May 26

Today’s News 26th May 2022

  • Putin Authorizes 'Fast-Tracked' Russian Citizenship For Occupied Ukrainian Territories
    Putin Authorizes ‘Fast-Tracked’ Russian Citizenship For Occupied Ukrainian Territories

    In the biggest indicator thus far in the over three-month long war in Ukraine that Russia intends to likely fully annex territory in the East and South, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday signed a decree which allows residents of Russian-occupied Kherson and Zaporizhzhia to gain fast-tracked Russian citizenship.

    Already the same policy is currently in effect for the breakaway eastern republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, the latter which is now reported to be almost completely in Russian forces’ control, as final battles with Ukrainian fighters are centered in the Luhansk cities of Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk.

    Woman with dual passports in Simferopol, Crimea. Via Reuters

    Since 2019 an estimated 200,000 people in the two far eastern regions have gained Russian passports through the policy, which is now being extended to the Russian-controlled southern cities.

    “Citizens of Ukraine, the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR), or the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR), permanently residing in the territory of the DNR, LNR, the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine or the Kherson region of Ukraine, have the right to apply for citizenship of the Russian Federation in a simplified manner,” the decree reads.

    Ukraine was swift to condemn the move as a violation of its sovereignty and of international law and norms. Its foreign ministry said, “The illegal issuing of passports… is a flagrant violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, as well as norms and principles of international humanitarian law.”

    Meanwhile also on Wednesday Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky slammed the door on the idea of making territorial concessions for the sake of ending the war.

    “It’s possible if Russia shows at least something. When I say at least something, I mean pulling back troops to where they were before Feb. 24,” which marked the start of the invasion. He even said on Tuesday that Russia must hand back Crimea as well. He put the ball in Moscow’s court, saying it must “shift from the bloody war to diplomacy” if it hopes for the war to end.

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    Meanwhile, concerning its standoff with Washington and the West on the question of making sovereign debt payments with the ruble, the Bank of Russia according to Bloomberg “moved up its next interest-rate meeting by more than two weeks to Thursday as currency controls and high commodity prices have fueled the ruble’s surge against the dollar.”

    Per the report it’s expected that “Moscow may make foreign debt payments in local currency after the US Treasury Department let a waiver expire, pushing Russia closer to a default.”

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/26/2022 – 02:45

  • Escobar: NATO vs Russia – What Happens Next
    Escobar: NATO vs Russia – What Happens Next

    Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,

    In Davos and beyond, NATO’s upbeat narrative plays like a broken record, while on the ground, Russia is stacking up wins that could sink the Atlantic order…

    Three months after the start of Russia’s Operation Z in Ukraine, the battle of The West (12 percent) against The Rest (88 percent) keeps metastasizing. Yet the narrative – oddly – remains the same.

    On Monday, from Davos, World Economic Forum Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab introduced Ukrainian comedian-cum-President Volodymyr Zelensky, on the latest leg of his weapons-solicitation-tour, with a glowing tribute. Herr Schwab stressed that an actor impersonating a president defending neo-Nazis is supported by “all of Europe and the international order.”

    He means, of course, everyone except the 88 percent of the planet that subscribes to the Rule of Law – instead of the faux construct the west calls a ‘rules-based international order.’

    Back in the real world, Russia, slowly but surely has been rewriting the Art of Hybrid War. Yet within the carnival of NATO psyops, aggressive cognitive infiltration, and stunning media sycophancy, much is being made of the new $40 billion US ‘aid’ package to Ukraine, deemed capable of becoming a game-changer in the war.

    This ‘game-changing’ narrative comes courtesy of the same people who burned though trillions of dollars to secure Afghanistan and Iraq. And we saw how that went down.

    Ukraine is the Holy Grail of international corruption. That $40 billion can be a game-changer for only two classes of people: First, the US military-industrial complex, and second, a bunch of Ukrainian oligarchs and neo-connish NGOs, that will corner the black market for weapons and humanitarian aid, and then launder the profits in the Cayman Islands.

    A quick breakdown of the $40 billion reveals $8.7 billion will go to replenish the US weapons stockpile (thus not going to Ukraine at all); $3.9 billion for USEUCOM (the ‘office’ that dictates military tactics to Kiev); $5 billion for a fuzzy, unspecified “global food supply chain”; $6 billion for actual weapons and “training” to Ukraine; $9 billion in “economic assistance” (which will disappear into selected pockets); and $0.9 billion for refugees.

    US risk agencies have downgraded Kiev to the dumpster of non-reimbursing-loan entities, so large American investment funds are ditching Ukraine, leaving the European Union (EU) and its member-states as the country’s only option.

    Few of those countries, apart from Russophobic entities such as Poland, can justify to their own populations sending huge sums of direct aid to a failed state. So it will fall to the Brussels-based EU machine to do just enough to maintain Ukraine in an economic coma – independent from any input from member-states and institutions.

    These EU ‘loans’ – mostly in the form of weapons shipments – can always be reimbursed by Kiev’s wheat exports. This is already happening on a small scale via the port of Constanta in Romania, where Ukrainian wheat arrives in barges over the Danube and is loaded into dozens of cargo ships everyday. Or, via convoys of trucks rolling with the weapons-for-wheat racket. However, Ukrainian wheat will keep feeding the wealthy west, not impoverished Ukrainians.

    Moreover, expect NATO this summer to come up with another monster psyop to defend its divine (not legal) right to enter the Black Sea with warships to escort Ukrainian vessels transporting wheat. Pro-NATO media will spin it as the west being ‘saved’ from the global food crisis – which happens to be directly caused by serial, hysterical packages of western sanctions.

    Poland goes for soft annexation

    NATO is indeed massively ramping up its ‘support’ to Ukraine via the western border with Poland. That’s in synch with Washington’s two overarching targets: First, a ‘long war,’ insurgency-style, just like Afghanistan in the 1980s, with jihadis replaced by mercenaries and neo-Nazis.  Second, the sanctions instrumentalized to “weaken” Russia, militarily and economically.

    Other targets remain unchanged, but are subordinate to the Top Two: make sure that the Democrats are re-elected in the mid-terms (that’s not going to happen); irrigate the industrial-military complex with funds that are recycled back as kickbacks (already happening); and keep the hegemony of the US dollar by all means (tricky: the multipolar world is getting its act together).

    A key target being met with astonishing ease is the destruction of the German – and consequently the EU’s – economy, with a great deal of the surviving companies to be eventually sold off to American interests.

    Take, for instance, BMW board member Milan Nedeljkovic telling Reuters that “our industry accounts for about 37 percent of natural gas consumption in Germany” which will sink without Russian gas supplies.

    Washington’s plan is to keep the new ‘long war’ going at a not-too-incandescent level – think Syria during the 2010s – fueled by rows of mercenaries, and featuring periodic NATO escalations by anyone from Poland and the Baltic midgets to Germany.

    Last week, that pitiful Eurocrat posing as High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, gave away the game when previewing the upcoming meeting of the EU Foreign Affairs Council.

    Borrell admitted that “the conflict will be long” and “the priority of the EU member states” in Ukraine “consists in the supply of heavy weapons.”

    Then Polish President Andrzej Duda met with Zelensky in Kiev. The slew of agreements the two signed indicate that Warsaw intends to profit handsomely from the war to enhance its politico-military, economic, and cultural influence in western Ukraine. Polish nationals will be allowed to be elected to Ukrainian government bodies and even aim to become constitutional judges.

    In practice, that means Kiev is all but transferring management of the Ukrainian failed state to Poland. Warsaw won’t even have to send troops. Call it a soft annexation.

    The steamroller on the move

    As it stands, the situation on the battlefield can be examined in this map. Intercepted communications from the Ukrainian command reveal their aim to build a layered defense from Poltava through Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhia, Krivoy Rog, and Nikolaev – which happens to be a shield for the already fortified Odessa. None of that guarantees success against the incoming Russian onslaught.

    It’s always important to remember that Operation Z started on February 24 with around 150,000 or so fighters – and definitely not Russia’s elite forces. And yet they liberated Mariupol and destroyed the elite neo-Nazi Azov batallion in a matter of only fifty days, cleaning up a city of 400,000 people with minimal casualties.

    While fighting a real war on the ground – not those indiscriminate US bombings from the air – in a huge country against a large army, facing multiple technical, financial and logistical challenges, the Russians also managed to liberate Kherson, Zaporizhia and virtually the whole area of the ‘baby twins,’ the popular republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.

    Russia’s ground forces commander, General Aleksandr Dvornikov, has turbo-charged missile, artillery and air strikes to a pace five times faster than during the first phase of Operation Z, while the Ukrainians, overall, are low or very low on fuel, ammo for artillery, trained specialists, drones, and radars.

    What American armchair and TV generals simply cannot comprehend is that in Russia’s view of this war – which military expert Andrei Martyanov defines as a “combined arms and police operation” – the two top targets are the destruction of all military assets of the enemy while preserving the life of its own soldiers.

    So while losing tanks is not a big deal for Moscow, losing lives is. And that accounts for those massive Russian bombings; each military target must be conclusively destroyed. Precision strikes are crucial.

    There is a raging debate among Russian military experts on why the Ministry of Defense does not go for a fast strategic victory. They could have reduced Ukraine to rubble – American style – in no time. That’s not going to happen. The Russians prefer to advance slowly and surely, in a sort of steamroller pattern. They only advance after sappers have fully surveilled the terrain; after all there are mines everywhere.

    The overall pattern is unmistakable, whatever the NATO spin barrage. Ukrainian losses are becoming exponential – as many as 1,500 killed or wounded each day, everyday. If there are 50,000 Ukrainians in the several Donbass cauldrons, they will be gone by the end of June.

    Ukraine must have lost as many as 20,000 soldiers in and around Mariupol alone. That’s a massive military defeat, largely surpassing Debaltsevo in 2015 and previously Ilovaisk in 2014. The losses near Izyum may be even higher than in Mariupol. And now come the losses in the Severodonetsk corner.

    We’re talking here about the best Ukrainian forces. It doesn’t even matter that only 70 percent of Western weapons sent by NATO ever make it to the battlefield: the major problem is that the best soldiers are going…going…gone, and won’t be replaced. Azov neo-Nazis, the 24th Brigade, the 36th Brigade, various Air Assault brigades – they all suffered losses of 60+ percent or have been completely demolished.

    So the key question, as several Russian military experts have stressed, is not when Kiev will ‘lose’ as a point of no return; it is how many soldiers Moscow is prepared to lose to get to this point.

    The entire Ukrainian defense is based on artillery. So the key battles ahead involve long-range artillery. There will be problems, because the US is about to deliver M270 MLRS systems with precision-guided ammunition, capable of hitting targets at a distance of up to 70 kilometers or more.

    Russia, though, has a counterpunch: the Hermes Small Operational-Tactical Complex, using high precision munitions, possibility of laser guidance, and a range of more than 100 kilometers. And they can work in conjunction with the already mass-produced Pantsir air defense systems.

