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“One Of The Most Brilliant Explanations Of The Modern World”: Russell Brand Sits With Tucker Carlson For Explosive Interview
“One Of The Most Brilliant Explanations Of The Modern World”: Russell Brand Sits With Tucker Carlson For Explosive Interview
Russell Brand flew too close to the sun, it would seem. Just as the popular British comedian was gaining massive attention for confronting global authoritarianism, he was hit with an onslaught of sexual allegations by anonymous accusers, which were amplified throughout the mainstream media.
Brand, known for his left-leaning ideology, articulate critique of the war in Ukraine, and the history of NATO leading up to said war, drew a clandestine ‘shadow campaign’ against him, which according to Tucker Carlson, “began with governments, not private organizations, but governments, their Intel services and their policy makers.” Brand was even attacked “as a Chinese propagandist” for his views on Ukraine.
“I’ve never been to China. I don’t purport to understand China, certainly don’t advocate for Chinese policy,” Brand told Carlson, who suggested that the ‘Chinese propagandist’ allegations were nothing more than “the early seeds of a very deceptive plant that flowered more than a year later, in September, when you were accused of these crimes,” referring to the sexual assault allegations.
“You were making kind of a remarkable case against the Ukrainian people and certainly not in favor of Russia,” Carlson noted, to which Brand replied: “All we’ve essentially done is listen to brilliant academics talking about the history of NATO and the coup in 2014, in Ukraine, and Putin’s explicit declaration that he would prefer, let’s put it mildly, that Ukraine were not invited into NATO, the sum of the regional disputes, how they’re escalating tensions. This is information that, because of independent media, is available.”
Brand was also attacked after Moderna ‘tracked his content’ during the pandemic, and thinks that we’re at a major inflection point for independent voices.
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Poland’s Obstruction In Nord Stream Pipeline Probe Raises Alarm For Investigators
Poland’s Obstruction In Nord Stream Pipeline Probe Raises Alarm For Investigators
At this point, one might be forgiven for thinking that the Nord Stream pipelines sabotage is already ancient history. After all, mainstream media and prime time TV news coverage has by and large ‘moved on’ as soon as it became clear that Russia had nothing to do with it.
At this point, the consensus even among Moscow’s vehement enemies is that the September 26, 2022 series of blasts which disabled the Russia to Germany NS-1 and NS-2 natural gas pipelines had Ukrainian and/or Western involvement. While MSM sources have favored the theory that it was a mystery group of pro-Ukraine operatives on a small yacht, legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has reported that it was a CIA and US Navy special operation with help from Norwegian intelligence services.
Since then, the ongoing investigation by Germany, Denmark and Sweden into the details of what happened has continued to yield very interesting, incremental developments. The latest was revealed in a Wall Street Journal report this week, and involves apparent Polish obstruction of the probe, which has been deemed by officials to be highly suspicious.
Reports WSJ, “Polish officials have resisted cooperating with an international probe into the sabotage of the Nord Stream natural-gas pipelines and failed to disclose potentially crucial evidence, according to European investigators working on the case.”
Cover-up?… you don’t say:
Those Polish officials have been slow to provide information and withheld key evidence about the alleged saboteurs’ movements on Polish soil, investigators said. They are now hoping the new government in Warsaw, which took office in December, will help shed light on the attack.
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Rickards’ Five 2024 Forecasts
Rickards’ Five 2024 Forecasts
I have five forecasts for 2024 to help keep you ahead of the curve in positioning your investment portfolio.
My overall forecast is that 2024 will be more tumultuous and shocking than 2023. That may seem hard to credit.
With two major wars going on, an indicted former president and a demented current president, how can 2024 be more challenging than 2023?
Rest assured; it will be. I explain why below.
An Election of Dire Consequences
It’s a cliche to write that the next presidential election will be the “most important in our lifetimes.” Yet in 2024 that cliche will actually be true.
The divide between the two parties is probably greater than at any time in U.S. political history since the Civil War. The choice could not be more stark and the stakes could not be higher.
That’s why this election is so important.
First off, I don’t think that Joe Biden will be the Democratic nominee for president.
Biden’s problem is not just his age, but the fact that he actually is mentally and physically impaired. He’s simply not fit to be president, and everyone knows it even if Democratic operatives and media sycophants don’t want to mention it. But who will replace Biden?
