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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.”
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 Timenamed 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.”
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
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.
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]
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.
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.
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.
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.”
futurism | Congressman Eric Burlison (R-MO) has waded into the discourse about
UFOs — and in an outburst that probably says more about the state of US
politics than unidentified objects in the sky, speculated that they
might be "angels" sent by God himself.
Yes, you read that right. During a recent episode of That UFO Podcast this week, Burlison took the UFO conversation in a wild new direction.
"They
may not fit exactly the Biblical narrative, but whenever I use the term
'angels,'" he said, "to me, it's synonymous with an extradimensional
being."
"I think it's more likely that it would be something extradimensional
than it would be within this dimension," Burlison argued. "And then, so
what I'll say is that when you start talking about things in that
nature, that they're extradimensional, well, in a lot of different
scriptures, including the Bible, and others, that's really the way that
you describe messengers of God or, you know, angels."
Strikingly,
Burlison's musings come after he attended a classified briefing about
UFOs this month, though he said after it that nothing he'd learned there
had fundamentally shifted his worldview.
"There’s nothing that’s been said that’s changed my worldview," he told the Kansas City Star.
"I believe the veracity of the claims of the people who testified in
the public hearing. Now, that being said, I believe that what they
believe they said is true."
Burlison isn't alone in musing about a connection between UFOs and religious texts.
"UFOs were in the Bible," representative Tim Burchett (R-TN) claimed
in 2021. "Read Ezekiel, it talks about the wheel flying around. So I
mean, they’ve been around since we’ve been around and somebody needs to
come up with some answers."
Burlison has long called for oversight
over reports alleging that the US government has conspired to keep
spicy UFO findings from leaking to the public.
The subject has
been fraught with drama. Last summer, an Air Force veteran and former
member of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency named David Grusch
came forward
to allege that the government had secretly recovered alien spacecraft —
and even dead "pilots" inside them — for decades as part of a
top-secret UFO retrieval program.
nakedcapitalism | Now in the wake of October 7 and the unification of sentiment in
Israel against Palestinians, a two-state solution is simply na ga
happen. Having the US, Egypt, and Qatar talk up a peace scheme that
includes a two-state solution as a major component is an insult to
intelligence, like the Collective West coming up with Ukraine peace
plans they dreamed up in a vacuum, with no consideration of what Russia
would accept.
But on top of that, even before October 7, the Palestinians had also soured on the idea. From The Strategist:
On the Palestinian side, long before 7 October it was
evident the paradigm of Palestinian politics had shifted. Support for a
two-state approach has collapsed.
Fatah, self-indulgent, corrupt and unwilling to do the hard yards of
election campaigning, lost to Hamas in Gaza in 2006. It was crushed by
Hamas when it attempted a coup in 2007.
Meanwhile, Israeli intransigence; settler violence in the West Bank;
the loss of political authority on the part of Mahmoud Abbas; the
contempt of Palestinians for the role played by the PA in meeting
Israel’s security demands and destructive military and settler
incursions; US promotion of normalisation between Israel and Persian
Gulf Arab states, without addressing the Palestinian issue as an
essential part of that process; and the emergence of West Bank urban
militant groups defying the PA all combined to deadly effect.
And finally, let us turn to the ultimate obstacle, the fact on the
ground of settler extreme balkanization of the West Bank. On top of
settler occupation of much of the land, many of the roads are reserved
for Israeli use, and Palestinians often have to take roundabout routes
to get from Point A to B, as well as go through many checkpoints. The
only way to create even some decent-sized chuck of contiguous
Palestinian land would be through a reverse Nakba. And that simply will
not occur.
Even in 2008, Foreign Minister (and lawyer), Tzipi Livni, was spelling outwhy “Israel’s
only answer (to the issue of how to maintain Zionism) was to keep the
State’s borders undefined – whilst holding on to scarce water and land
resources – leaving Palestinians in a state of permanent uncertainty, dependent on Israeli goodwill”.
Livni was saying that she wanted Israel to be a Zionist
state – based on the Law of Return and open to any Jew. However, to
secure such a state in a country with very limited territory – means
that land and water must be kept under Jewish control, with differential
rights for Jews and non-Jews – rights that affect everything, from
housing and access to land, to jobs, subsidies, marriages and migration.
A two-state solution inherently therefore, did not solve the problem
of how to maintain Zionism; rather, it compounded it. The inevitable
demand for full equal rights for Palestinians would bring the end of
Jewish ‘special rights’, and of Zionism itself, Livni argued – a threat
with which most Zionists concur.
Sharon’s answer to this ultimate paradox, however, was different:
Sharon had an alternative plan for managing a large non-Jewish
‘out-group’, physically present within a Zionist State of differentiated
rights. Sharon’s alternative amounted to frustrating a two-state
solution within fixed borders…
Sharon envisaged the depth of the West Bank in its entirety as one extensive, permeable
and temporary ‘frontier’. This approach could thus disregard any
thin-nibbed pencil line, drawn to denote some political border. This
framework was intended to leave Palestinians in a state of permanent
uncertainty, caught within a matrix of interlocking settlements, and
subject to Israeli military intervention at Israel’s sole discretion.
Crooke also developed these ideas in his Judge Napolitano interview on Monday. But he added some critical detail, particularly starting at 18:50: “Where are the two states going to be?” Continuing:
According to the Security Council resolution, it [the
Palestinian state] includes all the West Bank and Gaza. Well, what are
you going to do about the West Bank? I’ve already, you know that is
peopled by nearly 800,000 settlers now who are armed and zealous, have
absolutely no intention, whatever any government says, of abandoning.
These are fanatics. I’ve been to them. I’ve spoken to them. They are
really radical people. Even the Israeli Army, and look at the Israeli
Army in the West Bank. It’s basically a reservists army, but also it is a
settler army. Most of these people, when I was in Israel, I saw the big
transformation of the Israeli Army into becoming a settler army. It
used to be managed and led by the kibbutznik, the people who lived in
the kibbutz, but then it changed and the settlers took command over the
main points of this army.
So you’re not going to be able to use the Israelis to remove them.
Who’s going to remove nearly a million Israelis from West Bank? There’s
no discussion that is serious about these things. New fabulist sort of
ideas that people are using just to manage the problem. We can’t solve
it so we come up and we’ll say, “Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states will
do this,” and the other things when they know that’s not going to work,
it’s impossible to work.
In other words, shorter Crooke is that failure to admit how
intractable the Israel/Palestine problem is allows Israelis to continue
to use ambiguity and misdirection to the disadvantage and now physical
destruction of Palestine and its people.
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