https://www.waterstones.com/author/robert-cook/435753/pageJune
June 26th 2024
Biden may let US defense contractors deploy to Ukraine, but not like in Iraq and Afghanistan: report. CNN reports that Biden is considering allowing US private military contractors to go to Ukraine. Sources told the outlet that they would be restricted to helping maintain US-supplied equipment.
Comment I suspect that those contractors are already there, with more to come. NATO obviuosly provoked this war and neither side can afford to lose.
R J Cook
World Map with Countries and Capitals
Features of the World Map
Important features represented by the world map are the continents of the world. Our world is divided into 7 important continents which are listed below: (Ordered from largest in size to smallest)
- Asia
- Africa
- North America
- South America
- Antarctica
- Europe
- Oceania (Australia)
Important Oceans
The world map also portrays the important oceanic divisions on earth, which includes:
- Arctic Ocean
- Atlantic Ocean
- Indian Ocean
- Pacific Ocean
- Southern Ocean (Also known as Great Southern Ocean and Antarctic Ocean)
- India Flag
- Geography of India
- History of India
- Economy of India
- Culture of India
- Who is Who
- Languages in India
- National Symbols
- Why India Matters
June 25th 2024
Age anxiety hangs over first Biden-Trump debate
Kayla Epstein
BBC News
Reporting from
New York
- Published25 June 2024, 02:00 BST
For Joe Biden and Donald Trump – the two oldest candidates ever to seek the US presidency – age is an election issue neither can escape.
On Thursday, the current Democratic president, 81, and his Republican predecessor, 78, will face off in Atlanta, Georgia, for the first of two debates ahead of November’s vote, offering Americans a rare, split-screen comparison of the two men’s physical and mental strength.
For 90 minutes, under the glare of the high-definition cameras, President Biden and former President Trump — who remain nearly tied in national opinion polls — will spar on issues ranging from the economy and foreign wars to immigration and the future of democracy. One slip-up, stumble or verbal miscue could cement concerns about their advanced age, with the potential for reshaping an already tight presidential race as voters begin to pay attention.
But delivering a vigorous performance may be more critical for Mr Biden, the nation’s oldest president who has been dogged by questions about his stamina and mental fitness since he took office.
“There’s no hiding the fact that Biden’s 81, there’s no hiding the fact that Trump’s basically the same age,” said Jim Messina, a Democratic strategist who managed Barack Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign. “It’s not a contest of age, it’s a contest of policy and character.”
“Part of what needs to happen on Thursday night is just to begin the conversation about the differences between them,” Mr Messina said.
Polling shows that voters are far more concerned about Mr Biden’s age than his opponent’s. But if Trump wins, he would break Mr Biden’s record as the oldest president before the end of his term.
A March New York Times/Siena College poll suggested 73% of registered voters believed Mr Biden was “just too old to be an effective president”. Voters of all age groups expressed these concerns about the president’s fitness for office, including those 65 and older, according to the survey.
Just 42% of registered voters said the same about Trump, despite a mere three-and-a-half-year age gap.
“It ought to be about both of them, but Biden looks his age,” said Larry Sabato, the director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics.
Mr Biden was declared “fit for duty” earlier this year by a White House physician, but concerns about his age have persisted since he took office. Signs of his aging have become more notable in recent years, including a softer speaking voice, occasional memory lapses and a “stiffened gait” which his doctor partly attributes to arthritis.
As president, he is “covered almost every moment he is out in public” which means he endures more scrutiny than his challenger, Mr Sabato said.
Videos of routine actions – walking up and down Air Force One’s stairway, crossing a stage at public events — are watched closely online and in conservative media.
When Mr Biden tripped and fell at an Air Force Academy graduation in June 2023, the tumble made national news. After being helped to his feet, he continued to stand and walk as normal. His team said he had tripped on a sandbag on the stage, and the president later told reporters at the White House, “I got sandbagged!”
Some Democrats have publicly and privately expressed reservations about the president’s age, but they rallied around him in February, when justice department special counsel Robert Hur released his investigation into Mr Biden’s handling of classified documents after his term as vice-president.
The report did not recommend prosecuting him, but Mr Hur’s description of the president as an an “elderly man with a poor memory” made headlines.
But when Mr Biden gave his annual State of the Union address a few weeks later, pundits gave him high marks for an energetically delivered speech.
“The president always delivers in big moments,” Congressman Ro Khanna, a Biden campaign surrogate, told NBC News last week. “He did in the State of the Union. And people are going to see the difference.”
The Biden campaign is hoping Thursday’s debate will be another moment in which the president demonstrates he can endure the rigours of governing, drawing a sharp contrast with Trump on policy and temperament.
Ahead of the debate, Donald Trump suggested his opponent could exceed expectations, telling the All-In podcast in a 20 June appearance that he assumed Mr Biden was “going to be somebody [who] will be a worthy debater”.
“I don’t want to underestimate him,” he added. Trump has separately spread unsubstantiated claims that the president will take performance-enhancing drugs to put in a good performance, which the Biden campaign has described as “desperate lies”.
While the scrutiny around Trump’s age is not as intense, the former president has faced questions about his own fitness for office.
At a January rally, Trump appeared to confuse his Republican primary rival, Nikki Haley, with former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, for several minutes during his speech.
He claimed, incorrectly, that Ms Haley had been “in charge of security” at the time of the 6 January attack on Congress. Ms Haley, Trump’s former UN ambassador, called for “mental competency tests” for politicians over 75 during her own unsuccessful presidential run.
Trump’s personal physician issued a statement in November attesting that his “cognitive exams were exceptional”.
At a Saturday rally in Pennsylvania, Trump complained of a double standard between the media’s treatment of himself and Mr Biden.
“If I say one word slightly out, they say, ‘He’s cognitively impaired,’” Trump told supporters. “Whereas Biden can run into walls. He can fall off the stage. He can fall up the stairs. He falls up.”
Assange to go free.
Summary
- Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has left the UK after agreeing a US deal that will see him plead guilty to one charge and go free
- His wife Stella tells the BBC she is “elated” but the deal was “touch and go at times”
- “We weren’t really sure until the last 24 hours that it was actually happening”, she says
- Assange was charged with conspiracy to obtain and disclose national defence information, after the Wikileaks site published secret US military records
- He’s been in a British prison for the past five years, fighting extradition to the US – where he feared a lengthy sentence
- Assange will spend no time in US custody and will receive credit for the time spent in prison in the UK
- The plea deal is expected to be finalised in a court in the Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory, on Wednesday – Assange’s plane landed in Bangkok on Tuesda
Why did the US choose to reach a deal with Assange?
Nomia Iqbal
BBC News, Washington
As we just reported, this deal was signed between the Americans and Julian Assange and his team just last week – Wednesday, 19 June.
We are yet to find out exactly why the US has taken this rather dramatic reversal in policy.
Three years ago, the US Justice Department said it would pursue extradition – although President Biden did indicate in April this year he was considering Australia’s request to resolve the legal limbo.
We are of course in a presidential election year and it’s hard not to see everything through that lens. Biden’s opponent Donald Trump said last month he would consider pardoning Assange if he won November’s election.
The decision is dividing lawmakers here in both Democratic and Republican parties. There are those whom consider Assange a menace who endangered soldiers’ lives. Others see him as a free speech hero who simply exposed US war secrets to the public.
The Jews in Hitler’s MilitaryLos Angeles Timeshttps://www.latimes.com › archives › la-xpm-1996-12-…
24 Dec 1996 — … Nazis called ‘full Jews‘ served in the military with Hitler’s knowledge. … “Thousands of men of Jewish ancestry fought in the Nazi military …
Wikileaks: Document dumps that shook the world
Julian Assange’s Wikileaks – which has published thousands of classified documents covering everything from the film industry to national security and wars – has been dividing opinion for years.
To its supporters, the whistleblowing website is a key player in exposing secrets governments and companies would rather keep hidden.
But to those who found their documents exposed on the web, it is a dangerous and reckless force.
The US government has argued that the publication of the Wikileaks files – which disclosed information about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars – went as far as endangering lives.
Here are a few of the leaks which went on to make headlines around the world.
- Wikileaks founder Julian Assange freed after US plea deal
- A timeline of the Julian Assange saga
- Who is Wikileaks’ Julian Assange and what did he do?
- Wife of Julian Assange ‘elated’ by US plea deal
The helicopter attack
In 2010, Wikileaks published a video from a US military helicopter showing the killing of civilians in Baghdad, Iraq.
A voice on the transmission urged the pilots to “light ’em all up” and the individuals on the street were fired at from the helicopter.
When a van arrived on the scene to pick up the wounded, it too was fired at.
Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and his assistant Saeed Chmagh were both killed in the attack.
US Army Intelligence
Wikileaks has published hundreds of thousands of documents leaked by former US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.
Documents relating to the war in Afghanistan revealed how the US military had killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents.
Further documents from the Iraq war revealed that 66,000 civilians had been killed – more than previously reported. The documents also showed that prisoners had been tortured by Iraqi forces.
Among the leaks were more than 250,000 messages sent by US diplomats. They revealed that the US wanted to collect “biographic and biometric” information – including iris scans, DNA samples and fingerprints – of key officials at the UN.
- 2010: Hidden US Afghan war details revealed
- 2010: Iraq war logs ‘reveal truth about conflict’
- 2010: Wikileaks publishes US diplomatic cables
-
9/11 pager messages
About 573,000 intercepted pager messages sent during the 9/11 terror attacks in the United States were published by Wikileaks.
The messages include families checking up on their loved ones and government departments reacting to the attacks.
“President has been rerouted won’t be returning to Washington but not sure where he will go,” one message said.
Democrat emails
Wikileaks published thousands of hacked emails from the account of Hillary Clinton’s campaign boss John Podesta, in the run-up to the US presidential election in 2016.
In the emails, Mr Podesta called Mrs Clinton’s election rival Bernie Sanders a “doofus” for criticising the Paris climate change agreement.
The emails also suggested that a CNN contributor tipped off the Clinton campaign about a question that was going to be asked during a debate hosted by the broadcaster.
The timing of the leaks led to accusations that Wikileaks was deliberately trying to discredit Mrs Clinton.
The site also published leaked information from Republican Sarah Palin’s Yahoo email accounts in 2008.
British National Party members
In 2008, Wikileaks published the names, addresses and contact information of more than 13,000 members of the British National Party.
The political party’s manifesto proposed banning immigration from Muslim countries and encouraging some UK residents to return to “their lands of ethnic origin”.
A former member was later fined £200 for the leak, external.
The Sony Pictures hack
A leak of more than 170,000 emails and 20,000 documents from movie studio Sony Pictures was published on Wikileaks in 2015.
The entertainment company suffered a cyber-attack weeks before releasing The Interview, a film that poked fun at North Korea.
The emails revealed that actresses Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Adams received a lower fee than their male co-stars in American Hustle.
There were also messages from producers and executives insulting celebrities such as Angelina Jolie.
Leonardo DiCaprio was called “despicable” for turning down a role in a Sony Pictures film.
Mr Assange said the emails were in the public interest because they showed the inner working of a multinational company and were “at the centre of a geo-political conflict”.
Related Topics
Historian: Nazi Army Included 150000 of Jewish Descent
Haaretzhttps://www.haaretz.com › ty-article › historian-nazi-ar…
30 Oct 2003 — BERLIN – As Many as 150000 Men of Jewish Descent Served in the German Military Under Adolf Hitler, Some With the Nazi Leader’s E
June 24th 2024
Must Read: Xi Jinping’s Russian Lessons
Must Read: Xi Jinping’s Russian Lessons – Extract From ‘Foreign Affairs.’
| Subscribe now for unlimited access. Xi Jinping’s Russian Lessons What the Chinese Leader’s Father Taught Him About Dealing With Moscow By Joseph Torigian Much has been made of Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “no-limits” partnership and its resemblance to the alliance between Beijing and Moscow during the Cold War, writes the historian Joseph Torigian. But today’s relationship is different—and sturdier—in large part because Xi had a front row seat to the mistakes that fueled the Sino-Soviet split in the decades after the Chinese Revolution. With newly reported details, Torigian tells the story of how Xi’s father, a high level Chinese Communist Party official, attempted to deal with the deterioration of the relationship between China and the Soviet Union—and the personal cost the rupture ultimately wrought on him and his family. “As the son of a man so involved in his country’s relationship with Moscow, Xi Jinping knows his history,” Torigian writes. “The past has shown the dangers of both incautious embrace and full-blown enmity.” Read the essay |
| North Korea’s Nuclear Family How the Kims Got the Bomb and Why They Won’t Give It UpBy Sue Mi Terry This past week, during his first visit to Pyongyang since 2000, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a mutual defense pact with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The agreement signaled a new stage in the countries’ growing military cooperation and their alliance against the West, and, potentially, in North Korea’s advancing nuclear program. In Foreign Affairs’ summer reading selection this week, Sue Mi Terry tells the story of how North Korea got the bomb—and why it won’t give it up. North Korea’s possession of a nuclear weapon—let alone one capable of striking North America—was not inevitable, wrote Terry, who spent years as an analyst on Korean issues in the CIA, in August 2021. But “years of inconsistent, and at times counterproductive, U.S. efforts to contain the North Korean nuclear threat have only let it fester.” North Korea launched its first nuclear test in 2006; in the years since, amid Washington’s dithering, it has amassed dozens of nuclear warheads and enough fissile material to build more every year. “If the United States ever had an opportunity to turn back the clock on North Korea’s nuclear program—and it is far from clear that it ever did—that moment has passed.” North Korea’s nuclear aspirations date back to the inception of the pariah state in the 1950s, Terry wrote. For the country’s leaders, the weapons are “a military asset, an insurance policy, and a vast source of prestige all in one.” The Kim family, “which has ruled the country without interruption since 1948, does not want to go the way of Saddam Hussein of Iraq or Muammar al-Qaddafi of Libya—tyrants who gave up their weapons of mass destruction programs only to be overthrown and killed.” The United States may have had a window of opportunity to permanently undo Pyongyang’s nuclear progress in 1994, when U.S. President Bill Clinton “seriously contemplated military action.” But that option, Terry acknowledged, “was fraught with uncertainty and would have exacted an unacceptable human toll,” and Clinton abandoned it in favor of a negotiated deal that froze Pyongyang’s program—an agreement that ultimately fell apart. Since then, the United States and its partners have been trapped in a “hopeless dynamic” that whipsaws between halfhearted pressure and futile engagement. Ultimately, “the North Korean nuclear crisis is a reflection of North Korea’s government,” Terry wrote. “Until that regime either dramatically reforms itself or collapses, the nuclear threat will remain.” |
Eve Of Destruction
Song by Barry McGuire
The Eastern world, it is explodin’
Violence flarin’, bullets loadin’
You’re old enough to kill but not for votin’
You don’t believe in war, but what’s that gun you’re totin’?
And even the Jordan river has bodies floatin’
But you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
How you don’t believe
We’re on the eve of destruction
Don’t you understand what I’m trying to say
Can’t you feel the fears I’m feeling today?
If the button is pushed, there’s no runnin’ away
There’ll be no one to save with the world in a grave
Take a look around you boy, it’s bound to scare you, boy
And you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
How you don’t believe
We’re on the eve of destruction
Yeah, my blood’s so mad, feels like coagulatin’
I’m sittin’ here just contemplatin’
I can’t twist the truth, it knows no regulation
Handful of senators don’t pass legislation
And marches alone can’t bring integration
When human respect is disintegratin’
This whole crazy world is just too frustratin’
And you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
How you don’t believe
We’re on the eve of destruction
And think of all the hate there is in Red China
Then take a look around to Selma, Alabama
Ah, you may leave here for four days in space
But when you return, it’s the same old place
The poundin’ of the drums, the pride and disgrace
You can bury your dead, but don’t leave a trace
Hate your next door neighbor but don’t forget to say grace
And you tell me
Over and over and over and over again, my friend
You don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction
No no, you don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: P. F. Sloan
Eve of Destruction (with lyrics) – Barry McGuire
June 23rd 2024
MOSCOW, June 23 (Reuters) – Gunmen opened fire at a synagogue, an Orthodox church and a police post in Russia’s North Caucasus region of .
Comment This is clearly CIA related. The U.S have a stranglehold on Syria to control their oil supply. They need the Black Sea for total control of the region. Anyone who believes this war is being waged by Democracies for Democracy is a moron. Ukraine has a long history, like the U.S and U.K of institutional corruption and is actually a police state, so a perfect fit for the west and its pseudo democracies. The CIA were obviously responsible for this war crime and the theatre massacre. The ugliness, greed and hypocrisy of the Anglo U.S deep state has never been more obvious.
The CIA work on the principle that they only have to win over 3% of the population to achieve regime change, which is how they toppled Ukraine’s pro Russia regime in the first place. The United States has 60 million living below the poverty line. Over here in Europe, we see the Hollywood U.S Imperialist view of what is real stateside. Young East European men dream of being discovered as Premier League footballers or rocks stars.
Some men, no doubt, are attracted to the myth of gender and sexual diversity. Young East European women are attracted by what they see on screen. They see all the dress shops, creature comforts, opportunities to marry and divorce rich men if he dares to argue with them, and the glittering careers in a world of feminism and female supremacy. The CIA knows what seeds to plant. Just remember, it would take 27,000 years for someone earning £38,500 a year, to make a billion. Like the U.S, the U.K has massive homelessness, high unemployment, ethnic conflict, religious conflict, gender and transgender warfare, record mental illness, decaying public services, rising violent crime and massive poverty. Not everyone lives like King Charles and his precious daughter in law Princess Kate.
R J Cook
6 hours ago — Russia says U.S. is responsible for deadly Ukrainian attack on Crimea … “Responsibility for the deliberate missile attack on the civilians of …
Comment Biden is a dangerous, possibly senile man, but his Vice President and backroom team are even more dangerous because they do his thinking. After the above attack, we are one minute closer to midnight.
R J Cook
They literally want the moon by R J Cook
It appears to be the case that Britain and France brought forward elections as part of preparations for all out war on Russia. To this end it is vital to discredit U.K Reform leader Nigel Farage, France’s Marine Le Pen and the Afd as Nazi Fascists. Their arguments and manifestos count for nothing. Character assassination is the rule with western plutocracies. The same goes for Donald Trump’s bid for President of the U.S.A. Biden has announced that U.S will support Ukraine for the next 10 years. This to be enshrined in immutable legislation should fear tactics and the Democrat media and legal war on Donald Trump fail. These people are such vile planet eaters that they literally want the moon. Hence the current space race.
So elections have to be sorted out now before the war moves towards its final and probably nuclear stages. All western governments have to be united by fair means or foul because this is all about the global elite and their investments. There are those exalted media opinions and military morons, like former U.K Defence Secretary Ben Wallace, who believe that all powers, east and west, have too much invested to risk nuclear war. So it won’t happen.
This well fed former army captain Wallace, with campaign medals for God Knows what, compared Farage to a ranting bar room drunk. This man never saw front line action – unless you call spying on Irish Catholics and bullying them, front line action. They argue that the global economy ties all civilised countries together in a common interest absent in 1939. I am afraid the world, its people and eco system are a little more complicated than that. Those were the last days of European Empires. Old style economic thinking failed the masses in the 1930s.
Meanwhile the super rich ruling class waited it out while their masses starved, caught diseases and many thousands died. U.K played a major role in stirring up World War Two, as with World War I. and have been blaming Nazis ever since. Most people are incapable of abstract thinking, as educational standards have been dumbed down to suit diversity, the racist anti racists and feminists powerful lobby.
The reality is that the masses have little to lose apart from their miserable lives and meagre possessions which they will lose to the care homes or tax man when they become senile or die. The Western elite need elections out of the way and for Europe and the U.S.A ready to move as one under any emergency legislation. British masses may believe their country left Europe. But that was a set up to enable the U.K and U.S to move as leaders in a war planned long before Putin’s so called invasion. Where it matters, the U.K elites are as far into Europe as they can get. Global Capitalism thought Russian asset stripping oligarchs had brought Russia back into the pre 1917 plutocratic fold. They need a reset.
They also need China and then on to sorting Latin America. Biden opening the Mexican borders is part of that strategy. The demise of Imran Khan and constant sneering supercilious attacks on India’s reformer Modi, are part of that Anglo U.S Global Elite investor New World Order strategy. The laugh is that they call it democracy. If it was a democracy, Julian Assange would never have been framed for rape, then upgrading the charges to espionage when all he did was publish categorical information of Anglo U.S war crimes in Iraq.
The special relationship between these countries is not simply historic. There has always been an incestuous financial relationship between their ruling classes, compounded by long time inbreeding – hence the cigar sucking bombastic, loud mouth, war mongering racist, classist, Sir Winston Churchill, who followed up both previous world wars with calls and plans to wipe out Russia because of communism which his class fear so much as a threat to their comforts, privacy, dynasties and immortality. To hell with anyone else because they are special. History moves forward whether we like it or not.
So it is testament to the delusional arrogant imbeciles in charge of the west’s economics, military, media and related political systems, that they are pumping out so much D Day Drivel and propaganda for a nation more divided than ever. These morons expect all the old films, D Day Celebrations, martial music and flag waving will rally the plebs to another rich man’s war. World War I and World War II were horror shows at home and abroad.
Any compos mentis D Day Veteran should stop basking in old glories. They should either shut up or tell the truth, not pander to the media by rewriting the past. Britain had 20,000 deserters during World War II. My own mother was raped by one of them near her North London home in 1945. I had six uncles and my father serving in wartime armed forces. My Uncle Charles Close was killed with the D Day invasion and my father badly wounded at Dunkirk. I remember the London bomb sites. My wartime family never talked about the war unless I asked them and then they were uncomfortable.
The rabble rousing elite ruling classes have so much more to lose if their masses don’t salute their new King and play the game of defending their vested interests and futures. So they follow up their COVID 19 Lockdown Fear Training Exercise, by trotting out the NATO Proxy war on Russia because they fear any opposition or rivalry.