The most likely replacements are Gavin Newsom, J.B. Pritzker, Gretchen Whitmer and Jennifer Granholm. All four were or are state governors. They’re all about the same ideologically; take your pick. Forget Kamala Harris; she’s simply too much of a liability.
The Republican Side
On the Republican side, there’s not a lot to say. Trump will be the nominee; no one can recall a non-incumbent with such a large lead in the polls.
He’s leading the pack by 55 points or more and is now even running ahead of Joe Biden in recent polls.
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Ukraine Was Always the UK’s War First
Ukraine Was Always the UK’s War First
“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”
— Verbal Kent, the Usual Suspects
For more than a year we’ve been regaled with headline after headline about how the War in Ukraine is a US war. It’s easy to think that, certainly. We’re the ones who started the process here, at least on the face of it.
Victoria Nuland and her cookies on The Maidan. John McCain and his money and support of Right Sector. Seymour Hersh’s expose on the Nordstream 2 bombing. The seemingly endless billions of materiel from Congress. Even this weekend’s continuing resolution to avoid a government shutdown hinged on Ukraine.
The US has the political, economic, and military prowess and rightly should be first considered to be driving this bus towards war. And there are no shortage of commentators in the space helping that narrative along. And none of what I’m implying or about to say absolves these people from their actions which have led us to the current state.
Hundreds of thousands of people are dead because of what should have been a fully avoidable war had someone been in charge on the West’s side that wanted peace.
But the West didn’t want peace. It froze the conflict in 2014 with the Minsk Agreements because Vladimir Putin believed German Chancellor Angela Merkel was honorable. He traded liberating the Donbass fully for building Nordstream 2 hoping that the pipeline would finally tie Germany and Russia together in a that bond couldn’t be broken.
This was Putin’s greatest mistake. And he’s still paying for it to this day.
In 2014 Ukraine was in no shape after the rout at Gorlovka to oppose a Russian-backed Donetsk and Lugansk forces to secure both Oblasts which included the important city of Mariupol…
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Is World War III About to Start? Part I: Drift Toward War
Is World War III About to Start? Part I: Drift Toward War
Read Part 2 of this series here.
It is likely that billions of people around the world view the conflict in Ukraine as a proxy war being waged by the U.S. against Russia. US President Joe Biden has pledged to aid Ukraine’s pursuit of victory “for as long as it takes,” without defining what the end state might be. Russian President Vladimir Putin has interpreted U.S. intentions to mean a fight “to the last Ukrainian.”
Anyone with a discernible pulse is aware of the danger that the conflict could escalate into a conflagration large and destructive enough to morph into World War III. The threshold would likely be crossed once nuclear weapons were unleashed. The military doctrines of all nuclear powers stipulate that such an attack would justify an in-kind response, though without always ruling out the same for lesser provocations of a potentially existential nature.
President Biden has said “the world faces the biggest risk of nuclear Armageddon since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.” The context of Biden’s statement came a month earlier on September 21, 2022, when Putin warned the West he was not bluffing when he said he would be ready to use nuclear weapons to defend Russia against what he said was “nuclear blackmail.” Earlier, in an April 21, 2021, speech, Putin said:
We really do not want to burn bridges. But if someone mistakes our good intentions for indifference or weakness and intends to burn or even blow up these bridges, they must know that Russia’s response will be asymmetrical, swift, and tough. Those behind provocations that threaten the core interests of our security will regret what they have done in a way they have not regretted anything for a long time.
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The Coming Ukraine Collapse and the “Rebuilding” Headfake
The Coming Ukraine Collapse and the “Rebuilding” Headfake
Marguerite Yourcenar salvaged one of the finest lines in all literature from the first version of her masterpiece Memoirs of Hadrian: “I begin to discern the profile of my death.” We are approaching that point with Ukriane, not just its military campaign, but also its economy. That baked-in collapse has been camouflaged by the bizarre pretense that there will be a huge reconstruction push, even more absurdly, funded by private sector interests. One has to think that the “rebuilding” patter is part of the cover for the fact that Project Ukraine is a lost cause.
