Today’s News 28th January 2022

• Sperry: What Did Clinton Know And When Did She Know It? The Russiagate Evidence Builds
  Sperry: What Did Clinton Know And When Did She Know It? The Russiagate Evidence Builds

  Authored by Paul Sperry via RealClearInvestigations,

  As indictments and new court filings indicate that Special Counsel John Durham is investigating Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign for feeding false reports to the FBI to incriminate Donald Trump and his advisers as Kremlin agents, Clinton’s role in the burgeoning scandal remains elusive. What did she know and when did she know it?

  

  Top officials involved in her campaign have repeatedly claimed, some under oath, that they and the candidate were unaware of the foundation of their disinformation campaign: the 35-page collection of now debunked claims of Trump/Russia collusion known as the Steele dossier. Even though her campaign helped pay for the dossier, they claim she only read it after BuzzFeed News published it in 2017.

  But court documents, behind-the-scenes video footage and recently surfaced evidence reveal that Clinton and her top campaign advisers were much more involved in the more than $1 million operation to dredge up dirt on Trump and Russia than they have let on. The evidence suggests that the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory sprang from a multi-pronged effort within the Clinton campaign, which manufactured many of the false claims, then fed them to friendly media and law enforcement officials. Clinton herself was at the center of these efforts, using her personal Twitter account and presidential debates to echo the false claims of Steele and others that Trump was in cahoots with the Russians.

  

  Although Clinton has not been pressed by major media on her role in Russiagate, a short scene in the 2020 documentary “Hillary” suggests she was aware of the effort. It shows Clinton speaking to her running mate, Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, and his wife, Anne, in hushed tones about Trump and Russia in a back room before a campaign event in early October 2016. Clinton expressed concerns over Trump’s “weird connections” to Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin. She informed Kaine that she and her aides were “scratching hard” to expose them, a project Kaine seemed to be hearing about for the first time.

  “I don’t say this lightly,” Clinton whispered, pausing to look over her shoulder, “[but Trump’s] agenda is other people’s agenda.”

  “We’re scratching hard, trying to figure it out,” she continued. “He is the vehicle, the vessel for all these other people.”

  The two then discussed “all these weird connections” between the Trump campaign and Russia. Kaine brought up former Trump Campaign Manager Paul Manafort, and Clinton expressed suspicion about Trump’s then-national security adviser, ret. Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, “who is a paid tool for Russian television.”

  Added Clinton: “This is what scares me … the way that Putin has taken over the political apparatus, or is trying to — .” At that point, a media handler interrupted them over some staging issues, and they stopped discussing Trump and Russia.

  

  Both Manafort and Flynn had been cited in dossier reports submitted to the Clinton campaign before the two Democratic nominees had their October 2016 conversation. The dossier falsely accused Manafort, Flynn and other Trump advisers of participating in a Kremlin conspiracy to steal the election for Trump.

  Dossier author Christopher Steele himself has suggested Clinton was briefed on his reports. On July 5, 2016 — the same day the FBI publicly exonerated Clinton in her email scandal — Steele handed off the first installments of the dossier to an FBI agent overseas who had handled him previously as an informant. In their London meeting, Steele noted that Clinton was aware of his reporting, according to contemporaneous notes Steele took of their conversation.

  “The notes reflect that Steele told [his FBI handler Michael Gaeta] that Steele was aware that ‘Democratic Party associates’ were paying for [his] research; the ‘ultimate client’ was the leadership of the Clinton presidential campaign; and ‘the candidate’ was aware of Steele’s reporting,” Justice Department watchdog Michael Horowitz wrote in his 2019 report examining the FBI’s use of the dossier to justify spying on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

  Later that same month, during the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, the CIA picked up Russian chatter about a Clinton foreign policy adviser who was trying to develop allegations to “vilify” Trump. The intercepts said Clinton herself had approved a “plan” to “stir up a scandal” against Trump by tying him to Putin. According to handwritten notes, then-CIA chief John Brennan warned President Obama that Moscow had intercepted information about the “alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016, of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisers to vilify Donald Trump.”

  At the convention, Clinton foreign policy adviser Jake Sullivan drove a golf cart from one TV-network news tent in the parking lot to another, pitching producers, anchors, correspondents and even some NBC network executives a story that Trump and his advisers were in bed with Putin and possibly conspiring with Russian intelligence to steal the election. He also visited CNN and MSNBC, as well as Fox News, to spin the Clinton campaign’s unfounded theories. Sullivan even sat down with CNN honcho Jeff Zucker to outline the opposition research they had gathered on Trump and Russia.

  Sullivan’s title was misleading. He was far more than a foreign policy adviser to Clinton. His portfolio included campaign strategy.

  “Hillary told Sullivan she wanted him to take over [her campaign],” journalists Amie Parnes and Jonathan Allen reported in their 2017 bestseller, “Shattered: Inside Hillary’s Doomed Campaign.” “You’re going to be my traffic cop and my rabbi, she told Sullivan, adding that he would be her de facto chief strategist.”

  Sullivan was included in “every aspect of her campaign strategy,” they wrote, because “no one on the official campaign staff understood Hillary’s thought process as well as Sullivan.”

  Now serving in the White House as President Biden’s national security adviser, Sullivan has denied under oath knowing details about the dossier project.

  

  Sullivan spread the anti-Trump rumors behind the scenes while Clinton Campaign Manager Robby Mook went in front of the cameras to echo essentially what Steele, a former British intelligence officer, had reported back to the campaign.

  “Experts are telling us that Russian state actors broke into the DNC, stole these emails, and other experts are now saying the Russians are releasing these emails for the purpose of actually helping Donald Trump,” Mook told CNN’s Jake Tapper at the convention. He made the same allegations on ABC News’ “This Week,” anchored by George Stephanopoulos, who served as White House communication director during Bill Clinton’s presidency..

  Hillary Clinton campaign Communications Director Jennifer Palmieri has acknowledged that they were all bent on casting a “cloud” of suspicion over Trump and seeding doubt about his loyalties by suggesting “the possibility of collusion between Trump’s allies and Russian intelligence.”

  “We were on a mission to get the press to focus on the prospect that Russia had not only hacked and stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee, but that it had done so to help Donald Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton,” Palmieri stated in a 2017 Washington Post column. “We wanted to raise the alarm.”

  It’s not known if their media blitz was coordinated with Glenn Simpson, the Clinton campaign’s opposition-research contractor who hired Steele for $168,000. But Simpson also attended the convention in Philadelphia, and at the same time Clinton’s top people were making the TV media rounds, Simpson and his Fusion GPS co-founder, Peter Fritsch, were meeting with the New York Times and other major print media outlets to pitch Russia “collusion” stories, focusing primarily on Manafort. Bad publicity from the planted stories would later pressure Trump to dump Manafort as his campaign manager.

  That same week, Simpson worked with ABC News correspondent Brian Ross on a since-debunked story framing Trump supporter Sergei Millian as a Russian spy. Simpson also told Ross that Trump was involved in shady business deals in Moscow. Simpson set up Ross’ interview with Millian through ABC producer Matthew Mosk, an old Simpson friend.

  Then in September 2016, ABC’s “Good Morning America,” which is co-hosted by Stephanopoulos, aired parts of the Millian report. Later that day, Hillary Clinton tweeted out a campaign video incorporating heavily edited quotes from Millian and suggesting they were more evidence Trump was “an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation.” Above the video she posted on Sept. 22, Clinton personally tweeted: “The man who could be your next president may be deeply indebted to another country. Do you trust him to run ours?”

  In effect, Clinton broadcast to her millions of followers a story her campaign had helped manufacture through a paid contractor.

  

  Durham’s ongoing investigation has found that core parts of the dossier were fabricated and falsely attributed to Millian as their source, including the foundational claim of a “well-developed conspiracy of cooperation” between Russia and Trump. Durham reported  that Steele’s main collector of information – onetime Brookings Institution analyst Igor Danchenko – never even spoke with Millian, as he had claimed, but simply made up the source of the most explosive information in the dossier.

  Durham recently indicted Danchenko for lying to the FBI about Millian.

  The day after Clinton’s false tweet about Millian and Trump, her campaign released a statement by senior national spokesman Glen Caplin touting a “new bombshell report” by Yahoo News that revealed the FBI was investigating “Trump’s foreign policy adviser” for suspected links to the Kremlin.

  “It’s chilling to learn that U.S. intelligence officials are conducting a probe into suspected meetings between Trump’s foreign policy adviser Carter Page and members of Putin’s inner circle while in Moscow,” according to the statement, which attached the Sept. 23, 2016, Yahoo article in full and noted the report came on the heels of ABC’s story about Millian.

  “Just one day after we learned about Trump’s hundreds of millions of dollars in undisclosed Russian business interests,” Caplin’s statement continued, “this report suggests Page met with a sanctioned top Russian official to discuss the possibility of ending U.S. sanctions against Russia under a Trump presidency – an action that could directly enrich both Trump and Page while undermining American interests.”

  “We’ve never seen anything like this in American politics,” the Clinton campaign statement added with alarm. “Every day seems to cast new doubts on what’s truly driving Donald Trump’s decision-making.”

  But the Yahoo story about Page’s nefarious Kremlin meetings was apocryphal. Its main source was Steele, whose identity was hidden in the story. Yahoo reporter Michael Isikoff had interviewed Steele in a room at a Washington inn booked by Simpson. The FBI nonetheless cited the article to support its applications to a secret federal court for authority to spy on Page, claiming it corroborated the dossier’s allegations, even though they were one and the same.

  Here again, Clinton’s team hyped as a “bombshell” Trump-Russia revelation a media report that it helped craft from opposition research it commissioned and from FBI interest it generated. All of this was hidden from voters.

  

  It was also in September that then-Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann planted at FBI headquarters the manufactured allegation that Trump had set up a “secret hotline” to Putin through Russia-based Alfa Bank. Steele had filed a campaign report about the bank’s ties to Putin around the same time.

  Durham last year indicted Sussmann for lying to the FBI, detailing how the lawyer and Simpson had collaborated with a team of anti-Trump, pro-Clinton computer researchers to draft a technical report for the FBI and media allegedly connecting Trump to Alfa Bank through email servers. Simpson, in turn, worked with Slate reporter Franklin Foer to craft a story propagating the allegation, even reviewing his piece in advance of publication.

  

  Foer’s story broke on Oct. 31, 2016. That same day, Sullivan hyped the story on Twitter, claiming in a written campaign statement that Trump and the Russians were operating a “secret hotline” through Alfa Bank and speculating “federal authorities” would be investigating “this direct connection between Trump and Russia.” He portrayed the discovery as the work of independent experts — “computer scientists” — without disclosing their connections to the campaign.

  “This could be the most direct link yet between Donald Trump and Moscow,” Sullivan proclaimed.

  ‘October Surprise’ That Wasn’t

  Clinton teed up that statement in an Oct. 31 tweet of her own, which quickly went viral. She warned voters: “Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank.”

  Also that day, Clinton tweeted, “It’s time for Trump to answer serious questions about his ties to Russia,” while attaching a meme that read: “Donald Trump has a secret server. It was set up to communicate privately with a Putin-tied Russian bank called Alfa Bank.”

  

  At the same time that Simpson was working Slate, he leaked to a friend at the New York Times that the FBI had evidence of the Trump-Alfa link, providing the Times and other friendly media outlets a serious news hook to publish the unfounded rumors on the eve of the November election.

  The Alfa smear was meant as an “October surprise” that would rock the Trump campaign and take media focus off the probe of Clinton’s emails, which then-FBI Director James Comey had been pressured by a New York agent to revive in the final week of the campaign. Clinton’s team had even “prepared a video promoting the Trump-Alfa Bank server connection and was poised to make an all-out push through social media,” according to Isikoff and David Corn in their book, “Russian Roulette.” But “that plan was canned,” they wrote because the Oct. 31 Times story noted that the FBI had not been able to corroborate the claims of a cyber-link. The skepticism cooled the media firestorm the campaign had hoped for.

  “We had been waiting for the Alfa Bank story to come out,” Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta told Isikoff and Corn. “Then — boom! — it gets smacked down.”

  In congressional testimony, Podesta has largely claimed ignorance about the campaign’s opposition-research efforts. 

  

  In Durham’s indictment of Sussmann for lying to the FBI about his work for the Clinton campaign while feeding them the Alfa Bank story, prosecutors revealed that Sussmann’s partner Marc Elias kept Clinton campaign bigwigs in the loop about the project to manufacture a Trump-Russian bank conspiracy, which the FBI months later completely debunked. Emails obtained by Durham’s investigators show the lawyer had briefed top Clinton campaign officials Sullivan, Palmieri and Mook about the Alfa smear in September 2016. Elias, the campaign’s general counsel, engaged with “individuals acting on behalf of the Clinton campaign to share information about the Russian bank data,” the indictment stated.

  Sullivan, who now serves as President Biden’s national security adviser, maintained in December 2017 congressional testimony he didn’t even know that the politically prominent Elias worked for Perkins Coie, a well-known Democratic law firm representing the Clinton campaign. Major media stories from 2016, however, routinely identified Elias as “general counsel for the Clinton campaign” and a “partner at Perkins Coie.”

  “To be honest with you, Marc wears a tremendous number of hats, so I wasn’t sure who he was representing,” Sullivan testified. “I sort of thought he was, you know, just talking to us as, you know, a fellow traveler in this – in this campaign effort.”

  Veteran FBI investigators doubt Sullivan or his boss were in the dark about the campaign-funded work of Elias, Sussmann, Simpson or Steele and other campaign operations designed to make Trump look compromised by a foreign adversary.

  “Durham is telling us that this Alfa Bank hoax – and probably related matters – were Clinton campaign ops at the very highest level,” former FBI counterintelligence agent and lawyer Mark Wauck noted. “How credible is it to suppose that Hillary herself wasn’t in the know?”

  Durham’s investigators have been questioning Elias under subpoena. A new court filing in the Sussmann case reveals that Elias has given testimony before a criminal grand jury impaneled by Durham in Washington, D.C.

  Grand jury testimony is sealed and it’s not known what Elias told prosecutors. But In 2017, he testified in a closed-door session of Congress that Mook was his campaign contact for opposition-research projects, including the dossier. “I consulted with Robby Mook, who was campaign manager,” he said, noting that Mook handled budget matters and signed off on opposition-research expenses billed by Perkins Coie, which totaled more than $1.2 million.

  While Mook has not been questioned under oath on the Hill, he told CNN: “I didn’t know that we were paying the contractor that created that document.”

