American Political Misleadership Dangerous To America And To The World

therealnews  |  In the months of July and September 1940 the French historian and future resistance fighter Marc Bloch, who fought in World War I and World War II, wrote a short book called L’Étrange Défaite or Strange Defeat. It was a searing condemnation of the French high command and political class which was responsible for the humiliating defeat and disintegration of the French army with the Nazi invasion of France. Bloch, who went underground to fight the Nazi occupiers, was executed by the Gestapo in 1944. 

Bloch’s book, published after the war, was the model for historian Andrew Bacevich’s book After the Apocalypse. Bacevich is no less censorious of the political and military class that has led the United States into one debacle after the next since Vietnam, a war he served in as a young officer. He argues they are woefully out of touch with reality, and unable to adapt to a changing world. Unless they are wrenched from power, the twilight of the American empire will be one filled with catastrophe after catastrophe. Andrew Bacevich joins The Chris Hedges Report to discuss his book After the Apocalypse.

Andrew Bacevich is a retired army colonel and Emeritus Professor of History and International Relations at Boston University. He is also the cofounder and president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

American Politicians Can Make A Name-Stealer Blush....,

BAR  |  It isn’t incompetence that keeps the democrats from fully realizing their political power. The terrible truth is that they prefer horse trading over the issues of importance to their donor class than they do meeting the needs of the people. Why does House Speaker Nancy Pelosi constantly speak of the need for a “strong republican party?” She needs a strong republican party, that is to say one which doesn’t resemble the January 6th rabble that frightened most of the nation. A more respectable and traditional republican party is one she can compromise with, and both sides of the aisle can represent the interests of the U.S. oligarchy while pretending otherwise.

Claims that every election is the most important in history, or a test of democracy, is a line meant for gullible rubes. They tell us so themselves. As president, Barack Obama presented republicans with a “grand bargain” of austerity so bad that Congressional Black Caucus member Emmanuel Cleaver referred to it as a “sugar coated satan sandwich.” As part of this plan Obama convened a National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform that was soon dubbed “the catfood commission.” Yet Obama hit the 2022 mid-term election campaign trail and condemned republicans for wanting to cut social security, which is exactly what he proposed doing ten years earlier.

Democrats raise millions of dollars for their presidential campaigns but come up empty in those state races which have a great impact on Americans’ lives. They don’t want to transform the country on behalf of the people. They are always on the side of their donor class and that is why the national leadership aren’t very concerned when republicans control state capitals. They will actually take a dive and then use their own corruption as a fundraising tool, pointing fingers at the republicans they have declared villains while secretly hoping they have to share power with them.

The inevitable result is senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia being in a close race with Herschel Walker, a former football player who mouths right wing, that is to say white wing, talking points on every issue. Warnock should have been further ahead but close races are guaranteed when there is no minimum wage increase while inflation runs rampant.

Of course inflation is high. Corporations gouge the public as much as they like because there is no major political party opposing them. Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act won’t reduce inflation by itself, but clever marketing is one of the tools used to keep the people fooled about how politics really work.

Why are margins so close in the House and the Senate when the people prefer what democrats claim to offer? The democrats are the ultimate cynics. They know what the people want and campaign accordingly, but once in office use the senate parliamentarian, arcane rules, or the bad cops among them to say that their hands are tied. The charade is a perfect crime.

Whatever the outcome of the races still to be decided, it is clear that the people must look to themselves and not at Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, or former president Obama, to guard their interests. They have different interests which are antithetical to those of the people. Electioneering fanfare cannot cover up this terrible but obvious truth.

If Black, A Gang. If Italian, A Mob. If Jewish, A Coincidence. Hope They Don't Take Anything Away From You

NYTimes  | When Dave Chappelle has previously hosted “Saturday Night Live,” his primary role has been to help the audience find humor in recent news events. This time, he was the news event.

But while Chappelle used his standup monologue this weekend to comment on a wide range of topics, including recent antisemitic remarks from Kanye West, the midterm elections and the persistence of former President Trump, he did not directly address the fallout from his 2021 Netflix special “The Closer,” which was criticized as sexist, homophobic and transphobic.

Taking the stage at “S.N.L.” as the house band played “Try a Little Tenderness,” Chappelle told the audience that he would begin by delivering a prepared statement. “I denounce antisemitism in all its forms, and I stand with my friends in the Jewish community,” he said, reading from the statement. He then looked up and added, “And that, Kanye, is how you buy yourself some time.”

In his usual fashion, Chappelle mocked West, now known as Ye, while performatively pushing boundaries of propriety and channeling some of the myths that underpin enduring antisemitic stereotypes.

From early in his career, Chappelle said, “I learned that there are two words in the English language that you should never say together in sequence. And those words are ‘the’ and ‘Jews.’”

He later said in the monologue that he had been to Hollywood and, based on his own travels, “It’s a lot of Jews. Like, a lot. But that doesn’t mean anything. There’s a lot of Black people in Ferguson, Mo. That doesn’t mean they run the place.”

Crypto-as-Commodity? Name Stealers Electing And Exploiting IQ-75 Politicians...,

dailycaller |  Sam Bankman-Fried, prolific Democratic donor and ex-CEO of now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, funded the campaigns of members of Congress overseeing the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), one of the key bodies tasked with regulating the crypto industry and the subject of Bankman-Fried’s aggressive lobbying.

Bankman-Fried’s FTX is currently under investigation by the CFTC and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) after Bankman-Fried allegedly moved $10 billion in client assets from his crypto exchange to his trading firm Alameda Research, and a liquidity crisis at his  exchange which prompted the company to file for bankruptcy. However, prior to the agency’s probe, Bankman-Fried aggressively courted the CFTC – and funded several key lawmakers charged with overseeing the agency, pouring cash into their campaign coffers.