They literally want the moon because whether it is made of cheese or anything else, they will dig it up and sell it, whatever the effect on its magnetism and tides. They must have control. They think they will own it because it will have cost them so much to get there and set up camp. The U.S already think it is theirs.
Meanwhile NATO countries are busy drawing up coordinated plans for conscription of ‘men’ for front line training and readiness to invade Russia when Ukraine fails to hold the line – the dreaded ‘draft’. British voters are being warned that the Russians may well rig the elections, so in the unlikely event of disruptive results, there will be a martial law style over ride. That will be the case across the western world. The hysteria surrounding Trump’s allegations of election fraud – which was no more than what Clinton said about her defeat, tells me which parties are most likely to rig elections. That is why elite media are fiercely attacking Farage and his Reform candidates rather than dealing with the Reform message. The very last thing mainstream consensus politicians want is institutional change and political reform. The system must remain secretive and corrupt. They want the sort of changes helping them to tighten up the system and elite control.
R J Cook
Macron’s threat of dictatorship and the treachery of France’s New Popular Front
Workers cannot fight war and police-state rule under the control of the New Popular Front and its allied trade union bureaucracies, who are signaling their support for war against Russia.
Last week, the House of Representatives voted to make enrollment in the US Selective Service database automatic, prompting a flood of worried statements by young people and parents on social media about the reimposition of the draft.
France’s neo-fascist National Rally endorses NATO war against Russia
National Rally President Jordan Bardella is aligning his party with NATO’s well-advanced plans for a monumentally reckless military escalation against Russia.
Philippine ruling elite whips up anti-China campaign to justify alignment with US war plans
The vicious and racist campaign is designed to justify the fact that the US is turning the Philippines into a base for launching a war against China and to demonize anti-war sentiment.
Putin meets North Korea’s Kim for summit as US, NATO threats of global war grow
The Putin-Kim summit was a response to the attempts of the US and NATO to link the proxy conflict in Ukraine to a war drive in the Indo-Pacific.
“Name names”—Canada’s anti-China foreign interference furor reaches new McCarthyite frenzy
From the outset, the spy agency-incited furor over “foreign interference” has served as a means to poison public opinion against China and push official politics and government policy sharply further right.
Philippine ruling elite whips up anti-China campaign to justify alignment with US war plans
The vicious and racist campaign is designed to justify the fact that the US is turning the Philippines into a base for launching a war against China and to demonize anti-war sentiment.
Dr. Vivek Murthy launched a campaign calling for a health warning label requirement to be imposed on social media platforms by Congress.
Political upheaval in Fiji after MPs vote themselves huge pay rises
The grubby dispute over MPs’ salary hikes further exposes the vast gulf that separates Fiji’s venal and corrupt ruling elite from the mass of ordinary people.
Workers Struggles: Europe, Middle East & Africa
Strikes across manufacturing sector against plant closures and layoffs in Italy; strikes and protests by municipal, oil and factory workers and retirees continue in many cities in Iran over crisis in cost of living; Kenyan clinical officers’ stoppage in Kiambu for permanent contracts and pay into its fourth month as one union calls off action, leaving interns as casuals
A Romanian village is set to become Nato’s biggest airbase in Europe
Nick Thorpe
Central Europe correspondent
Reporting from
Mihai Kogălniceanu airbase, Romania
Six RAF Eurofighter Typhoons sit on the taxiway, engines roaring on two, as the ground staff hurry about, adding the finishing touches before take-off.
In the distance, a cloud of dust rises in the summer haze over the construction site of the second runway, 3.5km (2 miles) long, beside the first. The hot northerly wind buffets the new hangars and the old.
Mihai Kogalniceanu (MK) airbase takes its name from the village nearby, itself named after a 19th Century liberal politician.
Now, it is the unlikely setting for what is turning into the biggest Nato base in Europe, bigger even than Ramstein in Germany.
Russian President Vladimir Putin justified his war in Ukraine on the grounds that Nato is encroaching on Russia’s European flank. In response to his invasion, more pieces have moved forward on the Nato chessboard.
The MK base will soon have a squadron of Romanian F-16s – recently bought from Norway – as well as MQ-9 Reaper drones, and a military city through which Nato army, air force and naval personnel from 32 countries will rotate.
The latest arrivals are the Finns. Just 20km (12 miles) from the Black Sea coast, the base is 300km from Odesa, as the fighter flies, and 400km from Sevastopol in Russian-occupied Crimea.
This is RAF pilot Flt Lt Charlie Tagg’s third and final tour of duty here.
“There’s a much bigger US presence here, a lot more infrastructure, accommodation, people and equipment.”
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has changed both the areas he flies over, he says, and the strategic posture of the mission. In 2021, on his last tour, Nato fighter pilots flew far out over international waters in the Black Sea. But now they stick to the 12 nautical mile zone above Romanian and Bulgarian territorial waters, “to avoid misunderstandings, escalatory situations with the Russians”.
“Previously we were here as a deterrence to any Russian aggression. Now it’s more as a reassurance to other Nato countries, such as Romania, that we are here, and we’re willing to defend.”
There has been no call to intercept a Russian plane since he arrived, he says, though there were on previous missions, over the Baltic.
“They will just be blundering through – it’s not against any international law, they are entitled to do that. But we’ll put an aircraft next to that adversary aircraft. From a posturing point of view, it shows the Russians… that we are active. We’re flying with armed jets, so it sends a clear message.
“And it also provides valuable intelligence for us, we’re recording serial numbers of aircraft, and the weapons that those aircraft are carrying, so it feeds into the whole intelligence picture as well.”
June21st 2024
Who owns the Moon? A new space race means it could be up ..
A UN agreement from 1967 says no nation can own the Moon. Instead, the fantastically named Outer Space Treaty says it belongs to everyone, and that any exploration has to be carried out for the benefit of all humankind and in the interests of all nations.
The mare constitutes around 15% of the lunar surface, making the total value of the moon… $4 quadrillion.” Thinking about it another way, that much He-3 could theoretically supply U.S. electricity demand for 80,000 years.10 Mar 2014
6 Celebs Who Apparently Own A Piece Of Land On Moon
June 20th 2024
Who are the U.S Baby Boomers ?
“Baby boomer” is a term used to describe those who were born from 1946 to 1964. They formed the largest generational group in U.S. history until the millennial generation slightly surpassed them. The baby boomer generation makes up a substantial portion of the world’s population, especially in developed nations.
Boomers also influenced the economy as a core marketing demographic for products tied to their age group, from toys to records. Constituting as much as 40% of the American population, baby boomers have exerted a strong pull on American culture at large, particularly during the social movements of the 1960s.
Not all are rich, but in aggregate they have amassed great wealth, owing to a combination of falling interest rates, declining housebuilding and strong earnings. American baby-boomers, who make up 20% of the country’s population, own 52% of its net wealth, worth $76trn (see chart 1).26 May 2024
Baby-boomers are loaded. Why are they so stingy? – The Economist
During the 1960-70’s schools, colleges, and universities were built to accomodate the boom and are now excessive for the baby bust cohort. Unemployment and crime rates rose and fell with the passing of the boom babies through late adolescence and early adulthood.
RelatedHow did boomers “ruin” the economy for millennials?
I’m sure people will go into lots of detail in other answers, but here’s a quick and concise list.
- Deficit spending during economic growth periods, starting with Reagan. This produced a massive spike in boomer wealth in the 80s and 90s at the cost of unimaginable public debt that future generations have to settle. They literally sold the labor of their children. This has only become more extreme over time, as countries (especially the US) are effectively paying off old debts with new credit, like a divorced dad with 45 credit cards and no job.
- Dismantling labor unions shattered workers ability to strike.
- What Events Shaped the Baby Boomer Personality
- 1954 – Army-McCarthy hearings begin.
- 1955 – Rosa Parks refuses to move to the back of the bus.
- 1957 – First nuclear power plant.
- 1960 – Kennedy elected President.
- 1962 – Cuban Missile Crisis.
- 1963 – Martin Luther King leads march on Washington DC.
Baby Boomers (born 1946-1964): Baby Boomers are known as the “workaholic” generation, famous for their strong work ethic, career dedication, and pursuit of personal and professional growth.
The “Me” generation is a term referring to Baby Boomers in the United States and the self-involved qualities associated with this generation. The 1970s was dubbed the “Me decade” by writer Tom Wolfe; Christopher Lasch wrote about the rise of a culture of narcissism among younger Baby Boomers.
Compiled by R J Cook because these boomers brought us World War III, Diversity, women’s rights, fascist feminism, feral children, mass immigration, neo authoritarianism, rampant mental illness, hypocrisy, public asset stripping, modern slavery, gratuitous street violence, with knife crimes off the scale, the ‘Me Too’ movement, institutional police corruption, soporific herd instinct sport, gender bending, gender diversity, transexual hate crimes, homelessness, rampant inflation, high unemployment, drug addiction and so much more.
These dreadful people are still in charge of the media, professions, military – with Biden, a geriatric baby boomer who needs leading of the stage, as Commander in Chief -politics and the mainstream elite media.
R J Cook
Bloomberg Ridicules Putin North Korea Alliance Because It Scares Them.
Kim Jong Un is pulling out all the stops for Vladimir Putin’s first visit to North Korea in 24 years, greeting him personally at the airport and staging lavish displays of public adoration for the Russian president on the streets of Pyongyang.
For all the cheesy echoes of a 1950s Stalin-era personality cult, their meeting today presents a very modern security challenge to the US and its allies.
Kim pledged to “unconditionally” support Putin’s war on Ukraine, lining up North Korea’s vast arsenal of weapons to aid Russia’s military. US and South Korean intelligence estimate millions of artillery shells may already have flowed to Moscow after Kim visited Russia in September.
Earth’s rotating inner core is starting to slow down — and it could alter the length of our days
A new study confirms that Earth’s inner core has been rotating more slowly than usual since 2010. This mysterious “backtracking” could also end up slightly altering the planet’s overall rotation, lengthening our days.
White House proclaims “new era” of nuclear weapons “without numerical constraints”
Ahead of next month’s NATO summit in Washington, US and NATO officials are making it clear they are preparing to abandon all existing limits on the deployment of nuclear weapons.
Comment The Biden regime is very dangerous. Once again they are saying in no uncertain term that they are going to take Ukraine, Russia, all of the Balkans, Crimea, the Black Sea Ports and their world wide allies at any cost. They are forcing Russia to recalibrate their nuclear doctrine,state of readiness to deflect or deter what looks imminent NATO invasion, and their pattern of response.
This is because because the U.S and EU lackeys have adopted a hyper aggressive military posture towards Russia. Vladimir Putin’s government has been backed into a corner. This is a major part of Biden’s election ploy mirrored across the U.K and EU.
It is also being used to scare voters away from Trump and Europe’s anti immigration so called nationalist far right. This what the billionares want, making a mockery of any claims that the west is democratic. They are the global ruling class tying up loose ends.
R J Cook
June 19th 2024
‘I don’t believe in peace now,’ released Gaza hostage tells BBC
Hafsa Khalil
BBC News
An Israeli peace activist who was seized from her home on 7 October and held hostage for 53 days in Gaza has told the BBC how her ordeal destroyed her belief that peace is possible between Palestinians and Israelis.
In her first UK interview since being freed in November, Ada Sagi, 75, also told Emma Barnett on Radio 4’s Today programme how she was held in an apartment by paid guards, that Hamas kept her in a hospital before her release – and that she now believes the world hates Jews.
Ms Sagi was among 105 hostages released in November in return for a week-long ceasefire and some 240 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.
She described the terrible uncertainty of the run up to her release on the fifth day of the deal along with nine other Israelis and two Thais.
“Every knocking on the door you think there is somebody coming to take you,” she said.
When the hostages heard there was a deal and that the older women would be released, she said one of the women eventually freed with her was “terrified” she might have been too young to be included.
“But our housekeeper said: ‘No. You came together, you go together,’” she explained.
On day 49 – a Friday – Ms Sagi said they were told: “You are going home”, which she didn’t believe.
“At lunchtime, they gave us food… they take us by car to Khan Younis and we go [un]til the border of Rafah [on the border with Egypt].”
But something had gone wrong and they had to return to Khan Younis.
“We are told they are releasing women with children, [and you feel] all the happiness that you are going to be released, and [then] something goes wrong,” she said.
When they got into the city, Ms Sagi said, they were taken to a hospital – which she believes was southern Gaza’s main hospital, Nasser – and told: “You are staying here.”
Ms Sagi said: “People say that they are not involved. They’re involved… and getting money for each of us.”
Testimony from a number of other released hostages places 10 hostages in total at Nasser hospital, one of whom remains in captivity.
When asked by the BBC to comment on Ms Sagi’s allegations, the hospital’s director, Dr Atef al-Hoot, denied that any hostages were kept there and said it only provided humanitarian services.
The Israeli military has previously said its troops detained “about 200 terrorists who were in the hospital” during a raid on Nasser hospital in February, and that they found ammunition as well as unused medicines intended for Israeli hostages.
Hamas has denied Israeli claims that its fighters have been operating inside Nasser and other hospitals across Gaza.
Ms Sagi said she and the other residents of Nir Oz who survived the 7 October attacks were now living in apartments in the city of Kiryat Gat.
She is writing a book and working with children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). “It’s made me feel good that I can help other people,” she said.
She is also keen to continue talking about her ordeal, despite the strong emotions it brings up.
“I lost my home. I lost my freedom – the whole place that I [have] to go back. Our village – kibbutz – is destroyed,” she said.
“I cried good. I’m not ‘iron woman’, like everybody says. Sometimes you cry and it’s good. My mother would say: ‘To cry, it cleans the eye.’”
“I don’t believe in peace, I don’t sorry,” the Arabic and Hebrew teacher said. “I understand Hamas don’t want it.”
Ms Sagi lived for decades in the Nir Oz kibbutz near the Israel-Gaza border, trying to help reconciliation efforts by teaching Israelis Arabic to speak to their neighbours.
In the autumn of 2023, she was planning to come to London to visit her son Noam and celebrate her birthday.
But all that changed when Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages into Gaza, Ms Sagi among them.
Ada, who turned 75 while held hostage by those she describes as “Hamas terrorists”, was finally freed 53 days later.
It has taken six months for the life-long peace activist to be ready to talk to the British media about her experience and her views of those who took her freedom, her home and her belief in peace.
She is aware of the 116 hostages still left behind, 41 of whom Israel says are presumed dead, and is urging the Israeli government to agree a new Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal with Hamas.
“Israel have to do the deal… bring back home all these hostages who [are] alive and also dead,” she says.
Ms Sagi describes how, when she was first taken into Gaza, she and some other hostages were hidden in a family home with children, but the following day taken to an apartment in the southern city of Khan Younis because it was “dangerous”.
The apartment owner, Ms Sagi said, told them his wife and children had been sent to stay with his in-laws. The man, she added, was a nurse.
She said students were being paid to watch over them. “I heard them say… 70 shekels [£14.82; $18.83] for a day,” she said.
“It’s a lot of money in Gaza because they have no work. And if you have work not with Hamas, it’s no more than 20 shekels for a day,” she said.
Comment Religion should be a private matter. But for social and political control reasons, western elite rulers of fake democracies have brought it back big time. Afer years of struggle and fall out from two Imperialist World Wars, it looked like the rise of satire and youth culture had consigned organised religion to its proper place. Then the Imperial Pigeons came home to roost bringing Islam and Africa’s version of Roman ( Imperialistic ) Catholicism back to the basics of everyday life with a return to their respective oppressive cruel, often murderous, psuedo moralities.
This process gave us the wonderful world of multi culture where not respecting the mind numbing ritualistic bigotry of these religions, worshipping a God for which there is no evidence of existence – that is to say; beyond the hell on earth that religion has created and sustrains. So, once again, disrespecting religiion has become a criminal offence of racism and is life threatening.
In the U.K Terf Feminists, with powerful cheer leaders like J K Rowling, obsessed with their sacred female parts, have become strange bedfellows with Islamists. They are united in their extreme disapproval of male to female transsexuals because such people threaten their entrenched view of nature and God’s Holy Order. Meanwhile, a history of Imperialist powers dividing and ruling the Arab World has brought us the latest episode in the absurd Israel Gaza conflict.
The western masses are too dim to realise that, via Iran, Russia re lit this paricular fuse in October 2023., to give Anglo U.S led NATO and their Ukraine proxy war a second front. Highly intgelligent nerds have spent centuries perfecting weapons of war and mass slaughter, because they can. However, this technology is manufactured by greedy ruthless weapons manufactuers, before falling into the hands of corrupt, ruthless, power crazed , arrogant, rich, powerful hubristic, hedonistic, lying, deceitful, egotistical , and stupid politicians.
The weapons are then put in the hands of armed forces who are all young men in the front line. They are a mix of psychos, the desperate, deluded and conscripted. As I was told, when I went for a Royal Navy Commission after leaving university many years ago : the armed forces are all about killing or being killed without ever asking questions. They are about obeying the aforementioned politicians. By the way, growng up in the wake of World War Two, I was one of the deluded. If you look arefully, you will see my little silver Air Training Corps badge in my left lapel. At the time, this corps was the junior taining body for the RAF. They even taught us to fly aeroplanes – with obvious long term intentions.
R J Cook
June 18th 2024
Conscription squads send Ukrainian men into hiding
Jean Mackenzie
Reporting from Odesa, Ukraine
- Published17 June 2024
Dark storm clouds threatened to upend Serhiy and Tania’s beach wedding. But as the couple walked down the long white staircase to greet their guests, the empty chairs signalled there was a bigger problem. In total, half of their guests were missing.
Their family and friends sent their apologies but explained that the risk of attending had been too great. What if they had been caught by one of the conscription squads, which now roam Ukraine’s streets?
With many of its soldiers dead, injured or exhausted, the Ukrainian government has stepped up its efforts to mobilise more men.
A new law, introduced in May, requires every man aged between 25 and 60 to log their details on an electronic database so they can be called up. Conscription officers are on the hunt for those avoiding the register, pushing more men who do not want to serve into hiding.
Overlooking the Black Sea in the southern city of Odesa, Tania quietly murmured that she understood why her friends and family did not want to fight.
Her father was killed on the front line in October, during the attritional battle for Avdiivka, and the 24-year-old is now terrified of her new husband being conscripted. “I don’t want this to happen to my family twice,” she said.
More than two years into the war, almost everyone knows someone who has been killed. Grim news has poured out from the front, of Ukraine being vastly outnumbered and outgunned.
Over the phone, the couple’s friend of 15 years, Maksym, relayed such tales. Among the dead are around a dozen of his friends and acquaintances. “There are more than a million police officers in Ukraine, why should I fight when they are not?” he said.
Maksym, who has a young daughter and wife who is seven months pregnant, said he was sorry to miss the wedding but was afraid of being “grabbed” by conscription officers who he likened to “bandits”.
The mobilisation squads have a fearsome reputation, especially in Odesa, for pulling people off buses and from train stations and ferrying them straight to enlistment centres.
For those avoiding the draft, public transport is now off limits. So too are restaurants, supermarkets, and weekend trips to the park to play football.
“I feel like I am in a prison,” Maksym said.
On a Tuesday morning, a dozen conscription officers descended on Odesa’s main train station, led by a seasoned veteran sailor, Anatoliy, and his younger, more muscular counterpart Oleksiy. They paced the forecourt, stopping men of serving age, to check they were registered on the database.
But the well-mannered pair had a tough time finding eligible men. Most were either too young or had received some sort of exemption. After a couple of hours Anatoliy conceded that it was highly possible men were hiding from them.
“Some people run away from us. This happens quite often,” he said. “Others react quite aggressively. I don’t think these people have been brought up well.”
Rod Stewart defends support for Ukraine after jeers
Tiffany Wertheimer
BBC News
Reporting from
London
- Published17 June 2024
Sir Rod Stewart has defended his support of Ukraine, after he was apparently booed at a concert in Germany on Friday night.
The music legend was performing in Leipzig when the Ukrainian flag appeared on a video screen, followed by an image of President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Both applause and jeers could be heard from fans, as Sir Rod sang his 1991 hit Rhythm of My Heart, which he says is an anti-war song, and has previously dedicated to Kyiv.
“I have supported the Ukrainian people throughout this war,” he told PA news agency on Monday.
“From arranging for members of my family to take supplies to the country, to renting a house in the UK for a Ukrainian family… So yes, I do support Zelensky and the people of Ukraine, and I will continue to do so.”
Sir Rod, 79, has also made expletive laden comments about Russian President Vladimir Putin during other concerts.
“Putin must be stopped,” he told PA.
“I’m having the time of my life playing for German audiences, sharing some special memories, and I’m looking forward to playing my remaining dates here.”
Sir Rod was performing at the Quarterback Immobilien Arena in Leipzig, the most populous city in Germany’s central state of Saxony.
The state has embraced nationalism, electing a mayor from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in December. There has also been neo-Nazi violence and attacks on migrants in Saxony.
In 2022, Sir Rod revealed that he and his wife Penny Lancaster had rented a home in Berkshire, in south-east England, for a Ukrainian family of seven who had fled Russia’s full-scale invasion.
The same year, Sir Rod also paid for four lorries, full of supplies, to be driven to the Poland-Ukraine border. His two nephews were among the drivers, and with the help of a UK-based humanitarian organisation, they then drove 16 Ukrainian refugees to safety in Berlin.
“They drove through France, Belgium, Germany and into Poland, dropped off supplies and picked up refugees and dropped them in Berlin,” Sir Rod told the Daily Record at the time.
“It took them three-and-a-half days to get there and back. They are the heroes, not me.”
Sir Rod is coming to the end of his European tour, but still has several German shows to go, in Hamburg, Cologne and Munich.
Next month, he will travel to the US to wrap up a 13-year residency at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.