  “What I’ve known [about the dossier] is what I’ve read in the press,” he claimed. Mook said he doesn’t recall seeing the dossier memos during the campaign. “I just can’t attribute to what piece of information, you know, came to us at one time or where it came from, frankly. You know, as campaign manager, there’s a lot going on.”

  Mook added that he wasn’t sure who was gathering the information for the dossier: “I don’t know the answer to that. … I wish we paid more attention to it on the campaign.”

  Elias Met Simpson Often

  In his testimony, Elias said he met with Simpson and other Fusion GPS researchers at least 20 times and Steele at least once during the campaign. He said he would receive written reports from them and direct them to find certain information. He, in turn, would travel each week to Clinton campaign headquarters in Brooklyn, N.Y., to report what he had learned about Trump and Russia.

  However, Elias insisted he left his interlocutors in the dark about the sources of that information, for which the campaign was paying him in excess of $1 million. He also insisted he didn’t tell his campaign contacts about his meetings with Steele or Simpson, despite billing the campaign for such consultations, and never shared the dossier reports or other materials they generated with those Clinton officials. Elias even maintained that he hired Fusion GPS on his own without consulting with Mook or the campaign. “I was the gatekeeper,” he said, between the research contractors and the campaign.

  According to “Russian Roulette,” however, Elias shared the findings of Steele’s memos with at least Mook. “Elias would at times brief Mook on their contents,” Isikoff and Corn wrote.

  Podesta has testified that he, too, had no idea Steele and Fusion GPS were on the campaign’s payroll and didn’t read the dossier until BuzzFeed posted it online after the election.

  Under oath, Podesta denied speaking with Clinton about the dossier even after the election: “I don’t know that I’ve ever discussed the dossier with Mrs. Clinton.” He also swore Clinton never talked to him about opposition research, in general, or who the campaign might hire to conduct it.

  The campaign’s in-house opposition research team, led by chief researcher Christina Reynolds, was under the direction of Palmieri, the head of communications who is close to Clinton.

  Former Bill Clinton political strategist Doug Schoen said it stretches credulity to suggest that top officials in the Clinton camp, including the candidate herself, weren’t fully aware of the research their campaign attorney was billing them for.

  “With more than 380 payments from the Clinton campaign and the DNC being made to Perkins Coie, it is seemingly impossible that the candidate herself would not have direct knowledge of the purpose of those payments or any earmarks being made, especially those for Fusion GPS,” Schoen said.

  Quoting unnamed Clinton surrogates, both the New York Times and CNN have reported that the candidate was unaware of the dossier prior to BuzzFeed publishing it two months after the 2016 election. Former Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon told CNN in a separate interview she may not have been totally out of the loop, however. “She may have known [about the dossier and its financing before the election],” he said, “but the degree of exactly what she knew is beyond my knowledge.”

  A senior congressional investigator who insisted on anonymity said the denials are hard to believe and described them as an effort to insulate Clinton from a major undertaking of her campaign that has proved scandalous, if not criminal.  “The biggest lie is Hillary didn’t know about any of this oppo stuff even though she tweeted about it!” he said.

  

  Clinton also appeared to cite dossier disinformation in the presidential debates, casting further doubt on claims she was walled off from such opposition research. In the final debate, for example, Clinton accused Trump of being Putin’s “puppet” and accepting his “help” in sabotaging her campaign, drawing conclusions similar to ones made in the dossier. She claimed Trump did what the dossier falsely claimed he did — conspiring with the Russian government to hack her campaign and steal emails — though she allegedly never read Steele’s reports.

  “You encouraged espionage against our people,” Clinton said on Oct. 19, 2016.

  Durham Inching Closer

  With each new indictment and court filing, Clinton inches closer to the center of the special prosecutor’s investigation, now in its third year.

  Durham indicated in a recently filed court document that he is actively investigating the Clinton campaign and seeks to question its top officials. His office declined to say whether it intended to question Clinton herself.

  Durham’s recent indictments of Sussmann and subcontractor Danchenko implicate key campaign figures and make clear that the Clinton campaign’s influence on the contents of the dossier was much deeper than previously known.

  For instance, Durham found that a longtime Clinton insider and campaign adviser — Charles Dolan — was a key source for the dossier and most likely originated the false “pee tape” rumor involving Trump and Moscow prostitutes. It seems likely that he acted as an intermediary between the campaign and Steele’s primary sub-source, Danchenko, with whom he communicated. In 2016, Dolan “actively campaigned and participated in calls and events as a volunteer on behalf of Hillary Clinton,” according to the Danchenko indictment.

  In other words, the Clinton campaign not only funded the Russia dirt on Trump but provided some of the actual sourcing for it. Campaign operatives, in turn, laundered the dirt through the FBI and into the mainstream media to damage Trump.

  In a related filing in the Danchenko case, Durham noted that his “areas of inquiry” include investigating “the extent to which the Clinton campaign and/or its representatives directed, solicited or controlled the defendant’s [Danchenko’s] activities” surrounding the dossier. He also indicated prosecutors want to find out whether the campaign knew Danchenko and Steele were funneling false information to the FBI, and intend to summon “multiple former employees of the campaign” as trial or grand jury witnesses.

  In the Sussmann case, Durham’s agents have already questioned one “former employee of the Clinton campaign” and subpoenaed Clinton campaign records, according to a new document filed by Durham earlier this week.

  Sources familiar with his probe say Durham ultimately is investigating the Clinton campaign for, among other things, alleged conspiracy to defraud the FBI, the Justice Department and the Pentagon’s research arm, which provided funding and sensitive Internet logs to Clinton operatives who helped fabricate the Alfa Bank hoax.

  Danchenko and the Clinton campaign, including Podesta and other officials, happen to share the same D.C. law firm – Schertler & Onorato – which gives the appearance that the Clinton campaign and the main source of the dossier have entered into a joint defense. Durham warned the court that the arrangement poses a conflict of interest.

  Podesta’s attorney, Bob Trout, did not respond to requests for comment. Trout also represents other ex-campaign officials who recently retained him in matters before Durham. 

  Clinton’s lawyer, David Kendall, who practices at the Washington-based firm Williams & Connolly, did not reply to requests for comment.

  J.D. Gordon, who held a position roughly equivalent to Sullivan’s on the 2016 Trump campaign, said in an interview that he hopes Durham adds Sullivan and other Clinton aides to his criminal investigation, “if he hasn’t already.”

  He suspects Sullivan was “the Russiagate hoax mastermind” and hopes that he and other members of Clinton’s 2016 team — as well as the candidate herself — are subpoenaed for testimony and document production just as he and other Trump advisers were targeted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, based almost entirely on rumors started by the Clinton machine. He called the Clinton-funded smears “depraved” and “nationally destabilizing.”

  “In addition to outright surveillance via the fraudulent FISA warrant against Carter Page, many of us were hit with federal and congressional subpoenas, subjected to grueling Senate and House investigations, special counsel interrogations and resulting harsh media spotlight,” he said. “I appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senate Judiciary Committee, House Intelligence Committee and produced requested documents to the House Judiciary Committee. Three times I was summoned before the special counsel, the first of which in August 2017 was apparently leaked to the Washington Post.”

  Gordon is not alone in his desire to see Clinton held to account. Among those Americans aware of the Durham probe, fully 60% think the special counsel should question Clinton about her role in the dossier and other campaign foul play, according to a recent national poll by TechnoMetrica Institute of Policy and Politics. Broken down by political affiliation, 80% of Republicans, 44% of Democrats and 74% of independent voters agree that Clinton should be interviewed by investigators.

  What happened more than five years ago may have renewed relevance: Some Democratic strategists speculate that Clinton is eyeing another run at the White House. As Vice President Kamala Harris’ popularity wanes and her shot at becoming the first female president slips, they say Clinton may see an opening.

  “I will never be out of the game of politics,” Clinton told ABC’s “Good Morning America” in October.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/27/2022 – 23:40

• Iranian Hackers Posed As "Proud Boys" During 2020 Election Disinformation Campaign, FBI Says
  Iranian Hackers Posed As “Proud Boys” During 2020 Election Disinformation Campaign, FBI Says

  Members of the ‘Proud Boys’ have been arrested for scuffling with Antifa, and the group has been de-platformed by every major tech platform for its “racist” views (members of the group proudly claim to be ‘male chauvinists’, although they would also vehemently dispute accusations of racism) while the left-wing media constantly held it up as a right-wing boogeyman.

  But as it turns out, a group of Iranian hackers purportedly posed as members of the Proud Boys during a cyber misinformation campaign dedicated to interfering in the 2020 US election, according to a briefing released by the FBI this week warning the public about the activities of Iranian hacker collective, which is called Emennett Pasargad.

  

  The notice describing the Iranian group’s tactics and techniques was released months after an October grand jury indictment of two Iranian nationals allegedly employed by the group. The indictment had been sought by federal prosecutors with the Southern District of New York.

  According to the FBI, Emennett Pasargad has conducted “traditional cyber exploitation activity” since 2018, and has targeted news, shipping, travel, oil, financial and telecommunications companies, including companies in the US, Europe and beyond.

  But in 2020, they carried out a “multi-faceted campaign to interfere in the US election”.

  As part of this campaign, they obtained confidential information on voters from at least one state election website; sent threatening e-mails to try and intimidate voters, created and disseminated a video containing “disinformation” about nonexistent vulnerabilities about America’s voting system, and attempted to access, without authorization, several states’ voting-related websites.

  The group also successfully accessed the network of a major US media company without permission. Members posed as Proud Boys while carrying out their “voter intimation”-related activities, the FBI said.

  In addition to interfering in the 2020 vote, Emennet has also conducted cyber disnformation campaigns against Saudi Arabia, during which the group “masqueraded” as the “Yemen Cyber Army”.

  Members of the group mask their activity by deploying attacks through virtual private networks, or VPNs. The bureau said Emennet favors websites that run certain software programs, including WordPress, which hackers can exploit to carry out their attacks.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/27/2022 – 23:20

• The Other Side Of The Story: Russia's View On Geopolitics, War, & Energy-Racketeering
  The Other Side Of The Story: Russia’s View On Geopolitics, War, & Energy-Racketeering

  Authored by Nash Landesman via The Saker blog,

  The following is an exclusive interview with Russian Duma deputy, Yevgeny Fyodorov, a high-ranking conservative, nationalistic lawmaker in President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia Party. He has been Chairman of the Committee on Economic Policy of the State Duma and a member of the Advisory Council of the President of the Russian Federation. Below we discuss war with Ukraine, principles of sovereignty and geopolitics, the ongoing energy battle, the nuclear option, and the reestablishment of the Soviet sphere, all within the context of US ambition and Russian counter-strategy.

  INTRO:

  Atop the unipolar priority list lies the looming Russian “threat” of providing European consumers with affordable, dependable heating and cooking gas at stable long-term contract terms amidst the dead of winter.

  Only America and its’ “allies”/ [subordinates/collaborators] can halt this menace by supplanting cheap Russian gas piped from relatively short distances with much more expensive, technically-complex US liquid natural gas shipped from across the Atlantic, capitalizing on America’s shale revolution while stamping out Russian influence in Europe—killing two birds with one stone. (Although at least twenty-nine multibillion dollar regasification intake terminals have been built across Europe under US pressure to import its supplies, a new Russian pipeline threatens to render them sunk costs).

  The Russian pipeline would “pose an existential threat to European energy security,” states one US sanctions bill, implying that the very notion of energy security outside of US/EU auspices is the threat itself. Washington is trying to block this development, using various means that now include the threat of war under any pretext.

  Since Soviet times as much as 80% of Europe’s Russian gas imports traversed Ukraine— but lately those flows have since slowed to a trickle, due to Washington’s eight-year proxy war in Donbas, NATO expansion, Kiev’s tendency to syphon Russian gas and not pay its bills, and other factors. It is little wonder Moscow is scrambling to establish alternate routes avoiding third-party generated instability.

  This year European gas prices rocketed to record highs, adding fuel to Russian ambitions to circumvent its’ now-hostile neighbor with its’ latest project, the recently- completed $11 billion natural gas pipeline, Nordstream 2, running under the Baltic sea direct to Germany, crucially evading land transit states subject to external control.

  Nordstream 2 could be a major geopolitical boon to both Russia and Germany, helping the latter achieve the energy independence it would need to take steps to chart an independent course and/or remove US occupation troops from its territory, still present under the NATO umbrella since WWII.

  Despite the pipeline’s recent completion, the European Commission has delayed (indefinitely) the certification required in order for Russia to start pumping gas. Whether Moscow will go ahead and do it anyway remains up in the air.

  What is clear is that US counter-strategy is a patchwork of threats, hysterics and racketeering. As Richard Morningstar, former US diplomat and founding director of the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Centre, bluntly put it, “I think Nord Stream 2 is really a bad idea…If you want to kill the [US-based] LNG strategy go ahead with Nord Stream [2]”.

  The pipeline also undermines an interrelated, long-developing, radical globalization scheme—an internal EU gas market established under the European Energy Charter that’s designed to dismantle Gazprom by preventing Russia from owning or controlling its downstream energy assets.

  Large land transit states like Ukraine help to ensure that Russia obey the rules. But after withdrawing from the aforementioned treaty in 2009, Russia has struck bilateral gas deals with states like Hungary and Belarus, enraging Washington and Brussels. Now Nordstream 2 would symbolize the ultimate affront to the internal energy market architecture as it involves Europe’s most powerful nation, Germany, with no transit states in-between.

  (Berlin has been left in the cold ever since caving to pressure to phase-out its nuclear capacity and cease domestic coal production).

  The pertinent question is: on whose outside supplies will Berlin come to depend? Europe’s future may hang on the answer.

  Ex-German chancellor Angela Merkel supported the pipeline, her foreign minister, Sigmar Gabriel, along with the Austrian Federal Chancellor, Christian Kern, complaining, “The draft bill of the US [sanctions regime] is surprisingly candid about what is actually at stake, namely selling American liquefied natural gas and ending the supply of Russian natural gas to the European market. We cannot accept the threat of illegal extraterritorial sanctions…involving Russia, such as Nord Stream 2, [which] impacts European-American relations in a new and very negative way.”

  Detractors, meanwhile, insist that a pipeline avoiding Ukraine would give Russia more leverage over its weaker neighbor, despite the implied detachment, a piece of double-think requiring little to no explanation.

  Nevertheless, one hard-headed member of Russia’s Duma explains what’s really going on, from Moscow’s view, and what’s truly at stake in this developing saga.

  

  Yevgeny Fyodorov

  INTERVIEW:

  Q: How does EU policy affect European states’ energy consumption?

