Poland denies US media claims about Nord Stream
RT | June 22, 2023
A Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report on Poland’s alleged role in the Nord Stream gas pipelines blasts last September is “completely untrue,” the Polish National Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement to the country’s daily Rzeczpospolita on Thursday.
Citing German investigators, the US media outlet claimed in early June that the EU nation supposedly served as an operational base for the suspects that might be behind the Russian natural gas pipeline sabotage. A Polish source familiar with the investigation told the paper that Berlin allegedly knew very little about some of the suspects and might be following the wrong track entirely.
Warsaw has launched its own probe into last September’s incident, alongside Germany, Denmark, and Sweden, the prosecutor’s office told the Polish outlet. The data gathered by Polish officials contradicts the claims made by the WSJ, it added.
“The statement that ‘Poland was a logistics hub for the operation of blowing up Nord Stream’ is completely untrue and is not supported by the evidence of the investigation,” the prosecutor’s office said.
The WSJ reported that a yacht called the ‘Andromeda’ – which was chartered by a Ukrainian-owned, Warsaw-based travel agency and moored at a Polish port – had been sailing around each of the locations where the explosions later occurred.
The Polish prosecutor’s office said there was “no direct evidence” of the yacht’s or its crew’s involvement in the blasts. ‘Andromeda’ arrived in Poland from a small German port called Wiek with six people on board. It moored in one of the Polish ports for 12 hours before leaving the nation’s territorial waters, according to the prosecutors.
“The findings of the investigation show that, during the stay of the yacht in a Polish port, no items were loaded onboard, and the crew of the yacht was inspected by the Polish Border Guard,” the prosecutor’s office said. The vessel’s crew had Bulgarian passports, which appeared authentic, according to the officials. None of the crew members were banned from entering the Schengen area either, they added.
“There is no evidence that would indicate the participation of Polish citizens in blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline,” the prosecutor’s office concluded.
A source familiar with the Polish probe also told Rzeczpospolita that German investigators had contacted Polish officials in mid-May and requested information under the European Investigation Order. The Germans asked many questions about ‘Andromeda’ and its crew, including “many trivial facts,” the source said, adding that they apparently had no knowledge of them. Berlin was also not willing to share its own findings on the issue, the source added.
Rzeczpospolita’s source also questioned the yacht’s role in the sabotage operation by claiming that it could not be used to transport enough explosives to relevant locations and deliver them to the undersea pipelines. No equipment that could facilitate that was found onboard, they added.
Rzeczpospolita also reported that Polish officials had not ruled out the possibility that the yacht might have been used as a distraction from the very onset and its purpose was to put the entire investigation on the wrong track.
CIA Vet Warns US Intel Agencies ‘Will Do Everything’ to Help Dems in 2024 Race
By Svetlana Ekimenko – Sputnik – 22.06.2023
Former Special Counsel John Durham offered his first public testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday regarding the details of his report into the FBI’s handling of allegations of collusion between ex-President Donald Trump and Russia. The day before, Durham testified behind closed doors to the US House Intelligence Committee.
While it is not completely clear whether the Federal Bureau of Investigation knew from the outset that dug-up “information on Trump” had been paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign in 2016, there is “no excuse for their having learned that and, nevertheless, proceeded with the investigation,” former CIA station chief Philip Giraldi told Sputnik.
“There might have been personal malice involved in going after Trump, but that has not been clearly demonstrated,” the Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest added, referencing the FBI’s investigation into the alleged Trump-Russia “collusion”.
Former Special Counsel John Durham paid his second visit to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to face the House Judiciary Committee over the details of his May report, released after almost a four-year-long investigation into the origins of the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation codenamed, Crossfire Hurricane. Durham had found that the agency had been “seriously deficient,” relying on “raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence,” when probing the 2016 Donald Trump campaign’s alleged ties to “Russia.”
“One has to assume that the Bureau felt it had a great deal invested in maintaining Democratic Party control of the presidency and that there were concerns that Trump would upset the arrangements made under [Barack] Obama,” Giraldi said.