At the end of this post, we are embedding a chapter on the devastation in Russia in the 1990s to give an idea of what the downside in Ukraine might look like.1 Recall that even though the USSR had suffered from underinvestment in many sectors, it still had ample resources and considerable manufacturing capacity. It did not, as Ukraine has, suffer from considerable infrastructure destruction, a fall in its population to half its former level, through flight, annexation, and death in the war, and the loss of some of its most economically developed areas.
The war is now entering a critical phase, with experts now warning of a breakdown of the Ukraine military in the not-terribly-distant future or using formulations that amount to the same thing. Scott Ritter had predicted that outcome for late summer-fall based on Ukraine’s dwindling missiles supplies, but that horizon has been extended by the US supply of cluster munitions, whose use is considered a war crime by many countries.
An indicator of the increased willingness to admit the inevitable military disintegration was coming is the early September article, How Ukraine’s Heroic Stand Against Russia Could Collapse Into Failure by Daniel Davis in 19FortyFive…
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Jeffrey Sachs: NATO Expansion & Ukraine’s Destruction
Jeffrey Sachs: NATO Expansion & Ukraine’s Destruction
Ukraine is being destroyed by U.S. arrogance, proving again Henry Kissinger’s adage that to be America’s enemy is dangerous, while to be its friend is fatal.
During the disastrous Vietnam War, it was said that the U.S. government treated the public like a mushroom farm: keeping it in the dark and feeding it with manure. The heroic Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers documenting the unrelenting U.S. government lying about the war in order to protect politicians who would be embarrassed by the truth. A half century later, during the Ukraine War, the manure is piled even higher.
According to the U.S. government and the ever-obsequious New York Times, the Ukraine war was “unprovoked,” the Times’ favorite adjective to describe the war. Putin, allegedly mistaking himself for Peter the Great, invaded Ukraine to recreate the Russian Empire. Yet last week, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg committed a Washington gaffe, meaning that he accidentally blurted out the truth.
In testimony to the European Union Parliament, Stoltenberg made clear that it was America’s relentless push to enlarge NATO to Ukraine that was the real cause of the war and why it continues today. Here are Stoltenberg’s revealing words:
“The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition to not invade Ukraine. Of course, we didn’t sign that.
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Russia: The United States Is At War Against Us
Russia: The United States Is At War Against Us
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in fresh statements made to reporters has said the Untied States in waging war against Russia through the Ukraine proxy war.
Lavrov in the Russian-language comments described that Washington is not only transferring some $100 billion in military aid to Kiev, but is actually controlling its decision-making. He further said this is in order to try and inflict a “strategic defeat” on Russia.
The top Russian diplomat was speaking on the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum on Sunday morning. “No matter what it says, it [the US] controls this war, it supplies weapons, munition, intelligence information, data from satellites, it is pursuing a war against us,” he said, according to a translation.
“While what is going on is that Ukraine has been prepared, has long been prepared for inflicting strategic defeat to Russia using its hands and its bodies,” Lavrov emphasized.
He in prior comments Friday had said the US is also waging a global effort to isolate Moscow, and that this was the intent of the recent Saudi-hosted Ukraine peace summit.
“There is a real plot around the topic of the so-called (peace) negotiations, as well as attempts to turn everything upside down through pseudo diplomacy,” he said Friday. He explained:
“The West has been saying for months that this ‘peace formula’ is the only basis for negotiations. It starts from innocent topics … and then comes to the purpose for which it was concocted – inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia, to restore the borders of Ukraine as they were in 1991, court-martial the Russian leadership, force Russia to pay reparations, and then ‘mercifully’ agree to sign a peace agreement.”
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Summer of the Hawks
SUMMER OF THE HAWKS
Wishful thinking is still the rule among Biden’s foreign policy team, as the slaughter in Ukraine continues
It’s been weeks since we looked into the adventures of the Biden administration’s foreign policy cluster, led by Tony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, and Victoria Nuland. How has the trio of war hawks spent the summer?
Sullivan, the national security adviser, recently brought an American delegation to the second international peace summit earlier this month at Jeddah in Saudi Arabia. The summit was led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS, who in June announced a merger between his state-backed golf tour and the PGA. Four years earlier MBS was accused of ordering the assassination and dismemberment of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, for perceived disloyalty to the state.