Comment Sir Rod is just another celebrity stooge virtue signalling. about something of which a mere pop singer has no understanding. Recruiting these people, as with Biden’s desperation for Taylor Swift’s endorsement is the flavour of western absurd nonsense of democracy.
R J Cook
From F.S – What are they doing to our skies?
Part One
-May 15, 2024
WEATHER modification programmes and other geo-engineering experiments to reverse ‘climate change’ can no longer be brushed off as the stuff of ‘chemtrail’ conspiracy theorists. In recent weeks concerns, catalysed by excess rainfall both here and in Dubai, have finally gone mainstream.
A report in the Telegraph on Dubai’s unprecedented floods detailed Saudi Arabia’s and the UAE’s systematic seeding the sky to bring rain on the desert and reported confirmation from Ahmed Habib, a meteorologist at the UAE’s National Centre of Meteorology, that ‘several cloud-seeding planes were flown in the days leading up to the unprecedented weather’. It went on to detail the processes and chemicals involved in generating ‘artificial’ rain. Cloud seeding has also been blamed for California’s devastating flooding in February.
British scientists, the Telegraph revealed in another article, have been involved in the Middle East project since 2017 and experimenting here in the UK, near Castle Cary in Somerset, where ‘above a verdant landscape rarely troubled by drought, unmanned aerial vehicles with specially developed charge emitters that could release positive or negative ions on demand were launched into another foggy sky’.
You may ask why I, a former General Officer in the Army, feel it necessary to launch into print on this subject. Well, for one thing I have been aware of weather modification and solar radiation management (geo-engineering activity) for some time now and I believe it to be a matter of security – the security of all our livelihoods, food supplies, health and in the worst case, survival. For another, I spent three years studying landforms and the forces that form them, chiefly climate and weather, so I have some knowledge as well as interest. Nor am I the only person to have witnessed the changes in our skies from the ground over recent years, or to have watched it happen from passenger aircraft flying above the spraying. Finally, when the same sources ‘rubbish’ and discredit the people reporting this and its possible impact – the same ones that hyped up covid and censored dissent as misinformation – it’s time to worry. Once again the government is either not being open with us or is not in control of what is going on.
Concern is not restricted to this type of attempted weather management. Alarming solar radiation modification research and experimentation has been going on for a decade and more. Roman Balmakov in the Epoch Times recently reported on one such secretive project taking place outside San Francisco right now. Many scientists and modellers in the powerful ‘man-made global warming’ lobby are pushing for more of it.
Last February saw more than 60 researchers from ‘prominent institutions’ recommending more research ‘on potential approaches to increasing the reflection of sunlight (or release of long-wave radiation) from the atmosphere’ in other words ‘solar radiation modification’ (SRM) of the type that Bill Gates has been funding and that Stanford and Harvard Universities have been pursuing. They also called for more ‘small-scale field experiments’. A scaremongering UN report last year also suggests the time has come to start investigating whether SRM can help to combat the ‘climate crisis’. ‘Emergency temporary measures such as SRM are being raised in scientific and public discourse since global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are not on track to meet the 1.5°C Paris Agreement goal. Climate change continues to worsen, with some of its impacts already irreversible.’ (My italics). This is their ‘excuse’ or rationale.
Read more
June 17th 2024
Joe Biden desperately seeking endorsement from Taylor Swift …
Joe Biden is attempting to recruit Taylor Swift as an influencer for his presidential campaign to boost his ailing poll ratings before the upcoming US election. The president’s campaign believes the pop star, 34, could restore his support among young voters and is pushing her to endorse him on social media
Can Political Endorsements From Stars Like Taylor Swift …
U.S. News & World Reporthttps://www.usnews.com › News › America 2024
3 days ago — President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are lining up Hollywood endorsements ahead of November – whether they matter is up for …
Comment This is the ultimate statement on the absurdity of the U.S World leading electoral system. This pampered financier’s daughter and her vacuous female supporters have no grasp of how terrifying the world has become as the planet eating elite use the nerd’s technology to to rape the planet at an increasing rate. What makes them feel safe are more laws to control white men for as much as looking at them and ‘more safe spaces’ at the same men’s expense.
The U.K has been an enduring source of data and encouragement for the lunatics in charge of the U.S Deep State. They are a lethal combination. Females generally speaking are not deep thinkers. They respond to what they consider to be non threatening symbols of power and protection, which is why young Sarah Everard obediently accepted the handcuffs, then climbed into psycho PC (Police Constable) Wayne Couzens car. Police and military uniforms are to the average woman, what stockings and suspenders are to men.
Women respond in a vacuum, to life style gurus as they clutch at straws to escape the mental illness of fascist feminism.
R J Cook
Greek coastguard threw migrants overboard to their deaths, witnesses say
Lucile Smith and Ben Steele
BBC TV Current Affairs
- Published9 hours ago
The Greek coastguard has caused the deaths of dozens of migrants in the Mediterranean over a three-year period, witnesses say, including nine who were deliberately thrown into the water.
The nine are among more than 40 people alleged to have died as a result of being forced out of Greek territorial waters, or taken back out to sea after reaching Greek islands, BBC analysis has found.
The Greek coastguard told our investigation it strongly rejects all accusations of illegal activities.
We showed footage of 12 people being loaded into a Greek coastguard boat, and then abandoned on a dinghy, to a former senior Greek coastguard officer. When he got up from his chair, and with his mic still on, he said it was “obviously illegal” and “an international crime”.
The Greek government has long been accused of forced returns – pushing people back towards Turkey, where they have crossed from, which is illegal under international law.
But this is the first time the BBC has calculated the number of incidents which allege that fatalities occurred as a result of the Greek coastguard’s actions.
The 15 incidents we analysed – dated May 2020-23 – resulted in 43 deaths. The initial sources were primarily local media, NGOs and the Turkish coastguard.
Verifying such accounts is extremely difficult – witnesses often disappear, or are too fearful to speak out. But in four of these cases we were able to corroborate accounts by speaking with eye witnesses.
Our research, which features in a new BBC documentary, Dead Calm: Killing in the Med?, suggested a clear pattern.
In five of the incidents, migrants said they were thrown directly into the sea by the Greek authorities. In four of those cases they explained how they had landed on Greek islands but were hunted down. In several other incidents, migrants said they had been put onto inflatable rafts without motors which then deflated, or appeared to have been punctured.
One of the most chilling accounts was given by a Cameroonian man, who says he was hunted by Greek authorities after landing on the island of Samos in September 2021.
Like all the people we interviewed, he said he was planning to register on Greek soil as an asylum seeker.
“We had barely docked, and the police came from behind,” he told us. “There were two policemen dressed in black, and three others in civilian clothes. They were masked, you could only see their eyes.”
He and two others – another from Cameroon and a man from Ivory Coast – were transferred to a Greek coastguard boat, he said, where events took a terrifying turn.
“They started with the [other] Cameroonian. They threw him in the water. The Ivorian man said: ‘Save me, I don’t want to die… and then eventually only his hand was above water, and his body was below.
“Slowly his hand slipped under, and the water engulfed him.”
Our interviewee says his abductors beat him.
“Punches were raining down on my head. It was like they were punching an animal.” And then he says they pushed him, too, into the water – without a life jacket. He was able to swim to shore, but the bodies of the other two – Sidy Keita and Didier Martial Kouamou Nana – were recovered on the Turkish coastline.
The survivor’s lawyers are demanding the Greek authorities open a double murder case.
Angry Migrants – by R J Cook
Comment Ordinary white hard working non Muslims are sick of mealy mouthed white liberals and migrant interest groups topped off by self interested out of touch protected EU and UK smug self satisfied consensus politicians. They are the ones who have to pay ever rising taxes with decaying migrant overloaded public services and collapsing infrastructure, terrible inflation, with their famlies facing imported violent crime, drug trading and rape. Rather than villify male to female transsexuals as rapists because women fear the more attractive competition to their rampant self righteous miserable egos, the likes of J K Rowling should pay more attention to migrant rape and grooming gangs which are real problems.
Like those angry self centred feminists, Migrants are always demanding something more because the ruling elites encourage them to think they are special rather than the reality that illegal migrants are engaging in illegal activities – putting coasts guards at risk and with more high costs to taxpayers. They are out for an easy ride and ‘better life.’
They have no interest in working to sort their own countries out. They come from lands of medieval religious bigotry, real sexism and overpopulation that have shown no improvement in culture since they gained independence nearly 80 years ago.
These people played a big role in creating and sustaining the Third World and they are bringing it to Europe. Covid lockdown was a smokescreen to shut down protest, now we have World War II nostalgia and World War III as the wealthy ruling elite’s latest and ultimate distraction.
R J Cook
R J Cook
June 16th 2024
Rishi Sunak given a ‘secret briefing’ as Putin nuclear submarine Kazan detected off the coast of Scotland
A Kremlin spokesman denied there was any reason for concern
Defence Secretary Grant Shapps has warned the Tories are facing a wipeout at the polls (Henry Nicholls/PA)
PA Wire
Anthony France @NewsFrenchTony13 hours ago
Rishi Sunak was given a “secret briefing” after a Russian nuclear submarine was spotted off the coast of Scotland, it has been revealed.
The Prime Minister and Defence Secretary Grant Shapps were alerted to the detection of President Vladimir Putin’s Yasen-class vessel earlier this month.
An RAF surveillance plane tracked the submarine’s movements along the west coast of Ireland to Scotland.
The Sunday Express reported the 13,800-tonne submarine Kazan passed by the UK’s nuclear naval base in Faslane without crossing into British waters, prompting swift reports back to the Permanent Joint Headquarters in Northwood, north west London.
14 hours ago — Rishi Sunak was given a “secret briefing” after a Russian nuclear submarine was spotted off the coast of Scotland, it has been revealed.
Major summit set to back Ukraine’s territorial integrity
Robert Greenall
BBC News
- Published2 hours ago
World leaders at the Ukraine peace summit in Switzerland are expected to adopt a declaration reaffirming Kyiv’s territorial integrity.
More than 90 countries and international organisations are attending the summit, aimed at creating the broadest possible backing for a process that could help end the war in Ukraine.
Russia has not been invited, and its biggest backer China is not present, leading some to cast doubt on the summit’s effectiveness.
But the attendees, not all of whom are Ukraine’s closest supporters, hope to reach agreement on issues such as nuclear security and food exports.
They include Saudi Arabia, whose foreign minister has warned that Ukraine will have to make difficult compromises, and Kenya, which spoke out against recent sanctions on Russia.
Nonetheless all the delegations are expected to endorse a final statement condemning Russia’s invasion.
The draft document, seen by Reuters news agency, calls for Ukrainian control to be restored over the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and the country’s ports on the Azov Sea, all currently occupied by Russia.
It also refers to Russia’s invasion as a “war”, a label which Moscow has rejected.
Humanitarian issues such as the return of prisoners and abducted children are also being discussed.
The most contentious topics, like the status of land under Russian occupation, will be left for later.
The organisers of the summit hope to announce a second conference, possibly in Saudi Arabia, to build on what has been achieved.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday that the results of the Swiss summit would be communicated to Moscow “so that at the second peace summit we can fix the real end of the war”.
Russia has described the Swiss event as a waste of time, and on Friday President Vladimir Putin said he would agree to a ceasefire if Ukraine withdrew troops from four regions which Russia partially occupies and claims to have annexed.
But a day later Western leaders attending the summit strongly rejected Mr Putin’s proposal.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni described it as “propaganda” and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak accused Mr Putin of “spinning a phoney narrative about his willingness to negotiate”.
Pawns In The Game – R J Cook
Comment It is difficult to believe that this situation will not get worse. The Third World is an appalling mess with the EU and UK seeing the solution being more corporate exploitatin, profiteering and importing their ever expanding surplus population in the name of human rights and virtue signalling. Biden, with his Democrats, has the same police to the equally exploited Latin America.
Then there is the Middle East,which has already been set on fire. NATO, the G7 and front man well paid puppet Zelensky are certain they can talk their way out of this. They have to try because the Western Capitalist Banking System has invested everything in this. The rest of us are just pawns in the game. We never mattered and we never will.
R J Cook
Only a Pawn in Their Game – Bob Dylan
Lyrics
A bullet from the back of a bush took Medgar Evers’ blood
A finger fired the trigger to his name
A handle hid out in the dark
A hand set the spark
Two eyes took the aim
Behind a man’s brain
But he can’t be blamed
He’s only a pawn in their game
A South politician preaches to the poor white man
“You got more than the blacks, don’t complain
You’re better than them, you been born with white skin, ” they explain
And the Negro’s name
Is used, it is plain
For the politician’s gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game
The deputy sheriffs, the soldiers, the governors get paid
And the marshals and cops get the same
But the poor white man’s used in the hands of them all like a tool
He’s taught in his school
From the start by the rule
That the laws are with him
To protect his white skin
To keep up his hate
So he never thinks straight
‘Bout the shape that he’s in
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game
From the poverty shacks he looks from the cracks to the tracks
And the hoof beats pound in his brain
And he’s taught how to walk in a pack
Shoot in the back
With his fist in a clinch
To hang and to lynch
To hide ‘neath the hood
To kill with no pain
Like a dog on a chain
He ain’t got no name
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game
Today Medgar Evers was buried from the bullet he caught
They lowered him down as a king
But when the shadowy sun sets on the one that fired the gun
You’ll see by his grave
On the stone that remains
Carved next to his name
His epitaph plain
“Only a pawn in their game”
Source: Musixmatch
Songwriters: Bob Dylan
Only a Pawn in Their Game lyrics © Special Rider Music, Universal Tunes
June 15th 2024
How the far-right gained traction with Europe’s youth
By Sarah Marsh, Barbara Erling and David Latona
June 13, 20247:05 AM GMT+1Updated 2 days ago
Item 1 of 3 Alternative for Germany (AfD) party co-leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla react to results after the polls closed in the European Parliament elections, in Berlin, Germany, June 9, 2024. REUTERS/Annegret Hilse/File Photo
[1/3]Alternative for Germany (AfD) party co-leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla react to results after the polls closed in the European Parliament elections, in Berlin, Germany, June 9, 2024. REUTERS/Annegret Hilse/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights
- Summary
- Far-right gains among Europe’s youth in EU election
- German study shows young voters worrying more about economy, less about climate
- Social media proficiency boosts far-right’s appeal to youth
BERLIN/WARSAW/MADRID, June 13 (Reuters) – From Germany and France to Poland and Spain, the far-right made inroads into the youth vote in key states in this EU election – as a generation that has grown up amid constant crises seeks new answers and follows politicians fluent in TikTok and YouTube.
Young voters, traditionally perceived to be more left-wing, drove the wave of support for environmental parties at the last EU election in 2019, earning the nickname “Generation Greta” after the young Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg.
That is why Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin & Nigel Farage are targets – By R J Cook
Comment This article misses the reality of anti white racism in the name of positive discrimination, record female initiated dirvorce removing fathers from the home, with consequent impoverishment is adding to already powerful feminist defined negative male role models. Rising unemployment in traditional male industries, and an increasingly authoritarian war mongering elite profiteering ruling class is tipping the balance against the lies of Western Democracy and its so called media advertised choices. Modern westerm politics is about offering different false promises by two main parties, to a set of ongoing problems that are inherent in a system set up by the rich for the rich.
The fact that western style educations systems scapegoat men, while excusing women through a school culture of brainwashing political correctness that vaunts female safe spaces, because even men who have escaped into transexxualism, according to feminists like wealty Potter author J K Rowling, want to rape women as soon as they see them because they are all so desireable in their boiler suits etc., makes the current situation intolerable.
To add insult to injury, these young working class males are called racist. This is because they see their own culture being riduculed, mariginalised and replaced by a mass of beneifit favoured cultutally backward religion obsessed African and Islamic immigration, with all the rapping and Allah Akba routine.
This ineluctable process pushes up prices of all vital goods and housing, while keeping wages down. the ‘cost of war crisis’ has made life close to impossible down here at the bottom. Public services can’t cope, so mental and other, especially imported, illness abounds.
The comfortable hideously weathly elite and the posh and comfortable ethic folk they employ, sit in judgement over the masses whom they patronise. These guardians of so called ‘freedom and democracy, work non stop on hgh salaries, even as graduate entrants, dicating the official truth, interferring with possible and actual election outcomes they don’t like.
The last straw for these young whites, their sisters and parents, is that they are told that they must be prepared to serve as soldiers etc. in an expected war against Russia – a war that the power grabbing hideously wealthy elite have provoked in Ukraine. That pampered controlling elite who control the public space that conformist women and security cameras guard, fear young males and even females, will join a revolutionary army as they did in Russia, 1917 and Germany in 1933. Covid lockdown was step one to shut down the Yellow Vests. Now the official brainwashing has shifted up a gear. World War Three is considered a worthwhile option to scare the masses, not just the young, back into frightened conformity. That is why London’s Police Chief is demanding tougher laws to control these EU and U.S expected protests. That is why Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin & Nigel Farage are targets of the BBC and worldwide western liberal left.
R J Cook
3 May 2024.
11 Feb 2024 — Presumably a similar process would occur if at some future date the Ukrainian army, starved of ammunition, were overrun by its Russian …
Putin lays out his terms for ceasefire in Ukraine
Henri Astier
BBC News
Vladimir Putin has said Ukraine would need to withdraw troops from territories Russia claims to have annexed before a ceasefire could begin – a proposal Ukraine’s president called a Hitler-like “ultimatum”.
Volodymyr Zelensky has long said Ukraine will not negotiate with Moscow until Russian forces leave all Ukrainian territory, including Crimea.
The Russian president also said Ukraine would have to give up on joining Nato before peace talks could start.
Mr Putin’s statement setting out his ceasefire conditions comes as leaders from 90 countries prepare to meet in Switzerland on Saturday to discuss paths towards peace in Ukraine – a summit Russia has not been invited to.
Speaking to a meeting of Russian ambassadors in Moscow on Friday, Mr Putin called on the Ukrainian government to withdraw from four regions partially occupied by Russia – Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
He also said Ukraine would need to officially give up in its efforts to join the Nato military alliance for the Russian advance to be halted.
Mr Putin said: “As soon as Kyiv declares that it is ready for such a decision… an order to cease fire and begin negotiations will immediately follow from our side, literally at the same minute.”
Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak called the proposal a “complete sham” and “offensive to common sense”.
US widens Russia sanctions in banking crackdown
Tom Espiner
BBC News
The US has broadened its sanctions on Russia, including a fresh crackdown on banks dealing with sanctioned entities.
It expands a December programme to target foreign banks deemed to be aiding Russia’s war effort in Ukraine.
The US also placed sanctions on the Moscow stock exchange, leading to it halting trading in dollars and euros.
It also moved to try to restrict Russia’s use of technology, including chips and software.
US President Joe Biden signed an executive order in December that imposed sanctions on banks dealing with about 1,200 individuals and companies deemed to be helping Russia’s war machine.
Those measures, which expose banks to the risk of being cut off from the US financial system, have now been expanded to about 4,500 entities.
The US will also target gold-laundering.
Peter Harrell, a former White House senior director for international economics, told the Reuters news agency that the US “is shifting towards something that begins to look like an effort to set up a global financial embargo on Russia”.
As part of this effort, the US Treasury announced that it would impose sanctions on parts of Russia’s financial system, including the Moscow Exchange, which is one of Russia’s main stock exchanges.
The stock exchange, which is Russia’s largest foreign exchange market, said the sanctions had forced it to stop trading in dollars and euros.
Zelensky seeks show of support at giant Ukraine peace summit
Sarah Rainsford
Eastern Europe correspondent
Reporting from
Lake Lucerne, Switzerland
This weekend, a secluded Swiss resort above Lake Lucerne will be transformed as dozens of world leaders and thousands of soldiers and police descend on Bürgenstock.
More than 90 countries and global institutions are attending the event, which aims to discuss basic principles for ending the conflict in Ukraine.
The Swiss hope that the Ukraine summit might produce the first tentative sketch marks for a peace process, some 28 months after Russia invaded its neighbour.
It is the biggest gathering for Ukraine since the full-scale invasion.
But with key players like China staying away, and Russian President Vladimir Putin issuing a new ultimatum – demanding Ukraine’s capitulation and calling that a peace proposal – expectations of significant progress are low.
Read More https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cv22zlq4y20o
Ukraine extends blackouts as Russian bombings continue
Jean Mackenzie
BBC News
Reporting from
Kyiv
Ukrainians are facing extended blackouts of up to eight hours on Wednesday, as their country grapples with severe damage to its power stations, caused by ongoing Russian attacks.
President Volodymyr Zelensky, speaking on Tuesday at a conference on the reconstruction of Ukraine, said Russia had destroyed half of his country’s electricity-generating capacity, since it began pummelling its energy facilities in late March.
Residents in the capital Kyiv, with a population of three million, are facing some of the most significant power shortages. The hum of generators reverberates though the city, while at night streets are now often coated in darkness.
Families with young children living on the top floors of apartment blocks have been left without working lifts, leaving them to walk up dozens of flights of stairs.
Ukraine is buying energy from the European Union to try to cover its shortfall. Its energy ministry said it was planning on Wednesday to import its largest amount of power to date. However, this is not enough to make up its deficit, meaning nationwide power cuts have been planned during an eight-hour window, from 3pm to 11pm, in order to protect critical infrastructure such a hospitals and military facilities.
The situation is expected to worsen as summer temperatures climb and people turn on their air-conditioning units.
June 14th 2024
ICFI mounts international pickets demanding the Ukrainian government release Bogdan Syrotiuk
The international pickets held in Istanbul, Paris, London, Berlin, Washington D.C., Toronto, Canberra and Sydney marked an important step forward in the building of an international working class campaign demanding Bogdan’s freedom and an end to imperialist war.
G7 leaders plot escalation of world war and promotion of far right at Italian luxury resort
The agenda of the two-day gathering is dominated by plans for a dramatic escalation of the US-NATO war on Russia, and will include discussions on the further integration of the European far right into established bourgeois politics.