The Durham report had also exposed the Democratic establishment’s anti-Trump narrative, and the role of Hillary Clinton’s campaign in spawning and then pushing the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.
During his probe, the special counsel charged and convicted FBI lawyer Kevin Clinesmith, who admitted to doctoring an email to state that Trump aide Carter Page had never been a CIA asset (which was not true) in order to push ahead with surveilling the former Trump campaign adviser. Durham also brought charges against Hillary Clinton’s campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann and Brookings Institution scholar Igor Danchenko for lying to the FBI. Danchenko has served as the main ‘subsource’ for ex-MI6 agent Christopher Steele, the author of the now infamous Steele dossier. It had been funded by the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) through the law firm Perkins Coie, which Marc Elias and Michael Sussmann worked for at the time.
The claims the “dirty” dossier contained were used by the FBI in a series of clandestine preliminary probes against Trump starting from 2016. John Durham, as part of his investigation, found that Steele’s source, Danchenko, when questioned by the FBI was unable to confirm any of the assumptions.
‘Acting on Behalf of the Deep State’
As the Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign sought to use fabricated information from the Steele dossier to smear Donald Trump and some of his advisors, similar tactics were wielded in the 2020 elections, Philip Giraldi previously underscored. After the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees found that senior Biden campaign officials colluded with the CIA to falsely discredit Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell” as “Russian disinformation”, Giraldi pointed out that former acting CIA Director Michael Morell had drafted the notorious letter, titled “Public Statement on the Hunter Biden emails.” It was signed by 51 former intelligence officials including CIA Directors John Brennan, Leon Panetta, and Mike Hayden, former acting CIA Director Michael Morell, former Director of National Intelligence and James Clapper. The letter claimed that the data on Hunter’s hard drive “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
“The CIA did not ‘approve’ of the letter from the 51 former national security officials. My understanding is that it was submitted to them because the Agency exercises ‘prepublication review’ over all articles and books written by former undercover officers to block the publication of any national secrets. In this case, as I understand it, they confirmed that the letter contained no classified information. The letter itself was largely the product of collaboration by Tony Blinken and Michael Morell, both Democratic Party loyalists who expected to benefit personally,” Giraldi emphasized.
The 51 ex-spies’ opinion was quickly disseminated by the US mainstream press, while the Hunter Biden laptop story, shedding light on the Biden family’s questionable business dealings, was suppressed by both Big Media and Big Tech.
“Morell, Blinken and associates should have known that they were acting on behalf of the deep state and were in fact damaging US democracy such as it is! When the national security agencies go after candidates it is in fact the death of government of and by the people,” Giraldi remarked.
Ahead of John Durham’s testimony on June 21, Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) underscored in his opening statement that the hearing was tasked to provide more “detail and add more color” to the findings of the May report.
“Seven years of attacking Trump is scary enough… What’s more frightening is that any one of us could be next,” Jordan emphasized.
A number of Republicans echoed John Durham’s calls for reforming the FBI, underscoring that the agency, had become “politicized” and “weaponized”, and had carried out a “politically motivated” investigation of Donald Trump.
Looking ahead at the next election cycle, where both Biden and Trump are gearing up to vie for another Oval Office stint, Philip Giraldi concluded:
“For 2024, I expect that the agencies will do everything they can to help Biden or whoever replaces him from the Democratic Party but they will be a lot more careful about how they do it than they were in 2020.”
Why China ignores the US
By Fernando Gaillardo – New Eastern Outlook – 22.06.2023
Beijing rejected Washington’s offer to conduct negotiations between Ministers of Defense on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue Summit against the background of mutual misunderstanding.
The Singapore Security Summit for many years has served as a neutral forum for discussing controversies in the Asia-Pacific region, where even outspoken opponents can meet and clarify their mutual grievances without sacrificing credibility. This is why the PRC’s refusal to hold a meeting between Li Shangfu and Lloyd Austin has attracted increased global attention.
The formal reason for rejecting the request was that the Chinese Ministers of Defense was under US sanctions. Li Shangfu previously supervised the revamp of the PLA and promoted the purchase of Russian Su-35 fighter jets and S-400 air defense systems, which angered the Trump administration at the time.