    The sinking ship

    Ukraine, within its current borders, is already a thing of the past. Georgy Muradov, permanent representative of Crimea to the President of Russia and Deputy Prime Minister of the Crimean government, is adamant: “Ukraine in the form in which it was, I think, will no longer remain. This is already the former Ukraine.”

    The Sea of ​​Azov has now become a “sea of ​​joint use” by Russia and the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), as confirmed by Muradov.

    Mariupol will be restored. Russia has had plenty of experience in this business in both Grozny and Crimea. The Russia-Crimea land corridor is on. Four hospitals among five in Mariupol have already reopened and public transportation is back, as well as three gas stations.

    The imminent loss of Severodonetsk and Lysichansk will ring serious alarm bells in Washington and Brussels, because that will represent the beginning of the end of the current regime in Kiev. And that, for all practical purposes – and beyond all the lofty rhetoric of “the west stands with you” – means heavy players won’t be exactly encouraged to bet on a sinking ship.

    On the sanctions front, Moscow knows exactly what to expect, as detailed by Minister of Economic Development Maxim Reshetnikov: “Russia proceeds from the fact that sanctions against it are a rather long-term trend, and from the fact that the pivot to Asia, the acceleration of reorientation to eastern markets, to Asian markets is a strategic direction for Russia. We will make every effort to integrate into value chains precisely together with Asian countries, together with Arab countries, together with South America.”

    On efforts to “intimidate Russia,” players would be wise to listen to the hypersonic sound of 50 Sarmat state-of-the-art missiles ready for combat this autumn, as explained by Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin.

    This week’s meetings in Davos brings to light another alignment forming in the world’s overarching unipolar vs. multipolar battle. Russia, the baby twins, Chechnya and allies such as Belarus are now pitted against ‘Davos leaders’ – in other words, the combined western elite, with a few exceptions like Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

    Zelensky will be fine. He’s protected by British and American special forces. The family is reportedly living in an $8 million mansion in Israel. He owns a $34 million villa in Miami Beach, and another in Tuscany. Average Ukrainians were lied to, robbed, and in many cases, murdered, by the Kiev gang he presides over – oligarchs, security service (SBU) fanatics, neo-Nazis. And those Ukrainians that remain (10 million have already fled) will continue to be treated as expendable.

    Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir “the new Hitler” Putin is in absolutely no hurry to end this larger than life drama that is ruining and rotting the already decaying west to its core. Why should he? He tried everything, since 2007, on the “why can’t we get along” front. Putin was totally rejected. So now it’s time to sit back, relax, and watch the Decline of the West.

    Tyler Durden
    Thu, 05/26/2022 – 02:00

  • Gun Rights Are More Important Than False Security And Appeasing Leftists
    Gun Rights Are More Important Than False Security And Appeasing Leftists

    Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

    If there is one Holy Grail target that the political left obsesses over more that anything else, it is getting their hands on the 2nd Amendment and molding it to their will or erasing it forever.

    The pursuit of American gun rights is paramount to them, beyond critical race theory, beyond gender politics, even beyond the abortion debate. The problem for them is that ever since the Obama era they have consistently hit a brick wall in terms of convincing the general public to give another inch of ground when it comes to gun control.

    To be sure, there are many reasons for this that coincide.

    First, the credit crash of 2008 opened many people’s eyes to the possibility that the economic systems we take for granted today could disappear tomorrow. Gun rights were no longer a matter of “tradition,” but a matter of necessity.

    If the system breaks down and emergency services are overwhelmed or disappear then the only person you can rely on to protect your family is you. Mortal realities always win over emotional and reactionary demands. In other words, the benefits of individual self protection greatly outweigh any potential risks of criminality or abuse.

    Second, the advent of the covid mandates, lockdowns and the blatant attempts to implement vaccine passport tyranny upon half the population of this country yet again reinforced the idea that gun rights are more important than ever. Without the unified refusal to comply by conservatives and some moderate Americans, it is highly likely that our nation would be in the same situation as China is right now – A pointless cycle of lockdowns, authoritarian denial of basic services for people that refuse to submit to a highly experimental mRNA vaccine, and even worse supply chain disruptions and financial instability than we already have.

    Make no mistake, the reason the US is mostly free from these draconian conditions today is because of the continued existence of the 2nd Amendment and an armed citizenry. Without these things, there is no longer any obstacle to enforcing whatever unconstitutional provisions the establishment wants.

    Third, with the advent of the BLM riots, inflationary pressures and rising crime rates, there has been a renewed interest in gun ownership in the US among normies. It’s not just a conservative trend, many democrats have suddenly taken an interest also.

    There is very little chance that increased gun restrictions are going to happen with the approval of the public. The only way it could even be attempted is through executive order, and many millions of Americans will simply say ‘no’, just as they did with the vaccine passports.

    And, let’s be clear about what is really going on: The intention of political elites and the left is not “reasonable gun control.” Their purpose is indeed confiscation.

    Incrementalism is the name of the game. Lets not forget what we saw with the covid passports – At first they claimed that there were no plans to institute anything like a vaccine passport system. They said this was “conspiracy theory.” Then, not more than a year later Biden tried to enforce proof of vaccination through executive order. Suddenly, it wasn’t conspiracy theory anymore.

    The same strategy has been attempted with gun rights in the past, and they will try to do it again. As with every other Western nation that has restricted gun ownership down to almost nothing, they start with the “scary” semi-auto weapons and work their way down until you have nothing left. Or, until only people with considerable money have the ability to purchase a firearm (which is the case through most of Europe).

    I suspect that leftists are not fully opposed to the idea of gun ownership as they often pretend to be. I think they would actually like to retain their own guns if possible, they just don’t want people like you and I to have them. Selective gun confiscation would be their ideal, which is the same exact strategy used by the Nazis, who selectively outlawed gun ownership for Jewish citizens and anyone politically opposed to the Third Reich but let all other Germans keep their weapons.

    I would note that whenever gun crimes and mass murders are committed by people that are ideologically opposed to conservatives, the media and leftists often conveniently stop caring about taking action. They only seem to care when the crime can be associated with their political enemies.

    We all know that leftists constantly argue that conservatives are inherently dangerous. It only takes one more step for them to claim that conservative thought is in itself a “mental illness” and that our guns should be taken by default. But let’s talk about REAL mental illness for a moment, shall we?

    Let’s talk about recent active shooters like Payton Gendron with bizarre political and ideological beliefs that have nothing to do with conservative principles. Democrats like AOC and Chuck Schumer immediately tried to link Gendron, the Buffalo grocery store shooter, to conservatives and the Republican party. Yet, in only a few days time they were suddenly silent about the whole event and the media was oddly quiet. But why?

    As it turns out, Gendron’s philosophies were entirely socialist, with tinges of fascism and communism within the same framework. In fact, Gendron stated on multiple occasions that he hated conservatives and identified himself as an “eco-fascist.” He also had a history of reports concerning his mental health and safety. The media’s focus on “replacement theory” was a clear distraction from the real issue at hand. Their assertion was that if you are critical of illegal immigration, then you are automatically a racist and share an ideological boat with people like Payton Gendron. But then, their narrative fell apart when it became obvious that Gendron was actually anti-conservative.

    In the case of Salvador Ramos, details are still emerging about the Texas school shooter and his affiliations, but some information has been leaked despite the media’s quick move to control the narrative. For example, Ramos is not the white conservative monster the leftists need to fulfill their narrative requirements. Photos are also in circulation allegedly taken from his social media accounts which suggest he was transgendered and identified as “they/them.” I’ll stress here though that his social media accounts have been completely scrubbed and right now there is no way to confirm that this claim is true. Why his accounts were removed so quickly is not clear, but surely we will know more in the next couple of days.

    Leftists are swiftly moving to refute any possibility that Ramos was transgendered; maybe they are right, maybe not. They were also very quick to deny that Darrell Brooks Jr., the mass killer that ran down a parade of people with his car in Waukesha, WI, was a supporter of BLM. But, as it turned out initial reports by internet sleuths were correct. Suddenly, leftists were fielding arguments that he was “pushed” to commit the crime by “institutional racism.”

    If it turns out that Ramos did in fact identify as trans, then the media message will surely change once again. I have no doubt there will be a move to defend Ramos as a tragic figure, rather than a monster, and the blame will be placed on the state of Texas and their legislative actions to stop transgender policies from invading their public school system.

    The point is, there is no connection between gun rights supporters or conservatives and gun crime as leftists often claim. I can find just as many if not more incidences of mass murder perpetrated by leftists.

    The common thread between all of these killers and events is not guns or gun rights. Rather, it is blatant signs of mental illness and ideological zealotry. The media will not address this issue, and political puppets like Joe Biden will not address it either. Remember, the goal is gun confiscation, not public safety. If they actually cared about public safety then the mental illness connection would not be ignored.

    It is also important to point out that such tragedies are not limited to the US as some gun grabbers would like you to believe. Numerous mass murder incidences have taken place in Europe and Asia despite strict gun control. Many people have forgotten the mass murder of French citizens in Paris in November of 2015 by Islamic militants with AK47s. Or, how about the mass killing of Spanish citizens by Muslim terrorists in Barcelona in 2017 using a moving truck?

    Another factor which is almost always present during mass murder events is that most of them occur in gun free zones; places where carrying by law abiding citizens is denied or frowned upon. If we are going to address the issue of mass murder, we cannot ignore the commonalities of mental illness and gun free areas. The existence of guns in civilian hands is not the problem, if it were then mass murders would be a daily occurrence in every community in the country. However, this does not stop leftists from trying to exploit every tragedy as an opportunity to attack gun rights.

    They don’t care about nuance or honest solutions, they just want guns out of the hands of people they don’t like. The establishment also wants guns out of public hands for obvious reasons; it makes it much easier to erode other parts of the constitution when the 2nd Amendment is no longer a deterrent. Joe Biden argues that Americans “need to stand up to the gun lobby” in the wake of the Texas shooting, but the gun lobby has nothing to do with these events either. The biggest gun lobby in the US is the American people standing in defense of their freedoms, and they have committed no crime.

    At bottom, no gun owner or gun rights advocate is to blame for what happened in New York or Texas this past week. We didn’t commit the crimes, but the assertion is that we should be punished anyway. Well, I’m not going to allow that, and millions of conservatives and liberty minded people are not going to allow it. The appeal for new gun control measures and confiscation is aimed at the political left, and it is designed to make them feel better about the reality of tragedy. It’s a false silver bullet solution (no pun intended). It doesn’t address the real causes of mass violence, it only makes us more vulnerable to it.

    Frankly, I don’t care if leftists feel better, or feel like they accomplished something when they did not. I also know that increased gun control is exciting to many of them simply because it goes against the values of people they hate – i.e. conservatives. The fact is this: No matter what tragedy arises, our right to self defense overall is more important than appeasing the emotions of the moment. We won’t be giving up our guns. It’s not going to happen. They think we will capitulate given enough threats or enough pressure, and they are wrong. It will not end well for them.