The CFTC is charged with regulating certain elements of the crypto marketplace, including digital assets that are commodities as well as crypto exchanges and clearinghouses. The agency is overseen by the Senate and House Agriculture Committees, with the former tasked with approving CFTC commissioners nominated by the president. (RELATED: Obama’s ‘Democracy Forum’ Promotes Director Of ‘Zuckerbucks’ Organization That Poured Millions Into 2020 Election)

The former FTX CEO personally donated to the Senate committee’s chairwoman, Democratic Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow, contributing over $20,000 to the Stabenow Victory Fund and $5,800 to her campaign for Senate. Bankman-Fried donated roughly $6,000 to the committee’s ranking member, Republican Arkansas Sen. John Boozman, as well, and $5,800 to the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Commodities, Risk Management and Trade, Republican Montana Sen. John Hoeven.

The offices of Stabenow, Boozman and Hoeven did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment.

More significantly, American Dream Federal Action, a political action committee founded by FTX executive Ryan Salame, spent over $1 million on Boozman during the 2022 election cycle, according to campaign finance records, and over $1 million on House Agriculture Committee member and Republican Minnesota Rep. Brad Finstad.

Bankman-Fried is also a key funder of the Protect Our Future PAC, which primarily works to elect Democrats, bankrolling the group to the tune of $27 million this election cycle. The PAC spent over $1 million funding Democratic Ohio Rep. Shontel Brown, a member of the House Agriculture Committee.

Bankman-Fried donated roughly $6,000 to ousted Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) Chair Sean Patrick Maloney, who sits on the House Agriculture Committee, and over $200,000 to Maloney’s DCCC.

Bankman-Fried also contributed almost $6,000 to Senate Agriculture Committee member and Democratic New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, and roughly $6,000 to committee member and Democratic New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s campaign, with another $10,000 to the Gillibrand Victory Fund.

Brown, Maloney, Gillibrand and Booker did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment, nor did Protect Our Future.

In addition to his campaign contributions to the lawmakers tasked with CFTC oversight, Bankman-Fried sought closer relations with the agency itself.

Bankman-Fried personally lobbied for legislation in the Senate Agriculture Committee that would grant the CFTC greater regulatory oversight over the crypto industry, according to Coindesk, and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying the CFTC, SEC and members of Congress on the legislation.

The bill, known as the Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act, which would grant the CFTC “jurisdiction to oversee the spot digital commodity market,” was introduced by Stabenow, Boozman, Booker and Republican North Dakota Sen. John Thune, three of whom are beneficiaries of Bankman-Fried’s donations.

For its lobbying team, FTX hired former Republican Rep. Mike Conaway, longtime chair of the House Agriculture Committee, and committee staffer Scott Graves to lobby lawmakers on crypto-related issues.

 

Inside-Baseball Details On The Takedown Of Kanye West

pagesix |  Beloved celebrity trainer Harley Pasternak appeared to threaten to “institutionalize” Kanye West so that the rapper would be medicated into “Zombieland forever.”

Following his anti-Semitic rants, West shared texts purportedly sent by Pasternak, who is Jewish, that began by offering to have a “loving, open conversation” with him based on “fact.” Pasternak also asked his former friend and client to refrain from “cuss words” or “crazy stuff.”

“Second option, I have you institutionalized again where they medicate the crap out of you, and you go back to Zombieland forever. Play date with the kids just won’t be the same,” the message continued.

West, 45, tweeted the screenshot Thursday and wrote that he was “mentally misdiagnosed and nearly drugged out of my mind to make me a manageable well behaved celebrity.”

“This is how a Hollywood trainer speaks to a far more influential black celebrity when we get out of line,” West added in a follow-up tweet.

Pasternak, 48, didn’t immediately return Page Six’s request for comment. He did, however, change his Instagram profile to private.

The texts purportedly sent by Pasternak, who has worked with Jessica Simpson, Jack Black, Lady Gaga, Rihanna and more celebrities, confirm reports that he made the phone call that resulted in West’s 2016 hospitalization.

The Grammy winner’s treatment came after he had a meltdown onstage right before the rest of his tour was canceled.

“He’s been suffering from exhaustion and sleep deprivation and went to the hospital today on his own will and under the consultation of his physician,” a source close to West said at the time.

The Los Angeles Police Department told The Post at the time that its officers responded to a call for a “disturbance,” but once they arrived at the address, the incident was classified as a “medical emergency.”

The rapper-turned-fashion designer has been under fire in recent months for his anti-Semitic remarks. While friends close to West claim he’s in the midst of a “psychiatric episode,” others maintain that his mental state does not exempt him from consequences, which include losing lucrative partnerships with Adidas and Balenciaga.  Fist tap Dale.

 

 

 

2nd Only To George Soros In The Volume Of Bribes Paid To Democrats..,

WaPo  |   Sam Bankman-Fried, the 30-year-old wunderkind of cryptocurrency, spent tens of millions of dollars over the past year trying to reshape how Washington and the world think about finance.

The crypto exchange he founded, FTX, had become an industry-dominating business in just three years, valued at $32 billion as recently as January. He amassed political clout in an even bigger hurry, emerging from obscurity to become the second-biggest Democratic donor in the midterm elections.

By Friday, the money and the clout had disappeared: Bankman-Fried resigned from FTX, which then filed for bankruptcy. And Bankman-Fried was left facing harrowing questions about his role in the most catastrophic collapse the notoriously volatile crypto industry has so far seen.

When Bankman-Fried was just 28, he built a platform that offered investors easy access to buying, selling and stashing bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. The offshore exchange allowed investors to place risky bets not allowed in the United States, though it was easy enough for American users to find workarounds; a U.S. affiliate offered limited services. With a massive marketing push — including a flashy Super Bowl ad and naming rights to the Miami Heat arena — he sought to make crypto trading a mainstream pastime.

Meanwhile, he was using his newfound political clout to sell Washington on a regulatory regime that promised to work to his advantage. The contrasts were glaring and never easily reconciled: As crypto’s self-appointed ambassador to Washington, Bankman-Fried was pressing for federal regulation even as he dodged U.S. oversight from his corporate headquarters in the Bahamas.

