which needs to suppress the
wealth and power of its subjects in order to continue to rule.
Workers around the world: lost $3.7 trillion in the pandemic Billionaires around the world: gained $3.9 trillion in the pandemic
It's the biggest one-year wealth transfer in history, yet somehow barely anyone is talking about it.
Rulers
do not historically give up their rule voluntarily, so we can expect
this continual pattern of wealth obstruction via wealth extraction to
continue until people get tired of being kept poor and powerless by
those who benefit from their poverty and disempowerment and use the strength of their numbers to force the emergence of a more equitable system. We can also expect our rulers to do everything in their power to prevent this from happening, including propagandizing the public into accepting the status quo and believing that anything better is impossible.
Drastic
change in the not-too-distant future does seem to be inevitable,
though, if only because we’re headed toward environmental collapse or
nuclear winter if we don’t rise to the revolutionary occasion first.
Humanity’s self-destructive patterning is in a race with our better angels, and right now it’s anybody’s race.
aurelian2022 | There’s a pretty solid consensus that the western political class
today is totally incapable, and that it presides over fragile state
systems, that it has itself hollowed out and de-skilled progressively
for the last forty years. Conversely, it is agreed that the West faces
an array of existential problems never seen before, some already with
us, others yet to arrive. Yet there’s been a surprising lack of
reflection on the implications of these two truths together. Let’s peel
away a few scabs, and try to see what’s likely to be hiding underneath.
Almost
everyone who’s not a member of the western political class, or a
parasite upon it, views it with a kind of numb despair. Increasingly
professional in the blinkered and isolated sense, it is increasingly
amateurish in every other. This would matter less if the class were
supported by competent and properly staffed state structures, but that
is seldom the case. Most state services in western countries have been
reduced to shadows of what they once were.
That much is generally
agreed, but there has been little attempt to think about what exactly
the practical consequences are, and how they might complicate, or even
prevent, an effective response to problems caused by climate change,
disease, war, mass population movements, and all the rest. The
conclusion of this essay will be a bit like an Aristotelian syllogism:
western states are increasingly being confronted with massive,
interlinked problems, requiring competent and far-sighted management.
But there is no competent and far-sighted management. Therefore we are
stuffed. I’m now going to try to put a little flesh on these
unattractive-sounding bones.
Let’s start with the biggest
weaknesses of the system. The first is the incestuous and exclusive
nature the political class, Now of course this is not new. The House of
Lords in eighteenth-century England, or the aristocracy at Versailles,
were at least as ingrown and far removed from the concerns of ordinary
people then, as their descendants are today. But in the eighteenth
century there was no question of a notionally representative political
class, theoretically owing a duty to the people: now there is. It’s a
familiar story: the end of mass political parties, the dominance of
politicians without experience of anything outside politics, the capture
of the main western parties by a well-off, culturally homogeneous
professional and managerial class, the triumph of image and discourse
over reality, and the increasing contempt of the political class for the
people who elect them. Beyond valid concerns about corruption and
nepotism, there are two entirely technical consequences of all this,
that bode ill for the political management of even relatively simple
problems, and which will make facing up to the kind of complex crises
that are starting to arise now difficult, if not impossible.
The
first is that fundamental traditional political skills are no longer
needed for career success. Once upon a time, politicians would try to
get elected, and to develop personal and organisational skills that made
that possible. They would rely on large numbers of volunteers for
canvasing and to get the vote out, and on convincing as many people as
possible to vote for them by personal contact and giving speeches. Few
politicians are capable of that today. Rather, success comes from
appealing to an in-group, to positioning yourself well with party
militants, and to getting favourable coverage from certain media
sources. “The electorate” is those who read your Twitter posts. Why does
this matter? Well, it means that when a genuine crisis arrives, such
politicians are incapable of understanding, let alone communicating
with, and certainly not motivating, ordinary people. The epitome of this
type of politician must be Emmanuel Macron, whose attempts to talk
directly to the French people during height of the Covid crisis were so
awful, and so embarrassing, that people hid under the table to get away
from him. Here was a man clearly hopelessly out of his depth, in a
situation where McKinsey was not the solution.
The second is that
genuine ideas are no longer needed either. True, governments are still
elected with notional programmes, but that’s a polite fiction. Politics
is about winning the media battle, looking good on TV, massaging genuine
political issues so that they go away, internal warfare within the
party, and winning the next election. Government “initiatives” are
generally sterile technocratic exercises which take money from those who
have too little already, or give even more to those who already have
too much. When a genuine political crisis arises (Covid, Brexit,
Ukraine) the system finds that it cannot be managed or Twittered away,
and has no idea what to do, other than to try to look good on TV. So it
inevitably panics. With Covid, western governments have effectively
surrendered, and allowed the disease to propagate freely, because they
don’t have the moral or intellectual capability to fight it effectively.
And Ukraine is being dealt with, so far as I can tell, on the basis
that winter isn’t coming this year after all. The result is a kind of
paralysis at the heart of government, where nothing is ever done except
in haste and for immediate effect on one hand, or out of sheer panic on
the other.
Even without forty years of the hollowing out of
state capacity, this would still cause problems. Contrary to myth,
public servants prefer to work for a government that knows what it
wants, and sets objectives (and no, not those sort
of objectives). Most senior figures in western public services have now
spent their careers working in a political culture which is obsessed
with image and with instant effects. There are no rewards any more for
being prudent, for thinking long-term, or for telling the political
class that they are storing up trouble for the future. All this produces
a kind of corruption: the prizes go to those ready to tell the
political class what it wants to hear, and to help them do whatever it
takes to get good media coverage. Good people leave, or just never join.
Celebrating 113 years of Mama Rosa McCauley Parks
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*February 4, 1913 -- February 4, 2026*
*Some notes: The life of the courageous activist Mama Rosa McCauley Parks*
Mama Rosa's grandfather Sylvester Ed...
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This year marks the 90th anniversary of the launch of the Spanish Civil
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Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
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He ...
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(Damn, has it been THAT long? I don't even know which prompts to use to
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SeeNew
Can't get on your site because you've gone 'invite only'?
Man, ...
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With the profligate racism of the Chumph Cartel, I don’t imagine any of
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