Beijing’s neat diplomatic move is a camouflage for Washington’s complete disregard for China’s foreign policy approaches and interests, including a hint of encroachment on sovereignty. US Air Force conducts about 1,000 surveillance missions per year near China’s maritime borders, while checking the readiness of Chinese air defense forces. The Navy also seeks to come up big in its area of responsibility by regularly sending ships to areas contested by China. Remarkably, even during the persistent attempts of the State Department to organize a meeting at the forum, the ships coming from the US to Japan for exercises could not resist and circled around Taiwan, just in case.
The problem of the island that does not recognize Beijing’s authority is most revealing. Technically, the fact that Taiwan is part of the PRC was stated in The Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relations between China and USA, 1979, and then in the 1982 Communiqué, which reaffirmed the provisions of the previous document. The duplication was necessary because after the establishment of diplomatic relations with the PRC, the United States passed a separate law that allowed to continue to pour weapons into Taiwan and justifying its military presence without recognizing it as a state.
Washington constantly broadcasts an interest in reducing tensions or even “resetting” relations, but is it worth trusting a partner that is constantly looking for loopholes to avoid even documented agreements? Given the recent demarches, Beijing has decided that there is nothing to talk about with the United States.
A few days after the event, the US media reported that the ministers did meet and, allegedly, discussed pressing issues, but there was no coverage of the event by officials of either country. According to “eyewitnesses” the ministers, in fact, crossed paths between venues and simply exchanged pleasantries, as required by protocol. It all sounds like a wounded hegemon is trying to make up for the reputational costs.
The ramifications of EU efforts to isolate China
Press TV – June 22, 2023
The European Commission is proposing a €10 billion fund to develop strategic technologies in order to become less dependent on high tech imports from China.
It also wants to block EU nations from dealing with China when it comes to so called sensitive technologies. The claim is that it’s to reduce risk.
It would appear that positive ties being advanced outside of the West’s control are putting Washington and Brussels on edge.
Trade between the EU and China is worth an incredible 2.3 billion euro per day. Some analysts believe the US is trying to scupper this vital economic link.
During recent European Parliament debates, lawmakers have heavily criticized the EU’s policy towards Russia and China.
The fallout from energy sanctions against Moscow is severely harming EU citizens and businesses.
At a time of dire economic pressures, the European Commission wants to prioritize the government in Kyiv.
Analysts say vested interests in the United States are benefiting most from deteriorating EU-Russia and EU-China relations.
EU leaders are due to hold a summit at the end of next week to discuss the Commission’s trade proposals.
It’s already clear there are major concerns in member states because current arrangements with China are so lucrative.
It is reported that some EU countries believe the European Commission is overstepping the mark.
EU Transfers to Ukraine Another $1.6Bln in Financial Assistance – Von der Leyen
Sputnik – 22.06.2023
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Thursday the European Union have transferred to Ukraine another 1.5 billion euros ($1.6 billion) in financial assistance to support its infrastructure.
“Today we disburse another €1.5 bn for Ukraine in macro-financial assistance. We help keep Ukraine’s services and infrastructure afloat in its brave fight for freedom,” von der Leyen tweeted.
She also promised to give Kiev more money, recalling the recently announced 50 billion euros of four-year financial reserves for Ukraine.
The head of the commission reiterated the EU was willing to provide Kiev with “long haul” support.
Earlier, the European Commission has reviewed the draft EU budget for the 2024-2027 period and asked member states to increase it by 66 billion euros ($72 billion), mostly to fund assistance for Ukraine.
Western countries have supplied Ukraine with military aid since the start of hostilities in February 2022. The support evolved from lighter artillery munitions and training in 2022 to heavier weapons, including tanks, later that year and in 2023.
Latest news ‘from the front’
By Gilbert Doctorow | June 22, 2023
This morning’s edition of the news and discussion program Sixty Minutes on Russian state television opened with the now traditional montage of excerpts from U.S. television reporting on transgender issues. Today this was the latest court decisions on state legislation banning sex change operations in children. That sort of material is now the daily filler on Russian news, providing a nice distraction from the misery of war and a clear demonstration of what degenerates the Americans have become.