The executive acknowledged that FTX’s aggressive lobbying made him an outlier in crypto. “Outside of us, there weren’t many people engaging,” Bankman-Fried said in an interview last month with The Washington Post. “I think that means we have to do a better job as an industry more generally engaging.”

In March, he appeared at the House Democratic retreat in Philadelphia with his arm around House Financial Services Committee Chair Maxine Waters (D-Calif.). In April, he turned up in the office of Caroline Pham, a Republican member of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, less than a week after she assumed the post, along with Mark Wetjen, the former acting chair of the agency and now Bankman-Fried’s top Washington adviser. Hill staffers say they regularly spotted him around the Capitol, shuttling between meetings flanked by Wetjen and Eliora Katz, who joined FTX this summer from the staff of the Senate Banking Committee’s top Republican, Patrick J. Toomey (Pa.)

 

Bankman Fried (Priceless...,) Tried To Politically Gin Up Central Bank Support For Crypto-Shystery...,

NYTimes | FTX’s founder was called a modern-day J.P. Morgan. The analogy still works. Though one of them failed and the other died rich, both of their careers make the case for central banks.

Mr. Bankman-Fried tried to bail out a couple of smaller failed crypto firms, Voyager Digital and BlockFi Inc., drawing laudatory press that compared him to J.P. Morgan Sr.

The Morgan analogy was repeated this week even after FTX customers withdrew $6 billion in funds in the equivalent of a bank run, forcing FTX to freeze operations and stranding billions in remaining customers’ potentially lost assets.

For all of the obvious ways in which Mr. Bankman-Fried is no Pierpont Morgan, a model of discretion whose namesake firm continues to be solvent to this day, on one point they have something in common: Their careers demonstrate a need for central banks.

Morgan earned his reputation as a private rescuer in 1907, when a bank run struck the trusts (banklike associations) in New York City and then spread to traditional banks. Morgan assembled the city’s leading financiers to lend emergency funds and ease the panic.

His heroism slowed the bleeding — but some banks failed, many suspended withdrawals and scores resorted to dispensing homemade certificates in lieu of money. As each bank hoarded reserves to save itself, the stock market plunged 40 percent and the country suffered a severe recession.

Morgan’s inadequacy made plain that the United States, already an industrial powerhouse, could not depend on the benevolence of a single financier. Precisely for this reason, Nelson Aldrich, a powerful senator with close ties to Morgan, led a mission to Europe in 1908 to study the workings of the central banks in England, France and Germany.

Two years later, a group of bankers, including a senior partner of Morgan’s, the president of its rival National City Bank, and the central banking crusader Paul Warburg, gathered at Morgan’s exclusive club on Jekyll Island, off the coast of Georgia. Meeting in secret, they plotted the outline of what Americans had resisted since Andrew Jackson’s day — a central bank. The Federal Reserve was born three years later, in 1913.

This week, The Wall Street Journal’s James Mackintosh opined, “The fundamental flaw of centralized finance is that it needs central banks to end chaotic bank runs …” This is like saying that the flaw with owning a home is that one may need the fire department.

Any monetary instrument is a form of credit, and credit will always involve risk. Mr. Bankman-Fried discovered that. His putative savior, a crypto exchange known as Binance, backed out 24 hours after it had tentatively agreed to a rescue. On Friday, FTX filed for bankruptcy. Yet had the rescue deal gone through, Binance would have been on the hook for, reportedly, up to $8 billion in claims against FTX. Who would have come to the rescue of Binance?

The point of a central reserve, which is what Paul Warburg and Nelson Aldrich had in mind in 1913, is that the pooled resources of the nation are immeasurably greater than those of any single mogul. They offer, in times of need, an ocean of liquidity to iron out the inevitable fluctuations in individual, regional, and industry-specific credit. Would anyone in their right mind wish to entrust the nation to crypto — and trade the imperfect Fed for the likes of FTX and Binance?

 

 

 

The Managed Withdrawal Eliminates The Thing DC And Kiev Were Hanging Their Hats On...,

You can’t understand military operations at any level without also understanding basic geography — especially the height of terrain features (hence the universal tactical imperative to “hold the high ground”).

The entire managed withdrawal (retreat) conversation has missed the crucial fact that the west bank of the Dnieper River is much higher than the east bank — thus there is no possibility of flooding the west side of the river. Any high water would inundate the flood plain to the east, which would cause the heavy artillery stationed there to displace and would disrupt fire support to the forces holding west of the river — not to mention also causing havoc with the supply lines leading up to the choke points of the bridges and ferries crossing the Dnieper, many of which would be damaged/washed away if the British managed to break the big Kakhovskaya dam with one of their underwater drones.

That is the problem that General Surovikin is pre-empting by his managed withdrawal from the east bank of the Dnieper now vs the chaos of a forced retreat after the SHTF from a massive dam break. The only inundation of the west bank that I can see occurs where the river just north of Kherson flows into the Dnieper, and it's relatively minor.

The article begins with the statement:
“A worst case modelling for a Russian demolition of the Nova Kakhovka Dnipro river dam show that the worst flooding will take place on the left (south east) side of the river bank.”  The animated map of the projected flooding is quite interesting, especially regarding the big backflow up the Bug River.  It shows that the majority of the water would inundate the east ban.   The right (west bank) of the river is generally higher than the east bank all the way north to Kiev. An old chestnut about WW II is that “if the Todt organization had begun fortifying the west bank of the Dnieper in 1942, the Germans would still be defending that line today….”

With Russian forces on the right bank Ukraine has good reason to combine destroying the dam with an offensive or just destroying it. Since Russia doesn’t really have the manpower applied to the conflict to do big pushes towards Nikolaev and Odessa the point of occupying the right bank at the moment is pride. And a temptation to dam busting. Ukraine might still blow up the dam, but it won’t create a huge blow to crimea and a military catastrophe along the river. The withdrawal also eliminates the legal reason for destroying the dam (it’s not legally prohibited when it serves a military purpose).