  A: The alternative to our natural gas is, of course, importing US LNG, which is much more expensive. The crucial interested parties in our piped gas are Europe and especially Germany. The key question arises from the fact that the EU wants absolute control over the Nordstream 2 gas pipeline. They want to control everything. The principle of competition of nations is involved. Russia is also interested in full control over those gas supplies; it helps Russia to fulfill its obligations. We welcome no third party to play this game as an outside controller over the pipeline.

  Hence the Germans’ position: they support Nordstream 2 because it provides for their gas balance and they understand that otherwise they will lack gas. Nord Stream 2 is a kind of “magic wand” for Russia because it helps Germany to get a stable gas supply and sign long-term contracts. Otherwise they will need to keep temperatures in their dwellings very low. If the EU refuses to certify Nordstream 2, Europe will freeze. It would be like shooting its’ own leg.

  The position of Europe is this: give us all transport routes and gas fields—but it contradicts the Russian principle of state sovereignty. So Russia won’t agree to it. Our position is simple: we supply gas, you can either take it or not. We aren’t going to sort out your domestic problems.

  Q: What are the impediments to gas flowing through the recently-completed Nordstream 2 pipeline?

  A: Blocking Nordstream 2 is a result of pressure from the Americans. There we need to understand common sense. What is the Americans’ interest? It is a very basic interest. There is no economic profit in LNG supplied from the US. The interest of the US is that they are generally against German economic independence and independent resouces. Yes, we have American military troops in Germany, Germany is being controlled by the US. In case Germany becomes too independent it will simply throw away American control. This is how history works. Of course, this is why the Americans are against NS2. Not just because of the competition with their LNG, but also because of US Anti-German policy. They dislike that Germany would gain a new level of economic independence; such level which would allow Germany to get rid of American control.

  It’s clear that the U.S. wouldn’t like European countries, particularly Germany, to become more powerful. So, the U.S.’s geopolitical interest consists in Germany not being able to solve its problems with gas supply beyond U.S.’s influence, without the influence from Ukraine, Poland etc… As a result Americans opposed Nord Stream 2 from the very beginning. It’s obvious. Because it’s one thing when you control a few countries and manipulate them and it’s absolutely different thing when Germany will get a regular gas supply and will be independent of the US. It’s the position of the US and it’s clear and understandable.

  The position of Germany: it needs a reliable gas supply and independence. The position of Russia: to earn money for its gas supply. With every coming year, Germany will become more and more sovereign\independent and one day American troops will be withdrawn from its territory. I’m sure one day Germany will raise the question of withdrawal of American occupation troops from their land. You know, these troops were simply renamed from occupation troops into NATO’s troops. It’s in the interests of German people and at some point Germans will do it. Russia will definitely help them, not in a military way but by creating geopolitical foundation of free nations.

  And now another question: the situation in the European Union. European regulations/treaties/charters/energy packages were adopted not by Germany but by the EU and which are greatly influenced by the U.S. They created the so-called energy packages … If EU countries had signed long-term contracts, there wouldn’t have been any price increase. They could have agreed on $300 per cubic meter for many years ahead. But without these contracts the price rocketed to $1000, harming Germany and other European countries.

  A: How does the issue of sovereignty come into effect?

  What’s the main motivation of any nation? Sovereignty and freedom. And if there are any occupation troop on their land, it’s anything but freedom. That’s why any nation will demand occupation armies to leave their country even if at present they don’t talk about it openly because of the propaganda. Germany is moving in this direction. It’s a normal process. A Unipolar world is neither normal nor legal in the historic context. Either there is one Empire, like the Roman Empire of Alexander the Great, or the world is multi-polar. There is no other option.

  Today’s unipolar world is volatile. And Americans understand this. They have two options: either to create a colonial empire (but aren’t powerful enough to do it) or accept\embrace the multi-polar world model. They are guided by the rules of competition among nations according to which everyone is everyone’s enemy. That’s the way people live in the world. All the wars were caused by this. The logic is: you’re the most powerful and the rest are suppressed by you. Everyone is suppressed by you, not only major enemies like Russia, but allies as well. They are allies because American troops are on their territory but not because they love America.

  Q: Why does the U.S. still insist on gas transit through Ukraine?

  A: Another play is the game with Ukraine, where we still talk about keeping gas supply transiting through it. Nobody (in Russia) refuses to transit via Ukraine. But the talks and wishes are about the substantial profit Ukraine will obtain from transiting our gas over its’ territories. The Americans will continue to insist that Russia must finance its’ own war with Ukraine, until NS2 will start to function; until Russia manages to exclude Ukraine from financing its’ military actions with Russian money [via transit fees amounting to billions of dollars per year].

  Frankly speaking there is a particular part of Ukraine that refused to follow the orders of the newly- emerged power in Kiev, who occupied power in 2014. The new undersea pipeline (NS2) shouldn’t involve a third party like what we have to deal with in the case of Ukraine. Our undersea pipeline is more convenient for Europe. It is clear that when the Ukraine pipeline was constructed in the middle of last century there were no underwater pipeline technologies. Now this new technology has emerged thanks to scientific progress.

  Q: What are the economic implications of this energy battle?

  A: Let’s look at this question from the viewpoint of science, history and geopolitics. What is the American dollar? The American dollar is a world currency. Let’s look at some figures: the American dollar turnover in the world is 40%, the euro turnover is 40% whereas the ruble turnover is only 0.18%. So, the ruble turnover is 400 times lower than that of the dollar or euro. The ruble doesn’t exist on the global scale.

  Americans have built their consumption at the expense of the world dollar. Estimates show that Americans consume 4 times more than they produce on their territory. The situation in Russia is quite the opposite. Russia produces 4 times more of the global GDP than it consumes. As a result Russia is a contributor to the world economy while the US is a vermin\parasite. These are merely figures\data, nothing personal. So, the dollar is of great importance to the Americans.

  The dollar requires worldwide jurisdiction – Anglo-Saxon law – because currency is worthless if it’s not supported by juridical system. Hence comes the mechanism of the world jurisdiction, the unipolar world as a vertical authority. According to Putin, “one power center means one decision-making center”. What’s Russia’s interest? To restore the ruble, which will allow Russia to immediately control 6% of the world currency turnover. And I’d like to remind you that at present we control only 0.18%. In the long run, taking into account that Russia has 1\3 of the world’s resources, we expect this figure to reach 1\3 of the world turnover. We want to have the right to print out currency.

  Q: Do the aforementioned issues implicate a pivot to Asia?

  A: There is a policy of reducing dependance of EU countries on Russian gas. We are ready to sell our gas to EU countries. But we see EU legislation creates harm to Europe, eg. Now the natural gas price jumped to $900 per 1000 cubic meters. But those are internal problems; they should be able to set up their legislation so that it will not harm their economy. Concerning Chinese – Russian relations and natural gas supply to China, the supply will continue to grow.

  This is about geopolitical and economic profitability. There are certain issues that lead to this. Russia and China have a common goal: to establish sovereignty. I reiterate one figure for economists: in the world economy the USD and the Euro comprise 80% of the world economy. The Russian ruble comprises one twentieth of 1% of global reserves. Hundreds of times less. Naturally that is unfair and illegal. And we will carry on politics which will result in the situation where the Russian ruble will equal Russia’s economy and resource export capability. And China will be our ally.

  Q: What is the general position of European states, notwithstanding EU internal market legislation?

  A: Who is the enemy of American unipolar world? The enemy of any unipolar world, including the American one, is national thousand-year-old states\countries, like Germany, France, etc… because such countries don’t want to be given orders. France has been independent for more than 1000 years.

  They don’t need any bosses in Brussels, let alone in Washington. So the policy of the US is to subdue them. The US has been trying to achieve this goal, firstly, by assisting in EU creation and by Mediterranean wars which led to millions of refugees who break French, German etc… national regimes. That’s the goal. Why did America bomb Libya, Syria? Why were they involved in the coup d’état in Egypt? It’s clear that they wanted to destroy national thousand-year-old states, which leads to economic destruction.

  Q: What do you make of the de-Russification laws in Ukraine?

  A: It is occupational tool intended to limit and prohibit the Russian language in Ukraine. The character and basic feature of Russian nation is that it is cultural people with big history. And the Russian language is a very important factor in consolidating and uniting multiple smaller nations.

  In the territory of Ukraine, as Ukraine itself is not a legal state from the position of International Law. So in Ukraine outside extranational parties. First of all, the US and their allies carry out the politics to stop the process of reestablishment of the joint united Motherland within it’s 1945 borders. In turn the reestablishment process in many parts of the Soviet Union is being carried out by all interested parties.

  From this fact emerges the conflict within Ukraine. This conflict could only be resolved by establishment of one single united state of Ukraine and Russia. Otherwise, it will never be resolved and will last forever. Actually, the reunion (of Ukraine and Russia) will definitely happen one day, is my strong belief. All serious leading experts understand that. The situation (between Russia and Ukraine) is still not regulated in accordance with the procedures guiding the liquidation of the Soviet Union. That is most important to understand. To say it in rough words, the situation with Ukraine and Crimea is prolonged and delayed until today. These are the roots of conflicts and arguments with Ukraine about Crimea and Donbass and Lugansk, and with Moldova, Transdniestria, Georgia, Abkhazia, etc…

  Q: How does Russia view subversive actions in nearby states like Belarus, for example?

  A: As an attempt to intrude by a third party into territory of an internationally recognized state entity, a joint Motherland within 1945 borders. Actually, we will react to intrusion into any other country, not only Belarus. Russia will use shield and defense tools. Defense tools we have include nuclear weapons, to protect and secure our borders and keep them safe and contain safely our nuclear weapons, and using those nuclear weapons. In other words, should America enter the territory of Belarus, our nuclear missiles are targeted at London, Washington, New York and other cities. The US will continue to manipulate Ukraine and Belorussia to oppose Russia. They will utilize the issue of unregulated state borders [see today: Kazakhstan] between these countries as a lever against its’ competitor and opponent, Russia.

  Q: Do you feel that America’s missile bases in Eurasia are directed towards Russia?

  A: We don’t ignore the reality that the US has installed missile bases throughout Eurasia. And the [US] State Department was saying that they will form new military nuclear bases there, including in Asian countries. Please understand this is very simple story. Russia plans to engage its nuclear weapons not against those countries where it was launched against Russia, but against the mastermind cities where the decisions were made. To be exact, it is Washington, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and other American cities. Please fully understand, in case American nuclear weapons are launched from, eg. Taiwan, or Poland, the response will hit New York or Washington.

  Q: Please elaborate on the EU’s long-unfolding internal gas market/energy treaty packages.

  A: Sure. European policy was to reject long-term contracts. This policy was to start a competitive war in which, as they said, the price would be reduced as a result of competition. And here lies their error of judgment. Competition works only if there is excess supply.

  But taking into consideration the post-Covid economy boost of China and Asia [among other factors], there hasn’t been any excess supply. As a result the EU failed. [higher prices, however, have increased demand for US LNG imports, perhaps implying that Russia’s plan backfired, playing into America’s hands]. Those who signed long-term contracts didn’t suffer at all. Some French companies, for instance, didn’t lose anything. They even benefited from this. So this price increase is the EU’s fault. What Russia wants is just to earn money for its produce. Russia thinks like this: if we don’t sell gas in Europe, we could sell it in China.

  Q: What is the situation surrounding US negotiations with Germany regarding Russian energy?

  A: Look: Who is more important: the supplier or the consumer who pays money? Surely, it’s the consumer. So, who is the main player in this situation: Germany or Russia? Germany. That’s why the U.S. opposes Nord Stream 2 by negotiating with Germany, not Russia. Germany is the main player here. So, the U.S. exerted pressure on Germany. And Germany, in its turn, tried to compensate by offering to invest in Ukrainian system, hydrogen etc… The negotiations regarding Nord Stream 2 were conducted between Germany and the U.S. but not between America and Russia.

  Q: How do offhand events, like the “Russiagate” fraud, the alleged Navalny poisoning, hysteria surrounding Russian troop buildup along the Russian-Ukrainian border, etc… influence public opinion?

  A: Russia is constantly blamed and there are two reasons why. Firstly, Russia doesn’t have influence on its own information sphere; it doesn’t have the necessary technology. Even Russia’s social networks, television are American. Mass media in Russia are beyond Russia’s jurisdiction. Russia doesn’t have “weapons” in the information sphere. Besides it’s very convenient to put all the blame on Russia in order to solve one’s own domestic problems. It’s common practice.

  Q: Is the EU’s energy Treaty Packages/Charter unfeasible?

  A: The EU’s energy packages are based on market excess supply. What I mean is they get gas supply from everywhere, from the U.S., Asia, Norway, and Russia. Europe wants to get the lowest price due to the competition between these suppliers. It only works providing there is excess supply due to different reasons, including transport logistics [plus Russia’s allegedly withholding supply from the market for leverage in Nordstrream 2 negotiations]. So it was a wrong strategy. I have only one question here: was this strategy was wrong because they are fools in Brussels or because they just played along with Americans? I think the latter. The situation got out of control: it led to price increase. Now they don’t know how to handle it.

  Q: Will Russia accept the terms and conditions of these energy packages?

  A: While drawing up this energy package (and it took years), they didn’t anticipate post-Covid syndrome which changed the situation globally. But Russia’s position is very simple. We support sovereignty. Historically, the concept of sovereignty in the Russian word is a priority. We respect the sovereignty of others. Russian position is simple: here is gas, you can either take it or not. We aren’t going to change your own internal regulations.

  Q: How does US and Russian geopolitical strategy differ?

  A: We have a different geopolitical strategy. The U.S. strategy is to support dollar turnover in the world. The U.S. domestic economy is dependent on external dollar. Hence 800 (military) bases abroad.

  The strategic historical policy of Britain and later America – the so called “gunboat policy, is creating conflict zones and supporting both conflicting parties with the aim of controlling the situation. That’s the U.S. policy. It originates from the American principle of nation building. Russia’s policy is exclusively managing our own business. We are a country of defensive\protective policy. The only exception was the USSR with its Marxist ideology of world revolutions. But it was a temporary exception and it was rejected by Russia.

  Q: Do you regard ecological complaints from Poland as a part of the American scheme?

  A: Sure. Poland is under U.S. control. If Americans remove this control, it will be gained by Germany. But it’s not in the U.S. interests, so they use Poland and Ukraine. They tried to control Belarus but failed. It’s a clash of strategies. The American strategy is “divide and rule.” Americans want to divide Russia in order to get supplies separately from the Siberia, Ural. But since Russia has nuclear weapons, this plan won’t work out for them.

  Q: Would Russia like to restore something like the USSR?