However, this distraction was cut short and ten minutes into the program we were shown live images of the ongoing meeting of the RF Security Council chaired by Vladimir Putin. The meeting was virtual not in-person. The President was seated at his desk in his Kremlin office with the other participants shown on television monitors. We caught the moment when Defense Minister Shoigu was reporting to Putin on the summary results of the fighting since the start of the Ukrainian counter-offensive at the start of the month: 246 Ukrainian tanks, including13 German Leopards, have been destroyed and a bit more than 13,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed. Yes, killed. In addition there must be the injured.
This, of course, was the part of the session fit for public dissemination. What really brought the Council together today was something else: to consider Russia’s response to latest developments in the war zone, namely the Ukrainians’ destruction yesterday of several bridges connecting the Kherson oblast under Russian control to the Crimea. It has already been determined that the attackers used the British supplied cruise missiles Storm Shadow. This looks very much like the tripwire that Shoigu had in mind a couple of days ago when he said that Russia will bomb the decision making center in Kiev if its territory is attacked. So we may well expect something to happen now.
Then there was surely another issue on the table arising from developments described in a 5-minute report by a journalist with the German Bild magazine which the Russians put up on the screen. His televised report was devoted to the consequences of the explosion at the Kakhovka dam and the emptying of the vast reservoir behind it, which, per the journalist was, as measured in square kilometers, larger than the Berlin metropolitan area.
After opening his remarks with the Hail Mary assertion that the Russians were responsible for this disaster, he went on to describe very persuasively why the emptying of the reservoir now serves Ukrainian military interests perfectly. Most of the land which had been under water is now dry and can very likely support tanks. In the new conditions, the distance separating Ukrainian and Russian forces in the Kakhovka area has been reduced to zero from what had been a body of water varying from 5 to 31 kilometers in width. Moreover, the length of this new stretch of the front is up to 200 km. And in this new front line, the Russians have no defensive mine fields, tank traps, hidden artillery or well engineered trenches that have been so murderous to the attacking Ukrainian army in the Southern Donetsk and Zaporozhie fronts.
This has to be one of the main “surprises” that the Ukrainian command had in mind as it looks for new ways to achieve a breakthrough. But, this potentially dramatic change is not necessarily what it seems: this is not some German move around the Maginot line that left the French with no response. Russia has the means to respond, but that takes us back to point one: to finish off the regime in Kiev now and not wait further.
Finally, within the broadcast of Sixty Minutes, the leader of a Chechen unit active in the Donbas who appears rather frequently on the program gave his assessment of the personnel and equipment losses on Ukrainian fighting potential. As he noted, the loss of tanks and artillery pieces means that the best trained Ukrainian fighters are now dead. To put an infantry soldier on the front lines, you hand him a Kalashnikov and push him out on the field. But the tank commanders and artillery men are the top soldiers who have undergone long training and war experience. Their loss is irreplaceable and explains the heavy infantry losses comprising most of the 13,000 dead, new recruits who were sent to their deaths as cannon fodder.
The two o’clock feature news program on Channel One provided additional video excerpts from the morning’s RF Security Council meeting, in particular the report to Putin by Nikolai Patrushev, the Secretary of the Council. His discussion of Ukrainian equipment destroyed was far more detailed, listing the numbers of armored personnel carriers, artillery pieces and rapid fire rocket launchers, helicopters, drones and much more. The conclusion was that most of the equipment that has been supplied to Ukraine over the past months is now destroyed. That takes in both US and European manufactured equipment as well as Soviet equipment donated by former Warsaw Pact countries. Ukraine is now living hand to mouth on fighting material coming in from the West.