As unlikely as it sounds, there was such a peace summit and its stars did include MBS, Sullivan, and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. What was missing was a representative of Russia, which was not invited to the summit. It included just a handful of heads of state from the fewer than fifty nations that sent delegates. The conference lasted two days, and attracted what could only be described as little international attention.
Reuters reported that Zelensky’s goal was to get international support for “the principles” that that he will consider as a basis for the settlement of the war, including “the withdrawal of all Russian troops and the return of all Ukrainian territory.” Russia’s formal response to the non-event came not from President Vladimir Putin but from Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Ryabkov. He called the summit “a reflection of the West’s attempt to continue futile, doomed efforts” to mobilize the Global South behind Zelensky.
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Zelensky Threatens “Russia May Be Left Without Ships” Amid Emerging Battle At Sea
Zelensky Threatens “Russia May Be Left Without Ships” Amid Emerging Battle At Sea
Last week witnessed two major Ukrainian strikes on Russian ships at sea in merely two days, which resulted in severe damage to a warship (seen listing as it was towed to port), and damage to an oil tanker known to supply fuel to Russia’s military in Syria.
This emerging “battle at sea” also comes as Russia has stepped up major assaults of Ukrainian ports, including on the Black Sea and in the Danube, across from NATO member Romania.
Kiev and Washington have accused President Vladimir Putin of ‘weaponizing food’ – while the Kremlin has blamed Ukraine and its NATO backers for making Black Sea transit routes dangerous, given the sea drone attacks and release of sea mines.
In new statements, President Volodymyr Zelensky has signaled there will be more attacks on Russian ships to come, which is likely to see the conflict slide further toward “unlimited war” – where any and all targets, including civilian, are taken out.
Zelensky said in a fresh interview with the Latin American publication La Nacion that Ukraine forces will turn the ongoing blockade of Ukrainian ports back on Russia.
“If Russia continues to dominate the Black Sea and block it with missiles, then Ukraine will do the same, which is a fair defense of our capabilities,” he said. And significantly, he added:
“If they continue to shoot, we don’t have many weapons, but if they continue to shoot, they may be left without ships until the end of the war. And this is what we want to show them.”
“Therefore, Ukraine will definitely respond to any attacks on the civilian population and grain corridors,” Zelensky emphasized.
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Storm clouds gathering in the Black Sea
Storm clouds gathering in the Black Sea
Turkish President Recep Erdogan (L) and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (R) with President Biden & NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg (C), NATO Summit, Vilnius,July 11, 2023
The NATO Summit in Vilnius (July 11-12) signalled that there is absolutely no possibility of talks to settle the Ukraine war in a foreseeable future. The war will only intensify, as the US and its allies still hope to inflict a military defeat on Russia although that is clearly beyond their capability.
On July 14, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of US joint chiefs of staff said that Ukraine’s counteroffensive is “far from a failure” but the fight ahead will be “long” and “bloody”. Milley has a reputation for speaking what the White House wants to hear, no matter his professional judgment.
Indeed, on July 19, the Biden administration announced additional security assistance of about $1.3 billion for Ukraine. The Pentagon said in a statement that the announcement “represents the beginning of a contracting process to provide additional priority capabilities to Ukraine.” That is to say, the US will be using funds in its Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative program, which allows the administration to buy weapons from industry rather than pull from US weapons stocks.
According to the Pentagon, the latest package includes four National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems (NASAMS) and munitions; 152 mm artillery rounds; mine clearing equipment; and drones.
Meanwhile, in an ominous development, no sooner than Russia let the UN-brokered grain deal expire on July 17, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky disclosed that he had sent official letters to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan suggesting to continue the grain deal without Russia’s participation.
On the very next day, Kiev followed up with an official letter to the UN’s International Maritime Organization spelling out a new maritime corridor passing through Romania’s territorial waters and exclusive maritime economic zone in the north-western part of the Black Sea.
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Chris Hedges: They Lied About Afghanistan. They Lied About Iraq. And They Are Lying About Ukraine.
Chris Hedges: They Lied About Afghanistan. They Lied About Iraq. And They Are Lying About Ukraine.
The playbook the pimps of war use to lure us into one military fiasco after another, including Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and now Ukraine, does not change. Freedom and democracy are threatened. Evil must be vanquished. Human rights must be protected. The fate of Europe and NATO, along with a “rules based international order” is at stake. Victory is assured.