  A: The priority here consists in re-establishing legal outcomes, in restoring something that was violated illegally. If a country is divided legally, they have the right to do so. For example, the Czech Republic and Slovakia decided to split. If they did it legally, that’s not a problem. But if it’s illegal, it should be revoked. Do you feel the difference?

  As for Yugoslavia one should scrutinize the legitimacy of its division. What are the relations between international and internal\domestic laws? International law doesn’t interfere with domestic laws. A country can be destroyed\divided only by its own laws. If internal Yugoslavian laws were broken while dividing Yugoslavia, then this country should be restored. For the same reason Americans insist on Serbia recognizing Kosovo. Because Americans are well aware that until Serbia recognizes Kosovo’s independence, Serbia and Kosovo can’t be considered legally divided, no matter how many American (military) bases are located in Kosovo.

  Without any doubt, the Soviet Union’s dissolution was illegal. By the way, from the viewpoint of law, it wasn’t dissolved because no republic, except for the Baltic States, took the decision to leave the Soviet Union. The republics decided on the state sovereignty but any union consists of sovereign states. So, it doesn’t mean the dissolution of the union.

  Q: Who controls Russia’s Central Bank?

  A: You must understand how our Central Bank works. The Central Bank is the Depositary of IMF and secures and answers for worldwide USD circulation and includes part of Russian territory. So the Central Bank is part of USD circulation. The Russian Ruble is a derivative of USD and Euro circulations. The Ruble emission is carried out proportionally to part of export deals, as part of USD and Euro income as a result of such operations. So, the Central Bank policy and ruble policy does not reflect the Russian economy at all. It just shows our export potential. So we understand we need reforms to nationalize our currency exchange system and Central Bank. And reforms would create a ruble currency bulk inside Russia in correlation with exports. Similar to what the ECB and Forex are doing. We plan this reform.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/27/2022 – 23:00

• Murder Chaos Overruns Baltimore As Liberals Fail To Maintain Law And Order
  Murder Chaos Overruns Baltimore As Liberals Fail To Maintain Law And Order

  We want to ask our readers: Why is it that the most liberal metro areas have some of the worst violent crime in the country if liberals are so peaceful and loving? 

  We gravitate to Baltimore City, where the city’s top prosecutor halted prosecuting minor crimes in early 2021. Before the new policing approach, the metro area had already been overtaken by a violent crime wave since the 2015 riots. And it’s only getting worse. 

  According to local news WMAR-TV, 25 days into the new year, there have already been 31 homicides. 

  “We’re not even a full month into the new year and already Baltimore City has seen more homicides this year than there have been days,” the local news station said. 

  At the moment, the city is averaging a homicide per day. Violent crime is worsening and spreading into the downtown district filled with major financial institutions, bar and restaurant district(s), and tourist areas. 

  The 2022 homicide trend is well above all years dating back to 2017. 

  

  Newly elected Mayor Brandon Scott and Police Commissioner Michael Harrison have said the police department is “doing their job by aggressively and relentlessly pursuing these violent offenders. The department works around the clock to solve these crimes, make arrests and improve the quality of life in our city.”

  “Those who commit these violent acts will be held accountable and we will use all resources at our disposal to ensure the safety of Baltimore residents. The violence must stop, and we need everyone’s support to achieve sustainable reductions of violence in our city,” said Harrison.

  What’s shocking is that “no arrests have been announced for any of these 31 homicides,” the news station reported. 

  

  Mosby’s focus to no longer prosecute drug paraphernalia possession, minor traffic offenses, open container violations, and defecating in public, among other petty crimes, has failed to lower the violent crime rate as promised. 

  On top of all this, the police department is struggling with staffing shortages that have strained patrols and made homicide investigations harder. 

  As violent crime surges, liberal cities need to rethink policing to restore law and order.  

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/27/2022 – 22:40

• Is ATF Preparing To Confiscate Forced Reset Triggers?
  Is ATF Preparing To Confiscate Forced Reset Triggers?

  Submitted by The Machine Gun Nest (TMGN).,

  Gun Owners of America, one of the largest pro-gun organizations, has just published what appears to be a leaked internal ATF email documenting their plans to start seizing lawfully-owned forced reset and wide-open triggers beginning immediately.

  Gun Owners of America has credibility when it comes to finding out what the ATF is doing before going public. If you remember, they were some of the first to break the news on the ATF considering braced pistols to be short barrel rifles, a very similar situation.

  GOA’s video (linked here) discusses how the ATF has just given their field agents the go-ahead to start demanding the forfeiture of Rare Breed’s Forced Reset Trigger and BDU’s Wide Open Trigger, which the ATF considers to be a “machine gun.”

  

  [ZH: For now, the ATF appears to be targeting manufacturers and resellers, according to the email. Still, the question is, of course, whether this portends similar action against individuals down the road.]

  The interesting thing about these items is that (as we’ve covered before) they’re not machine guns at all. Anyone possessing a bump stock violates the Hughes Amendment and the National Firearms Act and is subject to harsh penalties. This situation is very similar to the bump stock situation in 2019, where a firearm accessory increases the rate of fire yet does not convert the gun itself to “automatic.” The ATF, of course, cared little for these nuances and ended up considering bump stocks themselves to be “machine guns” in 2019. They’re now seemingly looking to do the same for forced reset triggers.

  In the leaked email, these plans for confiscation are detailed further. We can see that the ATF is planning to “take possession of any documents and FRTs” that retailers and manufacturers have. Additionally, it’s detailed in the leaked email that if said manufacturers, distributors, or retailers refuse to comply, the field agents can “seize them for forfeiture.”

  

  One of the most interesting parts of the leak is how the word “defendant” is used. In the email, it reads, “FMS will be collecting the number of FRT’s recovered and number of defendants found in possession of these devices.” It seems that the ATF has already declared those in possession of FRTs to be guilty.

  The FRT was an amazingly popular device with wide circulation among gun owners. This leak is disturbing news. But this is just another example of the ATF changing the law on a whim and criminalizing millions overnight. Who knows how many gun owners may be affected by this change in policy.

  There’s another aspect to this policy change that is even more sinister, though. The forced reset trigger technically still is a semi-automatic trigger. Even though it may allow the operator to increase their fire rate, the trigger is still being actuated per shot. There’s a reset of the trigger each time it’s pulled. All the forced reset does is, force the resetting of the trigger to happen.

  So by all logical standards, that trigger is semi-automatic. Gun owners should be very concerned about this. When the ATF banned bump stocks, many people thought they were silly devices that were more of a novelty than anything else, and while that might be true, how they were banned has opened up the path to banning all semi-automatic firearms.

  To ban the bump stock, the ATF could only use laws already on the books. That law is the NFA (National Firearms Act). The NFA subjected certain firearms to a regulatory tax and background check for the purchase. Those items are suppressors, short barrel rifles/shotguns, and suppressors. In 1986, the Hughes Amendment was added to FOPA or Firearms Owners Protection Act. This amendment banned possession of all new production machine guns after 1986 altogether. So how did the ATF “ban” bump stocks? By considering them to be machine guns, no bump stocks were made before 1986. So all bump stocks were effectively banned using the NFA, GCA & FOPA. The ATF uses this same process to ban and criminalize possession of forced reset triggers.

  Now here’s why gun owners should be concerned. These devices are not machine guns. They only increase the rate of semi-automatic fire. How long until single-stage triggers are considered machine guns? Then semi-automatic triggers in general- Have you ever seen Jerry Miculek shoot?

  For those reading now that think that maybe I’m being paranoid, I’d highly encourage you to read “Legal & Lethal,” an article for Giffords written by none other than failed ATF nominee David Chipman.

  In Section 9 of Legal & Lethal, Chipman details his idea that semi-automatic firearms with “large-capacity magazines” in his mind are the same as machine guns, and considering a semi-automatic trigger like Rare Breed’s FRT is another inch closer to that goal.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/27/2022 – 22:20

• Kraft-Heinz Again Raises Prices On Dozens Of Products As Inflation Continues To Bite
  Kraft-Heinz Again Raises Prices On Dozens Of Products As Inflation Continues To Bite

  As some on Wall Street warn that the Fed remains dangerously behind the inflation curve (a fear that was given voice yesterday when Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s comments on inflation during the post-FOMC press conference appeared to send stocks spiraling lower), one of America’s biggest makers of food and consumer goods has warned that more price hikes are coming.

  To wit, Kraft-Heinz (in which Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway owns a big stake) said in a letter to customers that it will raise prices in March on dozens of its most popular products. The hikes will affect brands including Oscar Mayer cold cuts, hot dogs, sausages, bacon, Velveeta cheese, Maxwell House coffee, TGIF frozen chicken wings, Kool-Aid and Capri Sun, CNN reported.

  

  Increases range from 6.6% on 12oz packs of Velveeta to a whopping 30% hike on a package of Oscar-Mayer turkey bacon.

  Most cold cuts and beef hot dogs will go up around 10% and coffee around 5%. Some Kool-Aid and Capri Sun drink packs will increase by about 20%.

  “As we enter 2022, inflation continues to dramatically impact the economy,” Kraft Heinz said in a letter dated January 24 to at least one of its wholesale customers that was viewed by CNN Business. The wholesaler shared the letter on the condition of anonymity to protect the company’s relationship with its suppliers.

  Kraft Heinz is just the latest consumer manufacturer to announce plans to boost prices early in the year. Last week, P&G said that it would raise prices on Tide and Gain laundry detergents, Downy fabric softener and Bounce dryer sheets by an average of about 8% in February. Conagra, which makes such brands as Slim Jim, Marie Callender’s and Birds Eye, has said it plans to raise prices later this year.

  The question now is how much of these price hikes will retailers pass on to customers? Given the thin margins that grocery stores operate on, it’s likely that most, if not all, of the hike will be incorporated into prices on the shelf.

  For Kraft-Heinz, this isn’t the first time prices have been raised since the start of the latest “transitory” inflation wave. The brand just announced a 9% price hike on its beef, lean beef, hot dogs and some other products back in November.

  Headline consumer prices surged 7% in December according to the most recent CPI data release, which was the strongest level in nearly 40 years. Food prices alone rose 0.5% MoM.

  

  Beyond the US, global food prices have soared to levels unseen in a decade led by surging demand for wheat and dairy products following a year of severe drought and other environmental factors limiting production.

  

  The question now is how many more times will K-H and its competitors hike prices before inflationary pressures finally ease?

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/27/2022 – 22:00

• COVID-19 Can Be Stopped Without Massive Vaccination: Dr. Peter McCullough
  COVID-19 Can Be Stopped Without Massive Vaccination: Dr. Peter McCullough

  Authored by Harry Lee and Steve Lance via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  COVID-19 can be stopped without massive vaccination, renowned cardiologist and epidemiologist Dr. Peter McCullough told NTD’s “Capitol Report” program during the “Defeat the Mandates” march in Washington D.C., on Jan. 23.

  According to McCullough, early treatment and natural immunity are safe and effective against COVID-19, but federal health agencies have ignored these in a push for vaccines, the broad use of which is not needed.

  “The government has certainly been in an oblivion in terms of early treatment,” he said.

  Thousands of people turned out to march in protest against COVID-19 vaccine mandates—one of the largest U.S. events against the mandates since the start of the pandemic.

  “Our CDC, FDA, and NIH have had no effective messaging on early treatment, even the emergency use authorized monoclonal antibodies, which are safe and effective,” McCullough said. “And even on the new Merck and Pfizer drugs, which they’re basically absent in terms of the media, despite being recently distributed across the United States.”

  Early effective treatment of any disease can help avert progression to more serious illness, with an additional benefit of reducing the burden on health care systems, and in a seperate interview, McCullough claimed that 95% of the COVID deaths could have been prevented by early treatment…

  Dr. Peter McCullough @P_McCulloughMD says there was a predecided plan by our health agencies to suppress early treatment in order to promote mass vaccination at all cost and 95% of our population that died could of been prevented. pic.twitter.com/9sFvyeOynk

  — McCullough For Director NIH (@I7Bomb) January 27, 2022

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

  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stated on its website that according to the COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines published by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), “current clinical management of COVID-19 consists of infection prevention and control measures and supportive care, including supplemental oxygen and mechanical ventilatory support when indicated.”

  The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved one drug, remdesivir (Veklury), to treat COVID-19 in hospitalized patients, the CDC continued.

  On Monday, the FDA announced that it is restricting the use of two monoclonal antibody treatments for COVID-19, saying data show such treatments are “highly unlikely” to be active against the Omicron variant.

  

  McCullough said that highly qualified doctors have done the research and have shown that “early treatment can end this pandemic by reducing the intensity and severity of disease and reducing the chances of hospitalization and death in our highest risk seniors.”

  “This basically means that the vaccines broadly used aren’t needed. And in fact, we have seen far too many vaccine injuries and now vaccine failures. With the Omicron variant, there’s effectively no coverage of these vaccines against the newest form of the virus,” McCullough said, adding 22 studies showed vaccines ran out of efficacy after six months.

  McCullough gave the example of how ivermectin, a Nobel prize-winning, FDA-approved drug that many studies and doctors claim is effective in treating COVID-19 patients, was dismissed by federal health agencies.

  

  The FDA has been saying the drug was approved to treat internal and external parasites, and currently no data shows its effectiveness against COVID-19.

  McCullough also claimed that the federal health agencies have ignored natural immunity, which is “robust, complete, and durable in terms of the lethal strains of the virus.”

  “It was only until it got to the Omicron variant, which there was a breakthrough, and individuals who are previously immune could get a mild Omicron syndrome. But natural immunity is the end of the pandemic,” McCullough continued. “Remember, as we all become naturally immune, COVID-19 is no longer a threat to our lives.

  “And the failure of our governmental agencies to recognize natural immunity has basically created unnecessary suffering, unnecessary testing, unnecessary masking and social distancing. Unnecessary compliance with all kinds of measures that are designed for the susceptible. Those who are naturally immune are no longer susceptible to fatal disease.”

  McCullough expressed doubt about the claim that COVID-19 vaccines could reduce hospitalization and deaths.

  “All we have at this point of time is bias-confounded, and I think invalid hospitalization data. The U.S. agencies still make the claim that the vaccines protect against hospitalization, whereas we see no evidence of that in the UK, Germany, South Africa, and the rest of the world,” McCullough said. “And I can tell you, the United States is not that different than the rest of these countries. Something is wrong. And I can tell you something is wrong with an incorrect, invalid claim that the vaccines reduce hospitalization. I don’t think it’s supportable.”