European Union joins US economic war against Chinese electric vehicles
The push for the tariff increases has been led by Spain and France with the claim that state subsidies to Chinese manufactures had created unfair competition in the European market, but also has led to opposition from Germany.
Workers Struggles: Europe, Middle East & Africa
Pay strike by Norway’s civil servants banned by Labour government on “national security” grounds; South African steelworkers’ protected strike at SA Steel Mills continues, demanding reinstatement of165 workers sacked for striking; general strike in the West Bank cities of Ramallah and Berea to protest Israeli Defence Force murder of four Palestinians during 50-vehicle assault, many injured
Unbending U.S Led NATO Empire Building Take On Ukraine Proxy War On Russia.
| This weekend, high-level officials from over 70 countries will convene in Switzerland for a peace summit on the war in Ukraine, which is nearing its 28th month. The goal of the conference, according to Swiss authorities, is to establish a “roadmap” toward a “lasting peace” that both Kyiv and Moscow can sign on to in the future. But with neither U.S. President Joe Biden nor Russian officials planning on attending—Moscow not having been invited—it remains unclear whether the summit will move either side any closer to a resolution. In fact, this is not the first time officials have worked to end the war between Russia and Ukraine. A few months ago, Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko got their hands on draft peace agreements between Moscow and Kyiv that had been exchanged just weeks after Russia launched its invasion. “After the past two years of carnage,” Ukraine and Russia’s near-settlement in the spring of 2022 “may be so much water under the bridge,” they write. “But it is a reminder that Putin and Zelensky were willing to consider extraordinary compromises to end the war.” Start reading this, and other Foreign Affairs essays about potential ways the war in Ukraine could end, below. |
| The Talks That Could Have Ended the War in Ukraine A Hidden History of Diplomacy That Came Up Short—but Holds Lessons for Future Negotiations By Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko |
| Why China Is Sabotaging Ukraine Beijing Has No Interest in a Peace Agreement It Can’t Help Broker By Alexander Gabuev |
| How to Convince Putin He Will Lose The West Must Show That It Can Outlast Russia in Ukraine By Dan Altman |
| Ukraine Needs More Than Crisis Management Its Security Depends on Long-Term Commitments From the West By Eric Ciaramella |
| The Ukraine War Will End With Negotiations Now Is Not the Time for Talks, but America Must Lay the Groundwork By Emma Ashford |
Comment Anglo U.S Led NATO has invested a lot of money and reputations in this war, which Biden called a good investment – he should know from his son Hunter’s interesting dealings in Ukraine. They will go for broke if they have to. That is why nuclear war appears inevitable because Putin seems to have no rational choice. If Russia gives way to NATO encirclement it will be dismembered and raped. The U.S is already coming in on China for the ultimate takeover.
R J Cook
G7 agrees $50bn loan for Ukraine from Russian assets
https://emp.bbc.co.uk/emp/SMPj/2.52.1/iframe.htmlMedia caption,
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky and US President Joe Biden sign bilateral security deal
Jaroslav Lukiv
BBC News in London
Jean Mackenzie
BBC correspondent in Kyiv
- Published13 June 2024
The G7 has agreed to use frozen Russian assets to raise $50bn (£39bn) for Ukraine to help it fight invading Russian forces.
US President Joe Biden said it was another reminder to Russia “that we’re not backing down”, but in Moscow President Vladimir Putin said the move was “theft” which would “not go unpunished”.
Also at the G7 summit in Italy, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Mr Biden signed a 10-year bilateral security deal between Ukraine and the US, hailed by Kyiv as “historic”.
The agreement envisages US military and training aid to Ukraine – but it does not commit Washington to send troops to fight for its ally.
According to the White House, the security deal means Washington and Kyiv will work to build and maintain Ukraine’s defence and deterrence capability, bolster the country’s defence industrial base, and support economic recovery and energy security.
The security deal also means that in the event of a future Russian armed attack against Ukraine, there will be consultation “at the highest levels to determine appropriate and necessary measures to support Ukraine and impose costs on Russia”, the statement added.
Separately, some $325bn worth of assets were frozen by the G7, alongside the EU, following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The pot of assets is generating about $3bn a year in interest.
Under the G7 plan, that $3bn will be used to pay off the annual interest on the $50bn loan for the Ukrainians, taken out on the international markets.
The money is not expected to arrive until the end of the year but is seen as a longer-term solution to support Ukraine’s war effort and economy.
Speaking at a joint news conference at the summit’s venue in Puglia, southern Italy, President Biden said the $50bn loan would “put that money to work for Ukraine and send another reminder to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin that we’re not backing down”.
The US leader stressed that Mr Putin “cannot wait us out, he cannot divide us, and we’ll be with Ukraine until they prevail in this war”.
President Zelensky thanked his American and other allies for their unwavering support.
And referring to the new security deal, he said: “It’s a truly historic day and we have signed the strongest agreement within Ukraine and the US since our independence [in 1991]”.
The G7 group of rich nations, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and US, have been important financial and military supporters of Ukraine as it battles to contain occupying Russian forces.
Other G7 leaders also hailed the $50bn loan deal, with UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak describing it as “game changing”.
Comment Anyone not wanting the horrors of nuclear war should avoid voting for Sunak, Biden or any of the other power grabbing fake European Democrats. Death by nuclear war will be instant for the lucky ones but worse than Biblical Hell for all those outside of the political and wealthy ruling elite’s. The latter have massive autonomius well stocked and fully equiped luxury bunkers, survival chambers and command centres.
This is way beyond the dangers of the Cuban Missile crisis which I remember well. Oddly enough more people were scared back then in those days, They were the pre today’s brainwashed zombie trust in freedom and demcracy generation.
As for intellectual lightweigt Sunak’s commen above, it will be the arrival of NATO F16s based in Poland etc. that will be the real gamechanger. Then the NATO Ukraine Proxy War on Russia will explode millions into oblivion, cause hideous burns and slow death from radiation on a nuclear wasteland feral nightmare.
This extract from T.S Elliot’s epic poem ‘The Wasteland’ sums up my feelings now :
‘My nerves are bad tonight. Yes, bad. Stay with me.
Speak to me. Why do you never speak. Speak.
What are you thinking of? What thinking? What?
I never know what you are thinking. Think.’
I think we are in rats’ alley
Where the dead men lost their bones.
‘What is that noise?’
The wind under the door.
‘What is that noise now? What is the wind doing?’
Nothing again nothing.
‘Do
‘You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember
‘Nothing?’
R J Cook
Implications of Russia–Ukraine war on land surface …
Heat waves and pollution will gripping Ukraine and Western Europe are due to the cumulative effect of heat waves, changing climate and ongoing war. They are already catastrophic with widespread impact on human health, agricultural yield and infrastructure, to name a few impossible problems.
An interim assessment, which focused on four activity areas directly affected by the war. It concluded that greenhouse gas emissions for seven months of the full-scale war totals at least 100 million tCO2e. This is the equivalent of the total GHG emissions over the same period in a country like The Netherlands.
Climate damage caused by Russia’s war in Ukraine (First and second interim assessments)
Months of the military conflict caused by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has caused significant damage and led to the unfolding of a humanitarian crisis. Civilian infrastructure has been destroyed and damage has been done to the environment. This war adversely affects the global climate causing significant carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere.
First interim assessment
The interim assessment, which is focused on four activity areas directly affected by the war, concludes that greenhouse gas emissions for seven months of the full-scale war totals at least 100 million tCO2e. This is the equivalent of the total GHG emissions over the same period in a country like The Netherlands. As a number of impacts of this war have not yet been taken into consideration, these figures are likely to underestimate the true level of emissions. The longer Russia’s war continues, the higher final figures will be.
Read More
This war adversely affects the global climate causing significant carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. First interim …
2 Mar 2023 — The war has caused widespread deforestation across Ukraine while also damaging the country’s renewable energy systems: 90 per cent of the …
7 Jun 2023 — They found that a total of 120 million metric tons of planet-heating pollution can be attributed to the first 12 months of the war, according to …
Comment Blame NATO, CIA and MI6 who fermented this proxy war in Russia for many years. For Russia, it is existential.
R J Cook
Evil beyond words
In a previous phase of my existence I used to pen regular film reviews for the local paper at which I worked. I got into the habit of writing these as soon as possible after I had seen the film in question, so that I would still be in touch with the impression that it had made on me and remember the salient details.So it’s somewhat surprising for me to realise that I have taken several weeks to write about the film I am going to describe. What has happened, I think, is that it made a very deep impression on me that I have needed time to fully process.Les Survivantes (‘the female survivors’, literally, or perhaps better rendered as ‘the women who survived’) is a new French documentary from director Pierre Barnérias, known for his 2020 exposé of the Covid scam, Hold-Up.Given the vitriol and censorship aimed at that film, and given the even more controversial subject matter of Les Survivantes, I would have expected only to have been able to view it via some rebellious non-corporate website.So it was a little surreal to find myself sitting down to watch it at a massive multiplex cinema in an out-of-town commercial zone in Nîmes. The subject of the film is the abuse of children: not just sexual abuse, including violent rape, but also the torture of children, the dismembering and murdering of children and the forcing of children to watch and participate in the abuse, torture, dismembering and murdering of other children.It has taken me a month to be able even to write that sentence, so it is hard to imagine how difficult it must have been for the survivors of such activity to talk in public about what they experienced.Indeed, as one of them explained, part of the purpose of the activity – in particular the forced participation – was to traumatise and shame them into a lifelong silence that these women have now broken.An important aspect of the film is that these crimes were not carried out by random individuals but by a network – when they met up, some of the eight women realised they had been abused by the same individuals in different locations across France, Belgium and Switzerland.As the survivors told their stories, the nature of this network became increasingly apparent – there was talk of powerful people, politicians, heads of state and billionaires. A former employee of Crédit Suisse (which cropped up in my recent article on the Rothschilds’ Chatham House operation) described how he had walked out of a party hosted by his banker boss when it started to involve a simulated satanic child sacrifice involving the banker’s daughter.Just in case there was any lingering doubt, the caption at the end of the film refers to the network being run by “global financial power”.We have, of course, all heard about Jeffrey Epstein or Jimmy Savile, with dark rumours about activities even less acceptable than sex with underage girls and boys.But I for one never wanted to think about this too much, didn’t really want to emotionally embrace its reality, even though I accepted it intellectually.Les Survivantes forced me to think about it, to feel it through the words of little girls who had suffered, survived and somehow found the courage, as women, to tell the world what had happened.I know I was not the only person who walked out of the cinema desperately suppressing the desire to burst into angry tears.In the subsequent weeks, the shock of what was described in the film has percolated into my thinking.I thought I was being pretty hard-line in the language I use to describe the circles involved in all this, using labels like “criminocrats” or “mafia” and adjectives like “corrupt”, “odious” or “vile”.However, I now realise I have been letting them off the hook. They’re worse than any of that. It is already difficult to understand how anyone could deliberately cause the deaths of millions of people in wars, deliberately poison them with toxic drugs, deliberately destroy the natural world, polluting land, air and water, deliberately wreck communities and cultures, cynically enslave and exploit people across the world.But how can we digest the fact that members of this same global financial power also enjoy raping, torturing, dismembering and murdering little children?What words can we use to describe what they are? Even “Satanist”, which is presumably how they regard themselves, seems too weak.I’ve always thought that mere human beings can no more be entirely evil than they can be entirely good.Now I’m not so sure.[Audio version]The three pieces of art illustrating this article are all by the film director David Lynch. |
June 13th 2024
The order Biden issued last week would limit asylum processing once encounters with migrants between ports of entry reach 2,500 per day. It went into effect immediately because the latest figures were far higher, at about 4,000 daily.
Comment The third world is becoming the only world. NATO’s proxy Ukraine War on Russia is speeding up the process. Russia knows this and is fighting back, offering a more stable version of civilisation and no more, if not less, authoritarian than Anglo U.S led rich mans’ NATO and G7.
The stakes are high, with the west led by the ruthless rich and upstarts like Zelensky. The Third World Countries have a few key things in common : 1) Mass Poverty 2) Hedonistic Puppet Dictatorships 3) Rampant Health Issues & Disease 4) Medieaval Religious Practices & Bigotry 4) Rampant Overpopulation 5) Massive & Vital Raw Materials 6) Consequent Deep Rooted Corruption 6) Worldwide Virtue Signalling Charitable Organusations like Water Aid and Oxfam acting as a smokescreen 7) Battlefields for Global Elite Exploitation – hence war in Sudan.
R J Cook
June 12th 2024
Are LGBTQ voters about to abandon Biden?
History suggests LGBTQ voters and Biden are headed for a breakup. But there’s much more at play here.
by Christian PazJun 12, 2024, 2:15 PM GMT+1
Gay Pride flags fly at a protest rally in Hamtramck, Michigan.Bill Pugliano/Getty Images
Christian Pazis a senior politics reporter at Vox, where he covers the Democratic Party. He joined Vox in 2022 after reporting on national and international politics for the Atlantic’s politics, global, and ideas teams, including the role of Latino voters in the 2020 election.
The 2024 election has been a bit weird for President Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats. According to most polls, the president’s support among traditionally Democratic constituencies has slipped severely. Significant numbers of Black voters, Latino voters and young voters — who turned out strongly for Biden during his 2020 victory — seem to be prepared to sit out the election, or even cross over to vote for Donald Trump.
15 May 2024 — President Joe Biden risks losing a significant share of Black votes in his rematch with Donald Trump unless his campaign improves his ..
‘Enemies list’ of ‘Trumpists and Communists’ published by Biden-linked Ukraine group, lawmakers charge
Sen JD Vance and Rep Matt Gaetz called on Secretary of State Antony Blinken to send them information regarding the Ukrainian NGO by June 28
FIRST ON FOX: Ohio Republican Sen. J.D. Vance and Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz are demanding answers from Secretary of State Antony Blinken surrounding a State Department-linked Ukrainian nongovernmental organization (NGO) that published a list of Americans labeled “Trumpists and Communists” for their opposition to providing more U.S. funds to Ukraine, Fox News Digital exclusively learned.
“On June 6, 2024, a Ukrainian corporation, Texty.org.ua, published an online article entitled ‘Rollercoaster: From Trumpists to Communists. The forces in the U.S. impeding aid to Ukraine and how they do it,’” the pair of Republican lawmakers wrote in their letter to Blinken. “The title of this article oversells the product: it is a substantively thin piece, largely an excuse to smear a large group of Americans who have been skeptical of aid to Ukraine in one form or another.”
“But it is being broadcast as a part of a coordinated media strategy that has all the hallmarks of a U.S.-targeting influence operation,” the lawmakers continued, identifying the names detailed in the article as an “Enemies List.”
Vance, who is considered a top contender as former President Trump’s running mate in the 2024 election, and Gaetz sent the letter to Blinken on Wednesday, demanding information – including any grant agreements – the State Department has with the NGO and its founder, Anatoly Bondarenko.
HOUSE PASSES $60B UKRAINE AID BILL AS GOP REBELS THREATEN TO OUST JOHNSON
Hunter Biden case: White House won’t rule out president shortening son’s sentence after guilty verdict
Hunter Biden was found guilty Tuesday in trial focused on his purchase of a handgun
Published June 12, 2024 3:12pm EDT
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refused Wednesday to rule out President Biden commuting whatever sentence his son Hunter receives after he was found guilty yesterday in a criminal trial focused on his purchase of a handgun in 2018.
Jean-Pierre, responding to a reporter asking whether a commutation of Hunter’s sentence is “something that would be on the table,” said she hasn’t spoken to President Biden since the announcement of the verdict and that “sentencing hasn’t even been scheduled yet.”
“He’s been very clear. We’ve been very clear. You know, he loves his son. And he and the first lady love their son and they support their son. I just don’t have anything, certainly anything beyond that,” she added, noting an interview Biden gave to ABC News last week in which the president said he would accept the verdict of the trial and rule out pardoning Hunter.
“So you’re not ruling out he would commute the sentence?” another reporter then asked Jean-Pierre.
PRESIDENT BIDEN REACTS TO SON HUNTER’S GUILTY VERDICT IN GUN TRIAL: ‘I AM ALSO A DAD’
Horrified cruise passengers spot Russian warships out their window as NATO on red alert
Russian nuclear warships are heading to Cuba for joint military drills with their Caribbean allies.
Russian Navy flotilla pictured en route to Cuba
Cruise ship passengers were left horrified after spotting Russian warships from their cabin windows, leading to a stark warning from a leading defence expert.
Passengers on board the cruise liner said they saw six ships passing by in broad daylight off the coast of Florida.
6 hours ago — HAVANA (Reuters) –Russian navy ships churned into Havana harbor on Wednesday, a stopover the U.S. and Cuba said posed no threat but which …
A US official told reporters on Wednesday that Russia had plans to send combat vessels into the Caribbean region to conduct naval exercises, noting that while Washington did not see their arrival as threatening, the US Navy would monitor the exercises.
A Ukrainian naval drone carrying 450 kilograms of TNT struck the Russian Navy base at Novorossiisk in the Black Sea, causing extensive damage to a Russian …
Brazil and US mark 200 years of diplomatic ties as Washington drags Latin America into global war
The anniversary was overshadowed by a US offensive on multiple fronts— diplomatic, economic and military—against China, Brazil’s leading trade partner.
Nigeria’s trade union leaders sabotage general strike over minimum wage
The unions are intent on suppressing massive opposition within the working class to Nigeria’s atrocious living conditions, intensified by the ruling class’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the soaring of prices due to the US-NATO war against Russia in the Ukraine and the government’s disastrous austerity policies.
An Open Letter to the Ukrainian government: Release Bogdan Syrotiuk!
On Thursday, June 13, the following letter from the Socialist Equality Party and the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site will be delivered to Oksana Markarova, the Ambassador of Ukraine, in Washington, D.C.