The two o’clock news also devoted special attention to the commemorative events going on today in Moscow and in cities and towns across Russia to mark the 82nd anniversary of the German invasion that brought the USSR into WWII. We were shown video recordings of candle lightings where tens of thousands of lights were laid out to form powerful images of remembrance. All of this comes in the midst of what is seen as a new struggle to crush Nazism in Europe as did their parents and grandparents in the Great Patriotic War.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023
US should pay the bill for devastation in Ukraine – Russian envoy
RT | June 22, 2023
The Ukraine conflict was instigated by the US and other Western countries, and as such it is up to Washington to pay for the reconstruction of the ravaged nation, Russia’s ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, claimed on Wednesday.
Antonov was asked to comment on a statement by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who, while speaking at a Ukraine reconstruction conference in London, claimed that “Russia will eventually bear the cost” of restoring the country.
The Russian diplomat pushed back against Blinken’s remarks, saying the conflict between Moscow and Kiev was “the result of years of deliberate efforts by the United States to create a hotbed of tensions at our borders, to turn Ukraine into ‘anti-Russia,’” which involved a Western-backed coup in the Ukrainian capital in 2014.
Antonov claimed that the US was actively fanning hostilities by pumping Kiev with weapons, while nipping any peace initiatives in the bud. “This means that the administration is fully responsible for what is happening in Ukraine. That’s why it is up to the United States to rebuild the country,” he stated.
He went on to state that while it is possible to restore houses destroyed by American weapons, it will be much more difficult to erase the humanitarian consequences of the conflict.
“How will… Washington evaluate the lives of innocent people? How is the United States going to settle accounts with the Ukrainians, whom they are driving into reckless frontal assaults in today’s so-called counter-offensive?” the envoy asked.
While Western countries have pledged billions of dollars in reconstruction assistance to Ukraine, some of Kiev backers have also called for the seizure of Russian assets that were frozen after the start of the Ukraine conflict, to be used for reconstruction. While legal hurdles have so far prevented this from happening, Kremlin Press Secretary Dmitry Peskov has described the initiative as “pure banditry.”
BlackRock Recruiter Claims Senators Can Be ‘Bought’ For $10k, War ‘Good For Business’
BY TYLER DURDEN | ZERO HEDGE | JUNE 20, 2023
The undercover chaps and lasses at James O’Keefe’s new undercover media venture have done it again – this time tricking a BlackRock recruiter into making several damning admissions.
In a series of covertly-recorded meetings, recruiter Serge Varlay describes how BlackRock – the world’s largest asset manager – is able to “run the world,” and that it’s easier to pull off shenanigans when “people aren’t thinking about it.”
According to Varlay, US Senators can be ‘bought’ for as little as $10k.
“The senators… are f***ing cheap – you got 10 grand, you can buy a senator,” he remarked.
You can take this big f*** ton of money and buy people, I work for a company called BlackRock… It’s not who is the president, it’s who is controlling the wallet of the president. You could buy your candidates. First, there is the senators these guys are fuckin cheap. Got 10 grand you can buy a senator I’ll give you 500k right now. It doesn’t matter who wins they’re in my pocket. –OMG
Blackrock is also apparently loving the war in Ukraine, which Varley described as “real fuckin’ good for business.”
Ukraine is good for business, you know that right? Russia blows up Ukraine’s grain silos and the price of wheat is going to go mad up. The Ukrainian economy is the wheat market. The price of bread goes up, this is fantastic if you’re trading. Volatility creates opportunity for profit…
According to Varley, it’s “exciting when shit goes wrong.”
“So what are you gonna do if you’re a trading firm? The moment that news hits, within a millisecond, you’re going to pump trades into whoever the wheat suppliers are. Into their stocks. Within an hour or two that stick goes f*cking up and then you sell and you just make, I don’t know, however many mil,” he continued. “The Ukrainian economy is tied very largely to the wheat market, global wheat market, prices of bread, you know, literally everything goes up and down. This is fantastic if you’re trading.
“Volatility creates opportunity to make profit. War is real fucking good for business.”
Watch:
As the Post Millennial notes, Varley also described himself as a person who “decide[s] people’s fates.”
“Every f*cking day, I literally decide how somebody’s life is going to be shaped,” he said. “I’m not actually a finance guy, I just know what happens because I’m recruiting people who do these things.”