The results are also the same. The justifications and narratives are exposed as lies. The cheery prognosis is false. Those on whose behalf we are supposedly fighting are as venal as those we are fighting against.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine was a war crime, although one that was provoked by NATO expansion and by the United States backing of the 2014 “Maidan” coup which ousted the democratically elected Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych wanted economic integration with the European Union, but not at the expense of economic and political ties with Russia. The war will only be solved through negotiations that allow ethnic Russians in Ukraine to have autonomy and Moscow’s protection, as well as Ukrainian neutrality, which means the country cannot join NATO. The longer these negotiations are delayed the more Ukrainians will suffer and die. Their cities and infrastructure will continue to be pounded into rubble.
But this proxy war in Ukraine is designed to serve U.S. interests. It enriches the weapons manufacturers, weakens the Russian military and isolates Russia from Europe. What happens to Ukraine is irrelevant.
“First, equipping our friends on the front lines to defend themselves is a far cheaper way — in both dollars and American lives — to degrade Russia’s ability to threaten the United States,” admitted Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell.
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World War Three Chronicles, Part 2
World War Three Chronicles, Part 2
As World War Three progresses with the proxy war in Ukraine grinding the nation and its war weary people into dust, we need to pay close attention to the second front. The systematic demolition of US Dollar Hegemony.
Part one of this series is embedded here: World War Three Chronicles, Part1
We are witnessing epochal changes in the global economy with the independent states, centred around the BRIC’s nations, now trading oil in their own currencies.
This development represents an existential threat not ‘just’ for US Dollar hegemony but for US military and industrial hegemony in what has rapidly become a multi-polar world.
China and to a lesser extent Russia are masters of “Soft Power”. The controlled demolition of US dollar hegemony is clearly underway.
Let’s take a field trip to the frontlines. Batton down the hatches, it’s going to be one hell of a transition, let’s hope we survive it! I would rate our chances as slim because of the mendacity existing in the USA and the impossibility of it meeting it’s debt obligations once the Greenback is no longer the worlds reserve currency.
“Brian Berletic and Danny Haiphong discuss the HUGE implications of Saudi Arabia taking steps to join China in forging peace in the Middle East.”
“The BRICS collective, comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, is working on a common currency in an attempt to ditch the US dollar and push back against America’s dominance. The move comes as Moscow and Beijing call for de-dollarisation in the face of Western sanctions”.
Dumping the Dollar: Will a new BRICS currency replace the US currency for trade?
“As the United States combats a recent flood of countries ‘de-dollarizing‘ – trading commodities in other currencies, the last thing that was needed was French President Emanuel Macron amplifying this message.“
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“Don’t Talk About Nord Stream”: WaPo Report Further Demolishes Official Narrative
“Don’t Talk About Nord Stream”: WaPo Report Further Demolishes Official Narrative
German investigators are now expressing severe doubts about the official Nord Stream sabotage narrative that was pushed hard in the aftermath the bombshell Seymour Hersh report which pointed the finger at a joint CIA-US Navy covert operation, with help from Norway. Last month, Hersh published an article on Substack that said the CIA planted a cover story for the Nord Stream bombings that was fed to The New York Times and the German newspaper Die Zeit. Likely this was in direct reaction to Hersh’s findings. A source within the US intelligence community told the famed Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, “It was a total fabrication by American intelligence that was passed along to the Germans, and aimed at discrediting your story.”
The favored narrative became one that said pro-Ukraine partisans did it in a rogue op. Hersh has maintained this was by design concocted in order to shield the US and Biden administration for ordering the operation. The Die Zeit report cited German officials to assert that the pipeline sabotage bombings were carried out by six people using a yacht rented in Poland that was owned by two Ukrainians. In the days that followed, several Western media outlets seized on that narrative and published similar articles reinforcing the cover story.
But now a fresh, lengthy investigative Washington Post story published Monday is actually confirming many of Hersh’s conclusions. Indeed the ‘cover story’ is already fast unraveling. What’s more is that the WaPo article bluntly states Western officials are not at all eager to talk about the Nord Stream sabotage, suggesting a continued cover-up in progress, or in effect a limited hangout. Also very telling is that Western accusations directed at Russia have long ago quieted down.
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