  On Jan. 19, the CDC published a study showing that people who had not gotten a vaccine but did have a prior infection, also known as natural immunity, were less likely to land in a hospital than the vaccinated without natural immunity.

  The Epoch Times has contacted CDC for additional comment.

  Last month, President Joe Biden announced new measures to battle COVID-19, the top three of which are boosters for all adults, vaccinations to protect kids, and expanding free at-home testing. Biden did talk about the new treatment, saying that “if and when any new COVID-19 treatment pills have been found to meet FDA’s scientific standards, they are equitably accessible to all Americans.”

  Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/27/2022 – 21:40

• China Warns US Over Ukraine & Blasts "Interference" In Beijing Olympics
  China Warns US Over Ukraine & Blasts “Interference” In Beijing Olympics

  China on Thursday blasted the US for continuing to interfere in its affairs, further saying nothing has fundamentally changed, but instead charging there’s been “new shocks” since the Biden-Xi virtual summit of two months ago. 

  The scathing rebuke came on Thursday as Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi held a phone call with his counterpart Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Importantly, Wang took the opportunity to for the first time side with Russia in the direct communication with the US top diplomat, saying Moscow has “reasonable security concerns” over Ukraine that must be “taken seriously”. Chinese state media and Beijing-linked pundits have also become increasingly vocal on the issue, charging NATO with overstepping…

  Russia won’t be alone when it resists squeeze from the US and NATO. China will offer Russia support for sure. https://t.co/dKfQRfIgtt

  — Hu Xijin 胡锡进 (@HuXijin_GT) January 27, 2022

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  He urged calm on the part of all sides but specifically called on the West to “abandon its Cold War mentality”. It’s been no secret that Washington sanctions and punitive actions against officials in both countries have served to make Russia and China unlikely allies against a common enemy. 

  “All parties should completely abandon the Cold War mentality and form a balanced, effective and sustainable European security mechanism through negotiation,” Wang spelled out in the call with Blinken, according to AFP.

  The tough rhetoric echoed the words of Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian during a Wednesday press briefing. In response to US claims that Russia is likely to invade Ukraine during the Beijing Winter Olympics, Zhao said, “As the world’s largest military alliance, NATO should abandon the outdated Cold War mentality and ideological bias, and do things that are conducive to upholding peace and stability.”

  He suggested that NATO is outdated and contributes to instability: “China firmly opposes all kinds of small cliques,” he added, and urged “fully consider each other’s legitimate security concerns, avoid antagonism and confrontation, and properly address differences and disputes through equal consultation on the basis of mutual respect.”

  

  Wang focused much of his Thursday call with Blinken on the “urgent priority” that the “US should stop interfering in the Beijing Winter Olympics.” The swipe appeared not just aimed at Washington’s continued emphasis on China’s human rights abuses, including allegations of detention centers and “genocide” targeting Uighur Muslims, but in response to the words the day prior from Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman.

  Sherman had unexpectedly linked the Ukraine crisis with the Olympic games hosted by China:

  “We all are aware that the Beijing Olympics begin on Feb. 4, the opening ceremony, and President Putin expects to be there. I think that, probably, [Chinese] President Xi Jinping would not be ecstatic if Putin chose that moment to invade Ukraine, so that may affect his timing and his thinking,” Sherman said in a virtual conference.

  Senior US official predicts Russia will attack Ukraine by mid-February. Wendy Sherman notes China won’t like invasion during Beijing Winter Olympics; US embassy in Kyiv advises citizens to consider leaving ‘now’; diplomatic talks continue #Russia #Ukraine #USA [TOI] pic.twitter.com/s2kbMr19lO

  — Eli Dror (@edrormba) January 26, 2022

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  She said this even as Ukraine’s leaders have stressed that it doesn’t appear an invasion is “imminent” – as the White House has been asserting. 

  Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry has essentially rejected the US assessment, stating at the start of the week when the US Embassy in Kiev began reducing staff: “In fact, there have been no radical changes in the security situation recently: the threat of new waves of Russian aggression has remained constant since 2014, and the accumulation of Russian troops near the state border began in April last year,” the ministry said.

  Meanwhile, in the South China Sea…

  PLA recently organized warplane drills based on Yongxing Island of the Xisha Islands in the South China Sea, after a US warship trespassed into Chinese territorial waters in the region ahead of the #Beijing2022. https://t.co/gNbSvMk60t pic.twitter.com/v6o0n3K4Zt

  — Global Times (@globaltimesnews) January 27, 2022

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  Already there’s a US diplomatic boycott of the games, which means no US government official can attend, despite America being represented in the games through its athletes. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/27/2022 – 21:20

• More Than $6.4 Billion In US Pandemic Aid Sent Abroad, Including China
  More Than $6.4 Billion In US Pandemic Aid Sent Abroad, Including China

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

  Some 2,000 foreign contractors and nonprofits in 177 countries received more than $6.4 billion in United States’ federal pandemic response assistance between the spring of 2020 and the fall of 2021, according to a report by the U.S. Office of Inspector General’s (OIG) Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC).

  

  Most of the “prime recipients” are based in the United States and distributed the funds overseas. The $6.4 billion in foreign payments came from two pandemic relief packages passed by Congress in March 2020 and March 2021 totaling $4.1 trillion.

  Those prime recipients include federal agencies, including the departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Health & Human Services, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and nonprofits, such as North Carolina-based Family Health International and Boston-based JSI Research & Training Institute.

  Collectively between spring 2020 and Sept. 30, 2021, these federal agencies and nonprofits have approved more than 4,000 contracts and issued 1,000 grants from pandemic relief funds to “sub-recipients” across the globe, including foreign contractors that provide services for the U.S. government and international development and health care organizations.

  The largest single international prime recipient is the United Nations, which received $831.4 million in direct pandemic funding, according to the report.

  The United Nations, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Refugees received 43 percent of U.S. pandemic relief funding spent overseas, according to the report.

  The other top nine prime recipients which spend the relief funds overseas included were: UNICEF ($224 million); FHI ($99.945 million); General Dynamics Global Force LLC ($96.5 million); United Kingdom-based Acrow Global Ltd. ($83.5 million); International Red Cross/Red Crescent ($73.667 million); International Organization for Migration ($68.242 million); JSI ($64.32 million); the African Field Epidemiology Network ($62.5 million) and “miscellaneous foreign contractors” ($366.5 million).

  About $2.132 billion of the $6.4 billion in internationally distributed U.S. pandemic relief funds was deposited and distributed through banks in Switzerland because many international nonprofits and organizations are headquartered in Geneva.

  According to PRAC, those Geneva-based recipients include $1.5 billion for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; $401 million for the U.N. High Commission; $87.856 million for the International Organization for Migration; $78.688 million for the World Health Organization; and $61.4 million for Le Comite International de La Croix-Rouge (Red Cross).

  The recipient mix varies from nation to nation. For instance, sub-recipients in Kuwait received the second-highest allocation by nation after Switzerland, $411 million, with most providing services for U.S. information technology and defense contractors, such as Colorado-based Vectrus Systems Corp., which distributed $339 million in pandemic relief funds on contractors and organizations in Kuwait.

  The pandemic relief funds that went to non-domestic recipients are in addition, or supplementary, to existing U.S. foreign aid programs, which totaled $51 billion in aid obligations to 11,000 recipients across the globe in 2020.

  In 2021, while pandemic relief funds were distributed through USAID, its direct allocation actually declined to $36 billion, which was committed to 8,000 “activities” in 181 countries.

  Since spring 2020, USAID maintains it has supported “more than 120 countries in their fight to contain and combat the virus” by providing $5.7 billion for vaccinations, including $700 million to strengthen vaccination programs and to purchase 1 billion Pfizer vaccines for distributions around the world.

  During fiscal year 2022, USAID reports it had $4.7 billion “obligated”—$502 million in contracts, $4.2 million in grants—and dispersed $3.1 billion in 781 pandemic relief awards to 287 recipients, including many in Africa.

  Phone calls and emails left with officials listed as USAID media contacts did not to elicit a response over a two-week period.

  PRAC was created within the OIG’s independent Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity & Efficiency (CIGIE) in spring 2020 to track the $2.2 trillion in CARES Act allocations to state and local governments, nonprofits, contractors, and individuals.

  With the subsequent adoption of additional federal COVID-19 relief and stimulus packages, including the March 2021 American Rescue Plan Act, PRAC’s 22 inspector generals are now tracking more than $5 trillion in federal pandemic allocations and documenting what is reported by “prime recipients” on its webpage that is accessible to the public on the committee’s website.

  But accessibility and transparency doesn’t always translate into comprehensive accounting; there are 21 million “rows” of data on one of PRAC’s dashboards.

  OpenTheBooks.com founder Adam Andrzejewski told Epoch Times that while doing a “deep dive” August analysis of the $282.6 billion the U.S. distributed in foreign aid between 2013-18, researchers found discrepancies between the numbers posted by PRAC, USAID, the Department of Treasury, the Congressional Budget Office, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Congressional Research Service.

  Many of the discrepancies across the varied tracking and oversight programs are related to specific agency reporting requirements, the type of recipients they deal with, and can mix in assorted federal allocations from different times and programs that are not related to the COVID-19 response.

  The bottom line, Andrzejewski said, is it can be daunting to find the bottom line when there are nearly as many haystacks as needles.

  “It takes hard work” to ferret through and comprehend the data, he said. “They don’t make it easy.”

  According to the Treasury, in 2020 Congress appropriated $3.8 billion for international COVID-19 relief efforts and by April 2021, had added another $10.8 billion in COVID-19 foreign-aid funding, totaling $14.6 billion.

  OpenTheBooks maintains the $6.4 billion figure cited by PRAC, and even the $14,6 billion cited by Treasury, does not include all foreign-related COVID-19 spending, such as allocations for the U.S. Health & Human Services global vaccine program, the $9.6 billion in “total COVID-19 budgetary resources” earmarked for USAID, or the American subsidiaries of foreign companies,

  According to OpenTheBooks.com, that includes 125 Chinese firms—with “strong ties to the Communist Chinese Party (CCP)”—that received forgivable loans from the $660 billion Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) in 2020, which is also not included in the foreign aid outlays.

  PRAC’s Award Details Report lists 27 allocations totaling $14.539 million in pandemic assistance on its webpage to contractors in China through U.S.-based organizations and businesses with the largest —$5.18 million—allocated by DHS to U.S. Tactical Supply, Inc., based in Post Falls, Idaho.

  According to USASpending, the May 18, 2020 allocation was for U.S. Tactical Supply’s procurement of 5.396 million face masks made in China.

  FHI of Durham, N.C., distributed $99.945 million and the JSI Research & Training Institute, based in Boston, dispersed $64.32 million to contractors and organizations overseas.

  Both are public health management consulting and research organizations that provide technical and managerial assistance to public health programs worldwide in tandem with contributions from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the European Union, European Investment Bank, and corporate donors.

  FHI fields a staff of 4,000 across the U.S. and in more than 60 countries. JSI Research & Training Institute, a nonprofit subsidiary of John Snow International, has 135 staff members engaged in 75 projects in 40 countries, seven technical core competency centers and corporate services teams.

  Officials at JSI did not respond to repeated emails and phone calls. An FHI representative who requested not to be cited for attribution explained COVID-19 assistance was “channeled” by U.S.-based nonprofits to international groups and contractors using existing “contracting vehicles” and “funding mechanisms” established through the Epidemic Control (EpiC) project funded by the Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).

  “When COVID hit, (the federal government) used a lot of nonprofits” like FHI and JSI because “they were experienced and they had the pipelines in place” to support COVID-19 response in countries “where we’re already working,” she said, providing a fact sheet outlining how FHI allocated pandemic relief money by modifying EpiC in early 2020 to respond to COVID-19 and to bolster health systems to address the pandemic.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/27/2022 – 21:00

• CCP Expands Beijing Lockdown As More Cases Detected Among Olympics Personnel
  CCP Expands Beijing Lockdown As More Cases Detected Among Olympics Personnel

  The other day, the English-language press picked up on a rumor that President Xi of China had implored his ally, Russian President Vladimir Putin, not to invade Ukraine until after the Winter Games. Anonymously-sourced leaks like these are often propaganda, not truth. But as the Games draw near, the Communist government is tightening the screws on the city of Beijing as COVID continues to spread – albeit, more slowly – despite their draconian measures.

  Reuters reports that the CCP has expanded its localized lockdowns in Beijing, restricting movement to those who live within a growing number of neighborhoods and housing complexes, and prohibiting outsiders from entering.

  

  For example, Beijing’s Fengtai district said late on Wednesday residents in a new swath of areas should not leave their residential compounds for unnecessary reasons and must be tested daily for COVID.

  Beijing has some reason to target the district: it has produced more local cases than any others, at least going by what the CCP has admitted publicly.

  The area had already locked down some compounds that house tens of thousands of people, while several other city districts have restricted the mobility of their residents.

  China’s NHC said Beijing saw just five locally transmitted infections confirmed for Wednesday, down from 14 a day earlier.

  Locals who spoke with Reuters anonymously indicated that they are all terrified of getting COVID for fear of provoking the government’s wrath.

  “I’m anxious everyday because the virus situation is still quite serious,” said a traveler surnamed Wang at Beijing Railway Station. “I don’t want to bring trouble to my hometown. Now I’m tested negative, but what if it changes to positive?”

  Beijing has already locked down some compounds that house tens of thousands of people. Several other city districts have imposed mobility restrictions in certain areas. Meanwhile, elsewhere in China, travel has surged during the Lunar New Year holiday. Travel during the first ten days of the holiday season has risen 46% from last year.

  Local authorities in charge of the Winter Games said 23 new cases were detected among Games-related personnel on Jan. 26, including eight among those already in the closed-loop Olympics bubble. The rest were discovered upon arrival at the airport.

  China isn’t alone. Cases are climbing elsewhere in Asia. For example, in Japan, Tokyo is reportedly facing “an explosive infection situation due to an omicron-fueled wave that’s driving daily case numbers to record highs. Top Japanese health authority Norio Omagari said newly recorded daily infections in Tokyo could exceed 24K in a week if the current trend continues. The capital city reported 16.5K cases on Thursday.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/27/2022 – 20:40

• CNN In Meltdown Mode Over Biden-Ukraine Phone Call Fiasco
  CNN In Meltdown Mode Over Biden-Ukraine Phone Call Fiasco

  Update (2023ET): CNN journos doing damage control after the network’s Natasha Bertrand panicked and deleted tweets containing harsh comments reportedly made by President Biden to Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky – namely that a Russian invasion was “imminent,” that the Capital city of Kyiv could be “sacked,” and to “prepare for impact.”