More via the PM:
Varlay said these banks run the world because “you acquire stuff. You diversify, you acquire, you keep acquiring. You spend whatever you make in acquiring more. And at a certain point, your risk level is super low. Imagine you’ve invested in 10 different industries, from food to drinks to technology. If one of them fails it doesn’t matter, you have nine others to back you up.”
Varlay said that once “you own a little bit of everything… you can take this big f*ck-ton of money and then you can start to buy people.”
YouTube Censors Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
By Jonathan Turley | June 20, 2023
YouTube has continued its censorship of those with opposing positions on Covid 19 and vaccines. This week it prevented users from hearing the views of Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Despite Kennedy running on the failures of the pandemic response, YouTube will not allow users to hear what it considers harmful thoughts.
On Sunday, both Kennedy and podcast host Jordan Peterson tweeted that they were the latest to be censored by the company. Kennedy tweeted: “What do you think… Should social media platforms censor presidential candidates? My conversation with [Peterson] was deleted by [YouTube].”
He added: “Luckily you can watch it here on [Twitter] (thank you [Elon Musk]).”
The incident shows why many on the left continue an unrelenting attack on Musk and Twitter. Musk eliminated most of the company’s censorship system and, despite a few censorship controversies, the site is now the most open social media site among the major companies.
A Google spokesperson told Fox News Digital YouTube “removed a video from the Jordan Peterson channel for violating YouTube’s general vaccine misinformation policy, which prohibits content that alleges that vaccines cause chronic side effects, outside of rare side effects that are recognized by health authorities.”
Rather than allow experts and others to debate that question, Google and YouTube will not allow the debate to occur. It is consistent with calls from Democratic leaders for dissenting voices to be removed on subjects ranging from Covid to gender identity to climate control.
We have been discussing efforts by figures like Hillary Clinton to enlist European countries to force Twitter to restore censorship rules. Unable to rely on corporate censorship or convince users to embrace censorship, Clinton and others are resorting to good old-fashioned state censorship, even asking other countries to censor the speech of American citizens.
President Joe Biden has at times acted as a virtual censor-in-chief, denouncing social-media companies for “killing people” by not censoring enough. Recently, he expressed doubt that the public can “know the truth” without such censorship by “editors” in Big Tech. There is growing evidence of long-suspected back channels between government and Democratic political figures and Big Tech. Some of those contacts were recently confirmed but Congress again refused to investigate.
For years, scientists faced censorship for even raising the lab theory as a possible explanation for the virus. Their reputations and careers were shredded by a media flash mob. The Washington Post declared this a “debunked” coronavirus “conspiracy theory.” The New York Times’ Science and Health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli was calling any mention of the lab theory “racist.”
When a Chinese researcher told Fox News that this was man-made, the network was attacked and the left-leaning PolitiFact slammed her with a “pants on fire rating.”
The mask mandate and other pandemic measures like the closing of schools are now cited as fueling emotional and developmental problems in children. The closing of schools and businesses was challenged by some critics as unnecessary. Many of those critics were also censored. It now appears that they may have been right. Many countries did not close schools and did not experience increases in Covid. However, we are now facing alarming drops in testing scores and alarming rises in medical illness among the young.
The point is only that there were countervailing indicators on mask efficacy and a basis to question the mandates. Yet, there was no real debate because of the censorship supported by many Democratic leaders in social media. To question such mandates was declared a public health threat and what the WHO called our “infodemic.”
A lawsuit was filed by Missouri and Louisiana and joined by leading experts, including Drs. Jayanta Bhattacharya (Stanford University) and Martin Kulldorff (Harvard University). Bhattacharya previously objected to the suspension of Dr. Clare Craig after she raised concerns about Pfizer trial documents. Those doctors were the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated for a more focused Covid response that targeted the most vulnerable population rather than widespread lockdowns and mandates. Many are now questioning the efficacy and cost of the massive lockdown as well as the real value of masks and the rejection of natural immunities as an alternative to vaccination. Yet, these experts and others were attacked for such views just a year ago. Some found themselves censored on social media for challenging claims of Dr. Fauci and others.