    Other solutions need to be explored because the path to a revision or erasure of the 2nd Amendment, whether by legislation or by executive order, is nothing more than a path to civil war. It’s time to move on from the foolish notion that taking away guns from everyone (or just the people we disagree with politically) solves the underlying causes of mass murder. It doesn’t remove the motivation, nor does it even remove the means, it only sets the stage for a conflict that leftists will find impossible to win.

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    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/25/2022 – 23:40

  • China Builds World's First AI-Powered Drone Carrier For Maritime Operations 
    China Builds World’s First AI-Powered Drone Carrier For Maritime Operations 

    The latest observation of how China aims to use artificial intelligence to conquer the Pacific is the launching of the world’s first autonomous drone carrier. 

    According to the South China Morning Post, the intelligent, unmanned 88-meter drone carrier named Zhu Hai Yun will bring revolutionary changes to ocean surveillance, deploying a swarm of aerial, sea, and or submersible drones. 

    The Zhu Hai Yun is powered by an artificial intelligence system called the Intelligent Mobile Ocean Stereo Observing System (IMOSOS). The vessel can navigate autonomously in open water and or be controlled remotely while releasing various types of drones. 

    “The intelligent, unmanned ship is a beautiful, new ‘marine species’ that will bring revolutionary changes for ocean observation,” Chen Dake, director of the laboratory responsible for the ship, was quoted as saying by the Science and Technology Daily in 2021 when the shipbuilding began. 

    The ship was built by Guangzhou of the Huangpu Wenchong Shipyard, a subsidiary of China’s top shipbuilding company, the China State Shipbuilding Corporation. Sea trials will happen in the second half of the year. 

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    Aside from these civilian uses, the drone carrier could be used for military operations. 

    Suppose the autonomous drone carrier is transferred to the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). In that case, it could be used as a surveillance craft to patrol the country’s militarized islands in the South China Sea.

    China’s primary strategy is to defeat the US by expanding its artificial intelligence military capabilities. So this could be the beginning of the world’s second-largest superpower building out a fleet of intelligent drone carriers to patrol highly contested waters. 

    Meanwhile, the US Navy has piloted drone ships in the Pacific, though only equipped for anti-submarine warfare. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/25/2022 – 23:20

  • Nuland-Pyatt Ukraine Coup Tape Removed From YouTube After 8 Years
    Nuland-Pyatt Ukraine Coup Tape Removed From YouTube After 8 Years

    Authored by Joe Lauria via Consortium News,

    The smoking gun proving US involvement in the 2014 coup in Kiev has been removed from YouTube after eight years. It was the most complete version of the intercepted and leaked conversation between then Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt, the then US ambassador to Ukraine, in which the two discuss who will make up the new government weeks before democratically-elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown in a violent coup on Feb. 21, 2014. 

    The US State Department never denied the authenticity of the video, and even issued an apology to the European Union after Nuland is heard on the tape saying, “Fuck the E.U.” Mainstream media at the time focused almost exclusively on that off-color remark, ignoring the greater significance of U.S. interference in Ukraine’s internal affairs. 

    Consortium News has numerous times embedded the YouTube video in articles about the overthrow of Yanukovych. CN successfully embedded it earlier this week in an article now being written, but on Wednesday the video suddenly appeared this way in the draft article: 

    This is a screenshot taken earlier from the video that has now been removed. 

    Nuland in screenshot from now removed YouTube video.

    Timing of Removal

    The removal of a video that had existed online for eight years raises major questions as it comes during the war in Ukraine. Corporate media has studiously avoided mentioning the causes of the current conflict, including NATO eastward expansion, the rejected Moscow treaty proposals in December, the civil war in Donbass and the 2014 coup in Kiev that led to the Donbass uprising and violent repression by the coup government. 

    The coup in 2014 is the starting point that led to all these events culminating in Russia’s invasion in February. Removing the video would be consistent with the suppression of any information that falls outside the enforced narrative of events in Ukraine, including whitewashing any mention of the U.S.-backed coup. 

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    It was the original, most complete, and widely viewed recording of the call on YouTube:

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    Transcript Still Online

    The BBC on Feb. 7, 2014 — 14 days before Yanukovych was toppled- — published a transcript of the Nuland-Pyatt conversation. Consortium News is republishing the transcript here, lest it be removed from the internet as well:

    * * *

    Voice thought to be Nuland’s: What do you think?

    Voice thought to be Pyatt’s: I think we’re in play. The Klitschko [Vitaly Klitschko, one of three main opposition leaders] piece is obviously the complicated electron here. Especially the announcement of him as deputy prime minister and you’ve seen some of my notes on the troubles in the marriage right now so we’re trying to get a read really fast on where he is on this stuff. But I think your argument to him, which you’ll need to make, I think that’s the next phone call you want to set up, is exactly the one you made to Yats [Arseniy Yatseniuk, another opposition leader]. And I’m glad you sort of put him on the spot on where he fits in this scenario. And I’m very glad that he said what he said in response.

    Nuland: Good. I don’t think Klitsch should go into the government. I don’t think it’s necessary, I don’t think it’s a good idea.

    Pyatt: Yeah. I guess… in terms of him not going into the government, just let him stay out and do his political homework and stuff. I’m just thinking in terms of sort of the process moving ahead we want to keep the moderate democrats together. The problem is going to be Tyahnybok [Oleh Tyahnybok, the other opposition leader] and his guys and I’m sure that’s part of what [President Viktor] Yanukovych is calculating on all this.

    Nuland: [Breaks in] I think Yats is the guy who’s got the economic experience, the governing experience. He’s the… what he needs is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside. He needs to be talking to them four times a week, you know. I just think Klitsch going in… he’s going to be at that level working for Yatseniuk, it’s just not going to work.

    Pyatt: Yeah, no, I think that’s right. OK. Good. Do you want us to set up a call with him as the next step?

    Nuland: My understanding from that call – but you tell me – was that the big three were going into their own meeting and that Yats was going to offer in that context a… three-plus-one conversation or three-plus-two with you. Is that not how you understood it?

    Pyatt: No. I think… I mean that’s what he proposed but I think, just knowing the dynamic that’s been with them where Klitschko has been the top dog, he’s going to take a while to show up for whatever meeting they’ve got and he’s probably talking to his guys at this point, so I think you reaching out directly to him helps with the personality management among the three and it gives you also a chance to move fast on all this stuff and put us behind it before they all sit down and he explains why he doesn’t like it.

    Nuland: OK, good. I’m happy. Why don’t you reach out to him and see if he wants to talk before or after.

    Pyatt: OK, will do. Thanks.

    Nuland: OK… one more wrinkle for you Geoff. [A click can be heard] I can’t remember if I told you this, or if I only told Washington this, that when I talked to Jeff Feltman [United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs] this morning, he had a new name for the UN guy Robert Serry did I write you that this morning?

    Pyatt: Yeah I saw that.

    Nuland: OK. He’s now gotten both Serry and [UN Secretary General] Ban Ki-moon to agree that Serry could come in Monday or Tuesday. So that would be great, I think, to help glue this thing and to have the UN help glue it and, you know, Fuck the EU.

    Pyatt: No, exactly. And I think we’ve got to do something to make it stick together because you can be pretty sure that if it does start to gain altitude, that the Russians will be working behind the scenes to try to torpedo it. And again the fact that this is out there right now, I’m still trying to figure out in my mind why Yanukovych (garbled) that. In the meantime there’s a Party of Regions faction meeting going on right now and I’m sure there’s a lively argument going on in that group at this point. But anyway we could land jelly side up on this one if we move fast. So let me work on Klitschko and if you can just keep… we want to try to get somebody with an international personality to come out here and help to midwife this thing. The other issue is some kind of outreach to Yanukovych but we probably regroup on that tomorrow as we see how things start to fall into place.

    Nuland: So on that piece Geoff, when I wrote the note [US vice-president’s national security adviser Jake] Sullivan’s come back to me VFR [direct to me], saying you need [US Vice-President Joe] Biden and I said probably tomorrow for an atta-boy and to get the deets [details] to stick. So Biden’s willing.

    Pyatt: OK. Great. Thanks.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/25/2022 – 23:00

  • 10,000 Truck Drivers Taken Off The Road Due To Marijuana Violations
    10,000 Truck Drivers Taken Off The Road Due To Marijuana Violations

    Five years ago in 2017, when the US labor shortage was in its nascent stages and when the US was years away from a wage-price spiral, the Fed’s Beige Book surveys of economic activity across the country in April, May and July all noted the inability of employers to find workers able to pass drug screenings: “It’s not just a matter of labor participation; there is also a lot of collateral economic damage,” said Alan B. Krueger, a Princeton economist who wrote a widely discussed paper on the subject last year. In other words, too many people were high 24/7 to be gainfully employed.

    Well, fast forward to today when with the US in the depth of the biggest labor crisis in history, when there are almost two job openings for every unemployed worker (according to the latest JOLTs report), we learn that just marijuana violations have taken over 10,000 truck drivers off the road this year, adding more to unprecedented supply chain disruptions.

    While the COVID-19 pandemic has been the catalyst for a myriad of supply-chain challenges, including delayed packages, bare grocery store shelves, and inflated prices, there are other bottlenecks also causing supply chain issues, including a lack of truck drivers to transport goods from one place to another. In late 2021, the American Trucking Associations reported that the driver shortage had risen to an all-time high of 80,000, partly due to the aging population and shrinking wages.

    In response, the Biden administration vowed in December to get more truck drivers on the road by boosting recruitment efforts and expediting the issuing of commercial licenses. However, that won’t have an effect on another hurdle: disparate marijuana laws across the U.S. that are contributing to an increase in violations. According to KPLC News, in 2022, a growing number of truckers are being taken off the job, which could soon worsen the already suffering supply chain.

    As more states legalize recreational marijuana—four of which did so in the past year and three more are expected to by the end of 2022—more truck drivers have tested positive for the substance. As of April 1, 2022, 10,276 commercial vehicle drivers have tested positive for marijuana use. By the same time in 2021, there had been 7,750 violations. That’s a 32.6% increase year over year.

    Truck drivers who travel cross-country face inconsistent state regulations as 19 states have legalized recreational marijuana and 37 states permit it for medicinal purposes. But even if a driver used marijuana or hemp-based products like CBD while off duty in a state where those substances are legal, they could still be faced with a violation due to the Department of Transportation’s (DOT) zero-tolerance policy at the federal level.

    “While states may allow medical use of marijuana, federal laws and policy do not recognize any legitimate medical use of marijuana,” a DOT handbook for commercial vehicle drivers reads. “Even if a state allows the use of marijuana, DOT regulations treat its use as the same as the use of any other illicit drug.”

    Stacker looked at what’s causing thousands of truckers to be removed from their jobs, and the looming domino effect of the continued supply chain disruptions.