And in a weird way it eliminates the thing Kiev and DC we’re hanging their hats on. Sure, it can be said that Russia ran away but that’s a short news item. A defeat in the field was necessary; large losses, surrender, chaos. It’s not a short war anymore so it cannot be prosecuted like one. And the last thing the US needs or wants is an actual long war (funding a long insurgency is different). The Ukrainian state isn’t Russia’s problem and it’s a very big and growing problem.

The Day After Gen. Mark Milley Said It Would Take Weeks - Brandon Puts It In Iraq....,

kommersant |  The Ministry of Defense reported that at 5:00 Moscow time, the transfer of Russian troops to the left bank of the Dnieper was completed. As the department clarifies, not a single piece of military equipment and weapons was left on the right bank.

The official representative of the Ministry of Defense, Igor Konashenkov, said that the Armed Forces of Ukraine tried at night to disrupt the transportation of civilians and the transfer of troops to the left bank of the Dnieper. River crossings were hit five times by HIMARS rockets.

“All Russian military personnel crossed over, no losses of personnel, weapons, equipment and materiel of the Russian group were allowed,” Mr. Konashenkov said (quoted by TASS).

According to him, the Russian military stopped the enemy at a distance of 30-40 km from the area of ​​crossings across the Dnieper. The representative of the Ministry of Defense added that the advance of the Armed Forces of Ukraine over the past two days in certain areas in the Kherson region amounted to no more than 10 km.

On November 9, the Ministry of Defense decided to withdraw troops from Kherson to the left bank of the Dnieper. On the same day, the authorities of the Kherson region reported the beginning of heavy fighting in the Snigirevka area near Kherson. The Kremlin stated that the Kherson region remains a subject of the Russian Federation, and there can be no changes in this status.

About what happens on the 261st day after the entry of Russian troops into Ukraine - in the online broadcast "Kommersant".

If You Had Kept Your Silence You Would Have Stayed A Philosopher...,

WaPo  | U.S. Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Tuesday night that 20,000 to 30,000 Russian forces remained on the western bank of the river and that it would take time for them to withdraw. But he, too, saw “initial indicators” that the retreat was underway, he said.

“This won’t take them a day or two,” Milley said, speaking at an event at the Economic Club of New York. “This is going to take them days and maybe even weeks to pull those forces south of that river.”

Ukrainian forces have been slowly advancing toward Kherson for weeks, targeting ammunition centers, command posts and supply facilities in the region and putting pressure on Russian forces, said Yuriy Sak, an adviser to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry.

“Literally it’s no longer possible for them to stay in Kherson because they’re unable to provide munitions to their army, provide provisions,” Sak said in an interview. “It’s no longer possible for them to continue to fight.”

Despite exuberant troops posting social media videos and selfies of retaken villages, Ukrainian military commanders are reluctant to broadcast their next moves.

“The winter will be a factor,” Sak said. “It could be slower, it could be faster depending on weather conditions. But we’re not going to stop. We’re going to continue our counteroffensive meter by meter, village by village.”

Departing Russian forces are laying mines and blowing up bridges as they pull back from Kherson city, and there is concern that some troops may be hiding in the city, waiting to spring a trap, Ukrainian officials said. Advancing Ukrainian soldiers also will be within range of Russian artillery on the opposite bank of the river.

But a full retreat from Kherson city is now seen as inevitable. Ukrainian forces have targeted Russian supply lines and choked off Moscow’s ability to support front-line troops.

“The Russians can definitely organize some traps in Kherson still, but they never had enough troops or logistics to keep those right-bank positions,” said another adviser to the Ukrainian government who was not authorized to speak to the press and commented on the condition of anonymity.

Russian Withdrawal From Kherson A Tactical Necessity

sputnik  | Surovikin’s concerns about the danger posed to Kherson’s civilian population are not academic. In the opening stages of Russia’s military operation this spring, thousands were killed or injured in Mariupol, Popasnaya, Volnovakha and other urban locations after Ukrainian forces and neo-Nazi battalions dug in, often deliberately in civilian areas, hiding in or near apartment blocks, shopping centers, schools, kindergartens, and even hospitals, to lure Russian forces into bloody street battles, and receive a convenient pretext to accuse Moscow of war crimes anytime a civilian building was damaged or destroyed.

By withdrawing forces from the right bank of the Dnepr, Russian forces have signaled their rejection of this costly and bloody strategy. Over the past three weeks, as Ukrainian forces amassed troops near Kherson and intensified shelling of the city, a large-scale evacuation of civilians was kicked off. In his remarks Wednesday, Surovikin reported that over 115,000 people had been evacuated, taken to Crimea and other areas deeper inside Russia.

 

The military’s strategy of evacuation and the creation of a defensive line that can be easily secured appears to be aimed at showing that Russia is not interested in "pyrrhic victories," and that Moscow will not succumb to efforts by NATO and its clients in Kiev to drown the region in blood, kill tens of thousands, and trap Russia in a hopeless strategic and tactical situation from which it would be nearly impossible to escape.

 

In the run-up to Wednesday’s announcement, Ukrainian commanders made no secret of their assessment of the situation. On October 29, Ukrainian military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov predicted that amid the concentration of Ukrainian forces, NATO mercs, and heavy weapons near Kherson, the “liberation” of the city wouldn’t take place “without a fight,” but be preceded by the cordoning off of the city and the isolation of Russian forces, followed by battles to gradually grind them down. The strategy is familiar to historians of the Second World War on the Eastern Front, which featured the heavy use of pincers to encircle troops, leave them without supplies, and gradually close the noose to eliminate them or take them prisoner.

In his remarks last month, Budanov even suggested that Russia might sabotage the Kakhovskaya Dam to try to slow down Ukrainian forces, apparently forgetting that terrorist attacks against civilian infrastructure was more Kiev and the West’s forte (the recent attacks on Nord Stream, the Crimean Bridge, and Sevastopol Bay serving as but a few examples).