Wars, resets and the global criminocracy
At the time of the First World War, for example, Britain’s arms trade was controlled by a monopolising ring based around Vickers Ltd; Armstrong, Whitworth and Co Ltd; John Brown and Co Ltd; Cammell, Laird & Co, and the Nobel Dynamite Trust.Historians Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, who show how the criminocrats created and prolonged the war for their own profit, note: “The ring equated to a vast financial network in which apparently independent firms were strengthened by absorption and linked together by an intricate system of joint shareholding and common directorships.“It was an industry that challenged the Treasury, influenced the Admiralty, maintained high prices and manipulated public opinion”. [2]War also calls for vast amounts of raw materials, not just to manufacture the guns, ammunition, tanks, ships and aircraft, and all the associated paraphernalia, but also to transport goods and men over oceans and continents. The Rothschild gang’s dominant role in the global oil industry, as well as in iron and steel and in railways, meant their cash tills were ringing heartily from this huge surge in demand – on both sides of the 1914-18 conflict.There are other aspects of immediate financial gain, in the past and in the present, that are hard to identify with precision, because they fall into the realm of clearly criminal behaviour and thus are even more carefully concealed than other forms of skullduggery.Two centuries ago, during the Napoleonic wars, the Rothschilds took advantage of food shortages and spiralling prices to operate on the black market in their home city of Frankfurt and sold provisions to armies at a considerable profit.British goods, including cotton fabric, sugar, indigo and tobacco, were also transported across the Channel, via the Rothschilds’ warehouses, in defiance of Napoleon’s blockade.War-related sanctions can be a profitable affair for those with the right contacts.“Humanitarian” relief in wartime is often a convenient cover for massive and highly dubious transfers of money.Docherty and Macgregor explain how, in the First World War, “aid” to Belgium amounted to “one of the world’s greatest con jobs”. [3]The Commission for Relief in Belgium hailed itself as “the greatest humanitarian undertaking that the world had ever seen”. [4]It later claimed to have spent over $13,000,000,000 on relief for the people of Belgium, a truly staggering figure for the period. The man in charge was Herbert Clark Hoover (pictured), later president of the USA, whom the two authors do not hesitate to describe as “a confidence trickster and a crook”.[5]With a certain inevitability, it turns out that he was deeply connected to the circles that had planned the very disaster which he was now allegedly alleviating.Explain Docherty and Macgregor: “The American-born mining engineer lived in London for years and was a business colleague of the Rothschilds… He held shares in the Rothschilds’ Rio Tinto Company and was associated with the same all-powerful Rothschild dynasty which invested in his Zinc Corporation”. [6]“When Herbert Hoover negotiated the massive loans for Belgian Relief from Allied governments he used the J.P. Morgan organizations in America, co-ordinated through Morgan Guaranty Trust of New York which, in turn, made the requisite transfer to London”. [7]“Financial muscle was never far from his center of power. The Morgan/Rothschild axis was wrapped around the entire project”. [8]According to a report from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy earlier this year, 2024, global aid to Ukraine had already reached $278 billion, and billions more dollars are being lined up. [9]It is interesting to note that, back in 2007, The New York Times predicted that a member of the young Rothschild generation, Nathaniel, (pictured) “may become the richest Rothschild of them all” thanks to “bold bets in this era’s new-money investment vehicles” and the family’s traditional geopolitical foresight. [10]It added: “The man in line to be the fifth Baron Rothschild is close to becoming a billionaire through a web of private equity investments in Ukraine”.The medium-term source of financial profit from such grandiose rackets arises from the huge amounts of public money that are thrown into them under the pretext of an “emergency”.The “magic money tree” of public spending suddenly becomes infinitely bountiful when faced with the all-eclipsing “crisis” of pandemic, war, terrorism or climate change.For instance, the British government estimates the total cost of its Covid-19 measures as ranging from £310 billion to £410 billion. [11]Some of the most expensive schemes included the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (sometimes called the furlough scheme) and NHS Test and Trace.As to the key question of where exactly this money came from, with tax revenue down because of lockdowns, it reports that it increased borrowing to £313 billion in 2020/21 alone.Borrowing from the global bankers, that is.Lucrative loans to governments for waging wars have been part of the Rothschilds’ racketeering playbook since Napoleonic times.Historian Niall Ferguson notes that the banking family found themselves “repeatedly on both sides of decisive conflicts which were to recast the map of Europe”. [12]The aftermath of war was also a great source of profit. In 1871, the Rothschilds were on hand to lend massive amounts of money to the French state to pay off its reparations after defeat to Prussia, in what Ferguson describes as “the biggest financial operation of the century”. [13]The post-war dividend also comes from loans and contracts for the “building back better” of devastated countries.The third way in which the criminocrats profit from wars, as from the Great Reset, is the long-term effect such events have on society.The cash-starved states involved, up to the neck in debt, have no choice but to go along with the bankers’ idea of how best to rebuild their countries.After both world wars, the idea of a “post-war” reality, to which people had to adapt, was used to ramp up industrialism and modernity, destroying traditional agriculture and communities and declaring old ways of thinking and living as being unsuited to the brave new normal.Schwab hoped that Covid would have the same effect, creating a new historical separation between “the pre-pandemic era” and “the post-pandemic world”. [14]All such showcase events, including most so-called “revolutions” and so-called terrorist attacks like 9/11, are, in my view, merely “shock and awe” operations designed to push traumatised populations further into the prison-camp society favoured by the criminocrats.Rootless, helpless, disorientated, brainwashed people, entirely dependent on the system for their every need, cut off from each other, from nature, from reality and from spiritual belonging, are the ideal fodder for the criminocrats’ money-making machine.With this in mind, is not surprising that in each case we see the same means being rolled out to ensure that populations go along with the agenda.Most obvious is the full-on propaganda from all the state and corporate media.In 2020 it was the tone and extent of this propaganda, as encountered via French state radio, that indicated to me that the Covid “pandemic” was a psy-ops. This propaganda has to go so far as to create a sense of absolute moral conviction in the population and thus a conditioned fear or hatred of anyone who refuses to toe the line.In times of war, dissenters and doubters are portrayed as cowards, traitors, fifth-columnists working on behalf of the despised enemy and during the Covid scam we were represented as irresponsible and selfish idiots, putting the lives of others at risk and perhaps following some insidious “far-right” agenda.To help impose this moral conformity, the system deploys groups which it apparently does not control and whose positions carry moral weight with certain key parts of the population.During Covid, the “left” not only echoed every part of the official narratives concerning lockdowns, social distancing and so-called vaccines, but also adopted a very aggressive stance towards dissidents, vilifying and ostracising anyone, even from their own ranks, who dared sympathise with pro-freedom protesters – as I myself experienced, in fact.During the First World War, one of the groups wheeled out to support the criminocratic agenda was a wing of the Suffragette movement.Apparently in return for agreeing to stop their militant activities, Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst were handed a government grant.Emmeline declared her support for the war effort and began to demand military conscription for British men, while Christabel Pankhurst demanded the “internment of all people of enemy race, men and women, young and old, found on these shores”. [15]And the suffragettes were among those women who handed white feathers to males not in uniform, including teenage boys as young as 16.Along with propaganda, comes censorship, considered quite normal and acceptable in times of war and justified during so-called pandemics in the name of the public good.But today the mission of the “fact-checkers” introduced during Covid is evolving into a broader attempt to defend the criminocratic agenda.With so-called “hate” laws being hurriedly rolled out all over the place, the main target seems to be those of us who have seen through the lies and propaganda, who have joined the dots to make out the shape of the long-term plan being imposed on us by duplicitous means.We are described as “conspiracy theorists”, which apparently automatically means we are “far right”. Our commitment to truth and freedom is interpreted as “hate” and identifying the leading role of the Rothschilds in the criminocratic empire amounts, necessarily it seems, to so-called “anti-semitism”.The reality is, of course, very different. It is that control of our national and international institutions, as well as of the entire industrial-financial system, has fallen, by foul means, into the hands of a veritable mafia.Because this global domination is profoundly anti-democratic and entirely illegitimate – based as it is on criminal activity and the concealment of that wrong-doing – it has to be kept secret.The criminocracy knows that there can never be clear-sighted and united opposition to its rule while people remain trapped in its tricks and illusions and fail to even recognise its existence, let alone start talking about how to bring it down. Our most important first task is therefore to expose its activities, to break down the multiple walls of its defences, to ignore its threats and taboos and to shout from the rooftops what it is and what it is doing to us.[Audio version] NOTESFor more detailed discussion of these subject matters, and full references, see my essay ‘A crime against humanity: The Great Reset of 1914-1918’ and my booklet Enemies of the People: The Rothschilds and their corrupt global empire.[1] Klaus Schwab, Thierry Malleret, Covid-19: The Great Reset (Geneva: WEF, 2020), e-book. Edition 1.0, 63%.[2] Gerry Docherty and Jim Macgregor, Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War (Edinburgh & London: Mainstream Publishing, 2013), p. 139.[3] Jim Macgregor and Gerry Docherty, Prolonging the Agony: How the Anglo-American Establishment Deliberately Extended WWI by Three-and-a-Half Years (Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2018), p. 233.[4] George H Nash, Herbert Hoover The Great Humanitarian 1914-1917, p. x, cit. Macgregor and Docherty, Prolonging the Agony, p. 202.[5] Macgregor and Docherty, Prolonging the Agony, p. 204.[6] Macgregor and Docherty, Prolonging the Agony, pp. 204-05.[7] Macgregor and Docherty, Prolonging the Agony, p. 229.[8] Macgregor and Docherty, Prolonging the Agony, p. 231.[9] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/these-countries-have-committed-the-most-aid-to-ukraine[10] https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/09/business/09rothschild.html[11] https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9309/[12] Niall Ferguson, The House of Rothschild: The World’s GreatestBanker 1849-1999 (New York: Penguin, 2000), p. 89.[13] Ferguson, p. 205.[14] Schwab, 89%, 90%[15] https://spartacus-educational.com/WpankhurstE.htm |
| History America is turning into revolutionary France Politicians are wilfully ignoring the omens MALCOM KYEYUNE |
South Africa & The Scars of Apartheid – all is not forgiven.
| When South Africa transitioned to democracy in 1994, after the activist Nelson Mandela and his party, the African National Congress, helped topple the apartheid regime that had been in place for nearly half a century, Mandela and the ANC made a choice: to avert a brewing race war through a process of truth and forgiveness. The resulting Truth and Reconciliation Commission, chaired by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, was a quasi-legal process “intended to ‘bear witness,’ record, and, when appropriate, grant amnesty to the perpetrators of crimes of apartheid,” wrote Msimang, a South African writer and political analyst. But even though the TRC “offered a chance for many families to hear the truth about what happened to their loved ones,” it “failed to address the deeper wounds of apartheid that continue to plague South Africa.” Although it was important to expose the brutality and human toll of the apartheid regime, wrote Msimang, the TRC sidestepped the structural impacts of apartheid on the millions who had been systematically dispossessed, forced to relocate, and deprived of basic democratic rights and economic opportunities. As a result, “the power imbalances that defined race relations under apartheid continue to exist.” In South Africa today, she wrote, “many look back on the process as a carefully managed stage show—a piece of theater concerned with the appearance of truth-telling rather than the substance of what the truth actually means.” Indeed, on Wednesday, May 29, South Africans displayed their dissatisfaction with the status quo at the ballot box in a historic vote that brought the ANC’s 30 years of dominance to an end. Polls show that many South Africans believe their country is heading in the wrong direction, pointing to high rates of crime, unemployment, and inequality. Msimang saw the writing on the wall in 2018, arguing that from the start, the ANC had “failed to ensure that the new South Africa was not simply a new democratic polity but a country genuinely committed to economic justice and equality.” For as long as entrenched economic inequality persists, she warned, “the deferred dream of reconciliation festers like a sore.” |
Why is the far-right vote surging in the European elections?
The rise of the far right is the product of the systematic disenfranchisement of the workers by nationalist, bureaucratic organizations that the media and the ruling class promote as the “left.”
Spain’s Revolutionary Left group calls for freeing of Bogdan Syrotiuk
On Saturday, the Revolutionary Left (IR) group posted a statement calling for the freedom of Bogdan Syrotiuk—a Trotskyist opponent of the fascistic Zelensky regime, and the NATO-instigated Ukraine-Russia war, now threatened with life imprisonment.
The Conference sought to politically disarm workers and youth by obscuring the link between the Ukraine war and the Gaza genocide and by downplaying the criminal responsibility of the imperialist powers.
“The volumes are unbelievable and we keep having restructures. The depot I work at now had a restructure and we lost two routes and gained a supervisor. How does that happen?”
Workers Struggles: The Americas
Mexican police attacked striking teachers while the Amalgamated Transit Union called off a strike by 12,000 Toronto Transit Commission subway and bus drivers.
Hunter Biden guilty of all charges in gun trial
Bernd Debusmann & Madeline Halpert
BBC News in Delaware court & New York
- Published11 June 2024, 16:27 BST
Updated 5 hours ago
Hunter Biden has been found guilty on all three charges in his federal gun trial, becoming the first son of a sitting US president to be criminally convicted.
Prosecutors said Biden, 54, lied about his drug use on a federal form when he bought a handgun in 2018.
Biden pleaded not guilty, claiming he was in recovery from drug addiction at the time and therefore did not lie on the gun application form.
A panel of 12 Delaware jurors reached their verdict after about three hours of deliberations.
Biden showed little emotion as he learned his fate. He stared ahead with arms folded before turning around to hug some of the associates on his legal team.
He faced two charges related to lying about his drug use on a federal background check, and one for possessing a gun while addicted to or using drugs.
Once court was adjourned, he kissed and embraced his wife before walking out of the room, escorted by Secret Service agents.
- The struggles and scandals of Hunter Biden
- What the conviction means for the son Joe Biden
- Why Hunter Biden was on trial
Biden said in a statement that he was “disappointed by the outcome”, but “grateful today for the love and support I experienced this last week from Melissa, my family, my friends, and my community”.
Experts say it is possible Biden could face prison time – although it would be highly unlikely for him to receive the maximum sentence of 25 years.
The three gun charges all relate to Biden’s purchase of a Colt Cobra Special revolver at a Delaware gun store in October 2018, which he kept for about 11 days.
The gun was later discovered in his truck and discarded by his then-girlfriend Hallie Biden – the widow of his brother Beau – in a rubbish bin outside a shop.
Her decision, which she testified was “stupid”, set off a chaotic series of events that resulted in a criminal investigation and, ultimately, the guilty verdict.
Biden has been candid in the past about his “full-blown addiction” to crack cocaine, including in his memoir.
During the trial, prosecutors used portions of the book – in audiobook format, in Biden’s own voice – to highlight his painful descent into addiction and multiple failed attempts at recovery.
Jurors also heard from his ex-wife and a former girlfriend, Zoe Kestan, who described long crack binges at luxury hotels across the country.
The two false statement charges stemmed from allegations that he lied about his drug use on a federally mandated form when he bought the weapon.
Prosecutors said he falsely claimed he was “not an unlawful user of and addicted to any stimulant narcotic drug”.
The third count was related to possessing a firearm while using drugs.
June 11th 2024
On To A Good Thing
At D-Day commemoration, Biden recklessly inflames war with Russia
This week, the leaders of the imperialist powers used the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings to pledge a major escalation of the US-NATO war against Russia, threatening to once more plunge humanity into world war.
| On June 3, the Ukrainian government banned the World Socialist Web Site across the country, issuing an order commanding all internet service providers to block access to the WSWS indefinitely. The order was issued by the Ukrainian State Special Communications Service (SSSCIP), a wing of the country’s military-intelligence apparatus. It instructs “providers of electronic communication networks and/or services to implement access restriction (block access) on own recursive DNS servers to domain name (as well as its subdomains) wsws.org.” The order has no end date, and will last “until the termination or abolition of martial law in Ukraine.” The SSSCIP claims the ban is justified under President Vladimir Zelensky’s February 24, 2022, declaration of martial law, which suspended democratic rights across the country. Order by the Ukrainian State Special Communications Service banning the WSWS The order banning access to the World Socialist Web Site exposes as lies all claims that the US-led war in Ukraine is being waged in the name of “democracy.” The reality is Ukraine is a dictatorship where the government is politically dependent on fascists who idolize the Holocaust. The decision to ban the WSWS is a response to the outpouring of support within Ukraine and internationally for Bogdan Syrotiuk, a 25-year-old socialist internationalist who was arrested by the Zelensky regime on April 25 on trumped-up charges of “high treason” for writing articles for the WSWS, which SBU prosecutors (Ukraine’s domestic intelligence agency) deceitfully claim is “Russian propaganda.” Syrotiuk and the organization to which he belongs, the Young Guard of Bolshevik-Leninists (YGBL), are Trotskyists and inveterate opponents both of the US/NATO war against Russia as well as the capitalist government of Vladimir Putin. |
| Sign petition There is compelling evidence that the Ukrainian government’s decision to ban the WSWS was made in consultation with the Biden administration. The Ukrainian State Special Communications Service—the institution from which the order to ban the WSWS derived—is a long-term partner of the United States government. In July 2022 the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA—a component of DHS) signed an agreement with SSSCIP “to strengthen collaboration on shared cybersecurity priorities” which “expands upon CISA’s existing relationship with the government of Ukraine.” CISA Director Jen Easterly said the agreement “allowed us to really focus on how do we effectively share information, best practices, exercise together, train together, figure out how to hunt for adversary activity.”There is not a shred of evidence to support the claim that Syrotiuk or the WSWS are supporters of the Russian government. On the contrary, the prosecuting documents rely entirely on articles by Syrotiuk and the WSWS denouncing the US/NATO war, exposing the role of fascists in the Ukrainian government, warning of the danger of nuclear escalation, and calling for the unity of the Russian and Ukrainian working class against both governments.The campaign to free Syrotiuk has garnered widespread international attention, and the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)—which publishes the WSWS—has established a defense committee to coordinate the global campaign demanding his freedom. A video originally published on Twitter/X by WSWS Editorial Board Chairman David North has been viewed well over 140,000 times, and thousands of people from across the world have signed the petition demanding Syrotiuk’s release. Prominent artists, political groups, journalists and public figures internationally have called on the Ukrainian government to liberate Syrotiuk and drop all charges against him.The WSWS urges all readers to sign the petition demanding Syrotiuk’s liberation, circulate it on social media, get active in the campaign to oppose the widening assault on freedom of speech, issue statements condemning the prosecution and the decision to ban the WSWS.Lastly, we ask that you donate as much as you can to help the WSWS fight this censorship. Donate |
Unaccountable Fake Democracies Every community deserves answers and accountability. Yet there has been a net loss of 2,886 local U.S. newspapers since 2005.1 Those that have survived are smaller and often lack the resources needed to produce time-consuming investigative reporting projects. But ProPublica is different, thanks to readers like you. As a nonprofit newsroom, we don’t depend on advertising or short-term investors. Our work is supported largely by donations from individuals, and over the past few years, we’ve grown significantly. For us, that growth comes with a responsibility: to help fill undeniable gaps in deep-dive journalism all over the country. Through our new 50 State Initiative, ProPublica will bring world-class accountability journalism back to every state in the country. ProPublica has spent the past seven years refining our approach to local journalism. In 2017, we opened our first regional office, in Illinois, and in the years that followed, we opened hubs in the Midwest, South, Southwest, Northwest and Texas. In 2018, we launched the Local Reporting Network to empower under resourced outlets to pursue accountability reporting. Through the LRN, ProPublica funds the work of a local reporter for at least a year and provides them with editorial guidance and resources through every step of the investigative process. ProPublica has since partnered with more than 70 media organizations to produce over 90 projects across 35 states. In “State of Disrepair: Inside Idaho’s Crumbling Schools,” ProPublica partnered with the Idaho Statesman to investigate why Idaho spends less, per student, on schools than any other state and how restrictive policies created a funding crisis that’s left rural schools with collapsing roofs, deteriorating foundations and freezing classrooms. Spurred by our reporting, the Idaho Legislature approved $2 billion for school districts to repair and replace aging and overcrowded buildings — an amount they said would mark the largest investment in school facilities in state history. Citing our reporting, Gov. Brad Little said in his January State of the State address that he wanted to make funding for school facilities “priority No. 1.” In our “America’s Dairyland: Risking Workers’ Lives for the Milk We Drink” series, co-published with USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin and El Faro, we examined the cruel and often inhumane conditions facing Wisconsin’s immigrant dairy farm workers. Our reporting revealed how a grammatical mistake in Spanish contributed to officials wrongly blaming a Nicaraguan dairy worker for killing his young son in a farm accident, showed the consequences on the dairy industry of a state law that bars undocumented immigrants from driving and exposed how workers are often fired and evicted from their homes when they are hurt at work, among other issues. In all, the yearlong series of stories brought to light the horrors and tragedies of Wisconsin’s dairy industry. In November, elected officials in Dane County, Wisconsin, approved an $8 million fund for farmworker housing. Separately, the sheriff’s office there drafted a proposed policy on how to respond to incidents involving residents with limited English proficiency, and it’s now working with the Justice Department on its first-ever written policy. We know that local news is essential, and there are critical stories worth telling, but we need to invest in the infrastructure to support sophisticated investigative reporting. Without it, communities lose unbiased information to hold their local officials and institutions accountable, and we miss local political and economic trends that often have national repercussions. ProPublica staff, partnerships and tools help fill the gap in local investigative reporting, catalyzing ambitious, community-driven journalism that sparks change. And we’re just getting started. Help us strengthen the ability of investigative journalism to right wrongs in every corner of this country by making a donation of any amount right now. As a reader of ProPublica, you know how important it is for journalists everywhere to have the freedom, resources and ability to pursue stories that shine a light on corruption, miscarriages of justice and other wrongdoing. We’re so grateful to our supporters for giving us the ability to make a difference where it’s most needed. I’m asking you to join us today with your donation of any amount and help power one of the largest teams of investigative journalists in the country. Thanks so much, Jill Shepherd Proud ProPublican |
June 10th 2024
| WORDS OF WISDOM |
| “No man can ever be secure until he has been forsaken by Fortune.” |
| BOETHIUS |
President Joe Biden confused Iraq and Ukraine while speaking to reporters over the weekend in France. Biden spoke to reporters at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery in Belleau, France, on Sunday following his trip to Normandy to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day.
Joe Biden Confuses Ukraine and Iraq – Newsweek
Comment Biden is not fit to be President except in a Woody Allen movie where he could be run over and cloned from his nose.
R J Cook
Some of F-16s transferred to Kiev to be deployed outside …TASShttps://tass.com › politics
5 hours ago — Some of the F-16 fighter jets that Kiev expects from the Western countries will be deployed at safe airfields outside Ukraine, Sergey Golubtsov, …
Plan to Protect F-16s from Russian Attacks Revealed by …Newsweekhttps://www.newsweek.com › …
11 hours ago — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in May that Kyiv needs between 120 and 130 F-16s to combat Russia’s air force. Kyiv’s NATO backers …
An explosion at an armaments factory in Poland has caused fire, killing one person and injuring several more, RMF radio reported on Monday. The blast at the Mesko plant happened at its rocket fuel center, the broadcaster said on its website, citing the company’s official.
Explosion in Polish weapons factory leaves one dead
MOSCOW, June 10 (Reuters) – Russian politicians gloated on Monday over heavy defeats for the parties of French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in European Parliament elections, and the Kremlin said right-wing parties were on the rise in Europe
Russian politicians revel in EU election defeats for Macron …
Spin operations disguised as news outlets and right-wingers muddy the waters with Kremlin narratives, experts say.
Comment Who are these experts ? Only morons believe western elite media doesn’t spin. Only the morons believe that U.S elections are democratic and that prosecuting Donald Trump is nor a political witch hunt.
R J Cook
Putin warns Russia could provide weapons to strike West
George Wright
BBC News
Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that Moscow could arm countries with a view to attacking Western targets.
Mr Putin made the statement while criticising the West’s delivery of long-range weapons to Ukraine.
Several countries including the United States have given Ukraine the green light to strike targets inside Russia.
Such action could lead to “very serious problems”, Mr Putin told foreign reporters.
“If someone thinks it is possible to supply such weapons to a war zone to attack our territory and create problems for us, why don’t we have the right to supply weapons of the same class to regions of the world where there will be strikes on sensitive facilities of those countries?” the Russian president said.
“That is, the response can be asymmetric. We will think about it.”
He did not specify which countries Moscow could supply weapons to.
Mr Putin singled out Germany, which recently told Ukraine it was free to hit targets inside Russia with long-range German-made weapons.
“When they say that there will be more missiles which will hit targets on Russian territory, this definitively destroys Russian-German relations,” Mr Putin said.
US President Joe Biden has given Ukraine permission to use American-supplied weapons to strike targets in Russia, but only near the Kharkiv region. The White House has said Ukraine cannot use long-range ATACMS missiles on Russian soil.
Ukraine has used US weapons to strike inside Russia in recent days, a US senator and a Western official told the Associated Press on Wednesday.
Fierce fighting has been raging north-east of Kharkiv since a new Russian push across Ukraine’s northern border. Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second city, is just 30km (18 miles) from the border.
UK Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron has said it is up to Ukraine to decide how to use British weapons and insisted it has the right to strike targets on Russian territory.
Ukraine says North Korean missiles are being used inside Ukrainian territory, and Western intelligence agencies say Russia has been using Iranian-made drones in the conflict.
- What weapons are being supplied to Ukraine?
- Published14 May
- Anger in Moscow after Ukraine allowed to hit Russia with Western weapons
- Published31 May
Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Mr Putin was speaking to foreign journalists at the annual St Petersburg International Economic Forum.
He also warned that the West was wrong to assume that Moscow would never use nuclear weapons.
“For some reason, the West believes that Russia will never use it,” Mr Putin said when asked by Reuters about the risk of nuclear escalation over Ukraine.
“We have a nuclear doctrine, look what it says. If someone’s actions threaten our sovereignty and territorial integrity, we consider it possible for us to use all means at our disposal.