    Under regulations set forth by the DOT, truck drivers are tested for drug use—including marijuana—prior to starting a new job. They can also be tested at random, as well as after accidents. In January 2020, the DOT’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration also upped the random drug testing rate from 25% of the average number of driver positions to 50%. Truck drivers are mainly screened for drug use via urinalysis, but there are now new saliva tests being proposed as well.

    At worst, if a driver fails just one drug test, that can be grounds for termination under DOT regulations. At best, they are temporarily taken off the road and required to complete an evaluation with a substance misuse professional who determines their rehabilitation process, which can sometimes take months.

    As of January 2020, employers are also required to list commercial drivers who fail a drug test in the FMCSA’s Drug & Alcohol Clearinghouse. These violations remain searchable for five years. Potential employers are also required to check the Clearinghouse to see if a commercial driver had any previous violations, which would prevent them from being hired.

    In recent years, more states have legalized both recreational and medical marijuana, making it more widely available and used. However, marijuana use is still prohibited for commercial truck drivers, state laws and medical prescriptions aside. According to the FMCSA, “a driver may not use marijuana even if [it] is recommended by a licensed medical practitioner.” The DOT has maintained its zero-tolerance stance for marijuana use even as it’s become legalized, saying, “Legalization of marijuana use by States and other jurisdictions also has not modified the application of U.S. Department of Transportation drug testing regulations.”

    A commercial driver could use marijuana while off-duty, not driving, and in a state where marijuana is legal, but still test positive for the substance for up to a month later and be taken off the road. The American Addiction Centers says for infrequent marijuana users—meaning those who use the substance less than two times a week—it can show up in their urine for up to three days. Someone who uses marijuana several times a week can test positive for up to three weeks, and those who use marijuana even more frequently can “test positive for a month or longer.”

    Meanwhile, shortages, factory closures, and goods waiting to be unloaded at ports are just some of the current issues affecting the supply chain across America. Trucking transports 72% of products within the U.S., according to a report from the White House, but a growing number of commercial drivers are sidelined for marijuana use.

    The return-to-duty process that commercial vehicle drivers must undergo once faced with a marijuana violation can keep them from returning to work at all. According to the FMCSA’s monthly report, 89,650 commercial drivers are currently in prohibited status as of April 1, 2022, but 67,368 of them have not begun the RTD process.

    If violations continue at the current rate, the truck driver shortage will further disrupt the supply chain, which means higher prices not just for commodities but the cost of living at large.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/25/2022 – 22:40

  • Report Shows FBI Spied On 3.3 Million Americans Without A Warrant, GOP Demands Answers
    Report Shows FBI Spied On 3.3 Million Americans Without A Warrant, GOP Demands Answers

    Authored by Joseph Lord via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    Top House Republicans are demanding answers from the FBI after court-ordered information came to light showing that the federal agency had collected the information of over 3 million Americans without a warrant.

    Republican Representative from Ohio Jim Jordan speaks during the House Judiciary Committee hearing on Policing Practices and Law Enforcement Accountability at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. on June 10, 2020. (Michael Reynolds/Pool/Getty Images)

    In a May 25 letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Mike Turner (R-Ohio) asked Wray to explain why his agency had wiretapped and gathered personal information on over 3.3 million Americans without a warrant (pdf).

    Limited authority to gather foreign intelligence information is granted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

    Specifically, section 702 of the bill says: “the Attorney General (AG) and the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) may jointly authorize the targeting of (i) non-U.S. persons (ii) who are reasonably believed to be outside of the United States (iii) to acquire foreign intelligence information.”

    However, this power can grant an expanding circle of possible searches to the FBI and other intel agencies, who can use the same power against American citizens who had any interaction with targeted foreigners.

    Historically, insight into how FISA has been used against American citizens has been limited and hidden behind classified reports.

    However, a November 2020 decision by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC)—which serves as a watchdog for U.S. intelligence agencies—required that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) report “the number of U.S. person queries run by the FBI against Section 702-acquired information.”

    In accordance with these new requirements, ODNI’s recently-released Annual Statistical Transparency Report included data on how often the FBI gathered information on American citizens using section 702 in 2021.

    In total, queries against U.S. citizens came out to a jaw-dropping 3,394,053 searches. By comparison, only 1,324,057 such queries were made in 2020, representing around a 250 percent increase during President Joe Biden’s first year in office.

    According to ODNI more than half of these queries—approximately 1.9 million—were part of the larger investigation of alleged Russian attempts to target or weaken U.S. critical infrastructure.

    The ODNI report also admitted that on at least four occasions, the FBI failed to get FISC approval before accessing the contents of information collected under section 702.

    This is not the first time the FBI has been caught red-handed overstepping its legal authority under section 702.

    In November 2020, the FISC announced that “the government … reported numerous incidents” in which the FBI reviewed information gathered under section 702 without obtaining proper permission from the court.

    On other occasions, the FISC noted, the FBI used section 702 for issues entirely unrelated to foreign intelligence. These included queries for criminal investigations about healthcare fraud, transnational organized crime, violent gangs, domestic terrorism involving racially motivated violent extremists, as well as investigations relating to public corruption and bribery.”

    “None of these queries was related to national security, and they returned numerous Section 702-acquired products in response,” the FISC noted.

    “Rigorous Congressional oversight of the FBI’s Section 702-related activities is essential given FBI’s track record utilizing its FISA authorities,” Jordan and Turner ruled in view of the FBI’s past overreach.

    FBI Director Christopher Wray testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill, in Washington, on March 2, 2021. (Mandel Ngan-Pool/Getty Images)

    In their letter to Wray, Jordan and Turner laid out a laundry list of questions about the report, demanding further transparency and explanations on the revelation that the FBI has often overstepped its legal authority to spy on American citizens.

    Among other questions, they requested a full accounting of all 3,394,053 citizens who showed up in FBI queries and “[the] number of preliminary or full investigations into any U.S. citizens the FBI has initiated as a result of information obtained through any of these U.S. person queries, and the nature of the predication for each such investigation.”

    They also asked for information on the 1.9 million Americans queried over alleged Russian efforts to compromise U.S. critical infrastructure. Specifically, they asked for, “The rationale for why these queries were found to be compliant with the FBI’s Section 702 querying procedures [and the] total number of U.S. citizens the FBI identified as victims of these compromises(s) pursuant to these queries.”

    In addition, they demanded “A detailed statement about the FBI’s investigation, including the status of the investigation and any information uncovered about the identity of the Russian actors and their involvement with or connection to the Russian government, if any.”

    Additionally, they asked for information gathered under FISA rules in the years between 2015 and 2020, as well as for an explanation of the FBI’s overreach of authority on various occasions.

    The letter demands that Wray provide a written response by no later than 5 p.m. on June 7.

    FISA Section 702 was last authorized by Congress for a six-year period in 2018 and will be up for reauthorization in 2024.

    The FBI could not be immediately reached for comment.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/25/2022 – 22:20

  • Elon Musk's Starlink Satellite Internet Hits 400,000 Users 
    Elon Musk’s Starlink Satellite Internet Hits 400,000 Users 

    SpaceX’s Starlink has exponentially grown its subscriber base worldwide this year. The network of thousands of satellites in low Earth orbit, providing high-speed internet anywhere globally, has seen a 275% increase in subs since January. 

    CNBC noted that the Elon Musk-owned company presented the new figures to the Federal Communications Commission in a presentation on May 19. Starlink had 145k subscribers at the beginning of the year. By March, it was 250k, and as of this month, it had 400k. 

    Last week, SpaceX launched a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket with 53 more Starlink internet satellites into orbit. The satellites will expand the company’s constellation of more than 2.5k, which provides high-speed internet worldwide. Coverage is set to expand across North America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East by the end of the year, opening the doors for the company to add even more subs. 

    The 400k subs are spread across 48 U.S. states and dozens of countries (36 in total). Starlink’s website shows much of the U.S. and Europe have service, but plenty of places worldwide are on a “waitlist.” 

    Starlink has also inked deals with two carriers to provide inflight Wi-Fi, which could dramatically increase internet speeds on planes from the dial-up-like speeds that make remote work near impossible. 

    High-speed internet from space is great, but is it a profitable business? Not yet… 

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    Meanwhile, Russia has been trying to jam the internet service as it’s being used across Ukraine. Also, Chinese scientists are developing ways to destroy the global network. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/25/2022 – 22:00

  • Russia To Open Sea Corridors From Ukraine Ports Amid Wheat Crisis, But Warns Of Ukrainian Mines
    Russia To Open Sea Corridors From Ukraine Ports Amid Wheat Crisis, But Warns Of Ukrainian Mines

    After being accused of using the food supply as blackmail and a bargaining chip, Russia said Wednesday its military will open up protected sea corridors for international shipping to pass through from seven Ukrainian ports that have thus far been blockaded.

    According to a defense ministry statement reported by Bloomberg late in the day, “Humanitarian maritime corridors from ports on the Black Sea and Azov Sea, including Odesa, will operate from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily.”

    Black Sea port of Constanta, Romania recently had a drifting mine nearby. Image: Alamy

    The announcement comes two days after the head of the United Nations World Food Program David Beasley ripped Moscow for what he dubbed a “declaration of war” on global food security. He’s been urging “political solution” to the crisis of blocked Black Sea ports, saying the war in ‘the world’s breadbasket’ threatens to unleash “famine, the destabilization of nations as well as mass migration by necessity.” Millions of people in 43 countries dependent on grain from the war-torn region are “knocking on famine’s door,” he said.

    However, Russia has stressed that its military is engaged in extensive and complex demining operations due thousands of mines dotting Ukraine’s coast placed by Ukrainian forces, making international shipping dangerous and impossible. As reported in the independent Moscow Times:

    The port of Mariupol has resumed normal operations, Russia’s Defense Ministry  announced Wednesday.

    The Defense Ministry said Black Sea Fleet specialists cleared more than 12,000 mines from the seaport and its surrounding areas.

    Some one-third of global wheat supplies originate from Ukraine and Russia, with the bulk of it passing through the Black Sea.

    On Wednesday Russia said it remains ready and willing to work with the West to reach a solution, but that easing sanctions is a necessity:

    “We have repeatedly stated on this point that a solution to the food problem requires a comprehensive approach, including the lifting of sanctions that have been imposed on Russian exports and financial transactions,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Rudenko was quoted as saying by Interfax.

    But the statement called on Ukraine to cease deployment of sea mines, and to engage in immediate demining operations: “And it also requires the demining by the Ukrainian side of all ports where ships are anchored. Russia is ready to provide the necessary humanitarian passage, which it does every day,” Rudenko added.

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    He further warned against such plans that have been floated lately by Lithuania and the UK which involve foreign military naval escorts accompanying cargo ships. Interfax quoted him as saying such a scenarios would “seriously exacerbate the situation in the Black Sea.”

    Also, addressing ongoing accusations that Russia is stealing Ukrainian grain and other food sources, he stressed to reporters: “We completely reject this. We don’t steal anything from anyone.”