Russia’s Strategy in Historical Context

The Russian military’s decision was obviously a “difficult,” forced measure, as Surovikin openly stated in his remarks Wednesday.

 

In both the strategic and historical contexts, the pullout to the left bank of the Dnepr River could be said to be based on a broader interest – winning the "proxy war" that the West has declared on Russia, not winning a single battle. During the Great Northern War against Sweden of 1700-1721, the French invasion of Russia in 1812, and the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, commanders pulled back forces dozens or even hundreds of kilometers when necessary, but never lost sight of the strategic goal.

 

In the Ukrainian security crisis, unleashed by the US and the EU in 2014, time appears to be on Russia’s side, with Kiev and its Western backers facing an increasingly grim series of economic and energy crises, and Western capitals from Washington to Berlin signaling exhaustion with Kiev, and expressing growing hesitation to support the bottomless pit of weapons and cash that Ukraine has become.

 

US and European media have issued report after report detailing how NATO is literally running out of weapons to send to Ukraine. Meanwhile, capitals across Europe, including economic and political powerhouse Germany, have been overrun with cost of living protests sparked largely by Brussels’ move to slap restrictions on Russian energy.The US, which has committed $60 billion of the estimated $100 billion in military and economic support sent to Kiev over the past eight months, just held its most highly-contested midterm elections in decades, with Republicans poised to take the House, and wrangling with Democrats for control of the Senate. Last month, Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy warned that there would be no “blank check” for Ukraine in a GOP-controlled House.

 

The Trump wing of the GOP has been even more adamant, with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene stressing last week that “not another penny will go to Ukraine” under the Republicans, who will instead focus Washington’s energy and resources on the US’ porous border with Mexico. Only time will tell whether the politicians will make good on their promises, or even be allowed to do so by America's powerful deep state interests.

 

Whatever happens, in a situation where Russia has the energy and food resources to survive the coming winter, and a seemingly better chance to preserve the political wherewithal to ride out the crisis, it will ultimately be up to Kiev's Western sponsors to decide whether to continue the strategy of exchanging tactical gains for strategic losses, or to finally push its clients to come to the negotiating table and address Russia's fundamental security concerns.        

“Nothing is accomplished in haste. It’s not difficult to take a fortress, but difficult to win a campaign. And for this you need not to storm and attack, but patience and time,” Field Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov said in the Leo Tolstoy classic "War and Peace."

More than 150 years after being written, these words have not lost their relevance.

Did Jake Sullivan Threaten The Intervention Of 90,000 NATO Troops In Ukraine?

NYTimes  |  In Ukraine, the fate of Crimea is a particularly thorny question. Ukrainian leaders insist they will retake that peninsula and other land that the Russian military seized in 2014.

Mr. Putin sees Crimea as a territory of great strategic and historical importance. At the same time, Ukraine, the United States and European nations have insisted for years that Crimea’s status is nonnegotiable. Biden administration officials have repeatedly said that one of the main reasons for supporting Ukraine is to defend the core principle that borders cannot be changed by force.

“In terms of the ultimate status of Crimea, that will be something to be negotiated or discussed between the Ukrainians and the Russians, but Crimea is Ukraine,” Colin H. Kahl, the Pentagon’s under secretary for policy, said on Tuesday.

Ukrainian military advances on Crimea, though a distant prospect for now, would stoke concern in Washington about Mr. Putin’s threats to escalate the conflict.

American and European leaders see their goal for now as keeping a protracted war contained to Ukraine and deterring Mr. Putin from using a tactical nuclear warhead or other weapon of mass destruction. Officials debate whether Mr. Putin is bluffing when he hints at using nuclear arms, but some analysts believe that control of Crimea, home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, could be a red line for the Russian leader.

American officials have said for months that they are sending private and public messages to the Kremlin to warn of severe consequences if Mr. Putin uses nuclear weapons. Mr. Sullivan has been talking to Nikolai Patrushev, his Russian counterpart, since the beginning of the war to try to avert any misunderstandings around nuclear threats, the Biden administration official said.

“I have known both Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken for years,” said Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, referring to Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken. Mr. Khanna, who was among those who signed the progressives’ letter to Mr. Biden, continued, “I have confidence that they understand the risks of nuclear war and the risks of escalation, and are doing everything they can to stand with Ukraine while minimizing the risks of the conflict escalating.”

American officials said Mr. Zelensky’s private position has been the same as his public one: He wants to see Ukraine’s pre-2014 territory returned, and he is not interested in trading any of it for an end to the war.

Some European officials wonder privately whether that position is tenable, but others voice support for it.

“We hear many careless statements, like saying, ‘It’s not necessary to have absolute territorial integrity, we need to negotiate, we need to go for compromise so that finally we can have peace again,’” Annalena Baerbock, foreign minister of Germany, said at a policy forum last month. “I say very clearly: Such demands are naïve, and such naïve strategies already failed in 2014.”

What Has Become Of German Self-Interest And Will?

NLR  |  What is nothing short of astonishing is how many hawks have come out of their nests in recent months in Germany. Some figure as ‘experts’ on Eastern Europe, international politics and the military, who believe it to be their Western duty to help the public deny the approaching reality of nuclear explosions on European territory; others are ordinary citizens who suddenly enjoy following tank battles on the internet and rooting for ‘our’ side. Some of the most warlike used to belong to the left, widely defined; today they are more or less aligned with the Green party and in this emblematically represented by Baerbock, now the foreign minister. A strange combination of Joan of Arc and Hillary Clinton, Baerbock is one of the many so-called ‘young global leaders’ cultivated by the World Economic Forum. What is most characteristic of her version of leftism is its affinity to the United States, by far the most violence-prone state in the contemporary world. To understand this, it may help to remember that those of her generation have never experienced war, and neither have their parents; indeed, it is safe to assume that its male members avoided the draft as conscientious objectors until it was suspended, not least under their electoral pressure. Moreover, no previous generation has grown up as much under the influence of American soft power, from pop music to movies and fashion to a succession of social movements and cultural fads, all of which were promptly and eagerly copied in Germany, filling the gap caused by the absence of any original cultural contribution from this remarkably epigonal age cohort (an absence that is euphemistically called cosmopolitanism).