“This should not be taken lightly, superficially.”
Mr Putin also dismissed the idea that Russia has plans to attack Nato territory.
“You should not make Russia out to be the enemy. You’re only hurting yourself with this, you know?” Mr Putin said.
“They thought that Russia wanted to attack Nato. Have you gone completely crazy? That is as thick as this table.
Who came up with this? It is just complete nonsense, you know? Total rubbish.”
June 9th 2024
Macron calls shock French elections after far-right rout
By Michel Rose and Tassilo Hummel
June 9, 202411:30 PM GMT+1Updated an hour ago
Item 1 of 4 Paris, June 9, 2024. REUTERS/Sarah Meyssonnier
[1/4]Paris, June 9, 2024. REUTERS/Sarah Meyssonnier Purchase Licensing Rights
- Summary
- French President Macron calls snap parliament vote
- Move follows defeat to far-right RN in Europe election
- Macron risks losing control of domestic agenda
- RN’s Le Pen has eye set on 2027 presidential vote
PARIS, June 9 (Reuters) – French President Emmanuel Macron rolled the dice on his political future on Sunday, calling snap legislative elections for later this month after he was trounced in the European Union vote by Marine Le Pen’s far-right party.
Macron’s shock decision set off a political earthquake in France, offering the far-right a shot at real political power after years on the sidelines and threatening to neuter his presidency three years before it ends.
If Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) party wins a parliamentary majority, Macron would be left with little sway over domestic affairs.
Macron said the EU result was grim for his government, and one he could not ignore. In an address to the nation, less than two months before Paris hosts the Olympics, he said lower house elections would be called for June 30, with a second-round vote on July 7.
“This is an essential time for clarification,” Macron said. “I have heard your message, your concerns and I will not leave them unanswered … France needs a clear majority to act in serenity and harmony.”
Advertisement · Scroll to continue
After Macron’s announcement, a few hundred anti-far-right protesters gathered at Paris’ Place de la Republique, waving flags for green and leftist groups and chanting against the RN.
Led by telegenic 28-year-old Jordan Bardella, the RN won about 32% of the vote in Sunday’s vote, more than double the Macron ticket’s 15%, according to exit polls. The Socialists came within a whisker of Macron, with 14%.
Le Pen, widely seen as the frontrunner for the 2027 election in which Macron is unable to stand, welcomed his decision.
“We are ready to take over power if the French give us their trust in the upcoming national elections,” she said at a rally.
Macron’s Renaissance party currently has 169 lower house lawmakers, out of a total of 577. The RN has 88.
If the RN wins a majority, Macron would still direct defence and foreign policy, but would lose the power to set the domestic agenda, from economic policy to security.
“Emmanuel Macron is a poker player, we’ve seen that tonight,” said Green Party lawmaker Sandrine Rousseau.
UNCOMFORTABLE ‘COHABITATION’
Teneo, a consultancy, said “Macron has called an election he might lose.”
It said his ultimate “goal might be to bring an RN victory forward in time to expose the party’s lack of experience in government and make them confront politically painful decisions ahead of the 2027 presidential election.”
Olivier Blanchard, a former International Monetary Fund official who is now at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said Macron had made the best of a weak hand.
“Either the incoherence of the RN program becomes clear during the campaign and it loses the election. Or the RN wins, gets to govern and quickly makes a mess of it,” he wrote on X.
Macron’s gambit has echoes of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s move to call a snap national election last year after the far right thrashed his party in local government polls.
Sanchez managed to retain power but only after months of wrangling with regional parties and a controversial deal to offer an amnesty to Catalan separatists.
France has known so-called “cohabitation” periods before, when the president is from a different political party than the parliamentary majority. In such cases, the majority party’s prime minister becomes France’s top domestic decision-maker.
In the last such period, from 1997-2002, President Jacques Chirac played second fiddle to Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin.
The euro slipped to its lowest level in around a month in early trading in Asia, reflecting the uncertainty.
Macron’s decision underlined what was a grim night for centrist parties across Europe, with Eurosceptic nationalists making the biggest gains in the European Parliament vote.
SUCCESSION BATTLE HEATS UP
Le Pen’s strong electoral showing, notching a 10-point increase on her 2019 EU result, is likely to lure conservative rebels to the RN, a party with a clear sense of momentum.
On Sunday night, Le Pen’s niece Marion Marechal, a political ally of Eric Zemmour and his far-right Reconquete party, said she was prepared to meet with her aunt to explore a pact.
“A right-wing coalition to me seems more necessary than ever,” Marechal said.
Le Pen’s ascent is also likely to turbocharge the centrist succession battle to replace Macron.
Several big names – including Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin, former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, the current one, Gabriel Attal, and Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire – are all eager to take the top job, political sources say.
“We’ll have to do some soul-searching and explain to the French why we haven’t been able to listen to them enough,” Darmanin said in comments prior to Macon’s announcement.
Sunday’s results also saw the resurgence of the French centre-left, with Socialist candidate Raphael Glucksmann, a pro-Ukraine moderate, who won some 14%. His strong showing will embolden the Socialists, who had faced electoral oblivion after Macron’s 2017 election win.
Macron Should Be Gone by R J Cook.
Macron devrait partir
Comment
Macron should be called Napoleon IV – note there was no Napoleon II. Lockdown had no role in defeating Covid 19. Covid was basically another version of influenza. The virus particularly thretened ethnic minorities for life syle and genetic reasons. The terrified of dying baby boomer elderly were used as a foil to hide a reality compounded by mass immigration. The Yellow Vests were criminalised and routed by this device and have not been heard of since.
Europe has millions of indigenous white people, as does the U.S.A. They know the fake democrat elitists have only lies and propaganda to direct voters to the liberal politically correct elite’s selection of ‘democratic’ consensus candidate choices.
The complacent comfortable rich created conditions for World War Two and they are doing it again. Millions of people have no hope. Mass immigration has destroyed Europe’s social fabric. Multi Culture is dogmatic social solidarity drivel where white Europeran culture is supposed to give way to rappers and women’s studies.
So white men are designated privileged wife abusing sexists, creating a one parent feminist family culture, astronomical divorce rates as women rush to find themselves, with little boys wanting to be virtuous females like their mothers.
So these little white boys have the options of being denigrated as future female abusers, gays, or worst of all, TRANSSEXUALS. Failing that there is the increasingly popular suicide option if the anti psychotics fail. Those young whites who pursue the idea of traditional masculinity are the most likely to see what is glibly referred to as ‘far right’ as the only means of defending their historic cultural identity, holdiing back Islam and the emascualting TERF feminism.
“Robert, you used to be such a nice little boy.”
R J Cook
June 8th 2024
Confident Putin warns Europe is ‘defenceless’
Steve Rosenberg
Russia editor
Reporting from
St Petersburg
- Published7 June 2024
Ever since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Moscow has been engaged in nuclear sabre-rattling, dropping a series of not-so-subtle hints that trying to defeat a nuclear power like Russia could have disastrous consequences for those who try.
Today President Putin claimed that Russia wouldn’t need to use a nuclear weapon to achieve victory in Ukraine.
He was being interviewed at a panel discussion at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum: the annual event often described as ‘Russia’s Davos’.
There are few occasions when Mr Putin looks dovish compared to the person asking him the questions.
But when the person asking the questions is Sergei Karaganov it would be hard not to. Mr Karaganov is a hawkish Russian foreign policy expert. Last year he called for a pre-emptive nuclear strike. Today he suggested holding a “nuclear pistol” to the temple of the West over Ukraine.
President Putin wasn’t so extreme in his language.
But he is no dove.
The Kremlin leader said he did not rule out changes to Russia’s nuclear doctrine: the document which sets out the conditions under which Russia would use nuclear weapons.
“This doctrine is a living tool and we are carefully watching what is happening in the world around us and do not exclude making changes to this doctrine. This is also related to the testing of nuclear weapons.”
And he delivered a warning to those European countries who’ve been supporting Ukraine: Russia’s has “many more [tactical nuclear weapons] than there are on the European continent, even if the United States brings theirs over.”
“Europe does not have a developed [early warning system],” he added. “In this sense they are more or less defenceless.”
Tactical nuclear weapons are smaller warheads designed to destroy targets without widespread radioactive fallout.
This has been a surreal week in St Petersburg. On the one hand, a huge international economic forum has been taking place , sending the message that Russia is ready for cooperation and that, despite everything, it’s business as usual.
Clearly, though, it is not business as usual. Russia is waging war in Ukraine, a war which is now in its third year; as a result, Russia is the most heavily sanctioned country in the world.
And, right now, tensions are soaring between Russia and the West.
Earlier this week, at a meeting with international news agency chiefs in St Petersburg, President Putin suggested that Russia might supply advanced conventional long-range weapons to others to strike Western targets.
This was his response to Nato allies allowing Ukraine to strike Russian territory with Western-supplied weapons.
He repeated the idea again today.
“We are not supplying those weapons yet, but we reserve the right to do so to those states or legal entities which are under certain pressure, including military pressure, from the countries that supply weapons to Ukraine and encourage their use on Russian territory.”
There were no details. No names.
So, to which parts of the world might Russia deploy its missiles?
“Wherever we think it is necessary, we’re definitely going to put them. As President Putin made clear, we’ll investigate this question,” Vladimir Solovyov, one of Russian state TV’s most prominent hosts, tells me.
“If you are trying to harm us you have to be pretty sure we have enough opportunities and chances to harm you.”
“In the West some will say we’ve heard this sabre-rattling before,” I respond, “and that it’s a bluff.”
“It’s always a bluff. Until the time when it is not,” Mr Solovyov replies. “You can keep thinking that Russia is bluffing and then, one day, there is no more Great Britain to laugh at. Don’t you ever try to push the Russian bear thinking that ‘Oh, it’s a kitten, we can play with it.”
- Anger in Moscow after Ukraine allowed to hit Russia with Western weapons
- Published31 May
- Russia to hold nuclear drills following ‘threats’ from West
- Published6 May
CEOs from Europe and America used to flock to the St Petersburg International Economic Forum. Not any more. Instead I saw delegations from Asia, Africa, the Middle East and South America. Russia has been using this year’s event to try to show that, despite Western sanctions, there are plenty of countries in the world who are ready to do business with Russia.
And what have we learnt in St Petersburg about Vladimir Putin?
That he sounds increasingly confident and determined not to back down. He seems to believe that in the current standoff between Russia and the West, it is the West that will blink first.
Comment The above has the usual sneering smug BBC editorial bias, carrying the message not to worry because Vladimir Putin is delusional. Reality is that the west are delusional. Western puppet master fat cats are protecting their multi billion investment and corrupt economic system. Russia is protecting its homeland from being raped, ravaged, dumbed down and divided up by corrupt greedy western capitalism and its NATO army. God help the world and forget all the unctious clap trap about D Day.
R J Cook
Four hostages rescued from Gaza, as hospitals say scores killed in Israeli strikes
Hostages freed but scores of Palestinians killed – a recap of today
We’re soon going to be bringing our live page to a close, but before we do here’s a recap of what happened today:
- Four hostages kidnapped by Hamas from the Nova music festival on 7 October have been rescued by the Israeli military during a day-time operation in central Gaza
- Noa Argamani, 25, Almog Meir Jan, 22, Andrei Kozlov, 27 and Shlomi Ziv, 41 were freed from two seprate buildings in Nuseirat in what the Israeli military said was a “high-risk, complex” mission in the densely-populated area of Nuseirat
- Scores of Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes in and around the area of the operation. The al-Aqsa and al-Awda hospitals said they had counted 70 bodies between them, while the Hamas government’s media office has put the death toll at 210. The Israeli defence ministry body in charge of civilian policy in the occupied West Bank and Gaza estimate there were under 100 casualties
- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called for an emergency UN Security Council session to discuss what he called “the bloody massacre that was carried out by the Israeli forces”
- World leaders, including US President Joe Biden, France’s Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz have welcomed the news of the hostage rescue.
God Save America – Vote Donald Trump.
| GET YOUR ‘GOD BLESS AMERICA’ TRUMP BADGE |
| Make America Great Once Again |
| Hurry! Limited Left In Stock! |
| GET STARTED |
Read This Book
June 6th 2024
https://tass.com/economy/1799895
Today’s D-Day celebration: An exercise in political propaganda and historical falsification
The imperialist powers are gathering to celebrate their defeat of Nazi Germany even as they have embraced the methods and war aims of the Third Reich.
Far Right Terrifies Liberal Elite – Don’t Worry, Democracy Will Always Win.
Any breach with the nauseatingly smug elite and bourgeoise consensus has to be called ‘far right’ to cover the fact that the real authioritarian power & land grabbing fascists are already in conttol of what they like to call ‘western style democracies’. This is what Russia has good reason to be afraid of. So do their Chinese, North Korean, Middle Eastern and Global South friends and allies. India and Pakistan also have cause for concern given the western elite’s treatment of Modi and Imran Khan..
R J Cook
The far right is set to gain seats in this week’s European Parliament elections, but internal disputes among many nationalist groups will limit their influence and might offer mainstream parties some breathing space.
The Alternative for Germany (AfD) in particular has suffered a number of setbacks in the past few weeks.
A series of scandals shook the party, ranging from a conference on the planned deportation of asylum seekers and naturalized Germans to a bribery and spying affair, which tainted the party’s lead European Union candidate, Maximilian Krah, and his deputy, Petr Bystron, a member of parliament. The AfD leadership told both candidates to stop campaigning.
Even worse: Two weeks ago, French nationalist Marine Le Pen publicly distanced her National Rally (RN) from the AfD after Krah said in an interview with an Italian newspaper that not all members of the Nazi SS paramilitary organization were criminals. The Identity and Democracy alliance in the European Parliament, which includes RN, expelled the German party.
Although this move was purely symbolic, since it didn’t affect any decision making in the current EU parliament, it showed how isolated the AfD has become in Europe.
Unlike Le Pen and Italy’s far-right leader Georgia Meloni, the AfD’s co-leader, Alice Weidel, has failed to move her party more into the political mainstream. Plus, it’s unclear whether the AfD will be able to join a political group again in the newly elected EU parliament.
As a result of this series of mishaps, the AfD has lost its momentum in the polls. In the most recent national EU poll from the Insa institute, it dropped from a peak of 23 percent in July 2023 to 16 percent on June 1. But it remains the second-most popular party in Germany, ahead of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats.
Without the AfD, ID is projected to win 68 seats in the assembly, according to a polling average compiled by Europe Elects. That would be down from the December projection when it appeared on track to win 93.
In spite of the surge projected by the polls, European officials remained skeptical that the results would lead to the rightist tide that some have predicted.
Their disruptive impact would depend on whether the two main voices of these parts of the spectrum, Le Pen and Meloni, could join forces in a single group in the EU chamber, said some diplomats, who doubted that the Italian prime minister would go for that option.
The increase of the support for hardline parties against some landmark EU policies, including green rules, has come amid the rising impact of hacking and disinformation against the candidates and the EU institutions.
Some campaign officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, expected a significant increase of malware activity during the final couple of weeks.
European Commission President and EPP candidate Ursula von der Leyen’s website was one of the targets of such attacks. — Arne Delfs and Jorge Valero
Comment This is simply Bloomberg propaganda. R J Cook
Scholz admits many Germans afraid of escalation in Ukraine
Meanwhile, Olaf Scholz pointed out that “securing peace does not mean throwing away the white flag or capitulating to violence and lawlessness”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz
BERLIN, June 6. /TASS/. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has admitted that many citizens of the country are afraid of worsening of the conflict in Ukraine and assured that for him the preservation of peace is an absolute priority.
“Many citizens are afraid that there could be an escalation <…> that security and peace will be jeopardized for us as well,” he said, delivering a government statement in the Bundestag. “There is nothing naive or bad in worrying about peace. The concerns of citizens is something to be respected and taken seriously. I do this in any case,” Scholz affirmed. “As Chancellor, it is my responsibility to ensure that no child who is born in Germany will ever have to face war in our country. This is an absolute priority for me,” he assured.
Meanwhile, Scholz pointed out that “securing peace does not mean throwing away the white flag or capitulating to violence and lawlessness.” “Peace does not mean conquest,” he emphasized. “We will not allow the return of using war as a means of politics,” Scholz asserted.
Tags
US introduces visa sanctions against dozens of Georgian citizens over foreign agents bill
Putin sees no reason not to visit Kurils, because it is Russian territory
Russian President sees no reason to abstain from visiting islands
Seoul might make ‘reciprocal gesture’ in response to Putin’s words — expert
June 5th 2024
Putin’s Hidden Game in the South Caucasus
Azerbaijan’s Rise, Georgia’s Drift, and Russia’s Quest for a Gateway to Iran and the Middle East
By Thomas de Waal
June 3, 2024
Sign in and save to read later Print this article Send by email Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn Get a link Page url
Get Citation Request Reprint Permissions
On April 17, a column of Russian tanks and trucks passed through a series of dusty Azerbaijani towns as they drove away from Nagorno-Karabakh, the highland territory at the heart of the South Caucasus that Azerbaijan and Armenia had fought over for more than three decades. Since 2020, Russian peacekeepers had maintained a presence there. Now, the Russian flag that flew over the region’s military base was being hauled down.
Although it caught many by surprise, the Russian departure further consolidated a power shift that began in late September 2023, when Azerbaijan seized the territory and, almost overnight, forced the mass exodus of some 100,000 Karabakh Armenians—while Russian forces stood by. Azerbaijan, an authoritarian country that shares a border with Russia on the Caspian Sea, has emerged as a power player, with significant oil and gas resources, a strong military, and lucrative ties to both Russia and the West.
Meanwhile, the region’s other two countries, Armenia and Georgia, have been experiencing tectonic shifts of their own. In the months since Azerbaijan’s takeover of Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia, a traditional ally of Russia, has swung ever more firmly toward the West. The ruling party in Georgia is breaking with three decades of close relations with Europe and the United States and seems intent on emulating its authoritarian neighbors. In May, the Georgian parliament passed a controversial law to crack down on “foreign influence” over nongovernmental organizations—a law that derives inspiration from Russian legislation and sends Moscow a signal that it has a dependable partner on its southern border.
Stay informed.
In-depth analysis delivered weekly.
Obscured in this reordering of the South Caucasus are the complex motives of Russia itself. The region—known to Russians as the Transcaucasus—has held fluctuating strategic significance over the centuries. The imperial touch was not as heavy there as in other parts of the Russian Empire or Soviet Union. Following the end of the Soviet Union, Moscow tried to keep its leverage through manipulation of the local ethnoterritorial conflicts there, maintaining as many troops on the ground as it could.
But the war in Ukraine and the Western sanctions regime has changed that calculus. By deciding to remove troops from Azerbaijan, the Kremlin is acknowledging that economic security in the South Caucasus—for now at least—is more important than the hard variety. Russia badly needs business partners and sanctions-busting trade routes in the south. And at a time when it is increasingly squeezed by the West, it also sees the region as offering a coveted new land axis to Iran.
BAKU’S BIG PLAY
At first blush, the unilateral Russian withdrawal from Nagorno-Karabakh this spring was puzzling. For much of the past three decades, Azerbaijanis and Armenians have fought over the territory, which is situated within Azerbaijan but has had a majority ethnic Armenian population. In 2020, Azerbaijan reversed territorial losses it had suffered in the 1990s and would have captured Nagorno-Karabakh, as well, were it not for Russia’s last-minute introduction of a peacekeeping force, mandated to protect the local Armenian population. Those peacekeepers stood by, however, as Azerbaijan marched into Karabakh last September. Still, they had a mandate to stay on until 2025. As well as projecting Russian power in the region, they could also have facilitated the return of some Armenians to Nagorno-Karabakh.
Of course, for Russia, the 2,000 men and 400 armored vehicles that were transferred out of the territory provide welcome reinforcements for its war in Ukraine. But that was not the whole story. By deciding to leave the region, Russia handed Azerbaijan a triumph, allowing its military to take unfettered control of the long-contested territory. For most Armenians, it was a fresh confirmation of Russia’s abandonment. Almost immediately, observers speculated that some kind of deal had been struck between Russia and Azerbaijan.
As the largest and wealthiest of the three South Caucasus countries, Azerbaijan has profited most from Russia’s shift. It is a player in East-West energy politics, providing oil and gas that is carried by two pipelines through Georgia and its close ally Turkey to European and international markets. Sharing a border with Iran, it also serves as a north-south gateway between Moscow and the Middle East. It helps that the Azerbaijani regime—in contrast to Armenia’s democratic government—is built in the same autocratic mold as Russia’s. Ilham Aliyev, Azerbaijan’s longtime strongman president, has even deeper roots in the Soviet nomenklatura than does Russian President Vladimir Putin: his father was Heydar Aliyev, a veteran Soviet power broker who was also his predecessor as the leader of postindependence Azerbaijan, running the country from 1993 to 2003. The younger Aliyev and Putin also know how to do business together, in a relationship built more around personal connection and leadership style than on institutional ties.
Relations were not always so good. In tsarist and Soviet times, Moscow took a more overtly colonial approach toward the Muslim population of Azerbaijan, giving Russian endings to surnames and imposing the Cyrillic script on the Azeri language. Azerbaijanis still resent the bloody crackdown in 1990, when, during the last days of the Soviet Union Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev sent troops into Baku to suppress the Azerbaijani Popular Front Party, killing dozens of civilians. During much of the long-running Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Moscow gave more support to the Armenians.
After the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war, however, Russia began a new strategic tilt toward Azerbaijan. The withdrawal of peacekeepers this spring looks like the key component of a full Baku-Moscow entente. Just five days after the Russian peacekeepers left, Aliyev traveled to Moscow, where he discussed enhanced north-south connections between the two countries. After the talks, Russian Transport Minister Vitaly Savelyev said that Azerbaijan was upgrading its railway infrastructure to more than double its cargo capacity—and allow for much more trade with Russia.