    Regarding mines, NATO in a message this month warned all commercial traffic in the Black Sea of the growing danger of drifting mines as spillover from the Russia-Ukraine war. “The latest statement of regional authorities, confirming another sighting of a mine, shows the threat of drifting mines in the Southwest part of the Black Sea still exists,” a May 13 NATO shipping advisory said.

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    “An additional stray mine was detected and deactivated on 06 of April 2022 in the Southwestern part of the Black Sea. National authorities stated that the searches for mine-like objects are ongoing. The threat of more drifting mines cannot be ruled out,” it warned.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/25/2022 – 21:20

  • "Very Dangerous": Pelosi Responds For The First Time Since Being Banned From Communion
    “Very Dangerous”: Pelosi Responds For The First Time Since Being Banned From Communion

    Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on May 24 reacted for the first time to being banned from communion in San Francisco, where she lives.

    The decision “is very dangerous,” Pelosi said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) speaks in Washington on May 17, 2022. (Julia Nikhinson/Reuters)

    San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Joseph Cordileone recently announced that he was banning Pelosi because of her continued support for abortion despite “numerous attempts” to convince her of “the grave evil she is perpetrating.”

    Cordileone said he held off on the move for years while speaking with Pelosi but was compelled to act after the lawmaker’s position on abortion became “more extreme.” He also noted she has said that her Catholic faith motivates her support for abortion, which directly opposes Pope Francis and the Catholic teachings.

    “Since the first century the church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable,” the Vatican said in a communication to questioners in 2009, citing the Catechism of the Catholic Church. “Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law.”

    Pelosi will not receive communion in San Francisco until she “publicly repudiate[s] her support for abortion ‘rights’ and confess[es] and receive[s] absolution for her cooperation in this evil in the sacrament of penance,” Cordileone said.

    Pelosi, speaking on Tuesday, attacked Cordileone directly by describing him as being “against LGBTQ rights” and questioning why he has not barred people who support the death penalty from taking communion.

    “I wonder about death penalty, which I am opposed to. So is the church, but they take no action against people who may not share their view,” she said.

    Pelosi reportedly received communion at Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Georgetown over the weekend following Cordileone’s announcement.

    The Archdiocese of Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

    A spokesperson told the Washington Examiner that Archbishop Wilton Gregory will not ban Pelosi from communion.

    “The actions of Archbishop Cordileone are his decision to make in the Archdiocese of San Francisco. Cardinal Gregory has not instructed the priests of The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington to refuse communion to anyone,” the spokesperson said.

    Other bishops, including Bishop Robert Vasa of the Diocese of Santa Rosa, have said they support Cordileone’s decision.

    “All politicians who promote abortion should not receive holy communion until they have repented, repaired scandal, and been reconciled to Christ and the church,” Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois, said in a statement.

    Pelosi on Tuesday also was asked about the Women’s Health Protection Act, which she helped pass the House of Representatives before a bipartisan majority of senators blocked it.

    Pelosi falsely said the bill did not expand access to abortion, alleging it would just “enshrine Roe v. Wade into the law.”

    “I think it’s very insulting to women to have their ability to make their own decision hampered by politics,” she said. “This should never have been politicized.”

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/25/2022 – 21:00

  • Obamacare 'Time Bomb' To Hit Right Before Midterms
    Obamacare ‘Time Bomb’ To Hit Right Before Midterms

    Congressional Democrats have yet another thing to worry about going into this year’s midterm elections.

    A temporary pandemic relief program aimed at lowering healthcare premiums under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare, is set to expire unless Democrats can revive a reconciliation bill that extends the financial assistance past the end of the year. And that means striking a deal with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV).

    If they can’t, roughly 13 million Americans will be hit with steep price hikes amid crippling inflation, in what Insider describes as a “time-bomb.”

    “There’s no denying that if they are not extended, then there could definitely be a political impact,” said healthcare policy analyst Charles Gaba.

    Voters are set to receive notices about premium increases in late October, as they head to the ballot box for the November midterms. Others would find out during the ACA open enrollment period, which begins on November 1.

    “If Congress lets the ACA premium help in the American Rescue Plan expire at the end of this year, middle-class people buying their own insurance would be hit hardest,” tweeted Larry Levitt, vice president for health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsLevitt noted that “a middle-class couple of 50 year-olds making $75,000 would see their premium go up by $8,304 on average,” adding “And, if the insurer hikes the unsubsidized premium by 10% for inflation, that’s another $1,468.“

    Gaba, the healthcare analyst, calculated potential premium hikes using different scenarios based on age, income, marital status and family size, and created two maps to illustrate how letting the ACA assistance lap would affect Americans by state:

    In this scenario, a couple nearing retirement age in West Virginia would see their monthly premium soar $2,704 if  enhanced Obamacare subsidies expire, the sharpest increase in the US. Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia has been open to reviving pieces of Biden’s agenda without committing to any specific plans and Democrats can’t revive a bill without his support. He has been publicly noncommittal on renewing the program in a smaller package. -Insider

    Americans who make just enough to lose access to government help would feel the brunt of the increases. “If you’re in that situation, you’d see all financial aid removed and your net cost would increase pretty dramatically,” said Gaba.

    Those who make under 150% of the federal poverty level – $19,320 for singles and $39,750 for a family of four – would also end up paying more if the ACA assistance lapses.

    As Insider notes, 20 Senate Democrats urged President Biden to include an extension of Obamacare subsidies a priority in his Build Back Better plan.

    In other words – extending the assistance is a no-brainer for Democrats. The only question is whether Manchin will be on board. According to Politico, “Staffers for Manchin and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer have spent the last couple weeks exchanging preliminary ideas for what the framework of a bill might look like,” adding that “the discussions have boosted hopes that an agreement remains in reach, though there is little expectation of a breakthrough before Memorial Day.”

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    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/25/2022 – 20:40

  • US Government Admits It Used Schools As Tool To Erase Culture, Seize Native American Land: Report
    US Government Admits It Used Schools As Tool To Erase Culture, Seize Native American Land: Report

    Authored by Beth Brelje via The Epoch Times,

    Erasing culture, pulling children away from their parents, and disregarding the emotional needs of children. These tactics could be pulled from today’s headlines, but they are the tried-and-true education policies the United States has admitted to using for 150 years as a tool to force the assimilation of Native Americans, and specifically to acquire Indian territorial land.

    U.S. School for Indians at Pine Ridge, South Dakota, 1891. (John C. H. Grabill collection, Library of Congress)

    This month, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) released a 106-page report detailing how the U.S. federal government “applied systematic militarized and identity-alteration methodologies in the Federal Indian boarding school system to assimilate American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children through education.”

    The BIA says the government used the education of children to “replace the Indian’s culture with our own.” This, the report says, was considered “the cheapest and safest way of subduing the Indians, of providing a safe habitat for the country’s white inhabitants, of helping the whites acquire desirable land, and of changing the Indian’s economy so that he would be content with less land.”

    The report was requested last year by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of the Pueblo of Laguna in New Mexico. She is the first Native American to serve as a cabinet secretary.

    Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland speaks during a daily press briefing at the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington on April 23, 2021. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

    Haaland asked for an investigation into the loss of lives and lasting consequences of the Federal Indian boarding school system.

    “This report shows for the first time that between 1819 and 1969, the United States operated or supported 408 boarding schools across 37 states [or then-territories], including 21 schools in Alaska and seven schools in Hawaii,” Bryan Newland, assistant secretary of Indian Affairs, wrote in a letter introducing the report.

    Another report expanding the investigation is planned.

    “The Federal Indian boarding school policy was intentionally targeted … at children to assimilate them and, consequently, take their territories,” Newland said.

    The report makes recommendations for new funding and the revitalization of tribal languages and cultural practices—a move necessary, Newland said, to start the healing process.

    Taken from Parents

    Congress ended treaty-making with Indian tribes in 1871 and started using statutes, executive orders, and agreements to regulate Indian Affairs, the report says. Around that time, Congress enacted laws to compel Indian parents to send their children to school and to authorize the Secretary of the Interior to issue regulations to secure the enrollment and regular attendance of eligible Indian children, whom the government considered wards of the government.

    “Many Indian families resisted the assault of the Federal Government on their lives by refusing to send their children to school,” the 1969 Kennedy Report, quoted in the current report, said.

    Under the Act of March 3, 1893, Congress authorized the Secretary of Interior to withhold rations, including those guaranteed by treaties, to Indian families whose children between ages 8-21 did not attend schools. No school meant no money or food for the family.

    “There is ample evidence in federal records demonstrating that the United States coerced, induced, or compelled Indian children to enter the Federal Indian boarding school system,” the report says.

    The Department of Interior moved children to off-reservation boarding schools without parental consent, often in distant states where children endured “rampant physical, sexual, and emotional abuse; disease; malnourishment; overcrowding; and lack of health care,” the report says.

    Ciricahua Apaches at the Carlisle Indian School, Penn., 1885 or 1886, as they looked upon arrival at the School. (Library of Congress)

    Once at boarding school, children were given English names and clothing. Their hair was cut, and they were prevented from using their native language, religion, and cultural practices. Children were sorted into units to perform military drills; performed labor and were subject to corporal punishment.

    At the Kickapoo Boarding School in Kansas, when children ran away from school, officials went looking for them and brought them back to school where they faced “a whipping administered soundly and prayerfully,” in front of other students to warn them not to flee, the report says. This same school had children sleeping three to a bed. The schools were typically overcrowded, the report shows.

    The intent of all this was to permanently break family ties and prevent students from returning to the reservations. The system produced intergenerational trauma, the report says.

    In 1886, the Haskell Institute in Kansas intentionally mixed Indian children from 31 different tribes to disrupt tribal relations and prevent Indian language use, the report says. The Department of Interior intended school graduates from different tribes to intermarry, so they would use English for their children’s mother tongue. Affected tribes that year included the Apache, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Cherokee, Chippewa, Comanche, Caddo, Delaware, Iowa, Kiowa, Kickapoo, Kaw, Mojave, Muncie, Modoc, Miami, New York, Omaha, Ottawa, Osage, Pawnee, Pottawatomie, Ponca, Peoria, Quapaw, Seneca, Sac and Fox, Seminole, Shawnee, Sioux, and Wyandotte.

    Lacking Education

    Work done by children in these boarding schools would likely be a violation of child labor laws in most states, said the 1928 Meriam Report, prepared at the request of the then-Secretary of the Interior.

    Focused on vocational training, the government adopted a half-time plan, with students spending half the day in academic subjects and the remaining time in work. They tended to farm animals, the report says, and worked in lumbering, on the railroad, carpentry, blacksmithing, fertilizing, irrigation system development, well-digging, making furniture including mattresses, tables and chairs, cooking, laundry, ironing services, and garment-making.

    The 2022 report shows that, in 1857 at the Winnebago Manual Labor Schools in Nebraska, the girls made 550 garments for themselves and the boys attending the school, and 700 sacks for farm use. In 1903, a report from the Mescalero Boarding School in New Mexico showed the Mescalero Apache boys sawed over 70,000 feet of lumber, 40,000 shingles, and made more than 120,000 bricks.