Looking deeper, as one must, cultural Americanism, including its idealistic expansionism, promises a libertarian individualism which in Europe, unlike the United States, is felt to be incompatible with nationalism, the latter happening to be the anathema of the Green left. This leaves as the only remaining possibility for collective identification a generalized ‘Westernism’ misunderstood as a ‘values’-based universalism, which is in fact a scaled-up Americanism immune to contamination by the reality of American society. Westernism, abstracted from the particular needs, interests and commitments of everyday life, is inevitably moralistic; it can live only in Feindschaft with differently moral, and in its eyes therefore immoral, non-Westernism, which it cannot let live and ultimately must let die. Not least, by adopting Westernism, this kind of new left can for once hope to be not just on the right but also on the winning side, American military power promising them that this time, finally, they may not be fighting for a lost cause.

Moreover, Westernism amounts to the internationalization, under robust American leadership, of the culture wars being fought at home, inspired by role models in the United States (although there the war may be about to be lost at least domestically). In the Westernized mind, Putin and Xi, Trump and Truss, Bolsonaro and Meloni, Orbán and Kaczyński are all the same, all ‘fascists’. With historical meaning restored to the uprooted individualized life in late-capitalist anomie, there is once more a chance to fight and even die for, if nothing else, then for the common ‘values’ of humanity – an opportunity for heroism that seemed forever lost in the narrow horizons and the hedged parochialism enshrined in the complex institutions of postwar and postcolonial Western Europe. What makes such idealism even more attractive is that the fighting and dying can be delegated to proxies, people today, soon perhaps algorithms. For the time being, nothing more is asked of you than advocating your government sending heavy arms to the Ukrainians – whose ardent nationalism would until a few months ago have seemed nothing short of repulsive to Green cosmopolitans – while celebrating their willingness to put their lives on the line, for the cause not just of regaining Crimea for their country but also of Westernism itself.

Of course, in order to make ordinary people rally to the cause, effective ‘narratives’ must be devised to convince them that pacifism is either treason or a mental illness. People must also be made to believe that unlike what the defeatists say in order to undermine Western morale, nuclear war is not a threat: either the Russian madman will turn out to be not mad enough to follow up on his delusions, or if he doesn’t the damage will remain local, limited to a country whose people, as their president reassures us on television every night, are not afraid of dying for both their fatherland and, as von der Leyen puts it, for ‘the European family’ – which, when the time is ripe, will invite them in, all expenses paid.

Handy Chart Showing George Soros Oversized Presence

opensecrets |   The top seven GOP megadonors have contributed nearly $222.7 million to Republican candidates and outside groups. Of the $185.8 million given by the top three Democratic megadonors, $128 million has come from Democratic megadonor George Soros, the top individual donor this election cycle and a frequent target of anti-semitic attacks from conservative pundits and politicians. Fund for Policy Reform, a 501(c)(4) funded by Soros, has given an additional $25 million to super PACs during the 2022 election cycle.

“There are still very active megadonors – George Soros, Ken Griffin, Richard Uihlein – and then also new ones like Sam Bankman-Fried from industries on the rise like cryptocurrency,” Bryner said. 

Soros, an emigre from Hungary after WW II, is very keen on Eastern European “democracy” and (according to his Open Society Foundation website) spent $18 billion on projects around the world since its founding around 1980. An “Open Society” (term coined by Karl Popper, who Soros claims as an intellectual father) has open borders to flows of capital, labor and information. The epitome of a “Closed Society” was the USSR (when Popper’s book was published in the ’70’s).

I wouldn’t be surprised if Soros has used his influence in the Democratic Party over the years to ensure that people like Madeleine Albright (parents fled Czechoslovakia) and Vicky Nuland (parents fled Ukraine) were placed in high places. I suspect he was a big supporter of Russophobes like McCain and Graham as well.

Some of Soros’s “projects” may well have borne fruit in such diverse areas as the framework for the EU (free flow of capital and labor); EU and NATO expansion; the growing dominance of Neocons throughout the DC establishment; and much more. I’m not a conspiracist, and won’t say that Soros “caused” all of these things; but in the absence of a countervailing $18 billion force, I think he surely made a difference by lubricating and tipping the balance in many ways.

 

2022 America Is What Happens When Government Is Controlled By Organized Crime

Fist tap Dale. 

The first 40 minutes of this video during which Whitney talks about l'affaire Epstein and how far back that goes is GREAT. The Davos Transhuman stuff afterword I kind of snoozed on.

The % of people (Khazarian gangsters) in favor of continued hostilities with Russia is really quite small. "it's all over but for the crying!"

Actually, it was all over way back when Russia didn't collapse. Come to think of it, that would be a good project/essay for someone to study and publish.  Is there a day/week where one could point to and ID a specific point at which the crisis passed? (Was there even actually such a point or was it just the grand cacophony of western media?)

It is clear that Russia has already won in Ukraine. Therefore, any reconciliation will be on the winner's terms and Russia cannot simply forgive and forget. They have learned a very important lesson, which is that the Anglo Saxons are not entirely in control of their political fate, and consequently, are only at liberty to respond to an overwhelming display of strength. It remains to be seen what consequences will unfold for the small minority of Khazarian gangsters who have ruled the British and U.S. Anglo-Saxon elites via extortion for the past ___ years.

After Ukraine is rolled up (in a matter of weeks?) from a combination of the US election blowout, subsequent supply termination, general winter and Russia's big push offensive, what's the point of continuation?