For Moscow, this is all part of a race with the West to create new trade routes to compensate for the economic rupture caused by the war in Ukraine. Since the war started, Western governments and companies have been trying to upgrade the so-called Middle Corridor, the route that carries cargo from western China and Central Asia to Europe via the Caspian Sea and the South Caucasus—thereby bypassing Russia. For its part, Russia has been trying to expand its own connections to the Middle East and India via both Georgia and Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijan, thanks to its favorable geographical position and nonaligned status, has been able to play both sides. It is a central country in the Middle Corridor. It is increasing gas exports to the EU, after a deal with the European Commission in 2022. But it is also ideally positioned to trade with Russian energy exporters, too. In a report released in March, the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies suggested that Azerbaijan, working with its close ally Turkey, could help create a hub for Russian gas to reach foreign markets without sanction. And because of Azerbaijan’s growing status as the regional power broker, it also could enable Russia to realize its aims of building stronger connections to Iran.
TRAINS TO TEHRAN
A key part of Russia’s shifting ambitions in the South Caucasus is to rebuild overland transport routes to Iran. The most attractive route is the one that Azerbaijan calls the Zangezur Corridor, a projected road and rail link through southern Armenia that would connect Azerbaijan to Nakhichevan, an Azerbaijani exclave that borders both Iran and Turkey. By reopening the 27-mile route, Moscow would have a direct rail connection to Tehran, which has become an important arms supplier to Russian forces fighting in Ukraine.
In fact, this north-south axis would effectively revive what was known as the Persian Corridor during World War II—a road-and-rail route running north from Iran through Azerbaijan to Russia that supplied no less than half the lend-lease aid that the United States provided the Soviet Union during the conflict. By a strange twist of fate, this same axis is now vital to Moscow in its current struggle against the United States and the West.
A long-closed route through Armenia would connect Russia with Iran.
Back in November 2020, the Russians thought they had a deal to get this route open when Putin, Aliyev, and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan signed a trilateral agreement that formally halted that year’s conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh and introduced the Russian peacekeeping force. The pact included a provision calling for the unblocking of all economic and transport links in the region, and it specifically mentioned the route to Nakhichevan across Armenia. Moreover, it also stated that control over this route would be in the hands of Russia’s Federal Security Service, or the FSB.
Since then, the corridor has remained closed because Armenia and Azerbaijan could not agree on the terms of its operation. Yet Russia’s insistence that its security forces should be in control has remained constant. On his return from Moscow in April, Aliyev also alluded to this, telling an international audience that the 2020 agreement (whose other provisions are all now redundant) “must be respected.” Opening the corridor, then, may be the essence of the new deal between Azerbaijan and Russia: in return for Russia pulling its forces out of Karabakh—a step that handed the Azerbaijani leadership a major domestic victory—Azerbaijan may acquiesce to Russian security control over the planned route across southern Armenia.
If such a plan is carried out, it would amount to a coordinated Azerbaijani-Russian takeover of Armenia’s southern border—a nightmare for both Armenia and the West. The Armenians would lose control of a strategically vital border region. The United States and its Western allies would see Russia take a big step forward toward establishing a coveted overland road and rail link with Iran. Moreover, Armenia on its own lacks the capacity to prevent Russia and Azerbaijan from acting.
ARMENIAN ALIENATION
No former Russian ally has seen such a dramatic breakdown in its relations with Moscow as Armenia. The two countries have a long historical alliance built on their shared Christian religion. Russia was the traditional protector of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, and Armenians who lived in the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union tended to enjoy more upward social mobility than other non-Slavs: some of them reached the highest echelons of the Soviet elite.
But all that has changed over the past few years. Russian relations with Armenia began to cool off in 2018, when Armenia’s Velvet Revolution brought Pashinyan, a populist democrat, to power. That transition was barely tolerated in Moscow, which feared another “color revolution” bringing an unfriendly government to power on its border. After the Nagorno-Karabakh war in 2020, Moscow continued to support the Armenians, but relations were increasingly strained. For Yerevan, Azerbaijan’s seizure of the territory last fall, with Russian acquiescence, became the last straw.
As the Kremlin failed to honor its security commitments to Armenia, Pashinyan began to move his country decisively toward the West. Last fall, he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and pushed Armenia to formally join the International Criminal Court, meaning that Putin, who has an ICC arrest warrant on his head, could theoretically be arrested if he sets foot in Armenia. And in February, Pashinyan also suspended Armenia’s participation in the Russian-led military alliance, the Collective Treaty Security Organization. Some European politicians have now mooted the idea of eventual EU membership for Armenia.
With Nagorno-Karabakh removed from the equation, Pashinyan is also pressing harder to reduce his country’s dependence on Russia. Armenia has asked Russia to remove the Russian border guards who have been stationed in Armenia’s Zvartnots airport since the 1990s by August 1. Other Russian border guards who are stationed on Armenia’s borders with Iran and Turkey will stay for now, but the deployment in 2023 of an EU civil monitoring mission in southern Armenia shows where the Armenian government’s strategic preferences lie.
Armenia’s pivot to the West, however, comes at an extremely unfavorable moment. Flush with victory and benefiting from strong ties with both Russia and Turkey, Azerbaijan shows no signs of letting up its pressure on Armenia. Meanwhile, the other big regional powers around Armenia—Iran, Russia, and Turkey—are aware that the West is overextended. Despite their many differences, they have a common agenda, shared with Azerbaijan, to cut down the West’s strategic profile in the region and elevate their own. In April, for example, top U.S. and European officials in Brussels announced an economic aid package for Armenia. In response, Iran, Russia, and Turkey each issued almost identical statements deploring the West’s dangerous pursuit of “geopolitical confrontation,” by which they meant Western intervention in Armenia.
The new confrontation over Armenia is not just a matter of posturing. Pashinyan’s government has evidently concluded that its future lies with the West. Although this shift makes sense in the longer term, it carries many shorter-term risks. Armenia is overwhelmingly dependent on Russian energy and Russian trade: Moscow supplies 85 percent of its gas, 90 percent of its wheat, and all the fuel for its lone nuclear power plant, which provides one-third of Armenia’s electricity. And Armenia’s own economy is still heavily oriented toward the Russian market. These ties give Moscow enormous economic leverage; it could seek to bend the country to its will by sharply raising energy prices or curtailing Armenian trade.
Meanwhile, Armenian officials and experts fear even more direct military threats to the country’s sovereignty. One is that Azerbaijan, in coordination with Russia, has the military capacity to seize control of the Zangezur Corridor by force, if it chooses to, in a few hours. Another is that rogue domestic forces in Armenia, with foreign backing, could try to overthrow the Pashinyan government by violence or organized street protests in an effort to destabilize the country and allow a more pro-Russian government to take power.
These threats come in parallel to diplomacy. Azerbaijan continues to pursue bilateral talks with Armenia to reach a peace agreement to normalize relations between the two countries. Whether the two historic adversaries can avoid sliding back into war depends largely on the extent to which Western powers, despite their commitments in Ukraine, are prepared to invest political and financial resources to underwrite such a settlement.
GEORGIAN AMBIGUITY
As if the threat of a dangerously weakened Armenia and a new Russian-Iranian land corridor were not enough, the West also faces a growing challenge from Armenia’s neighbor Georgia. As Armenia tries to move West, the government of Georgia, a country that has enjoyed huge support from Europe and the United States since the end of the Cold War, is seemingly doing the opposite.
Post-Soviet Russia has a long history of meddling in post-Soviet Georgia, and most Georgians retain a deep antipathy to Moscow. In 2008, Georgia cut off diplomatic relations after Russian forces crossed the border and recognized the two breakaway territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent. A 2023 poll found that only 11 percent of Georgian respondents wanted to abandon European integration in favor of closer relations with Russia.
Nonetheless, the ruling Georgian Dream party—founded and funded by Georgia’s richest businessman, Bidzina Ivanishvili, and in power since 2012—is burning bridges with its Western partners. The most conspicuous feature of this shift, although not the only one, is the controversial “foreign influence” law, which seeks to limit and potentially criminalize the activities of any nongovernmental organization that receives more than 20 percent of its funding from abroad—meaning nearly all of them. The move sparked mass protests, especially from young people, who call it “the Russian law” because it mimics Moscow’s own 2012 “foreign agents” law and seems similarly designed to stifle civil society and remove checks on the arbitrary exercise of power. The law is also a slap in the face for the European Union, coming just months after Brussels formally offered Georgia candidate status and a path toward accession to the union.
Most Georgians retain a deep antipathy to Moscow.
Georgian Dream’s first priority seems to be domestic: to consolidate its own power and eliminate opposition. The party is tightly focused on trying to win—by whatever means possible—an unprecedented fourth term in office in Georgia’s October parliamentary elections. Still, the sharp anti-Western turn sends friendly messages to Russia. Another refrain of the ruling party is that it will not allow Georgia to become a “second front” in the war in Ukraine.
Just as the Azerbaijani leadership does, the men who run Georgia understand Moscow. Ivanishvili, who as Georgian Dream’s kingmaker is the country’s effective ruler, made his fortune in Russia in the 1990s and learned to win in the ruthless business environment of that era; a coterie of people around him have made plenty of money from Russia since the Ukraine war began. Moreover, Georgia has opened its doors to Russian business and banking assets, and direct flights between the two countries have resumed. The Georgian elite seems prepared to pay the cost: one insider, former Prosecutor General Otar Partskhaladze, is now under U.S sanctions.
If the Georgian opposition manages to overcome its historic divisions and win this fall—no easy task—Georgia’s pro-European trajectory will resume. But much could happen before then. Perpetual crisis in Tbilisi now seems assured for the remainder of this year, if not beyond. Neither side will back down easily. The government has lost all credit with its Western partners, yet to call on Russia for assistance would be extremely dangerous. The uncertainty adds another wild card to any larger calculations about the strategic direction of the South Caucasus.
LOSING CONTROL
Putin recognizes the value of the South Caucasus to Russia, but since 2022, he has had little time for it. Moscow has no discernable institutional policy toward the region as a whole—or for other regions beyond Ukraine. The war has accentuated the habit of highly personalized decision-making by a leader in the Kremlin who seems uninterested in consultation or detailed analysis.
This has left the region’s three countries with strikingly different approaches. Azerbaijan’s Aliyev, with his two-decade relationship with the Russian president, seems most comfortable with Putin’s way of doing business. He can also derive confidence from the strong personal and institutional support he gets from Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In the case of Georgia, with which Russia has no diplomatic relations, there are no face-to-face meetings or structured talks. (If Georgia’s de facto leader, Ivanishvili, ever met Putin, it would have been in the 1990s long before either man was a big political player.) Once again, everything is highly informal and conducted by middlemen. Here, too, business stands at the heart of a mutually beneficial relationship. Paradoxically, the one country in the region that has long-standing formal and institutional links to Russia—Armenia—is also keenest to break off the relationship.
Speculation has mounted about what Russia may be planning for Abkhazia.
All these variables make Russian behavior in the region, as elsewhere, highly unpredictable. Since Azerbaijan’s capture of Nagorno-Karabakh, speculation has mounted as to what could happen in Abkhazia, the breakaway territory bordering Russia in the northwest corner of Georgia that has been a zone of conflict since the 1990s. Could Russia move to annex it fully, thus securing a new naval base on the Black Sea? Or—as some recent rumors have suggested—could a deal similar to the one with Azerbaijan be in the offing, whereby Moscow allows Georgia to march into Abkhazia unopposed in return for Georgia renouncing its Euro-Atlantic ambitions? Either of these is theoretically possible—though it is also quite likely that Putin prefers the status quo and will continue to focus on Ukraine.
At the same time, the most obvious benefit the South Caucasus countries have derived from the post-2022 situation—a stronger economic relationship with Russia—is unstable. Close trading ties to Russia give Moscow dangerous leverage, especially in the case of Armenia and Georgia, which have fewer resources and other places to turn for support. And if Western secondary sanctions on businesses that trade with Russia are tightened, that would put a squeeze on South Caucasian intermediaries.
Not everything is going Putin’s way. Russia’s military withdrawal from Azerbaijan is a sign of weakness. So, too, arguably, is Armenia’s pivot to the West and the Georgian public’s mass resistance to what the opposition labels the “Russian law.” But if Russia looks weaker in the region, the West does not look stronger. There are significant pro-European social dynamics at work, but they face strong competition from political and economic forces that are pulling the South Caucasus in very different directions.
Last month, the Georgian government awarded the tender to develop a new deep-water port on the Black Sea at Anaklia to a controversial Chinese company. That project used to be managed by a U.S.-led consortium. In other words, Europe and the United States are competing for influence not just with Russia but also with other powers, as well. Nothing can be taken for granted in a region that is as volatile as it has ever been.
You are reading a free article.
Subscribe to Foreign Affairs to get unlimited access.
- Paywall-free reading of new articles and over a century of archives
- Unlock access to iOS/Android apps to save editions for offline reading
- Six issues a year in print and online, plus audio articles
THOMAS DE WAAL is a Senior Fellow at Carnegie Europe and the author of The End of the Near Abroad.
More:
AzerbaijanGeorgiaRussiaMiddle EastIranDiplomacyGeopoliticsForeign PolicySecurityStrategy & ConflictVladimir PutinAuthoritarianism
June 5th 2024
What did Rishi Sunak do before he entered politics?
In a 2019 interview with the BBC’s Nick Robinson, Mr Sunak talked about working in banking during the financial crisis. What did the PM actually do before entering politics?
By Josephine Franks, news reporter and Sarah Taaffe-Maguire, business reporter
Tuesday 4 June 2024 19:07, UK
When Rishi Sunak moved into Number 10 two years ago, he was described as Britain’s first hedge fund prime minister.
Sky’s Economics and Data Editor Ed Conway wrote at the time that Mr Sunak’s background makes for a CV unlike almost every other resident of Downing Street.
It was a career that started aged 21 at Goldman Sachs and saw him co-found a firm registered in the Cayman Islands.
But it is Mr Sunak’s three years at hedge fund TCI straddling the 2008 financial crash that is now being revisited.
Both the Conservatives and Labour have been releasing “attack ad” videos in the general election campaign – and the prime minister’s financial background is the subject of Labour’s latest one.
In a play on The Big Short scene in which Margot Robbie explains mortgage bonds while sipping champagne in a bubble bath, comedian Jon Richardson examines Mr Sunak’s career as he drinks beer in the bath.
He takes viewers back to 2007, when Mr Sunak was a partner at TCI, a hedge fund known for taking an “activist” shareholder approach.
The fund bought a stake in Dutch bank ABN Amro – 2% according to Labour’s video and “more than 1%” according to a 2007 letter from the fund.
Despite what may seem a small stake, it used its influence to demand the bank sold up – ultimately to the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS).
Advertisement
“RBS paid billions for the bank – and in the process inherited a shedload more sub-prime mortgage assets,” Richardson says.
With RBS saddled with debt, the deal contributed to its near collapse and meant it required a taxpayer bailout to the tune of £45.5bn.
Richardson claims Mr Sunak “made millions from a deal that helped trigger the financial crash – and all at the expense of the British taxpayer”.
The Conservatives said the video was “not correct”, describing it as a “misleading piece of Labour Party propaganda”.
With Labour telling one story and the Conservatives another, Sky News looked at publicly available records – this is what they show.
The hedge fund made almost £900m profit in the two years leading up to the financial crisis.
According to Companies House documents, it recorded £321m in profits in the year ending August 2007, Mr Sunak’s first year as a partner, and £555m the following year.
Members of the hedge fund team received £5m each on average for the two-year period.
Mr Sunak left TCI in 2009, at the age of 29. He was elected MP for Richmond (Yorks) in 2015.
What is TCI?
TCI stands for The Children’s Investment Fund and was set up by billionaire Sir Chris Hohn.
Both the founder and the company itself are renowned for their secrecy.
TCI is known for being aggressive and placing very big bets in a limited number of companies.
In 2009, Sir Chris admitted to a select committee that TCI had bet against British banks during the crash, but said it was “relatively minor”.
TCI was one of the first hedge funds to donate a portion of its fees to charity, and supports charities tackling poverty in Africa and Asia through The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation.
It severed formal connections with the foundation about a decade ago but continues to support it.
Sunak’s sleepless nights during the 2008 crash
In a 2019 interview with the BBC’s Nick Robinson, Mr Sunak talked about working in banking during the financial crisis.
“Living it was stressful,” he said.
“You are responsible for people’s savings and when that’s all kind of evaporating in front of your eyes, that’s quite a stressful thing to live through.”
The stress made for some sleepless nights, he said.
It was an “extraordinary time”, he said.
“This hadn’t happened since the 1930s, this scale of dislocation of financial markets. The speed of what was happening, the scale of what was happening was unprecedented.”
From Southhampton to California via Oxford
Born in 1980 in Southampton, Mr Sunak is the eldest of three children to his parents of Punjabi descent.
Mr Sunak’s father was a family doctor and his mother ran a pharmacy, where he helped her with the books.
He attended England’s oldest public school Winchester College where he became the first Indian-origin head boy and was editor of the school paper.
He has since said his experience at the boarding school was “intellectually transforming” and put him “on a different trajectory”.
Mr Sunak went on to study philosophy, politics and economics at Lincoln College at Oxford University, where he obtained a first-class degree.
It was the investment club rather than student politics that occupied his time when he was there, with his sights set early on a career in investment.
He was said to have already had job offers from investment banks under his belt while still in his second year at Oxford.
Mr Sunak worked for the investment bank Goldman Sachs as an analyst after graduating in 2001.
He then completed an MBA at Stanford University in California, where he met his future wife, Akshata Murty.
Read more on Sky News:
The 12 big Tory names at risk of losing their seats
General Election poll tracker
A hedge fund registered in the Cayman Islands
Mr Sunak left TCI in 2009 to cofound a hedge fund, Theleme Partners.
During the 2022 Tory leadership race, Sky News’ Kay Burley quizzed Mr Sunak on whether he had personally benefitted from tax havens.
His quick answer was “no”.
She went on to ask: “A venture capital firm Theleme Partners you co-founded was registered in the Cayman Islands, so just to clarify, did you benefit?”
Mr Sunak replied: “I have never ever benefited and have paid full, normal taxes wherever I’ve lived.
“The bit in the Cayman Islands you’re referring to I have nothing to do with. I happen to work with a company that has multiple offices all around the world, but that’s not my responsibility.”
Burley pressed him on whether he had been paid by the offshore company, which Mr Sunak again denied.
Comment What will Rishi Sunak do when he is dead ? He will lie still. Anyway at least when asked whether he would use the NHS on ITN head to head with Starmer, former head of the dysfunctional Crown Prosecution Service, Sunak said a resounding ‘No.’
R J Cook
National Service: here’s what you need to know about the history of Brits being conscripted into the Armed Forces
When and why were Britons conscripted into the Armed Forces, and what were national servicemen expected to do? Find out more about the system that saw more than two million men were conscripted into the British Armed forces…
R J Cook
Most-Read Articles
June 4th 2024
Why India’s Modi failed to win outright majority
India correspondent
Indian PM Narendra Modi has won a third consecutive term in a much tighter general election than anticipated.
His Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) looks set to fall short of a majority and is leading in the 543-seat parliament, below the required 272 seats. However its coalition partners have gained additional seats.
The results are a personal blow to Mr Modi, who has always secured majorities in elections as both chief minister of Gujarat state and India’s prime minister, and dominated the country’s politics for a decade.
The verdict marks a surprising revival for the Congress Party-led INDIA opposition alliance, defying earlier predictions of its decline, and sharply diverging from both exit polls and pre-election surveys.
More than 640 million people voted in a marathon seven-week election, hailed as a “world record” by election authorities. Nearly half of the voters were women.
Divide & Fool India by R J Cook
Comment Western elite and their media, notably the BBC – who with every bulletin – proudly announce they broadcast across the world with their rival CNN – have worked hard to portray Modi as anti Islam. India was divided along religious lines so Pakistan is not going to accept a Muslim leader and government any time soon. Britain’s patronising elite still acts as if it knows best what is best for the Indian sub continent.
It is the same connundrum the U.S led global elite face in Israel and Gaza. The British wealthy and powerful elite treated their own people worse than slaves for centuries. They built an empire on divide and rule politics, shedding the blood of their lower orders and compliant natives to keep control. Cynically the British stoked up religious differences between Hindus and Muslims, hence the famous Indian Mutiny of 1857. Britain’s ruling classes have a history of exploiting brutal religious rivalries between Catholics and Protestants – and dissenters.
Those of us growing up in the 1950s and 1960s saw the demise of religious bigotry and tyranny, in the name of the very gentle Jesus Christ, as progress. The Romans learned the lesson that it was better to stop throwing Christians to the Lions, then invent the tyrannical Roman Catholic Church, leading to equally tyrannical spin offs, Protestants and Muslims.
The U.K ruling elite saw the decline of their Anglican High Church, with all its hyprocrisy and corruption, with fear because it had successfully dumbed down rebellion and so promoted social solidarity through fear.
With such a massive U.K Muslim influx and their high birth rates, the U.K ruling elite are working to a plan. This elite are members of a global club of plutocrats. They see support for Islam as a source of votes for their politcal interests. More impotantly this elite want to bring back organised religion. Islam is their way forward. Virtually any form of State supervised and endorsed religion will do. They do however think that Islam will be open to reform and so take its place in U.K’s absurd conflict riven Multi Culture.
Absurdly, Muslims have, like J K Rowling and the TERFSm have big issues with transsexuals. So along comes smooth talking U.K devout Hindu Prime Minister and Rishi Sunak pandering to Islam for their votes. Along with this Sunak panders to TERF feminists and their white man hating attitude to Transsexuals. According to Sunak’s policies, transsexual female will be humiliated ostarcised members of a freak show.