    Schools at the time said they could not afford to support operations merely on the funds provided by Congress. Students had to handle these chores to keep the places going. The report notes that this labor had a monetary value.

    Paid for With Money Meant for Indians

    The schools were given operation money annually, but according to the report, the federal government likely also used money held in tribal trust accounts and proceeds of the sale tribal land to run the schools.

    “It is apparent that proceeds from cessions of Indian territories to the United States through treaties—which were often signed under duress—were used to fund the operation of Federal Indian boarding schools. As a result, the United States’ assimilation policy, the Federal Indian boarding school system, and the effort to acquire Indian territories are connected,” the report says.

    The United States government paid missionary church groups to run the programs. It had contracts, the report says, with the American Missionary Association of the Congregational Church, the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church, the Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church, the Bureau of Catholic Indian Missions, and the Protestant Episcopal Church.

    In some cases, the missionaries were given no education or training. The government had no standards to follow or oversight over the programs, the report shows.

    Schools had Grave Sites

    Gravestones of American Indians at the Carlisle Indian Cemetery where children who died at the Carlisle Indian School in Carlisle, Penn., are buried. (Library of Congress)

    Most schools don’t need a cemetery, but these schools did. An initial investigation of 19 schools found over 500 student deaths.

    “The intentional targeting and removal of … children to achieve the goal of forced assimilation of Indian people was both traumatic and violent,” the report says. “The department found hundreds of Indian children died throughout the Federal Indian boarding school system and it believes continued investigation will reveal the approximate number of Indian children who died at these schools to be in the thousands or tens of thousands.”

    The department’s research has identified at least 53 different burial sites across the school system; some marked, others unmarked or poorly maintained.

    “The deaths of Indian children while under the care of the federal government, or federally-supported institutions, led to the breakup of Indian families and the erosion of tribes,” the report says.

    The department has been talking with tribal leaders to address cultural concerns regarding the burial sites, including future protection of burial sites and potential repatriation or disinterment of remains. “The department will not make public the specific locations of burial sites associated with the Federal Indian boarding school system in order to protect against well-documented grave-robbing, vandalism, and other disturbances to Indian burial sites,” the report says.

    Recommendations

    The report makes recommendations including funding a full investigation. Congress appropriated $7 million in new funds through fiscal year 2022, through the Consolidated Appropriations Act. The report asks to expand the investigation with continued funding for fiscal year 2023.

    It also suggests identifying surviving boarding school attendees, and formally documenting their historical accounts and experiences, including studying current impacts such as health status, including substance abuse and violence.

    It asks to protect details of gravesites from being made public under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, by making information exempt from Freedom of Information Act.

    It also recommends the advancement of native language revitalization by funding the development of programs supporting native language revitalization in both Bureau of Indian Education funded schools, and non-BIE schools.

    The report calls for the promotion of Indian health research by funding scientific studies on lasting health impacts.

    And the report suggests recognizing the generations of children who experienced the Federal Indian boarding school system with a federal memorial.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/25/2022 – 20:20

  • Consumers Face Summer Of Hell As Power Bill Costs Set To Jump 
    Consumers Face Summer Of Hell As Power Bill Costs Set To Jump 

    The last thing consumers want to hear is an increase in power costs this summer following the news last week of rising threats of rolling blackouts across half of the US. 

    Tight supplies of natural gas, crude, and coal have pushed up residential electricity rates this year. A nationwide weather outlook for this summer forecasts extreme heat — all of this will force households to crank up their air conditions, resulting in oversized power demand that could stress national grids. 

    Bloomberg cites new data from Barclays Plc that says monthly power bills could be 40% more than last year’s. The US Energy Information Administration expects retail residential electricity rates to increase the most since 2008. 

    Data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics shows Miami households spent 38% more on energy in April than a year ago. Power prices in the state have jumped due to the rising cost of natgas. 

    “Our continued overreliance on gas only sets us up for these burdensome and unnecessary rate increases. 

    “This business model is unsustainable, and it’s hurting people,” said Natalia Brown of Catalyst Miami, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group. 

    Besides Miami, parts of Hawaii, Dallas, Minneapolis, Boston, Philadelphia, New York, and San Francisco recorded the highest increases in retail electricity costs last month. 

    Barclays analyst Srinjoy Banerjee said the average residential power bills averaged $122 in April. He pointed out that power bills could raise another $49 due to natgas prices soaring over $8 per million British thermal units. 

    Consumers can’t escape the inflation storm that only suggests a summer of hell is ahead. Gasoline and diesel prices are at a record, food prices are screaming higher, homes and cars are unaffordable, and real wage growth is negative. 

    Banerjee said the inflation burden “disproportionately falls on lower-income groups.” 

    In California, higher costs for electricity and less reliable electric grids mean consumers will pay on average 25% more this summer, according to Cisco DeVries, chief executive officer of OhmConnect Inc., which helps households save money by remotely adjusting thermostats. 

    The cost of everything is rising and has pushed consumers to the brink. Many have maxed out credit cards and drained critical savings to survive this terrible economic backdrop of what appears to be stagflation which could quickly morph into a Federal Reserve-induced recession due to aggressive interest rate hikes. 

    Then there’s the risk of rolling blackouts across the Great Lakes to the West Coast due to tight power supplies may not be able to satisfy demand amid a megadrought. 

    Some Americans could get a nasty dose of high inflation and power blackouts, similar to life in Venezuela. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/25/2022 – 20:00

  • Sussman Trial Day 8: Ex-Clinton Lawyer Told Different Stories To Congress And FBI, Jury Hears
    Sussman Trial Day 8: Ex-Clinton Lawyer Told Different Stories To Congress And FBI, Jury Hears

    Authored by John Haughey and Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

    A lawyer representing Hillary Clinton’s campaign told members of Congress in 2017 that he took information about Donald Trump and Russia to the FBI on behalf of a client, even though he told the bureau previously that he was bringing the data on his own volition, jurors in federal court heard on May 25.

    “I think it’s most accurate to say it was done on behalf of my client,” Michael Sussmann, the lawyer, told the House Intelligence Committee on Dec. 18, 2017.

    Michael Sussmann arrives at federal court in Washington on May 18, 2022. (Teng Chen for The Epoch Times)

    Portions of the transcript were read into the record as prosecutors with special counsel John Durham’s team wrapped up their case against Sussmann, who is on trial on the charge of lying to the FBI.

    Sussmann texted James Baker, a bureau lawyer, in September 2016 asking for a meeting so he could share information, but claimed he was coming forward on his own accord, not as part of his representation of any clients.

    Sussmann, with Perkins Coie, at the time was representing both the Clinton campaign and Rodney Joffe, a technology executive who has said he was promised a position in the government if Clinton won the 2016 election.

    The parties colluded in gathering data and claiming that it showed a secret link between Trump and Russia’s Alfa Bank, prosecutors say. They hoped to sway the election in Clinton’s favor.

    About 14 months after handing over the allegations to Baker—the FBI and the CIA both deemed the claims false—Sussmann sat before the House panel and told members that he received the Trump-Russia information from a client, whom he indicated was not the Clinton campaign. He also said he did not go to the FBI and CIA on his own volition but was directed by his client to go to the agencies and hand over the information.

    “We had a conversation, as lawyers do with their clients, about client needs and objectives and the best course to take for a client. And so it may have been a decision that we came to together. I don’t want to imply that I was sort of directed to do something against my better judgment, or that we were in any sort of conflict, but this was—I think it’s most accurate to say it was done on behalf of my client,” Sussmann said before the panel.

    Clinton campaign officials have testified that they did not approve of Sussmann going to the FBI. They hoped that media outlets would publish stories on the Trump-Alfa Bank claims, and feared going to the bureau would delay the articles.

    Defense lawyers, meanwhile, called their first witnesses—several former Department of Justice employees, including former Associate Deputy Attorney General Tashina Gauhar.

    According to notes Gauhar took at a March 6, 2017, meeting that involved top officials, there was an awareness that Sussmann brought the information for a client or clients.

    Then-FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe said during the meeting that the Trump-Alfa Bank claims came from an “attorney” who “brought [them] to [the] FBI on behalf of his client,” with the last word possibly being “clients.”

    Gauhar said on the stand she did not remember the meeting but said she recognized the notes as ones she took. When pointed to the part about McCabe, Gauhar said she didn’t recall that moment.

    Another former DOJ official, Mary McCord, was questioned as the defense introduced her notes, which stated that an attorney brought the allegations to Baker and that the attorney did not “say who client was.”

    Baker testified earlier in the trial that Sussmann told him when their meeting first started that he was not coming on behalf of any particular client, and that he was “very confident” of the recollection. He did not take notes of the meeting.

    Baker also said he could only vaguely remember the 2017 meeting, for which he was listed as a participant, and did not remember anything that was said.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/25/2022 – 19:40

  • Stellantis CEO Warns Of Impending EV Battery Shortage As 'Greenification' Hits Snag 
    Stellantis CEO Warns Of Impending EV Battery Shortage As ‘Greenification’ Hits Snag 

    The latest sign the rapid transition to a green economy could soon hit a snag is a warning from the world’s fourth-largest carmaker about an approaching electric vehicle (EV) battery shortage. 

    Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares expects a shortage of EV batteries by 2024-25, according to CNBC. He then said the adoption of EVs by 2027-28 will slow due to a lack of raw materials for vehicles. 

    “The speed at which we are trying to move all together for the right reason, which is fixing the global warming issue, is so high that the supply chain and the production capacities have no time to adjust,” Tavares said. 

    President Biden’s ambitious target of 50% EV sale shares in the U.S. by 2030 could hit a brick wall unless domestic supply chains are strengthened and raw materials for battery-making are adequately sourced. 

    Tavares said new EV regulations to phase out traditional internal combustion are too aggressive and urged lawmakers to stop moving targets for EVs forward. 

    He expects a battery shortage will first emerge and then a lack of raw materials for the vehicles.

    “You’ll see that the electrification path, which is a very ambitious one, in a time window that has been set by the administrations is going to bump on the supply side,” the CEO added, who runs the world’s fourth-largest carmaker, with brands such as Chrysler, Dodge, Ram, Jeep, Abarth, Alfa Romeo, Lancia, Maserati, and others. 

    A shortage of batteries and raw materials will drive the spread of EV-combustion average car prices even wider. The average cost of an EV is around $60k, versus $46k for all other vehicles. That’s a difference of $14k. The spread will continue to widen as battery costs increase, thus making EVs unaffordable for most people. 

    And it’s not just EVs that could soon run into trouble. Greenify the nation’s power grid could result in power shortfalls across the western half of the US because grid operators have removed too much power capacity through retiring fossil fuel power plants and have yet to bring enough solar and wind to satisfy the increasing demand. This may trigger a summer of power blackouts. 

    What’s deeply depressing is that elected and unelected officials forcing this green transition have taken no accountability for their actions upon mishaps. Thank the billionaires at Davos for this mess, who want the masses to own nothing, drive EVs, and eat bugs. 