The military industrial complex has been the major player in US life, but in order to keep the peace domestically, energy, construction, agribusiness, automotive, travel etc. must all get their economic due as well. Russia is an absolute gold mine of opportunity - we need to consider everyone else wanting to get into the game vs the Khazarian mafia bankers keeping it to themselves. Constant terrorism, regional conflicts, arms sales and all the rest - keep the chances of nuclear escalation high. Non Americans are mistaken if they think the majority of American citizens here will accept the Khazarian status quo.

The typical American really only cares about 'getting ahead'. The usual first question when meeting someone is "what do you do?" Not out of genuine curiosity, but rather as a form of value assessment. Love it or hate it, at the end of the day it's why people would love a leader who could get gas back under $3/gallon. Doing a deal with Russia is the first big step in that direction.

"Normal" Americans are desperate to return to their one true desire: one upping friends and rivals in the quest for economic (class) achievement.  In reality, and this speaks to Russian youth as well, your everyday Russian also pretty much just wants to earn a (good) income, own a home/car/toy, score regular pussy, to party and have a good time.  If you sail, surf or travel, you will know the Russians were everywhere throughout Bali, Thailand and other party hotspots. It actually became a cliche, 'crazy Russian (chicks)'.

So when an existential crisis ends, it's time for everyone to get back to the business of enjoying life.

That's why I believe that after the electoral blowout next week, the Ukraine spigot will be turned off.

There will be calls to investigate the origins of the war as it will be used to score political points by hanging this albatross around the Biden/Blinken/Nuland regime's neck. We'll go back to trying to isolate China while attempting to bring Russia back into the fold. Levis, pop music, fast food, the whole western cultural experience (sans woke shit) for the offing.

They've got the energy, we've got $uncle bucks. The spending explosion in Moscow and other regional hotspots is just sitting there waiting to be launched. There was never any real intention to engage in a land battle over Ukraine. Rather, as has been pointed out by so many, it became an exercise is testing equipment, drawing down stores in order to acquire fresh arsenals, money laundering and career advancement.

From a US perspective, its basically off the news now. Sure, you can go find news if you so desire, but it's not being trumpeted 24/7 in your face as it was just a few months back. That both tells and reassures me of some basic American characteristics:

One, very short attention spans; No ancient Khazarian blood feuds here. Remember, everyone here is a product of people literally walking away from family/regional connections.

Two, we haven't had an actual existential fight on our land for 160 years. It's why Americans won't accept large losses - these overseas adventures are all fine and dandy if the losses are kept to a minimum. Three, dropping Ukraine doesn't mean the battle for Russia is over. Rather, it will simply transition to another theater in the so called hybrid scheme.

In fact, we could even become great pals again and include Russia in the dollar regime. As I keep saying, $usd = energy.  Russia has the energy, so why not accept a sweet heart deal that leads to an economic building boom? It's the old make or buy analysis: go your own way with all the attendant, drawn out sabotage and interference, or reach an agreement where both parties benefit today?

 

 

U.S. Funded Media Fails To Produce Any Evidence Of Russian War Crimes

pbs  |  The first man arrived at 7:27 a.m. Russian soldiers covered his head and marched him up the driveway toward a nondescript office building.

Two minutes later, a pleading, gagged voice pierced the morning stillness. Then the merciless reply: “TALK!!! TALK f–ing mother-f–er!!!”

The women and children came later, gripping hastily packed bags, their pet dogs in tow.

It was a cold, gray morning, March 4 in Bucha, Ukraine. Crows cawed. By nightfall, at least nine men would walk to their deaths at 144 Yablunska street, a building complex that Russians turned into a headquarters and the nerve center of violence that would shock the world.

Later, when all the bodies were found strewn along the streets and packed in hasty graves, it would be easy to think the carnage was random. Residents asking how this happened would be told to make their peace, because some questions just don’t have answers.

Yet there was a method to the violence.

What happened that day in Bucha was what Russian soldiers on intercepted phone conversations called “zachistka” — cleansing. The Russians hunted people on lists prepared by their intelligence services and went door to door to identify potential threats. Those who didn’t pass this filtration, including volunteer fighters and civilians suspected of assisting Ukrainian troops, were tortured and executed, surveillance video, audio intercepts and interviews show.

The Associated Press and FRONTLINE obtained surveillance camera footage from Bucha that shows, for the first time, what a cleansing operation looks like. This was organized brutality that would be repeated at scale in Russian-occupied territories across Ukraine — a strategy to neutralize resistance and terrorize locals into submission that Russian troops have used in past conflicts, notably Chechnya.

Why Are American Jails Dangerous Hellholes Too?

themarshallproject |  In California, lawyers accused staff at the Los Angeles County jail of chaining mentally ill detainees to chairs for days at a time. In West Virginia, people held in the Southern Regional Jail sued the state, saying they found urine and semen in their food. In Missouri, detainees in the St. Louis jail staged multiple uprisings last year, while in Texas, a guard at Houston’s overcrowded Harris County Jail said she and her coworkers had started carrying knives to work for fear that they wouldn’t have backup if violence broke out.

This article was published in partnership with The Associated Press.

And while the infamous Rikers Island jail complex in New York City has been the focus of media coverage for its surging number of deaths, rural and urban lockups from Tennessee to Washington to Georgia are not faring much better.

In other words, America’s jails are a mess.

“It’s hard to believe, but it seems jails are even more wretched than usual these last few months,” said David Fathi, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project. “Having worked in this field for 30 years, I don’t remember any other time when there seem to be so many large jails in a state of complete meltdown.”

Several lockups denied claims about deteriorating conditions or did not respond to requests for comment. A few, including Rikers, acknowledged problems such as infrastructure issues, detainee deaths and high staff attrition.

“We are working hard to stem the rippling effect of years of mismanagement and neglect within our city’s jails,” a spokesperson for the New York City Department of Correction, which runs Rikers, said in a statement. “Turning our jails around requires a collaborative effort, transparency and time.”