  Now – none of that apparently happened according to CNN‘s Jim Sciutto, the White House, and apparently Ukraine itself. Of note, CNN claims their source was a “senior Ukrainian official.”

  Human Events‘ Jack Posobiec lays it out:

  Hi @NatashaBertrand! Why did you delete this? pic.twitter.com/rNKNCLhIZr

  — Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) January 28, 2022

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  We may have just caught a CNN reporter deleting a war report that exposed the truth about the White House and Ukraine

  And it now looks like the White House pressured them to pull it

  The American people deserve the truth

  — Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) January 28, 2022

  Bertrand apparently didn’t get the message to CNN‘s Jake Tapper and Senior International Correspondent Matthew Chance, who repeated the now-disputed report – which CNN just deleted.

  BREAKING: We have recovered the Ukraine call report that @JakeTapper and CNN just deleted

  Please DO NOT RT this as they do not want anyone to see it! pic.twitter.com/vV67Jc1p7i

  — Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) January 28, 2022

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  And the White House disputes:

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

  We also see a tweet from Emily Horne, a Biden official, which is a brief denial, but does not include the the specific details of Sciuttio’s tweet

  That means the White House was working the phones to CNN https://t.co/6z8BEW3SBI

  — Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) January 28, 2022

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  Now, Posobiec reports that Zelensky’s office is also denying CNN’s report.

  Zelensky’s spokesperson about the call with Joe Biden: “Some reports regarding the content of the talks between Presidents Volodymyr Zelensky and Joe Biden have appeared on social media, citing the alleged ‘senior Ukrainian official’. These messages are completely false”. pic.twitter.com/Z3blRfCjw2

  — Ostap Yarysh (@OstapYarysh) January 28, 2022

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  CNN is now accusing CNN of spreading war propaganda on CNN

  This is where we’re at on the Ukraine call leak

  — Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) January 28, 2022

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  CNN‘s Alexander Marquardt gives a master class in walking back misinformation:

  

  *  *  *

  In their Thursday afternoon phone call which the White House called “a check-in”, it seems President Joe Biden took the opportunity to continue with an alarmist posture as he told his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskiy that a Russian invasion is “now highly certain” – according to CNN. 

  Further, “President Biden reaffirmed the readiness of the United States along with its allies and partners to respond decisively if Russia further invades Ukraine,” according to the White House call readout. But it remains that two conflicting narratives have emerged, given just prior to the call it was being reported that Zelensky was expected to request that the US be more cautious in its messaging surrounding a potential Russian attack, per source–particularly the word “imminent,” as it risks causing panic and negative economic consequences for Ukraine. That was also according to CNN.

  For anyone wishing to understand the mass media fake war rhetoric, you can see here how information is being manipulated: So today Biden and Zelensky had a call, look how CNN reported the news and the conversation content, the second one is the tweet of Zelensky about it#Ukraine pic.twitter.com/5ptTRNVLcN

  — Muslim Traveler (@Muslim68955104) January 27, 2022

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  But the statement immediately after the call of Zelensky himself was much more toned down compared to the White House rhetoric…

  “Discussed recent diplomatic efforts on de-escalation and agreed on joint actions for the future,” Zelenskiy said in a tweet. “Thanked President Joe Biden for the ongoing military assistance,” he said, also affirming that the US offered further financial support to Ukraine, which was highlighted in the Biden statement. 

  Had a long phone conversation with @POTUS. Discussed recent diplomatic efforts on de-escalation and agreed on joint actions for the future. Thanked President @JoeBiden for the ongoing military assistance. Possibilities for financial support to Ukraine were also discussed. pic.twitter.com/pAsQLYAuig

  — Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) January 27, 2022

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  CNN and mainstream media in general have of late seemed intent on hyping and stoking tensions to the point of armed conflict.

  The “long phone conversation” with Biden was Zelensky’s second one this month. Again, compare the low key statement of Ukraine’s president himself with what Biden reportedly said to him concerning the “level” of the threat, supposedly with Kiev itself in the crosshairs…

  A Russian invasion is now virtually certain once the ground freezes, Biden said to Zelensky, a senior Ukrainian official told @mchancecnn. Kyiv could be “sacked,” Russian forces may attempt to occupy it, “prepare for impact”, Biden said, according to this official.

  — Alexander Marquardt (@MarquardtA) January 27, 2022

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  The Ukrainian side appears to have leaked that Biden informed Zelensky that it’s “virtually certain” that Ukraine’s capital could be “sacked” and that Russian forces are looking to occupy it.

  Here’s more from CNN:

  Zelensky has been particularly concerned about the US’ rhetoric that war could be “imminent” — a word White House press secretary Jen Psaki used earlier this week to describe the US’ assessment of Russia’s plans — and the recent disclosures of intelligence to US media, the source said, which “is causing panic and economic disaster for Ukraine.”

  Zelensky is expected to convey to Biden that he believes the US and its allies have to be more careful with their messaging surrounding the conflict, the source added. 

  Zelensky during the call reportedly told the US president to calm down…

  Apparently, Biden was unaware of the talks going on this week in Paris between Germany, France, Russia, and Ukraine

  — Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) January 27, 2022

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  It seems the two leaders were openly at odds over the true level of the threat, with the White House now being accused of grossly inflating the threat. Indeed this has been the messaging of the Ukrainians all week, especially after the US took the dramatic step of telling some of its embassy staff in Kiev to leave the country over the Russian troop build-up near Ukraine. 

  On this issue, Biden had some explaining to do which likely didn’t make matters any better. Biden “made clear that despite the departure of American family members of embassy personnel, the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, remains open and fully operational,” according to the US readout.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/27/2022 – 20:24

• Maté: The Ukraine Crisis, Sponsored By US Hegemony And War Profiteers
  Maté: The Ukraine Crisis, Sponsored By US Hegemony And War Profiteers

  Authored by Aaron Maté via mate.substack.com,

  

  The US-Russia standoff over Ukraine has sparked bellicose threats and fears of Europe’s biggest ground war in decades. There are ample reasons to question the prospects of a Russian invasion, and US allies including France, Germany’s now-ousted navy chief, and even Kiev itself appear to share the skepticism.

  Another potential scenario is that Russia draws on the Cuban Missile Crisis and positions offensive weapons within the borders of Latin American allies. Whatever the outcome, the crisis has underscored the perils of a second Cold War between the world’s top nuclear powers.

  If the path forward is unpredictable, what got us here is easy to trace. The row over Ukraine is the outgrowth of an aggressive US posture toward Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union three decades ago, driven by hegemonic policymakers and war profiteers in Washington. Understanding that background is key to resolving the current impasse, if the Biden administration can bring itself to alter a dangerous course.

  US principles vs. power constraints

  Russia’s central demands – binding guarantees to halt the eastward expansion of NATO, particularly in Ukraine, and to prevent offensive weapons from being stationed near its borders – have been publicly dismissed by the U.S government as non-starters.

  In rejecting Russian concerns, the Biden administration claims that it is upholding “governing principles of international peace and security.” These principles, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken says, “reject the right of one country to change the borders of another by force; to dictate to another the policies it pursues or the choices it makes, including with whom to associate; or to exert a sphere of influence that would subjugate sovereign neighbors to its will.”

  The US government’s real-world commitment to these principles is non-existent. For decades, the US has provided critical diplomatic and military cover for Israel’s de-facto annexations, which have expanded its borders to three different strips of occupied territory (the West Bank, Gaza, and Syria’s Golan Heights). The US is by far the world leader in dictating policies to other countries, be it who their leaders should be; how little to pay minimum-wage workers; or how to share energy supplies.

  The Biden administration continues to subjugate sovereign countries to its will, whether it’s “neighbors” like blockade-targeted Cuba; coup-targeted Venezuela; sanctions-targeted Nicaragua; or far-away countries like US military-occupied and sanctions-targeted Syria. Biden just recently embraced the longstanding Monroe Doctrine of a US sphere of influence by declaring Latin America to be the United States’ “front yard.”

  When not making sanctimonious public pronouncements, US officials are quietly able to acknowledge the real principles that guide their actions. According to the Washington Post, one US official specializing in Russia “believes the Russians are still interested in a real dialogue.” Russia’s real aim, this official says, is “to see whether Washington is willing to discuss any sort of commitment that constrains U.S. power.”

  The official added: “The Russians are waiting to see what we’re going to offer, and they’re going to take it back and decide is this serious. Is this something we [the Russians] can sell as a major victory for security, or is it just, from their point of view, another attempt to fob us off and not give us anything?”

  If their public statements and actions are any guide, the Biden administration is so far opting for the latter.

  Rather than focus on diplomacy, the United States’ reliable British client has been trotted out, Iraq WMD dossier-style (or Steele dossier-style, or Syria dirty war-style), to lodge the explosive allegation that Russia is plotting to install a new leader in Ukraine via a coup. While declaring that the obedient Brits were “Muscular” for shouldering the war-mongering allegation, the New York Times quietly acknowledged that they also “provided no evidence to back up” their claims.

  After warning of a “false flag” operation by Russia in Ukraine, the US pulled off a stunt of its own by recalling its embassy personnel out of stated concern for their safety. Unlike the dutiful British, other US allies failed to get the memo, including the EU, which declined to follow suit and even took a pointed swipe at attempts to “dramatize” the situation.

  Maybe the Biden admin’s embassy withdrawal stunt is the Ukraine false flag that US intel warned us about? https://t.co/UXFBJoYAfK

  — Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) January 24, 2022

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  When US officials and allied media voices permit themselves to drop “Wag the Dog” theatrics and entertain the possibility of constraining US power, the Ukraine crisis no longer appears so dangerously intractable.

  In the New York Times, veteran national security correspondent David E. Sanger allows that it is “possible” that Putin’s “bottom line in this conflict is straightforward”: obtain a pledge to “stop Ukraine from joining NATO” as well as one that the US and NATO “will never place offensive weapons that threaten Russia’s security in Ukrainian territory.”

  On these issues, “there is trading space,” Sanger concedes. Given that “Ukraine is so corrupt, and its grasp of democracy is so tenuous… no one expects it to be accepted for NATO membership in the next decade or two.” Accordingly, Russia could be offered “some kind of assurance that, for a decade, or maybe a quarter-century, NATO membership for Kyiv was off the table.”

  In Sanger’s view, the real and “complex” issue is not Ukraine’s NATO status, but “how the United States and NATO operate” there – specifically, by flooding the country with weapons. Since 2014, Sanger writes, the US and NATO allies have provided “Ukraine with what the West calls defensive arms, including the capability to take out Russian tanks and aircraft”, a “flow that has sped up in recent weeks.” Russia – for reasons apparently foreign to Sanger – believes that these “weapons are more offensive than defensive” and “that Washington’s real goal is to put nuclear weapons in Ukraine.” An agreement to address these concerns, an unidentified US official concedes, would be “‘the easiest part of this,’ as long as Russia is willing to pull back its intermediate-range weapons as well.”

  Unmentioned by Sanger is that Russia has repeatedly signaled such a willingness, including just last month: Russia’s proposed draft treaty with NATO — issued with the stated aim of resolving the Ukraine standoff — proposes that all sides “not deploy land-based intermediate- and short-range missiles” in any area that allows them “to reach the territory of the other Parties.” Also unmentioned is that such deployments were previously banned under the INF Treaty, the Cold War-era pact that the Trump administration abandoned in August 2019, to the resounding silence of Democratic lawmakers and allied media outlets more invested in pretending that Trump was a Russian puppet than in addressing his actual Russia policies.

  In a bid to preserve some of the INF Treaty’s safeguards, Putin immediately offered a moratorium on the deployment of intermediate-range missiles in Europe – a proposal swiftly rejected by both Trump and NATO. (Trump’s response was again duly ignored by Russiagate-crazed media outlets and politicians, for the obvious narrative inconvenience.)

  Much like its refusal so far to re-enter the Iran nuclear deal – another critical security pact torn up by Trump — the Biden administration has thus placed itself in a dangerous geopolitical standoff rather than embrace diplomacy around proposals that US officials either deem as reality anyway (Ukraine not joining NATO) or that they were once party to (the Trump-sabotaged INF treaty).

  NATO expansion, from the Cold War to a Ukraine coup

  If the Biden administration is now willing to accept “real dialogue” over an outcome that “constrains US power” on the Ukraine-Russia border, it will have to eschew guiding US principles since the end of the Cold War.

  When he agreed to the reunification of Germany, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was “assured in 1990 that the [NATO] alliance would not expand,” Jack Matlock, Reagan and Bush I’s ambassador to the Soviet Union, recently noted. But upon entering office, Bill Clinton broke that pledge and began an expansion spree that has pushed NATO to Russia’s borders. In 2008 – against the reported advice of advisers including Fiona Hill – President George W. Bush backed a NATO declaration calling for Ukraine and Georgia’s eventual ascension.

  The constant expansion of NATO has led to what the scholar Richard Sakwa calls a “fateful geographical paradox”: NATO, Sakwa says, now “exists to manage the risks created by its existence.”

  Sakwa’s maxim undoubtedly applies to Ukraine, where the threat of Russia’s neighbor joining a hostile military alliance sparked a war in 2014 that continues today.

  The standard narrative of the origins of the current Ukraine crisis, as the New York Times recently claimed, is that Ukrainians revolted in street protests that ousted “pro-Russian leader” Viktor Yanukovych, “prompting [Russian President Vladimir] Putin to order the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and instigate a separatist war in eastern Ukraine.” In reality, the US backed a coup that overthrew Ukraine’s elected government and sabotaged opportunities to avoid further conflict.

  The immediate background came in the fall of 2013, when the US and its allies pressured Yanukovych to sign a European Union association agreement that would have curtailed its ties to Russia. Contrary to how he is now portrayed, Yanukovych was not “pro-Russian”, to the point where he even “cajoled and bullied anyone who pushed for Ukraine to have closer ties to Russia,” Reuters reported at the time.

  To sign the EU deal, Ukraine would have to accept the harsh austerity demands of the IMF, which had publicly criticized Ukraine’s “large pension and wage increases,” and “generous energy subsidies.” The agreement also contained a provision calling on Ukraine to adhere to the EU’s “military and security” policies, “which meant in effect, without mentioning the alliance, NATO,” as the late scholar Stephen F. Cohen argued.

  The EU proposal, the New York Times observed in November 2013, was the centerpiece of its “most important foreign policy initiative”: an attempt to “draw in former Soviet republics and lock them on a trajectory of changes based on Western political and economic sensibilities.”