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/25/2022 – 19:20

  • Hedges: No Way Out But War
    Hedges: No Way Out But War

    Authored by Chris Hedges via ScheerPost.com, (emphasis ours)

    Permanent war has cannibalized the country. It has created a social, political, and economic morass. Each new military debacle is another nail in the coffin of Pax Americana…

    Original Illustration by Mr. Fish — “No Guts No Glory”

    The United States, as the near unanimous vote to provide nearly $40 billion in aid to Ukraine illustrates, is trapped in the death spiral of unchecked militarism. No high speed trains. No universal health care. No viable Covid relief program. No respite from 8.3 percent inflation. No infrastructure programs to repair decaying roads and bridges, which require $41.8 billion to fix the 43,586 structurally deficient bridges, on average 68 years old. No forgiveness of $1.7 trillion in student debt. No addressing income inequality. No program to feed the 17 million children who go to bed each night hungry. No rational gun control or curbing of the epidemic of nihilistic violence and mass shootings. No help for the 100,000 Americans who die each year of drug overdoses. No minimum wage of $15 an hour to counter 44 years of wage stagnation. No respite from gas prices that are projected to hit $6 a gallon.

    The permanent war economy, implanted since the end of World War II, has destroyed the private economy, bankrupted the nation, and squandered trillions of dollars of taxpayer money. The monopolization of capital by the military has driven the US debt to $30 trillion, $ 6 trillion more than the US GDP of $ 24 trillion. Servicing this debt costs $300 billion a year. We spent more on the military, $ 813 billion for fiscal year 2023, than the next nine countries, including China and Russia, combined.

    We are paying a heavy social, political, and economic cost for our militarism. Washington watches passively as the U.S. rots, morally, politically, economically, and physically, while China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, India, and other countries extract themselves from the tyranny of the U.S. dollar and the international Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT), a messaging network banks and other financial institutions use to send and receive information, such as money transfer instructions. Once the U.S. dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency, once there is an alternative to SWIFT, it will precipitate an internal economic collapse. It will force the immediate contraction of the U.S. empire shuttering most of its nearly 800 overseas military installations. It will signal the death of Pax Americana.

    Democrat or Republican. It does not matter. War is the raison d’état of the state. Extravagant military expenditures are justified in the name of “national security.” The nearly $40 billion allocated for Ukraine, most of it going into the hands of weapons manufacturers such as Raytheon Technologies, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing, is only the beginning. Military strategists, who say the war will be long and protracted, are talking about infusions of $4 or $5 billion in military aid a month to Ukraine. We face existential threats. But these do not count. The proposed budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in fiscal year 2023 is $10.675 billion. The proposed budget for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is $11.881 billion. Ukraine alone gets more than double that amount. Pandemics and the climate emergency are afterthoughts. War is all that matters. This is a recipe for collective suicide.

    There were three restraints to the avarice and bloodlust of the permanent war economy that no longer exist.

    • The first was the old liberal wing of the Democratic Party, led by politicians such as Senator George McGovern, Senator Eugene McCarthy, and Senator J. William Fulbright, who wrote The Pentagon Propaganda Machine. The self-identified progressives, a pitiful minority, in Congress today, from Barbara Lee, who was the single vote in the House and the Senate opposing a broad, open-ended authorization allowing the president to wage war in Afghanistan or anywhere else, to Ilhan Omar now dutifully line up to fund the latest proxy war.

    • The second restraint was an independent media and academia, including journalists such as I.F Stone and Neil Sheehan along with scholars such as Seymour Melman, author of The Permanent War Economy and Pentagon Capitalism: The Political Economy of War. 

    • Third, and perhaps most important, was an organized anti-war movement, led by religious leaders such as Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King Jr. and Phil and Dan Berrigan as well as groups such as Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). They understood that unchecked militarism was a fatal disease.

    None of these opposition forces, which did not reverse the permanent war economy but curbed its excesses, now exist. The two ruling parties have been bought by corporations, especially military contractors. The press is anemic and obsequious to the war industry. Propagandists for permanent war, largely from right-wing think tanks lavishly funded by the war industry, along with former military and intelligence officials, are exclusively quoted or interviewed as military experts. NBC’s “Meet the Press” aired a segment May 13 where officials from Center for a New American Security (CNAS) simulated what a war with China over Taiwan might look like. The co-founder of CNAS, Michèle Flournoy, who appeared in the “Meet the Press” war games segment and was considered by Biden to run the Pentagon, wrote in 2020 in Foreign Affairs that the U.S. needs to develop “the capability to credibly threaten to sink all of China’s military vessels, submarines and merchant ships in the South China Sea within 72 hours.” 

    The handful of anti-militarists and critics of empire from the left, such as Noam Chomsky, and the right, such as Ron Paul, have been declared persona non grata by a compliant media. The liberal class has retreated into boutique activism where issues of class, capitalism and militarism are jettisoned for “cancel culture,” multiculturalism and identity politics. Liberals are cheerleading the war in Ukraine. At least the inception of the war with Iraq saw them join significant street protests. Ukraine is embraced as the latest crusade for freedom and democracy against the new Hitler. There is little hope, I fear, of rolling back or restraining the disasters being orchestrated on a national and global level.  The neoconservatives and liberal interventionists chant in unison for war. Biden has appointed these war mongers, whose attitude to nuclear war is terrifyingly cavalier, to run the Pentagon, the National Security Council, and the State Department.

    Since all we do is war, all proposed solutions are military. This military adventurism accelerates the decline, as the defeat in Vietnam and the squandering of $8 trillion in the futile wars in the Middle East illustrate. War and sanctions, it is believed, will cripple Russia, rich in gas and natural resources. War, or the threat of war, will curb the growing economic and military clout of China.

    These are demented and dangerous fantasies, perpetrated by a ruling class that has severed itself from reality. No longer able to salvage their own society and economy, they seek to destroy those of their global competitors, especially Russia and China. Once the militarists cripple Russia, the plan goes, they will focus military aggression on the Indo-Pacific, dominating what Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, referring to the Pacific, called “the American Sea.” 

    You cannot talk about war without talking about markets. The U.S., whose growth rate has fallen to below 2 percent, while China’s growth rate is 8.1 percent, has turned to military aggression to bolster its sagging economy. If the U.S. can sever Russian gas supplies to Europe, it will force Europeans to buy from the United States. U.S. firms, at the same time, would be happy to replace the Chinese Communist Party, even if they must do it through the threat of war, to open unfettered access to Chinese markets. War, if it did break out with China, would devastate the Chinese, American, and global economies, destroying free trade between countries as in World War I. But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen.

    Washington is desperately trying to build military and economic alliances to ward off a rising China, whose economy is expected by 2028 to overtake that of the United States, according to the UK’s Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR). The White House has said Biden’s current visit to Asia is about sending a “powerful message” to Beijing and others about what the world could look like if democracies “stand together to shape the rules of the road.” The Biden administration has invited South Korea and Japan to attend the NATO summit in Madrid.

    But fewer and fewer nations, even among European allies, are willing to be dominated by the United States. Washington’s veneer of democracy and supposed respect for human rights and civil liberties is so badly tarnished as to be irrecoverable. Its economic decline, with China’s manufacturing 70 percent higher than that of the U.S., is irreversible. War is a desperate Hail Mary, one employed by dying empires throughout history with catastrophic consequences. “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable,” Thucydides noted in the History of the Peloponnesian War. 

    A key component to the sustenance of the permanent war state was the creation of the All-Volunteer Force. Without conscripts, the burden of fighting wars falls to the poor, the working class, and military families. This All-Volunteer Force allows the children of the middle class, who led the Vietnam anti-war movement, to avoid service. It protects the military from internal revolts, carried out by troops during the Vietnam War, which jeopardized the cohesion of the armed forces.

    The All-Volunteer Force, by limiting the pool of available troops, also makes the global ambitions of the militarists impossible. Desperate to maintain or increase troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan, the military instituted the stop-loss policy that arbitrarily extended active-duty contracts. Its slang term was the backdoor draft. The effort to bolster the number of troops by hiring private military contractors, as well, had a negligible effect. Increased troop levels would not have won the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but the tiny percentage of those willing to serve in the military (only 7 percent of the U.S. population are veterans) is an unacknowledged Achilles heel for the militarists.

    “As a consequence, the problem of too much war and too few soldiers eludes serious scrutiny,” writes historian and retired Army Colonel Andrew Bacevich in After the Apocalypse: America’s Role in a World Transformed.

    “Expectations of technology bridging that gap provide an excuse to avoid asking the most fundamental questions: Does the United States possess the military wherewithal to oblige adversaries to endorse its claim of being history’s indispensable nation? And if the answer is no, as the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq suggest, wouldn’t it make sense for Washington to temper its ambitions accordingly?”

    This question, as Bacevich points out, is “anathema.” The military strategists work from the supposition that the coming wars won’t look anything like past wars. They invest in imaginary theories of future wars that ignore the lessons of the past, ensuring more fiascos. 

    The political class is as self-deluded as the generals. It refuses to accept the emergence of a multi-polar world and the palpable decline of American power. It speaks in the outdated language of American exceptionalism and triumphalism, believing it has the right to impose its will as the leader of the “free world.” In his 1992 Defense Planning Guidance memorandum, U.S. Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz argued that the U.S. must ensure no rival superpower again arises. The U.S. should project its military strength to dominate a unipolar world in perpetuity. On February 19, 1998, on NBC’s “Today Show”, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright gave the Democratic version of this doctrine of unipolarity. “If we have to use force it is because we are Americans; we are the indispensable nation,” she said. “We stand tall, and we see further than other countries into the future.”

    This demented vision of unrivaled U.S. global supremacy, not to mention unrivaled goodness and virtue, blinds the establishment Republicans and Democrats. The military strikes they casually used to assert the doctrine of unipolarity, especially in the Middle East, swiftly spawned jihadist terror and prolonged warfare. None of them saw it coming until the hijacked jets slammed into the World Trade Center twin towers. That they cling to this absurd hallucination is the triumph of hope over experience.

    There is a deep loathing among the public for these elitist Ivy League architects of American imperialism. Imperialism was tolerated when it was able to project power abroad and produce rising living standards at home. It was tolerated when it restrained itself to covert interventions in countries such as Iran, Guatemala, and Indonesia. It went off the rails in Vietnam. The military defeats that followed accompanied a steady decline in living standards, wage stagnation, a crumbling infrastructure and eventually a series of economic policies and trade deals, orchestrated by the same ruling class, which deindustrialized and impoverished the country.

    The establishment oligarchs, now united in the Democratic Party, distrust Donald Trump. He commits the heresy of questioning the sanctity of the American empire. Trump derided the invasion of Iraq as a “big, fat mistake.” He promised “to keep us out of endless war.” Trump was repeatedly questioned about his relationship with Vladimir Putin. Putin was “a killer,” one interviewer told him. “There are a lot of killers,” Trump retorted. “You think our country’s so innocent?” Trump dared to speak a truth that was to be forever unspoken, the militarists had sold out the American people.