Unlike prisons, most jails are funded and managed locally, so the problems they face can vary widely from one county to the next. While there’s crumbling infrastructure in Atlanta’s Fulton County Jail, there’s been murky brown drinking water in Seattle’s King County Jail and overcrowding in Houston because of a backlog in the court system.

But more than a dozen employees, detainees and experts who spoke with The Marshall Project and The Associated Press highlighted two problems they’ve seen at jails across the country: too many people incarcerated, and not enough guards.

“Our jail facilities are at capacity,” said David Cuevas, president of the Harris County Sheriff’s Office deputies’ union. “It is truly not safe.”

The twin issues of overcrowding and understaffing have plagued jails across the country for years, and even before the pandemic many facilities were in disarray. Yet in the months after COVID-19 hit, the number of people in local lockups plummeted. People stayed home and committed fewer crimes. Police did not make as many arrests. Courts reduced bail. And jails let more people go home early. Nationally, the number of people in jail decreased by about 25% by the summer of 2020, according to data compiled by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics.

But as concern about the virus faded, so did many of the measures designed to combat it — and soon jail populations began to rise. By the summer of 2022, many lockups held more people than they had in years, or became so overcrowded that detainees were forced to sleep on floors, in underground tunnels or in common areas without toilets.

 

Economics Of The American Prison System

smartasset  |  The American prison system is massive. So massive that its estimated turnover of $74 billion eclipses the GDP of 133 nations. What is perhaps most unsettling about this fun fact is that it is the American taxpayer who foots the bill and is increasingly padding the pockets of publicly traded corporations like Corrections Corporation of America and GEO Group. Combined both companies generated over $2.53 billion in revenue in 2012, and represent more than half of the private prison business. So what exactly makes the business of incarcerating Americans so lucrative?

Most of it has to do with the way the American legal system works and how it has changed over the last 40 years. In the 1970’s, lawmakers were dealing with a nationwide rash of drug-use and crime. By declaring a nation-wide war on drugs in 1971, President Richard Nixon set a precedent for hard-line policies towards drug-related crime.

New York governor Nelson Rockefeller followed suit declaring “For drug pushing, life sentence, no parole, no probation.”  His policies once put into action promised 15 years to life in prison for drug users and dealers. His policies catalyzed the growth of a colossal corrections system that currently houses an estimated 2.2 million inmates.

The runaway growth of US corrections did not come overnight, and did not come from the government alone. Since the 1970’s federal and state correction agencies have consistently struggled to meet the increased demands brought on by the US Department of Justice and strict drug laws.

In 1982, three Texas businessmen, Tom Beasley, John Ferguson, and Don Hutto saw an opportunity in the shortcomings of the Texas corrections system’s inability to deal with this influx of incarcerations. They devised and executed a plan to secure the first government contract to design, build, and operate a corrections facility from the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Texas Department of Justice.

Contract in hand, the trio was given 90 days to open a detention center for undocumented aliens. As their January 28 deadline neared, Hutto, Ferguson, and Beasley had no facility, no staff and their experiment seemed doomed to fail.

On New Year’s Eve, 1983, Beasley decided to get crafty, “Well, we’ll just go to Houston and find a place,” he reportedly told Ferguson. Incredulous, Ferguson replied, “Tom, you’re crazy. There’s no possible way. This is New Year’s Day. There is no possible way we can find a place today.” Beasley simply responded, “We have to.”

The three men immediately got on a plane and began their search. After a litany of rejections they came upon the Olympic Motel at 1am on New Year’s Day and immediately began negotiations that lasted for three days.

After hiring the motel owner’s family and promising to return the motel to its original condition, the group was in business. They then converted all of the motel rooms to secure cells, procured secure transportation and opened shop on January 28, 1983 when 87 inmates were brought in. Hutto, Ferguson and Beasley formed Corrections Corporation of America, the largest prison private prison network in the United States.

With the precedent it set with the first private detention center, CCA changed the face of US corrections for good. The private sector came to be seen as a quick-fix to the problem of overcrowded, understaffed public prisons. Today, privatized prisons make up over 10% of the corrections market—turning over $7.4 billion per year.

 

No One In The Biden Administration Thought About American Dependence On Russian Diesel?!?!?

oilprice  |  Last week, the Energy Information Administration (EIA) reported that distillate inventories were at their lowest levels since 2008. (The primary distillates are diesel, jet fuel ,and heating oil). However, in 2008 distillate levels were low coming out of spring. Currently, they are low going into fall. That’s far worse than the situation in 2008.

Distillate demand generally spikes in spring — when farmers are planting crops — and in fall, when they are harvesting those crops and people start buying fuel oil for winter. Thus, a low distillate inventory in late April 2008 isn’t quite as serious as a low inventory in October 2022. In fact, distillate inventories haven’t been this low in October since the EIA began reporting this data in 1982.

These low distillate inventories are why diesel prices are above $5.00 a gallon nationwide, even though the nationwide average price for gasoline has dropped below $4.00 a gallon.

Why is there a diesel shortage this year? There are four factors, but two of those factors are in play every year.

As mentioned above, distillate demand spikes at this time of year. But, it does that every year.

This is also the time of year that refineries are doing maintenance. They tend to do that in the spring and fall, which is when demand is lower and the weather is decent. So, refinery capacity drops at this time of year.

Third, U.S. refinery capacity has fallen in the past few years as several unprofitable refineries were closed. So, that’s a new factor that has appeared in the past couple of years.

But the primary reason is the cutoff of Russian imports. Prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. was importing nearly 700,000 barrels per day (BPD) of petroleum and petroleum products. Most of those imports were finished products and refinery inputs that boosted distillate supplies in the U.S.

The loss of those Russian imports have caused problems for refineries as they struggle to fill holes in their product slates. Refineries do have a small amount of flexibility in shifting gasoline production to diesel production. But it’s a relatively small amount (e.g., ~5% in a refinery I once worked in). That also means that if refiners do shift production, that also potentially creates shortages in the gasoline market.