  In the words of Carl Gershman, the then-head of the CIA-tied National Endowment for Democracy, “Ukraine is the biggest prize.” In Gershman’s fantasy, Ukraine’s entry into the Western orbit would redound to Russia as well. “Ukraine’s choice to join Europe will accelerate the demise of the ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin represents,” he wrote. “… Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.”

  Although it would have been a boon for DC neoconservatives, accepting the EU’s insistence on “increasing the retirement age and freezing pensions and wages” would have meant political suicide for Yanukovych. Putin capitalized by offering a more generous package of $15 billion in aid and gas subsidies, a deal that contained “no immediate quid pro quo for Russia,” the New York Times noted. To lure Yanukovych, Russia even dropped a proposal, opposed by Ukraine’s Maidan protesters, that Ukraine join a Russian-led customs union.

  Putin’s Ukraine offer, the Times added, was one of “several foreign policy moves that have served to re-establish Russia as a counterweight to Western dominance of world affairs.” In the eyes of the Western domineers, the prospect of a Russian “counterweight” was an intolerable act. The US responded by ramping up support for the Maidan protests in Kiev and helping to sabotage an agreement with Yanukovych to hold new elections.

  Any pretense that the US was acting as an honest broker was obliterated in early February 2014 when Russia released a recording of an intercepted a phone call between then-senior Obama official Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt. The US diplomats not only selected who would be Ukraine’s next Prime Minister — Arseniy Yatsenyuk – but decided to exclude their EU allies from the process. “Yats is the guy,” Nuland declared, before adding: “Fuck the EU.”

  A major tipping point in the conflict came two weeks later, on February 20th, when nearly 50 Madain protesters were massacred by snipers. The Ukrainian opposition immediately accused government forces, sparking a series of events that led to Yanukovych’s flight from the country two days later. Exhaustive research by the University of Ottawa’s Ivan Katchanovski argues that the massacre was in fact “perpetrated principally by members of the Maidan opposition, specifically its far-right elements.”

  Faced with the possibility of losing Russia’s most important naval base at Sevastopol to a US-backed coup regime, Putin responded by seizing the Ukrainian territory of Crimea. Russia also provided military support to Ukrainians in the country’s Donbas region hostile to the new coup government, sparking an ongoing war between the opposing sides.

  In Washington, the annexation of Crimea is widely seen as an expansionist act of aggression; even, according to Hillary Clinton, akin to “what Hitler did back in the 30s.” In Crimea, Russia had the support of the majority of the population, if polls are to be believed. The same for the Russian population, across the political spectrum. “For [Russian] politicians, not vocally supporting, let alone questioning, the annexation of Crimea is practically akin to political suicide – even for liberals,” a European Union think tank observed in 2014. Even “Anti-Putin nationalists… are enthusiastic backers of Putin’s territorial grab.” (For over 200 years Crimea had been a territory of Russia, until Nikita Khrushchev assigned it to Ukraine, then a part of the Soviet Union.)

  A negotiated solution to the Donbas war has been in place since the signing of the Minsk II accords in 2015, as Anatol Lieven of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft has repeatedly stressed. The prospect of NATO expansion appears to be the pact’s main obstacle to implementation. Minsk II calls for granting autonomy to the Donbas region in return for its demilitarization. But Ukraine has “[refused] to guarantee permanent full autonomy for the Donbas”, Lieven writes, out of fear “that permanent autonomy for the Donbas would prevent Ukraine from joining NATO and the European Union, as the region could use its constitutional position within Ukraine to block membership.”

  In Lieven’s view, this could change with one critical shift: “If the United States drops the hopeless goal of NATO membership for Ukraine, it will be in a position to pressure the Ukrainian government and parliament to agree to a ‘Minsk III’ by the credible threat of a withdrawal of US aid and political support.”

  To read the rest of the report click here.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/27/2022 – 20:20

• San Jose To Disproportionately Punish Low-Income Gun Owners With Liability Insurance Requirement
  San Jose To Disproportionately Punish Low-Income Gun Owners With Liability Insurance Requirement

  From their ivory towers (and returning to their low-crime neighborhoods) the San Jose, California City Council has decreed that gun owners will soon be required to carry liability insurance and pay a fee if they want to exercise their 2nd Amendment rights.

  The new requirements – the first of their kind in the United States – disproportionately punishes low-income residents who wish to defend themselves against criminals who will ignore the new financial burden.

  

  It’s the illegal gun ownership that needs restrictions. Don’t punish legal gun owners.

  — Septimber😷 (@Septimbersells) January 26, 2022

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  It’s unclear when exactly the plan will go into effect, according to ABC7.

  Fighting the law is the Firearm Policy Coalition, which called it “burdensome, unconstitutional, and prohibited by California law” to law-abiding citizens who own firearms.

  “Since San Jose’s recalcitrant City Council members don’t believe that the United States Constitution applies to them or their citizens, Firearms Policy Coalition and our members are now committed to fight the City’s outrageous and offensive policies in federal litigation and take every possible action to block their enforcement,” said the group.

  The move follows June 2021 legislation requiring the video taping of all legal gun purchases.

  San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo said at a Monday press conference that “San Jose has an opportunity to become a model for the rest of the nation to invest in proven strategies to reduce gun violence, domestic violence and suicide and the many other preventable harms from firearms in our communities.”

  Having liability insurance would encourage people in the 5,500 households in San Jose who legally own at least one registered gun to have gun safes, install trigger locks and take gun safety classes, Liccardo said.

  The liability insurance will cover losses or damages resulting from any negligent or accidental use of the firearm, including death, injury, or property damage, according to the ordinance. If a gun is stolen or lost, the owner of the firearm would be considered liable until the theft or loss is reported to authorities. –ABC7

  The law won’t apply to current or retired law enforcement officers, those with a license to carry, or anyone who simply ignores it.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/27/2022 – 20:00

• Watch: Fauci Decrees Kids Under Four Will Get Three COVID Vaccines
  Watch: Fauci Decrees Kids Under Four Will Get Three COVID Vaccines

  Authored by Steve Watson via Summit News,

  Appearing during a White House press briefing Wednesday, Anthony Fauci decreed that children under the age of four will eventually be subjected to a “three-dose regimen” of COVID vaccines.

  

  “Dose and regimen for children 6 months to 24 months worked well, but it turned out the other group from 24 months to 4 years did not yet reach the level of non-inferiority, so the studies are continued,” Fauci noted.

  He added, “It looks like it will be a three-dose regimen. I don’t think we can predict when we will see an EUA [Emergency Use Authorization] with that.”

  He told reporters that he couldn’t give an exact timetable on when this would happen, but was adamant it would.

  “We need to be patient,” he said, adding “That’s why the system works. The FDA is very scrupulous in their ability and in their effort to make sure that, before something gets approved for any age, and especially  with children … that they will be safe, and that they will be effective.”

  Watch:

  Last week, Fauci suggested that he wants to see the FDA authorise the vaccines for toddlers within a month.

  “My hope is that it’s going to be within the next month or so and not much later than that, but I can’t guarantee that,” Fauci said during an interview.

  “I can’t out guess the FDA. I’m going to have to leave that to them,” he added.

  However, after the interview, Fauci sent CNBC a statement “clarifying that he’s not involved in the decision making process at the FDA and didn’t know when the agency will clear the shots.”

  “I did not at all mean to imply that the authorization would come within a month,” Fauci said, adding “I meant that we do not know … I am not involved in that decision.”

  CDC Data has shown that children make up less than 0.1 percent of Covid deaths since the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020.

  

  Source

  To date, 259 of around 860,000 recorded U.S. Covid deaths have been among children under the age of five.

  A study out of the University of Utah last October (before Omicron) found that exactly 50 percent of children who contract the virus have asymptomatic cases.

  The World Health Organization’s Chief Scientist Soumya Swaminathan previously said that the body does not see it as necessary for healthy children to take Covid booster vaccines.

  “The aim is to protect the most vulnerable, to protect those at highest risk of severe disease and dying, those are our elderly population, immunocompromised with underlying conditions and also health care workers,” Swaminathan said last week.

  *  *  *

  Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

  In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. We need you to sign up for our free newsletter here. Support our sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Also, we urgently need your financial support here.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/27/2022 – 19:40

• US Navy Races To Recover Crashed F-35 Stealth Jet In South China Sea Before Beijing Does
  US Navy Races To Recover Crashed F-35 Stealth Jet In South China Sea Before Beijing Does

  The race is on to recover in a speedy fashion an advanced US F-35C stealth jet which crashed off the USS Vinson aircraft carrier and landed in the South China Sea on Monday.

  The US Navy is reportedly working on the daunting task of recovering the aircraft after the “landing mishap” which injured seven in total, including the pilot who had successfully ejected and six sailors who were presumably injured while on the flight deck.

  🇺🇲⚡ Unconfirmed:

  Photo of the F-35 jet that crashed in the South China Sea a few days back#USA #Military pic.twitter.com/fIvsKkBMmU

  — The RAGE X (@theragex) January 27, 2022

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  “The $100 million warplane impacted the flight deck of the 100,000-ton aircraft carrier and then fell into the sea as its pilot ejected, Navy officials said,” according to CNN.

  A spokesman for the Navy’s 7th Fleet confirmed that “The US Navy is making recovery operations arrangements for the F-35C aircraft involved in the mishap aboard USS Carl Vinson.” The Navy has not disclosed the precise location or area of the South China Sea where the accident happened, also on fears that the Chinese would be eager to recover the plane, which has closely guarded secretive stealth technology. 

  US military sources were quoted as saying it remains vital that “no one else can get their hands on the plane” – without doubt an indirect reference to China, which has a heavy military presence in the region. According to a US military quote: 

  The US presently faces the challenge of pulling the wreckage out of the contested waters of the South China Sea to recover US technology, as well as make sure no one else can get their hands on the plane. “The planning efforts are ongoing for the recovery of the F-35,” a 7th Fleet spokesman told Insider.

  Experts say China would almost certainly want to get ahold of the F-35, a highly-capable fifth-generation fighter jet that has taken many years and significant funding to research and develop. 

  Below: simulation of fighter jet crash landing aboard aircraft carrier and debris blowback impacting flight crew…

  A $100mln F-35 missed the landing and falls off deck into the South China Sea today, 7 injured. #f35 #southchinasea #scs pic.twitter.com/SqrwaNA02L

  — Sk Boz, PhD 💙 (@skbozphd) January 25, 2022

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  One defense analyst at the Hudson Institute, former US Navy submarine warfare officer Bryan Clark, explained that “There’s a huge opportunity for the Chinese if they were able to get a copy of an actual F-35 to reverse engineer its features, which they can’t do just based on the intelligence gathering they’ve conducted.” He added: “Maybe the bigger concern is if they got ahold of an actual F-35, it would help them to figure out how to better counter it.”

  The F-35 stealth manufacturer Lockheed Martin had announced last August when the USS Vinson had departed San Diego: “This deployment marks the first time in U.S. naval aviation history that a stealth strike fighter has been deployed operationally on an aircraft carrier,” it said.

  This is the F-35’s second crash in a matter of months at sea. Last November, a British F-35 stealth jet has crashed into the Mediterranean Sea during what was described at the time as routine flying operations from the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth. F-35 fighters are an estimated 135 million dollars, with cutting-edge stealth technology and radar.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/27/2022 – 19:20

• Proposed State Law Would Make It Illegal To Request A Person's Vaccine Status
  Proposed State Law Would Make It Illegal To Request A Person’s Vaccine Status

  Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  A newly proposed South Carolina law would make it illegal for certain institutions to ask a person for their COVID-19 vaccination status.

  “The government has no place in making you or telling you to take the vaccination or threatening your livelihood if you don’t,” said state Rep. William Chumley, a co-sponsor of the bill, known as H.4848.

  

  A representative of a public, private, or nonprofit entity who asks about a person’s COVID-19 vaccination status should be fined more than $14,000 or imprisoned not more than one year, or both, according to the text of the bill.

  “South Carolina didn’t want to get in this fight,” Chumley told local media outlets. “It was brought to us by the federal government.”

  The bill is currently being discussed in a state House committee.

  Lawmakers who sponsored the bill said they support the measure because it can serve as a bulwark against government coercion.

  “It’s about protecting people from being forced or coerced into getting a vaccine for purposes of employment, admission to schools, or government services,” state Rep. Wayne Long, a Republican, told Channel 2 News.

  “I get calls from people literally every week begging the legislature to take some kind of action to protect people’s rights, to protect their privacy, and to keep them from being forced or coerced into getting a vaccine that they frankly don’t want to get,” Long added. “And even for people who have gotten the vaccine, I’ve spoken with many of them, it’s really a privacy issue.”

  South Carolina labor law attorney Jeremy Summerlin told local media that he believes the bill would be very difficult to implement.

  “You put employers in an impossible position,” Summerlin remarked. “You’ve got a (proposed) state law now that says that if you ask about that, and try to comply with federal law, then you are going to jail,” he added.

  “What if you ask your coworker about their vaccination status, and you are just having a conversation?” he said. “What if you are a nurse, and you ask a fellow nurse about it? Do you want the local law enforcement to go in and arrest them because of this law?”

  The proposed law comes two weeks after the Supreme Court, in a 6–3 majority opinion, blocked an Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) emergency temporary standard that required employees at companies with 100 or more workers to either get the vaccine or submit to weekly testing. And on Tuesday, OSHA published an announcement saying it would formally withdraw the rule Wednesday.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/27/2022 – 19:00

• Elon Musk Tells 71 Million Twitter Followers To 'Vote Them Out', Stands With Canadian 'Freedom Convoy' Truckers
  Elon Musk Tells 71 Million Twitter Followers To ‘Vote Them Out’, Stands With Canadian ‘Freedom Convoy’ Truckers

  Update (1900ET): In a significant turn of events, that we are sure will be pilloried by Trudeau as being some mix of racist, mysognist, dangerous, or ‘damaging democracy’, Elon Musk – having earlier tweeted his support of the Canadian truckers protesting vaccine mandates…

  Canadian truckers rule

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 27, 2022

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  …just turned up the social media amplifier to ’11’, teling his 71.1 million twitter followers that: “If you scare people enough, they will demand removal of freedom. This is the path to tyranny,” and added that the way to fight back is to “vote them out.”

  

  How long before Musk – the richest man in the world – is deplatformed 

  *  *  *

  A massive convoy of Canadian truckers is nearing the capital of Ottawa to protest the cross-border COVID-19 vaccine mandates severely affecting the trucking industry. 

  Top government officials, big technology companies, and mainstream media are downplaying the protest, dubbed the “Freedom Convoy” that began in Vancouver on Sunday and is expected to reach Ottawa, Canada’s capital, on Saturday. 