    Noam Chomsky took some heat for pointing out, correctly, that Trump is the “one statesman” who has laid out a “sensible” proposition to resolve the Russia-Ukraine crisis. The proposed solution included “facilitating negotiations instead of undermining them and moving toward establishing some kind of accommodation in Europe…in which there are no military alliances but just mutual accommodation.”

    Trump is too unfocused and mercurial to offer serious policy solutions. He did set a timetable to withdraw from Afghanistan, but he also ratcheted up the economic war against Venezuela and reinstituted crushing sanctions against Cuba and Iran, which the Obama administration had ended. He increased the military budget. He apparently flirted with carrying out a missile strike on Mexico to “destroy the drug labs.” But he acknowledges a distaste for imperial mismanagement that resonates with the public, one that has every right to loath the smug mandarins that plunge us into one war after another. Trump lies like he breathes. But so do they.

    The 57 Republicans who refused to support the $40 billion aid package to Ukraine, along with many of the 19 bills that included an earlier $13.6 billion in aid for Ukraine, come out of the kooky conspiratorial world of Trump. They, like Trump, repeat this heresy. They too are attacked and censored. But the longer Biden and the ruling class continue to pour resources into war at our expense, the more these proto fascists, already set to wipe out Democratic gains in the House and the Senate this fall, will be ascendant. Marjorie Taylor Greene, during the debate on the aid package to Ukraine, which most members were not given time to closely examine, said:

    “$40 billion dollars but there’s no baby formula for American mothers and babies.”

    “An unknown amount of money to the CIA and Ukraine supplemental bill but there’s no formula for American babies,” she added.

    “Stop funding regime change and money laundering scams. A US politician covers up their crimes in countries like Ukraine.”

    Democrat Jamie Raskin immediately attacked Greene for parroting the propaganda of Russian president Vladimir Putin.

    Greene, like Trump, spoke a truth that resonates with a beleaguered public. The opposition to permanent war should have come from the tiny progressive wing of the Democratic Party, which unfortunately sold out to the craven Democratic Party leadership to save their political careers. Greene is demented, but Raskin and the Democrats peddle their own brand of lunacy. We are going to pay a very steep price for this burlesque.

    *  *  *

    The walls are closing in, with startling rapidity, on independent journalism, with the elites, including the Democratic Party elites, clamoring for more and more censorship. Please, if you can, sign up at chrishedges.substack.com so I can continue to post my now weekly Monday column on ScheerPost and produce my weekly television show, The Chris Hedges Report.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/25/2022 – 19:00

  • Is The US Already In Recession?
    Is The US Already In Recession?

    Do recessions lead to bear markets, or is it vice versa?

    That is the question Bloomberg Markets Live commentator Ye Xie asks today, and with good reason: with the S&P having fallen about 18% from its January peak, just a hair shy of the typical bear-market definition of a 20% drawdown, everyone is talking about an imminent recession. But here Yie spots a mathematical oddity: if the S&P 500 falls into a bear market and a recession follows in coming months, that would be the first time in modern history that a bear market has foreshadowed an economic downturn.

    As Xie explains his methodology, he counted 11 times when the S&P 500 fell at least 20% from previous records since 1929. (That excludes most of the periods from the 1930s and 1940s because the S&P 500 didn’t climb back to the its pre-Great Depression peak until the 1950s.)

    Here are Xie’s conclusions:

    • It took (a median of) four months for markets to trough. The median peak-to-trough drawdown was 34%
    • There were three false alarms, including 1987, 1966 and 1962, when the S&P fell more than 20% without an imminent recession
    • Recessions don’t always cause a bear market. Stocks fell less than 20% during recessions in 90-‘91, 1980, ‘60-’61 and ‘53-‘54 for example
    • The punchline: Bear markets never occurred before recession started. The 20% threshold was typically hit roughly 2-3 months after the economic contraction started.

    As Xie points out, the 20% threshold is of course arbitrary and yet that’s what traditionally is viewed as a bear market. Still, stocks fall more during, rather than before, an economic contraction. The bigger point is that if indeed the S&P entered a brief bear market last Friday when the S&P dipped below 3,855 and bounced immediately, then it’s safe to conclude that the US economy is already in a recession, unless this time is different. But we doubt it: after all just a few hours earlier the Atlanta Fed announced that its GDPNowcast tracker for Q2 GDP dropped from 2.4% to 1.8%.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    And with Q1 already negative, it means we are just 1.8% away from a full-blown technical recession.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/25/2022 – 18:40

  • They're Worried About The Spread Of Information, Not Disinformation
    They’re Worried About The Spread Of Information, Not Disinformation

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

    We’re in the final countdown to British Home Secretary Priti Patel’s decision on the fate of Julian Assange, with the WikiLeaks founder’s extradition to the United States due to be approved or rejected by the end of the month. Joe Lauria has a new article out with Consortium News on the various pressures that Patel is being faced with from both sides of this history-making issue at this crucial time.

    And I can’t stop thinking, as this situation comes to a boil, about how absurd it is that the US empire is working to set a precedent which essentially outlaws information-sharing that the US doesn’t like at the same time western news media are full of hand-wringing headlines about the dangerous threat of “disinformation”.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) has an article out titled “‘Disinformation’ Label Serves to Marginalize Crucial Ukraine Facts” about the way the mass media have been spinning that label to mean not merely the knowing distribution of false information but also of information that is true but inconvenient to imperial narrative-weaving.

    “In defense of the US narrative, corporate media have increasingly taken to branding realities inconvenient to US information goals as ‘disinformation’ spread by Russia or its proxies,” writes FAIR’s Luca Goldmansour.

    Online platforms have been ramping up their censorship protocols under the banner of fighting disinformation and misinformation, and those escalations always align with narrative control agendas of the US-centralized empire. Just the other day we learned that Twitter has a new policy which expands its censorship practices to fight “misinformation” about wars and other crises, and the Ukraine war (surprise surprise) will be the first such situation about which it will be enforcing these new censorship policies.

    Then there’s the recent controversy over the Department of Homeland Security’s “Disinformation Governance Board,” a mysterious institution ostensibly designed to protect the American people from wrongthink coming from Russia and elsewhere. The board’s operations (whatever they were) have been “paused” pending a review which will be led by Michael Chertoff, a virulent swamp monster and torture advocate. Its operations will likely be resumed in one form or another, probably under the leadership of someone with a low profile who doesn’t sing show tunes about disinformation.

    And this all comes out after US officials straight up told the press that the Biden administration has been deliberately sowing disinformation to the public using the mainstream press in order to win an infowar against the Kremlin. They’ve literally just been circulating completely baseless stories about Russia and Ukraine, but nobody seems to be calling for the social media accounts of Biden administration officials to be banned.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    You see so many discrepancies between what the oligarchic empire says and what it actually does regarding the issue of disinformation because the empire has no problem with disinformation.

    The empire that is built on propaganda and lies has no problem with propaganda and lies. It has a problem with the truth.

    They’re not worried about disinformation, they’re worried about information. They’re worried about journalists using the unprecedented information-sharing power of the internet to reveal inconvenient facts about the largest and most murderous power structure on earth. They’re worried about people finding out that they’ve been lied to their entire lives about their world, their nation and their government. They’re worried about people using their newly connected minds to decide together that they don’t much like the status quo as it’s been laid out for them, and deciding to build a new one.

    All the safeguards they’re setting up now to manipulate the flow of information online are not there to eliminate lies, they’re there to eliminate truth. These people have a vested interest in keeping things dark and confused, and we the ordinary people of the world have a vested interest in shining a big inconvenient spotlight on everything. The elite agenda to keep things endarkened is at direct odds with the people’s agenda to get things enlightened.

    We are not being protected by a compassionate alliance of corporations and governments who only want us to know the truth, we are being manipulated and oppressed by an oligarchic empire that wants us to believe lies. That’s why they’re locking up Assange, that’s why they’re censoring the internet, that’s why they’re filling our minds with propaganda, and that’s why we can’t let them win.

    *  *  *

    My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.

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    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/25/2022 – 18:20

  • Zelensky Rejects Kissinger Concession Comments, Says "Russia Must Also Leave Crimea"
    Zelensky Rejects Kissinger Concession Comments, Says “Russia Must Also Leave Crimea”

    Ukraine’s president in fresh Wednesday remarks asserted that his country will hold no talks or negotiations with Russia until its forces pull back to their pre-war positions. It’s but the latest clear signal that there likely won’t be any negotiated settlement on the horizon, also as US defense officials have recently been predicting a protracted, possibly even “years-long” conflict.

    President Volodymyr Zelensky laid out Ukraine’s position in a virtual address before this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. It came after an initial speech before the forum at the start of this week, according to the AP. He put the ball in Moscow’s court, saying it must “shift from the bloody war to diplomacy” if it hopes for the war to end. “It’s possible if Russia shows at least something. When I say at least something, I mean pulling back troops to where they were before Feb. 24,” which marked the start of the invasion. He added: “I believe it would be a correct step for Russia to make.”

    He also said at a moment Russia is making steady gains in Donbas, reportedly now poised to take all of Luhansk province, that Ukrainian forces would fight to liberate all occupied territory. 

    “Ukraine will fight until it reclaims all its territories,” he stressed. “It’s about our independence and our sovereignty.” This as there have been calls from a handful of European leaders to make some territorial concessions for the sake of ending the war based on a negotiated settlement. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, who has been present in Davos, admitted that the situation in eastern Donbas region remains “extremely bad”.

    Zelensky had said the day prior, on Tuesday, that negotiating recognition of Russia’s possession of Crimea is not on the table. “Russia will also have to leave Crimea,” he had said during a daily briefing according to the Kyiv Independent. Speaking of Kherson, Melitopol, Enerhodar, Mariupol, he said the Russians must exit these and “all other cities and communities where they are still pretending to be the owners.”

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    Crucially, all of this comes on the heels of veteran US statesman Henry Kissinger’s own controversial Davos remarks advising that Ukraine must be willing to cede territory or risk a broader Russia-NATO war that spreads beyond Ukraine’s borders. He said:

    “I hope the Ukrainians will match the heroism they have shown with wisdom,” Kissinger warned an audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland…

    “Negotiations need to begin in the next two months before it creates upheavals and tensions that will not be easily overcome.

    Ideally, the dividing line should be a return to the status quo ante.

    Pursuing the war beyond that point would not be about the freedom of Ukraine, but a new war against Russia itself,” he said.

    But now it’s been made clear that Zelensky has slammed the door on such a pragmatic approach, telling the same Davos audience that his government and armed forces won’t compromise, but will keep fighting until it has all sovereign territory back.

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    Kissinger’s Tuesday comments went viral and drove world headlines, with some Western pundits even suggesting, absurdly, that America’s most famous diplomat has been “compromised” by Putin and Russia.

    Tyler Durden
    Wed, 05/25/2022 – 18:00

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