The media has quietly acknowledged the science questioning mask efficacy and school closures without addressing its own role in attacking those who raised these objections.
Yet, the censorship continues to the point that even a presidential candidate is now being silenced on social media.
The censorship of Kennedy is a national disgrace. Despite the proven legitimacy of prior censorship of viewpoints like the lab theory and natural immunities, Google continues to silence those with opposing views.
YouTube is signaling that this election will be another exercise in corporate approved messaging and ideas.
If you want to use YouTube, you will now have to engage in self-censorship, eliminating views that Google disagrees with. You may be able to “Broadcast Yourself” but you must first “Censor Yourself” . . . or YouTube will do it for you.
Raytheon CEO Explains Why China Has US Military By The Balls
By Tyler Durden | Zero Hedge | June 21, 2023
Raytheon Chief Executive Greg Hayes admitted last week that Beijing effectively has the US military’s supply chain by the balls thanks to its reliance on rare earths and other materials which come from, or are processed in, China.
According to Hayes, Raytheon has “several thousand suppliers in China,” because of which “decoupling … is impossible.”
“We can de-risk but not decouple,” he told the Financial Times, adding that he thinks this is the case “for everybody.”
“Think about the $500bn of trade that goes from China to the US every year. More than 95 per cent of rare earth materials or metals come from, or are processed in, China. There is no alternative,” Hayes continued, adding “If we had to pull out of China, it would take us many many years to re-establish that capability either domestically or in other friendly countries.”
Hayes’ comments underline the difficulties facing western manufacturers amid growing friction between China and the US and its allies.
Beijing in February imposed new sanctions on both Raytheon and US defence peer Lockheed Martin for supplying weapons to Taiwan. Hayes has also been placed under sanctions.
The sanctions have had little commercial impact as the groups are not allowed to sell military equipment to China. Raytheon, however, has a substantial commercial aerospace business in the country through its engine subsidiary, Pratt & Whitney, and aviation systems and cabin equipment specialist Collins Aerospace. It has about 2,000 direct employees in China. – FT
Hayes said that the company is looking “to take some of the most critical components and have second sources but we are not in a position to pull out of China the way we did out of Russia.”
That said, entrepreneur Arnaud Bertrand makes a solid point – that this makes war with China “less likely.”
Except that they have all the leverage and we have have Joe Biden.
Extremists who left Syria to fight in Ukraine realize journey ‘futile’: Expert
The Cradle | June 21, 2023
Egyptian researcher and political analyst Ahmad Sultan was quoted as saying on 21 June that many of the extremist militants who left Syria for the Ukrainian battlefield last year have realized that the fight against Russia is futile.
“The jihadists have realized that the situation in Ukraine is difficult for them, and that the arena there is not suitable for them, and that their fight against Russia is a lost battle,” Sultan said.
“Among the jihadists who returned [to Syria] recently is the leader Abdel Hakim al-Shishani … he is one of the most prominent leaders who left with their fighters from Idlib to Ukraine,” he added.
“Dozens of foreign jihadists, especially Chechens, led by Abdel Hakim al-Shishani, the leader of the Soldiers of the Caucasus group, left Idlib in northern Syria and relocated to the fronts against Russian forces in Ukraine,” Sultan went on to explain, adding that Shishani made his way back to Syria “recently.”
Shishani is a Chechen militant leader who was in charge of the Idlib-based group of foreign fighters, Soldiers of the Caucasus.
At the start of the year, Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar reported that after several months of disappearance, the well-known Chechen extremist appeared in Ukraine as part of Kiev’s ‘international legion.’ The Chechen commander appeared in a video posted by the official Twitter account of Ukraine’s defense intelligence.
According to Sultan, Shishani and his Soldiers of the Caucasus were stationed on the fronts near Bakhmut, the eastern Ukrainian city which just last month fell to Russian forces.