Modi is no fool. India is a big country. The West didn’t like old rival Pakistan’s leader Imran Khan because he did an ill fated energy deal with Russia. So they used their vile CIA and MI6 influence for trumped up treason charges. When that failed, they had him for an illegal marriage, in their sick oppressive view. Low Caste Modi knows what is going on. He sees all the chaos and corruption is not a way forward for India. The Anglo Americans don’t like his attitude to Anglo U.S NATO led Ukraine proxy war or anything else. They hate how he has lifted millions of Indians out of poverty. Western Governments have spent a fortune, as they have done in Russia and Belorus, targeting impressionable voters, especially young women, on to western style issues like freedom, demcracy and feminism.
Like Khan and Modi, Trump has to be stopped. Prissy comfortable BBC reporters could not hide their dislike for the lefties sacred ANC defeat in South Africa because they have been a western proxy since 1990, in the sacred lefty loving name of Nelson Mandella. South Africa has been a disaster and basket case ever since. That disaster has kept South Africa vulnerable to western capitalist exploitation, ignorance, and religious bigotry ever since.
White liberal virtue signallers love it because when the younger African population up and leave under the Asylum Seeker banner. The western global rich love the immigrant cheap labour and the chance to denigrate any white objectors who have to pay the bills and adapt to the newcomers’ culture. Modi doesn’t want this for India, but the west, espscially Britain, does not.
The Anglo U.S Global elite want control of the world. They don’t want an India on the rise. They are promoting Islam in India to hold it back. They want the old ‘divide and fool’ or should I say ‘divide and fool’ days back.
R J Cook
Managing Media Organisations
By Lucy Küng-ShanklemanCopyright 2000
Inside the BBC and CNN provides a unique insight into two of the world’s best-known media organisations, during a period of great change and new challenges. The BBC and CNN have very different histories, remits and identities, but both must now compete to provide news in a media environment being reshaped by increasing competition, globalisation, digitisation and convergence. In addition they face increasing pressures of criticism focussed on the struggle for ratings and the perceived “dumbing down” of programming.
Drawing on intensive research carried out among senior managers in both organisations, Lucy Küng-Shankleman’s study explores the beliefs and attitudes that shape management priorities and broadcasting policy. More controversially, it examines how each organisation’s distinct cultural beliefs – about broadcasting’s fundamental purpose, about the nature of competition, and about the relationship between competition and quality – have laid the foundations for their current and past success, but could now threaten to limit their ability to respond to the unprecedented changes underway in the world’s media landscape.
| Weekend Essay |
| Trump is Hillary Clinton’s spirit animal The pair have more in common than you think |
Trump’s conviction in New York and the 2024 crisis election
Much will transpire over the five months remaining until the November election. It is possible that neither Trump nor Biden will end up as the candidates of the two corporate-controlled parties. But one thing is certain, the political system as a whole will continue its lurch to the right.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/28268078/putin-troops-video-ukrainian-pows-un/
Your info will be used in accordance with our Privacy Policy
As the Ukrainian soldiers marched in a row – gripping onto each others’ shoulders – the five Russian troops tried to make them sing the Soviet national anthem.
One cruel captor kicked the leading Ukrainian in the groin, causing him to fall to the ground, where he was then kicked in the head.
A Russian soldier, reportedly a paratrooper, demanded that the fallen PoW get up, then said: “Looks like we’re gonna have to kill him.
“Do we have to kill him? Hey, get up, get up.”
Biden walks difficult tightrope as son’s gun trial begins
Anthony Zurcher
North America correspondent
Reporting from
Washington
As jury selection in Hunter Biden’s gun possession trial began on Monday, his father released a statement that illustrated the fine line he is trying to walk in the midst of his re-election campaign.
“I am the president, but I am also a dad,” said Joe Biden.
His statement goes on to express support for his son, who could face up to 25 years in prison for allegedly lying about his drug addiction when filling out background documents for a 2018 handgun purchase.
“As president, I don’t and won’t comment on pending federal cases,” he continues. “But as a dad, I have boundless love for my son, confidence in him and respect for his strength.”
Hunter Biden’s struggles with drug addiction are common knowledge at this point. He has discussed them publicly and written about them in his memoir – revelations that will soon act as evidence in his trial and fodder for public consumption.
Joe Biden has previously publicly addressed his son’s tumultuous personal life. In the first presidential debate with Donald Trump in 2020, he said he was “proud” of his only surviving son.
“My son, like a lot of people you know at home, had a drug problem,” he said. “He’s overtaken it. He’s fixed it. He’s worked on it.”
Four years ago, President Biden was responding to Trump’s attacks on the debate stage. Now, however, his statement could be an attempt to defuse what is shaping up to be a politically fraught moment, where his son’s troubled past – and, by extension, that of the entire Biden family – will be on full display.
Hunter Biden’s ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle, is expected to testify about her former husband’s drug habit. Hallie Biden, the widow of Hunter Biden’s brother Beau – with whom Hunter would later be romantically involved and who discarded the handgun in question in a Delaware trash can – is also on the prosecution’s list of witnesses.
“It’s definitely not a good look,” says Kate Andersen Brower, who has written several books on US presidents, their families and first ladies. She says presidents have had to deal with family turmoil in the past. Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter faced sibling embarrassments, for instance.
For a president’s child to face a criminal trial is completely unprecedented, however, and it has left the elder Biden walking a tightrope.
He spent time with his son in Delaware this weekend, and he stayed in Wilmington – where the trial will take place – on Sunday night. During jury selection on Monday, the Biden family was well represented.
But the president had already returned to Washington by then. While he has noted his support for his son, he is also keeping his distance from the case itself.
But First Lady Jill Biden attended and sat behind Hunter. The two embraced during a morning break in court proceedings and again after the day concluded. She was joined by Hunter’s current wife, Melissa Cohen Biden – who held his hand as he walked out of court – and his half-sister, Ashley Biden, and her husband.
Jill Biden married the president after his first wife, Hunter Biden’s mother, died in a 1972 car accident in which Hunter and Beau were injured. The accident also took the life of their infant sister, Naomi.
The president regularly speaks about the closeness of his family – and has made this devotion part of his political identity.
He talks about how he would take the train home from Washington to Delaware each night as a US senator so he could say goodnight to his children. He wrote a book about dealing with grief following Beau Biden’s death from brain cancer in 2016 and has discussed the emotional trauma he experienced in the aftermath of his first wife’s passing.
Now, the more tawdry aspects of the Biden family story will be on public display, such as text messages between Hunter Biden and his family – including intimate communication with Beau’s widow.
There will also be photographs and other details of Hunter Biden’s crack cocaine use. Some of that was likely gleaned from laptop computer, whose existence and contents became a controversial part of the final days of the 2020 presidential election.
The Hunter Biden trial comes on the heels of one of the biggest stories of the 2024 presidential election so far – Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. While the two cases are substantially different – charges against a candidate versus a candidate’s son – the rhythm of the two trials will unavoidably lead to comparisons.
- The struggles and scandals of Hunter Biden
- Published3 days ago
- What Trump’s conviction means for the election
- Published4 days ago
At the very least, the attention focused on the Biden family drama, and Hunter Biden’s legal troubles, will shift the media focus from Trump. And the legal issues surrounding his son could make Mr Biden more reluctant to lean in to attacks on Trump’s criminal conviction.
It may also be a significant distraction for the president heading into the last campaign of his political career.
“It’s going to be very difficult on a personal level for Biden,” Brower says. “He has experience trying to wall off his personal life from his public life, but it’s his only living son. It’s got to be very taxing.”
There’s another way Hunter Biden’s legal drama differs from Trump’s. The former president’s three other criminal cases will probably not happen before November’s election.
Hunter Biden, however, is also under indictment on federal tax charges, with a trial scheduled for September.
That case, dealing with an alleged failure to pay at least $1.4m in taxes over four years, might be more politically damaging for the president, given that it involves financial crimes rather than ones connected to his drug addiction.
“Tax evasion is much harder to make excuses about,” says Bower.
If Hunter Biden is convicted in either federal trial, it is within his father’s presidential power to pardon him.
Such a move would have been politically toxic in the past, but Trump exercised his pardon authority for a slew of controversial figures who worked for him and seems to have paid little price for it.
While that is an action that Joe Biden the dad might find appealing – he has insisted his son is innocent – the White House has insisted it is not under consideration.
Comment Typically the BBC makes this story about Donald Trump rather than the Biden’s misconduct. Western media is not unspun. It is utterly biaed in favour of the Biden totem western leadership and the rush to world war against Russia. They are the planet eaters, and the authoritarians. Biden’s dubious highly profitable interest in Ukraine makes anything said about Trump seem like Kindergarten, but that case has been pullled by the Department of Justice.
R J Cook
Related Topics
June 3rd 2024
Democracy Needs Defending by R J Cook
Democracy needs defending
So please get used to war unending.
That’s the way life has to be
That’s the way to keep us free.
Can’t sing a song to stop the war
No good in that, just a bore.
Protest songs are on another page.
In the sixties they were all the rage.
We’re even better goodies now
Don’t ask questions, don’t ask how.
She bore the boy, raised him well
Now the State sends him to hell.
Here at home, the telly news
Shares all the very latest news.
Putin’s cracked and so’s his army
They’ll soon be dead and he’ll go barmy.
Does that mean he’ll send a nuke
Bomb Buckingham Palace and kill a Duke ?
Putin’s known for drunken violence
Soon there’ll be a deadly silence.
Birds won’t sing and planes won’t fly
Life on earth will simply die.
R J Cook June 3rd 2024
The US Constitution grants Congress the power to set the timing of presidential elections , but social media posts claim Joe Biden gave himself the ability …
Could Joe Biden declare a national emergency and suspend the November election?
Biden could declare a national emergency as a pretense to suspend the November elections. However, it would be a horrible idea. What would be far more effective is to declare an emergency that causes radical and unconstitutional changes to the election process and use that confusion to corrupt the election results. Imagine an election where the results confound all known bellwether indicators. An election where the top of the ticket loses but all down-ticket candidates outperform.
Either way, I’m hopeful that the American people are intolerant of these shenanigans (this time).
4 Feb 2024 — Imran Khan’s legal troubles. Since former prime minister and PTI founder Imran Khan was ousted from power in 2022, he has been convicted in four …
Pakistan’s Imran Khan acquitted of leaking state secrets
DWhttps://www.dw.com › pakistans-imran-khan-acquitted-…
Support grows in Britain for the release of Bogdan Syrotiuk: “Let his voice be heard!”
A former miner from South Yorkshire said: “To accuse Bogdan of treason is an absolute outrage. The war against Russia being fought in Ukraine is all about money and power.”
Republicans back Trump as convicted ex-president threatens “breaking point” if imprisoned
Following Trump’s conviction on Thursday, virtually every major Republican politician has attacked the trial as a sham while defending the ex-president.
For the first time since the end of the Second World War, the US and its allies are directly targeting Russian territory.
End of African National Congress hegemony: ANC vote slumps to 40 percent in South African election
The ANC’s share of the vote fell from 57 percent in the 2019 elections, itself a record low, to just 40 percent, much lower than the most pessimistic forecasts.
Germany’s housing market crisis intensifies: Exploding rents, evictions, homelessness
The state of Germany’s housing market is becoming increasingly catastrophic, with millions of households struggling with exploding rents.
France’s far right may win big in the EU elections … – AP News
That’s worrying for migrants, Macron and Ukraine. PARIS (AP) — French far-right leader Marine Le Pen isn’t on the ballot at the weekend’s European Parliament election, but she’s likely to emerge as one of its biggest winners
The attack took place during a Pax Europa event, an organisation which describes itself as informing the public about the dangers posed by …
A 29-year-old police officer, who was stabbed several times in the head and neck by a 25-year-old immigrant from Afghanistan in Manheim on …
A police officer has died from his injuries after being stabbed repeatedly during an attack at an anti-Islam rally in Germany.
Two Wrongs Don’t Make A Right by R J Cook
Comment White people in the western world, outside of the comfortable WOKE not so liberal professional and elite classes, are getting sick of taking the blame for historic imperialism and racism. Elite media nowadays ignore the ethnic and religious element in cases like this. This patronising concdescending elitist attitude is compounded by their lies about western democratic freedoms juxtaposed with poison about Russia being an authoritarian state. However bad Russia might be in certain areas, as my late father told me when I was making excuses for being naughty :”Two wrongs don’t make a right.” I expect dirty tricks to block the French so called far right, as well as the Afd and Marine LePenn.
R J Cook
Ukraine is a corrupt basket case living on foreign aid – protected by western media and political spin – R J Cook
NATO is planning to extend operations into East Asia to confront China. NATO have developed a strategy to isolate and contain China. where it has established a liason office in Japan. Britain’s Daily Telegraph today reported that ‘with Ukraine’s resources , Putin will be unstoppable. That is the bottom line. Rabies is now rife in basket case Ukraine.
Meanwhile U.K Special Forces have been directed to assist with the joint Anglo Ukraine obsession with blowing up the Kurch Bridge. That is a serious red line to cross, but they are determined to do it.
R J Cook
Why Deploying Western Special Forces to Ukraine may Help …
Special forces can also collect critical conventional warfare data from Ukraine, which now has the most battle-hardened military and is intertwined with traditional warfare throughout all allied countries.
4 days ago — NATO’s secretary general Jens Stoltenberg says Ukraine can win its war against Russia, but only if allies give “continued robust support”. Stoletenberg demands 40 billion a year of tax payer funded debt for Ukraine military support and fast tracking Ukraine into NATO.
27 Feb 2024 — Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, speaking at a conference in London, said that Russia had “struggled” in Ukraine and that its “military weakness” had …
Admiral Sir Tony Radakin is the professional head of the United Kingdom’s Armed Forces and principal military adviser to the Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Defence.
Admiral Sir Antony David Radakin, KCB, ADC is a senior Royal Navy officer. He was appointed Chief of the Defence Staff, the professional head of the British Armed Forces, in November 2021. Radakin was previously the First Sea Lord, the professional head of the Naval Service from June 2019 to November 2021
He was appointed Chief of the Defence Staff, the professional head of the British Armed Forces, in November 2021. Radakin was previously the First Sea Lord, the professional head of the Naval Service from June 2019 to November 2021. Wikipedia
Born: 10 November 1965 (age 58 years), Oldham
Education: King’s College London (2000), MORE
Spouse(s): Louise Radakin (m. 1995)
Children: 4
Awards: Order of the Bath, Legion of Merit (United States), Bronze Star Medal (United States)
Battles/wars: Iraq War
Other work: Lord High Constable of England (2023)
Dershowitz Says Trump Could Fast-Track His Appeal to Supreme Court
President Trump has vowed to appeal his guilty verdict.
| Donald Trump |
| Trump Turns Tables After Conviction |
| READ MORE SHARE* |
| Donald Trump |
| Trump Warns of ‘Breaking Point’ |
| SHARE* READ MORE |
June 2nd 2024
Zelensky accuses Russia and China of undermining summit
Tessa Wong
BBC News, Singapore
- Published2 June 2024, 11:42 BST
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused Russia and China of attempting to undermine his upcoming global peace summit in Switzerland.
He said Russia was trying to dissuade other states from attending the event, and that China was working to do this as well.
Speaking at an Asian security forum, he also said there were “elements of Russia’s weaponry” that come from China.
China says it does not side with either side of the Ukraine war, a position that has been increasingly questioned particularly by the US.
Beijing is accused of aiding Moscow by sending components for weapons. It is also seen as propping up the Russian economy by purchasing vast quantities of oil and gas, softening the impact of Western sanctions.
Mr Zelensky made a surprise appearance at the Shangri-la Dialogue in Singapore attended by defence chiefs from around the world, including US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chinese defence minister Dong Jun.
The visit was aimed at drumming up support from Asian countries. Besides meeting regional leaders, he also urged delegates to attend his summit due to be held later in June.
Mr Zelensky said it would focus on achieving nuclear security, food security, and the release of prisoners of war and Ukrainian children held in Russia.
So far 106 countries said they would send high-level representatives or their leaders to the summit, he said.
Russia has not been invited and China is not attending.
Read More https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c722q4dn7e1o
Comment NATO stooge and front man Zelensky wants to isolate Russia with all the friends he can muster. China would be stupid to agree because they are next on the planet eating NATO list,
R J Cook
1 day ago — A Moscow military expert has outlined Russia’s plan to “eliminate” the UK’s nuclear deterrents “within one day” if World War 3 were to break out .
‘No way out without bloodshed’: the right believe the US is under threat and are mobilizing. Donald Trump. The Guardian.
Biden secretly gave Ukraine permission to strike inside Russia with US weapons
Ukraine can now use Western arms to strike inside Russia
In new escalation, US and Germany approve strikes inside Russia with Western weapons
Donald Trump, guilty but not out
The former president has been convicted in a criminal trial. He could still win the White House.
Donald Trump is now a convicted felon. On 30 May, a Manhattan jury found the former US president guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records. Trump is the first US president to be convicted of a crime and faces up to four years in prison. He will be sentenced on 11 July, just days before the Republican National Convention begins on 15 July.
It’s an extraordinary moment: not only has a former president been convicted of nearly three dozen felonies, but the Republican Party is now running a criminal for the presidency – and selected him after these and other charges were filed, and after he was found liable for sexual abuse by a civil court.
Trump is certainly a felon among friends: “He joins his campaign manager, deputy campaign manager, national security adviser, foreign policy adviser, political consultant, and personal lawyer as felons,” political author Stuart Stevens tweeted shortly after the verdict came down. The man the GOP seeks to reinstall in office is a criminal whose previous campaign and administration was made up of other criminals.
More extraordinary still is that this conviction seems unlikely to matter electorally to those same Republican voters who claim to care about morality, want to “drain the swamp” and champion law and order. It may, though, serve as a reminder of Trumpian chaos, and deter those in the messy, less-engaged middle. My impulse is to say that this conviction won’t move the needle with many voters and may in fact reinforce the sense of victimhood among Trump’s base – and leave them even more aggrieved. But the truth is, no one knows; this is a truly unprecedented series of events.
Potential electoral impact aside, this moment is a relief for Americans who believe that, while our justice system is often imperfect, it is at its best when holding even the most powerful to the same standards as anyone else. Despite what Trump’s own team has argued, former presidents should not be immune from the rule of law. The prosecution put on a strong case, and a jury found that they demonstrated Trump’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. His status as a former president seeking to be a future one was not a get-out-of-jail-free card. This is precisely as it should be in a functional democratic state.
But that doesn’t make this a moment to cheer. Whatever one thinks of Trump as a person or his guilt or innocence – and to be clear, I think he’s a terrible person who is very obviously guilty of the crimes of which he was just convicted – it is in no nation’s best interests to have leaders who are criminals. It is a sign of continued functionality when leaders who do commit crimes are tried, convicted and punished, but it’s also a sign of serious decline when bad actors are put into power in the first place – especially when one of two major parties seeks to put them back in office even after their crimes have been revealed.
This conviction is a reminder of just how thoroughly Trump has degraded America, and – four years after he left office and tried to reinstall himself as leader on his way out – how degraded and broken the country remains. This is made worse still by the fact that Trump’s most loyal supporters are convinced that this trial, and the other three that the former president faces, are political farces, examples of a powerful Deep State trying to take down a heroic man. How does a country normalise when a large chunk of it believes a convicted criminal is the good guy, and the real problem is that the long-cherished judicial and democratic systems have told him he must play by the rules?
It seems unlikely that Trump will actually go to jail before the November presidential election. Even if he is sentenced to time behind bars, he will no doubt appeal. It’s difficult to imagine that a judge will order the imprisonment of a presidential candidate just days before the Republican National Convention and four months before voters go to the polls. Crazier things, of course, have happened – like a former president being convicted of 34 felonies and running for office again. Perhaps he will indeed be campaigning from a jail cell. But even if Donald Trump remains a free man through the election, he will carry with him a new title: the first former president to be a convicted felon.
[See also: The chaos and confusion of Trump on trial]
A Politically Weponised Corrupt New York Justice System
by R J Cook
Comment The Judge’s daughter in this so called example of U.S Justice is an established Democrat Political Consultant. As with the mysterious death of Pimp to the Anglo American super rich Jeffrey Epstein, Trump’s latest conviction is no good reason to celebrate the U.S Justice system which turned a blind eye to the Clintons, notably so many sexual allegations against Saint Bill and his precious feminist warrior wife who immediately disputed her 2016 defeat and wrote a book about it along with all the wonders of her life story. The Democrats in Congress duly spent the entirety of Trumps term of office by working to have him impeached. In short , they were trying to overturn the election.
At the time, the Anglo U.S led Ukraine proxy war on Russia was well past the preparation stage. So every effort was made to fabricate evidence that Vladimir Putin had rigged the 2016 Presidential Election and that Trump was a Russian agent. U.S, U.K and EU elites and business leaders desperately need what Russia and Ukraine have. They don’t care about the risks because they and their ancestors got rich and powerful that way. They can rely on the masses with the frightened feminists and other ‘freedom fighters’to intimidate or force the masses into line.
Then we come to the Bidens, ‘Sleepy Joe’ is excused from leaviing secret files at his private address because he was just a ‘kindly forgetful old uncle’ type. U.S Justice, like the U,K is corrupt which is why Epstein customer and friend Prince Andrew escaped extradition and prosecution for sex with a minor on a regulat basis.
Western justice is all about money, power and privilege. This is another good reason to mock and laugh at those who tell us that we live in a democracy dedcated to our ‘choice and out freedoms.’ As for the above article, it is full of the same old smug feminist lecturing hectoring feminist and liberal white bias.
Those people had a field day when Trump was convicted of indecent assault on now ancient New York magazine diarist E Jean Carroll dragged up an alleged 1990s sexual assault when she took Trump into a ladies changing room to model lingerie. This renowned diarist could not even remember the date of the alleged offence, but the outcome was a foregone conclusion as the New Yprk Justice system, fully weaponised in the Democrat cause, swung into action.
R J Cook
Be the first to comment on "Exceptional Powers – Anglo U.S Elite Tyranny XII"