  

  Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the protest and its supporters a “small fringe minority” with “unacceptable views.” 

  “The small fringe minority of people who are on their way to Ottawa are holding unacceptable views that they’re expressing, do not represent the views of Canadians who have been there for each other who know that following the science and stepping up to protect each other is the best way to continue to ensure our freedoms, rights, and values as a country,” Trudeau told reporters Wednesday. 

  The president has called anyone unvaccinated racist and misogynistic extremists. 

  Meanwhile, big tech companies are taking aim at the movement to limit their mobility ahead of reaching Ottawa. 

  GoFundMe froze an account linked to the group that organized the protest. The GoFundMe page raised CAD 6 million as of Thursday morning from 76,000 people. “We are asking for donations to help with the costs of fuel first, and hopefully food and lodgings to help ease the pressures of this arduous task,” the GoFundMe page says. 

  But GoFundMe spokeswoman Rachel Hollis sparked significant backlash after the tech company froze distributions of the fund after requesting organizers to show documentation “about how funds will be properly distributed.” 

  It makes sense why Trudeau, big tech, and corporate media are downplaying and limiting the group’s mobility – that is because the movement is massive, anywhere between 10,000 and 50,000 Canadian truckers. The convoy could easily shut down Ottawa this weekend. 

  Last night, over 50,000 Canadian truckers formed a caravan in protest against vaccine mandates and COVID tyranny.pic.twitter.com/ICTu8N2x6P

  — Michael P Senger (@MichaelPSenger) January 24, 2022

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  Freedom trucker convoy making it’s way through Brandon, Manitoba, Canada being greeted by large crowds of supporters today.

  The convoy is coming from the west and east of Canada and meeting in Ottawa to protest all mandates and restrictions in the country. pic.twitter.com/ON9tHu4L2h

  — Marie Oakes (@TheMarieOakes) January 25, 2022

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  Canadians set off fireworks last night as the truck convoy passed in protest against vaccine mandates and COVID restrictions. At over 70km long, Canada’s convoy shatters the prior world record for longest truck convoy ever recorded.pic.twitter.com/ujPYScL2Cw

  — Michael P Senger (@MichaelPSenger) January 26, 2022

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  WARMINGTON: ‘Freedom’ truckers may form world’s longest convoy https://t.co/3azEc28kuO Via @joe_warmington pic.twitter.com/8wuQ3SyMgC

  — Toronto Sun (@TheTorontoSun) January 26, 2022

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  Airplane view of the freedom trucker convoy between Whitewood and Moosomin, Saskatchewan, Canada today. pic.twitter.com/qJEy96Q8Ez

  — Marie Oakes (@TheMarieOakes) January 25, 2022

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  I have never seen such an enormous convoy before. I didn’t even know such amounts of freedom loving Canadians existed. This is more than a protest. Watch our full video tomorrow @RebelNewsOnline #TruckersForFreedom https://t.co/Apz9xO8v9h pic.twitter.com/4mXlXKHflv

  — Mocha Bezirgan (@BezirganMocha) January 24, 2022

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  Truckers are furious after a vaccine mandate that began on Jan. 15 required unvaccinated truckers crossing back into Canada to be tested and quarantined for a week. The US enacted a similar policy on Jan. 22. These two mandates instantly took 20% of the 160,000 cross-border American and Canadian truckers off the road due to noncompliance in both countries. 

  Joe Rogan sums it up, Canada “is in revolt.” 

  Guys, @joerogan talking about the trucker convoy

  “It’s a giant convoy of trucks . Some insane amount of people..like 50 thousand”

  Mainstream media, your move 🇨🇦 pic.twitter.com/DOfpo0Z6jj

  — Traditional Canadian Girl 🇨🇦 (@canadiangirls99) January 26, 2022

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  The convoy is expected to reach Ottawa in the next 48 hours. 

  

  Canadian truckers rule

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 27, 2022

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  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/27/2022 – 18:54

• Robinhood Craters To New Record Low After Another Catastrophic Quarter
  Robinhood Craters To New Record Low After Another Catastrophic Quarter

  Unlike last quarter, we didn’t need to look at Robinhood’s 606 filings ahead of earnings. We had a feeling that the results would be ugly (as we predicted last quarter), and we were wrong: they were disastrous and absolutely horrific.

  As a reminder, in its dismal guidance last quarter, when the stock imploded, Robinhood slashed its outlook seeing 4Q revenue of just $325M, a huge miss to consensus est. $500.7M, and predicted funded accounts of about 660,000. Well, had RH missed its own guidance, the stock would probably have to collapse to $0. And while it at least managed to come above its own bogey, it once again missed virtually every sellside consensus. Here is what the company reported:

  • Net revenue $362.7 million, missing the estimate $370.9 million
  • Transaction-based revenue $263.9 million, missing the estimate $269.3 million
  • Crypto revenue $48 million, -5.9% q/q, missing the estimate $55.0 million
  • Net Interest revenue $63.4 million, missing the estimate $66.3 million
  • Monthly active users 17.3 million, a slowdown of 8.5% Q/Q, and missing the estimate of 19.9 million

  While crypto trading has been a core strategy of Robinhood, and its zero-commission transactions have helped it enlist new users, making it a major competitor to cryptocurrency exchanges such as Coinbase, this particular revenue stream has imploded. After peaking at $233 million in crypto-trading revenue in Q2 as retail investors plowed into digital assets like Bitcoin, In the third quarter, crypto revenue — 40% of which was made up from Dogecoin trading — plunged to $51 million. It has since dropped again to just $48 and if cryptos continue to tumble, it will only get worse.

  But while the numbers were dreadful, the company’s own charts – which inexplicably are in green when they should be in red – speak much louder. Starting with MAU, we see that the “growth” company is now slowing for a second consecutive quarter…

  

  … going to Assets under custody, which at least flat were flat…

  

  … ARPU was an unmitigated disaster, dropping to the lowest level in the past year.

  

  Fewer users and lower ARPU means just one thing: a continued decline in revenue, which is now less than the price of a Ken Griffin apartment.

  

  Believe it or not, it actually gets even worse, with the company’s transaction based revenue (i.e., what it actually does) down to $264 MM, or almost down 50% from Q2. But wait, because if one excludes $48MM (down from 51MM last quarter) in crypto revenue, one gets just $216MM in total transaction based revenues, basically the lowest in the past year!

  

  That said not everything was plunging: operating expenses more than tripled, as the company at least took money from shareholders and gave it to employees.

  

  Some more commentary on what was (once again) the ugliest quarter in HOOD’s post-IPO history:

  • Robinhood introduced first trade recommendations to all new customers who have yet to place a trade, helping users get started with a diversified ETF portfolio based on their risk profile and investment objectives.
  • Robinhood launched Automated Customer Account Transfer Service (“ACATS”) In a few weeks ago to a small set of customers and has been gradually expanding its availability, with early results looking promising. This feature allows customers to transfer assets from other brokerages into Robinhood and the company will continue to improve the experience and expand the availability to all customers in Q1 2022.
  • Robinhood continued to improve its options experience for customers, introducing Options Alerts, Options Watchlist and making it simpler to roll option contracts.
  • Robinhood made considerable progress on its fully-paid securities lending program, continues to discuss with its regulators, and believes it will be able to launch the program during the first half of the year.
  • Robinhood is close to delivering an even larger window of available trading hours and expects to roll this out later in Q1 2022. This will be one of several improvements the company plans to make to the trading experience this year.
  • Robinhood successfully completed alpha testing on Crypto Wallets and has launched a public beta, which will continue to provide valuable insights as the company prepares for a full launch of wallets in Q1 2022.
  • During the holiday season, Robinhood launched Crypto Gifts, which enables customers to send crypto to family and friends. The company will take learnings from this launch and look to apply them to transfer capabilities beyond crypto.

  Of course, CEO Vlad Tenev tried to spice up the doomsday atmosphere but… he failed:

  “We had a momentous year, nearly doubling the number of customers on the platform and making critical investments in our team and infrastructure to support growth. This year, we’ll expand our ecosystem of products that make Robinhood the best place to start investing and build wealth”

  …. for Ken Griffin, he forgot to add.

  But wait, there’s much more and yes, it’s all ugly: in an echo from 3 months ago when HOOD warned Q1 2022 would be ugly and this time the company’s terrible guidance will be taken much more seriously:

  Sees Q1 revenues of less than $340 million, a huge miss to expectations of $447 million: “This implies a year-over-year revenue decline of 35% compared to the first quarter of 2021, during which we saw outsized revenue performance due to heightened trading activity, particularly relating to certain meme-stocks.”

  But while revenue is collapsing expenses keep rising: Robinhood expects total operating expenses, excluding share-based compensation, to increase 15-20% year-over-year.

  In light of all the catastrophic numbers above, it is a miracle that the stock is down just a buck after hours, or about 10%, down to the lowest level since the IPO and briefly dipping below $10.

  

  Traders should have taken our advice from 3 months ago when the stock crashed to a then-all time low of $34.82 to take the money and run. Alas, the smart money always knows better. Which smart money? These guys to start:

  

  One final point: dear Robinhood PR wizards – the opposite of green is not dark green.

  

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/27/2022 – 18:25

• Inflation Winners And Losers
  Inflation Winners And Losers

  Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

  The clear winners in inflation are those who require little from global supply chains, the frugal, and those who own their own labor, skills and enterprises.

  

  As the case for systemic inflation builds, the question arises: who wins and who loses in an up-cycle of inflation? The general view is that inflation is bad for almost everyone, but this ignores the big winners in an inflationary cycle.

  As I’ve explained here and in my new book Global Crisis, National Renewal, the two primary dynamics globally are 1) scarcity of essentials and 2) extremes of wealth/power inequality.

  Scarcities drive prices higher simply as a result of supply-demand. Conventional economics holds that there are always cheaper substitutes for everything and hence there can never be scarcities enduring long enough to drive inflation: if steak gets costly, then consumers can buy cheaper chicken, etc.

  But the conventional view overlooks essentials for which there is no substitute. Salt water may be cheap but it’s no substitute for fresh water. There are no scalable substitutes for oil and natural gas. There are no scalable substitutes for hydrocarbon-derived fertilizers or plastics. As energy becomes more expensive due to the mass depletion of the cheap-to-extract resources, the costs of everything from fertilizer to plastics to steel to jet fuel rise.

  This price pressure generates a number of effect. Rising costs embed a self-reinforcing feedback as prices are pushed higher in expectation of higher costs ahead, and these price increases generate the very inflation that sparked the pre-emptive price increase.

  Second, increasing costs either reduce profits or force price increases. Neither is ideal, as higher prices tend to lower sales which then lowers profits.

  Third, prices rise easily but drop only stubbornly, so sharp increases in prices aren’t reversed as cost pressures ease: enterprises and workers quickly become accustomed to the higher prices and pay and are extremely resistant to cutting either prices or pay.

  As I’ve outlined here before, extremes of wealth-power inequality are systemically destabilizing. Extremes generate reversals as the pendulum reaches its maximum and then reverses direction and gathers momentum to the opposite extreme. In terms of wealth-power inequality, the pendulum is finally swinging back toward higher wages for labor and higher taxes for the super-wealthy, and increasing regulation on exploitive monopolies.

  In other words, there is more driving systemic inflation than just “transitory” supply-demand issues. Speaking of supposedly “transitory” cost increases that are actually systemic, global supply chains that were deflationary (i.e. pushing prices lower) for 40 years are now inflationary (i.e. pushing prices higher) as costs rise sharply in exporting economies that are now facing much higher labor and energy costs, and also finally bearing the long-delayed costs of environmental damage caused by rampant industrialization.

  As noted here in The Real Revolution Is Underway But Nobody Recognizes It, labor has been stripmined for 45 years, and now the worm has turned. As much as corporate employers and governments would love outright indentured servitude where they could force everyone to work for low pay in abusive circumstances, people are still free to figure out how to simplify their lives, cut expenses and work less.

  Scarcities of labor are enabling sharp increases in pay, especially in services. Anecdotally, I’m hearing accounts of service workers such as therapists, plumbers, accountants, architects, etc. raising their hourly rates by 20% overnight. In my own little sliver of the economy (writing / editing content), hourly rates are up as much as 30% for experienced independents.

  So let’s highlight a few winners and losers in a self-reinforcing inflationary spiral.

  Asset inflation driven by zero interest rates and a tsunami of central bank liquidity will lose steam as rates rise and the liquidity spigots are turned off. As mortgage rates rise, already overvalued homes will become even less affordable as the number of buyers who can afford much higher monthly payments recedes toward zero.

  Local governments dependent on skyrocketing real estate valuations driving higher property taxes will be losers.

  Bonds paying 1% interest are losers once rates click up to 2% or 3%.

  Stocks are a mixed bag, as the relatively few companies with unlimited pricing power may benefit from inflation, but the majority will be pressured by higher labor, materials, shipping and energy costs, plus higher taxes and fees as the claw-back from capital gathers momentum.

  Consumers are losers as costs soar, but service workers with pricing power are winners. The Federal Reserve can print $1 trillion in an instant but it can’t print experienced welders, plumbers, electricians, accountants, therapists, etc., and very little of this labor can be replaced by low-level (i.e. affordable) automation / robotics.

  Farmers who have been decimated by decades of low-cost imports might gain some pricing power as adverse weather, higher shipping costs and other factors increase the cost of imported agricultural commodities. Corporations with quasi-monopolies on essential industrial minerals/metals such as magnesium, nickel, etc. will have pricing power due to scarcity and the wide moat around their businesses: it isn’t cheap to set up competing mines and acquire rights to the minerals.

  As a general rule, keep an eye on inelastic demand and supply. Elastic demand refers to demand which can ebb and flow with costs–the classic substitution mentioned earlier in which costly beef is replaced by cheaper chicken. Elastic supply is ranchers responding to much higher beef prices by increasing their herds.

  There is always some elasticity in demand and supply as conservation, new efficiencies, recessions, etc. can stretch or shrink supplies and demand. But demand for essentials such as fertilizer, energy and food can only drop so much, and supply can only increase by so much.

  The clear winners in inflation are those who require little from global supply chains, the frugal, and those who own their own labor, skills and enterprises in sectors with relatively inelastic supply and demand. The losers are those who are entirely dependent on global supply chains for essentials, wastrels who squander resources, food, labor and money and those gambling on the quick return to zero-interest largesse and endless trillions in liquidity.

  

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  My new book is now available at a 20% discount this month: Global Crisis, National Renewal: A (Revolutionary) Grand Strategy for the United States (Kindle $8.95, print $20). If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 01/27/2022 – 17:50

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