“The available data confirms that there are countries that facilitated the process of these fighters’ exit from Syria to Ukraine and that the process of transferring foreign fighters was planned by intelligence services affiliated with countries involved in the conflict inside Ukraine,” the Egyptian researcher continued.
According to Al-Akhbar’s January report, Turkish intelligence played a leading role in facilitating the transfer of militants from Syria to Ukraine.
Sultan adds that these cross-country transfers of militants were ignored by the US coalition operating in Syria, which he said “raises questions.”
Since the start of the war in Ukraine, hundreds of Syria-based militants belonging to ISIS, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), and other groups, have made their way to the eastern European country.
“The transfer of foreign fighters suggests that there is an attempt to recreate the scenario of the Afghan-Soviet war in Ukraine. There are fundamental differences between the two cases, but this did not prevent some countries from using the same tactics,” he concluded.
During the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, foreign militants joined the Afghan side under heavy backing from the US and Saudi Arabia.
US-backing for the ‘Mujahideen’ in Afghanistan throughout the 1980s resulted in the formation of what is today known as Al-Qaeda. This was admitted by Hilary Clinton in 2009.
Democrat blames conservative media for hyping Trump assassination remark
Trump “needs to be shot”
RT | June 21, 2023
Delegate Stacey Plaskett (D-Virgin Islands) excoriated “conservative media” for calling attention to a television appearance in which she appeared to call for the assassination of former US president Donald Trump, insisting in a statement on Tuesday that she had done no such thing.
“It is unfortunate that conservative media has taken an instance where I misspoke and misrepresented it as though I advocate for violence–I unequivocally do not,” Plaskett said. “I wish former President Trump no ill will or harm, only that justice be served in his case as with every other American who must face penalties for wrongdoing.”
Plaskett claimed to have misspoken during an MSNBC segment discussing the Republican candidate’s indictment over his alleged mishandling of confidential documents. “Having Trump not only have had the [nuclear] codes but now having the classified information for Americans and being able to put that out and share it in his resort with anyone and everyone who comes through should be terrifying to all Americans and he needs to be shot – stopped,” she had said, without elaborating on whether the latter word was meant as a correction or simply a clarification.
Several conservative outlets including Fox News and d the New York Post published articles about her supposed slip-up, including responses to the clip on social media calling for Plaskett to be investigated by the Secret Service or even criminally charged for threatening the former president.
“I do believe and did intend to say that he must be ‘stopped’,” the delegate, a non-voting member of the US Congress, continued, reiterating, “I do not advocate for anyone to shoot former President Trump.”
In April, Plaskett called for journalist Matt Taibbi to be charged with perjury based on a rival journalist’s claim that Taibbi had deliberately substituted the name of the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) subsidiary for the Center for Internet Security (CIS) in order to falsely depict an unconstitutionally cozy relationship between the government agency and Twitter. Taibbi countered that the switch was a mistake he had immediately corrected – and which ultimately turned out to be true.
In her statement on Tuesday, Plaskett claimed she did not “encourage or condone political violence nor behavior that goes against democratic principles at any time.” That also appeared to clash with her sign-off from the MSNBC program, in which she remarked that “In the Virgin Islands, we’re celebrating our 175th year of emancipation through violent and organized slave rebellion to remove ourselves from chattel slavery.”
While running for Congress, Plaskett actively pursued (and received) campaign contributions from convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein after securing lucrative tax breaks for the pedophile in her role as general counsel for the islands’ Economic Development Authority.
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How Ukraine Tortured and Slaughtered Donbass
By Kit Klarenberg | Al Mayadeen | July 11, 2024
Almost immediately after the proxy war erupted, ISIS-tier footage of the torture and murder of Russians in Ukrainian custody emerged.
On July 6th, the New York Times published an astonishing investigation: In Ukraine, Killings of Surrendering Russians Divide an American-Led Unit. The article documents in grim detail how Chosen Company, an international volunteer battalion for Kiev, routinely executes Russian prisoners of war. It is the very first mainstream admission that this practice – a brazen breach of the Geneva Conventions, and a grave war crime – is widespread among Ukraine’s fighters, both foreign and homegrown. … continue
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