Tucker Carlson’s Interview with Steve Witkoff Reveals Surprising Ignorance

penelopepnortney · 2025-03-23T17:16:12+00:00

It is, and he's making it even more likely with his ardent support of genocidal Israel, and his determination to support them no matter who in West Asia they target as enemies of their Greater Israel plan.

penelopepnortney · 2025-03-13T06:22:19+00:00

Same.

penelopepnortney · 2025-02-21T20:21:41+00:00

Isn't the parent company also heavily invested in weapons manufacturing?

penelopepnortney · 2025-02-20T18:18:18+00:00

There was a very good discussion of this in the video you posted on reddit of Nima and Wilkerson. Wilkerson is no fan of Trump's but he agreed with much of what Vance and Hegseth said at the Munich security conference.

penelopepnortney · 2025-02-10T02:36:54+00:00

He also lets them feel outraged and indignant, and they enjoy that too.

I'd say they enjoy it even more than all the rest.

penelopepnortney · 2025-02-09T16:57:16+00:00

A strange thing happened in 2020.

Most governments at all levels across the globe turned on their people. It was a shock because governments had never before attempted anything this audacious. It claimed to be exercising mastery over the whole of the microbial kingdom, the world over. It would prove this implausible mission as a valid one with the release of a magic potion made and distributed with its industrial partners who were fully indemnified against liability claims.

Suffice it to say that the potion did not work. Everyone got Covid anyway. Most everyone shook it off. Those who died were often denied common therapeutics to make way for a shot that clocked the highest rate of injury and death on public record. A worse fiasco would be hard to invent outside dystopian fiction.

The controlling forces in every nation traced to something else we did not normally think of as government. It was the administrators who occupied agencies that were deemed independent of public awareness or control. They worked closely with their industrial partners in tech, pharma, banking, and corporate life.

The Constitution did not matter. Neither did the long tradition of rights, liberty, and law. The workforce was divided between essential and nonessential in order to survive the great emergency. The essential people were the ruling class plus the workers who serve them. Everyone else was deemed unessential to social functioning.

penelopepnortney · 2025-02-09T16:50:21+00:00

Even if their efforts fail, it would keep him and the role he played and the lives he harmed front and center in the public's mind.

penelopepnortney · 2025-02-07T21:55:58+00:00

On a side note, I learned a lot from his talking about NYC real estate, why storefronts go empty year after year - 1) because, for example, they're going for $75k a month; and 2) because these buildings are owned by so many people, many of whom don't even know they're part of their investment portfolio, that it would be impossible to get the necessary consensus from investors to lower the rent. Meanwhile, small business owners who could use the retail space can't afford the cost.

penelopepnortney · 2025-02-03T19:57:33+00:00

They funneled $25 million into Georgia elections via a single grant.

penelopepnortney · 2025-01-28T21:55:27+00:00

This bit is also interesting:

The ICJ’s President Nawaf Salam resigned on January 14, 2025 to become Prime Minister of Lebanon

I'm hearing from the analysts I follow that the new government of Lebanon is working closely with the US and Israel to push Hizbullah out. On the other hand, Hizbullah appears to be even stronger than before and with even broader support.

penelopepnortney · 2025-01-28T21:42:24+00:00

With new countries joining South Africa’s case accusing Israel of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip, and a ceasefire potentially enabling war crimes investigators to gather fresh evidence of Israeli atrocities, a leadership shakeup at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) threatens to undermine the campaign for legal accountability.

The ICJ’s President Nawaf Salam resigned on January 14, 2025 to become Prime Minister of Lebanon, and was succeeded by Justice Julia Sebutinde of Uganda. Many observers were stunned when Sebutinde voted “no” on all resolutions introduced by South Africa in January 2024, placing herself in opposition to all ICJ judges, including her Israeli colleague, Aharon Barak.

The Ugandan judge rejected the court’s call for the Israeli military to halt deliberate assaults on civilians, end its policy of forced displacement, and cancel its planned invasion of Rafah. In a previous advisory case on the legal consequences of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territories, Sebutinde insisted that Palestinians had not been subjected to any military occupation whatsoever. In fact, she concluded that Israel may have the right to maintain a permanent presence in the West Bank and the whole of Jerusalem on the basis of purely biblical claims.

After probing deeper into Sebutinde’s bizarre dissent, a Princeton University graduate student named Zachary Foster discovered that large sections of it had been plagiarized from sources including neoconservative operative Douglas Feith and the Jewish Virtual Library.

Sebutinde’s fanatical adherence to Israel’s agenda does not appear to be the product of manipulation or enticement, however. The views expressed in her dissent on the South African case were much more likely a reflection of the Christian Zionist belief system she developed as a member of Watoto, a Pentecostal megachurch in the Ugandan capital of Kampala.

penelopepnortney · 2025-01-25T00:11:40+00:00

Assuming that the European officials weren't lying. Yes, Trump has made stupid comments about Greenland but demanding that Denmark "hand over Greenland" sounds like the typical hysterical utterances made by these morons. After all this time did they suddenly become rational, trustworthy sources?

penelopepnortney · 2025-01-14T21:22:06+00:00

https://archive.md/oNql2

I'm posting this mostly because of information it provides on the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), which is part of the Censorship Industrial Complex.

GARM, a 2019 initiative designed to ensure “brand safety,” has faced accusations of marginalizing conservative news outlets and viewpoints by influencing advertising practices. Though the initiative was dissolved in 2023 amid antitrust scrutiny, critics worry that its goals may persist through corporate practices.

The ADF (Alliance Defending Freedom), representing Disney shareholders alongside Bowyer Research and Patron Partners, had pressed the entertainment giant to affirm its support for free expression. However, Disney reportedly stated that issuing such a declaration was not in its “best interest.”

More recently, the organization has turned its attention to corporate policies it views as suppressing conservative and religious perspectives. Jeremy Tedesco, ADF’s senior vice president of corporate engagement, described their broader mission: “We’ve helped shareholders file about 10 resolutions this shareholder season related specifically to GARM, but we’ve also filed over 50 resolutions on issues like de-platforming [and] DEI in vendor contracts.”

...concerns about corporate censorship, particularly in light of GARM’s past activities. The initiative, backed by major corporations such as Coca-Cola and Unilever, reportedly encouraged its members to cut advertising ties with platforms like X after Elon Musk’s 2022 acquisition. A subsequent House Judiciary Committee investigation found that GARM’s practices likely violated federal antitrust laws, describing its actions as “colluding to suppress voices and views.”

Although GARM has officially disbanded, critics believe its agenda persists... [Tedesco] also raised concerns about the emergence of similar initiatives, suggesting that companies could continue leveraging advertising dollars to silence disfavored views.

penelopepnortney · 2025-01-13T02:44:10+00:00

Thanks you for providing these links, it's hard to track down all the segments sometimes.

penelopepnortney · 2025-01-10T17:04:41+00:00

Monitoring corporate media performance for 25 years – week after week, war after war – has done little to diminish our dismay at the robotic automaticity of ‘mainstream’ enthusiasm for US-authored regime change.

Each time, without fail, thousands of media commentators function, not as critical-thinking individuals, but as cookie-cutter cogs in a propaganda printing machine stamping the word ‘GOOD’ on the public mind.

It is not that we are told what to think – they know we mostly just skim the headlines – we are told what to feel. The result is a thin veneer of symbolic headline ‘news’ painting a positive picture followed by ‘in-depth’ content that hides as much as it reveals. This ‘coverage’ is not comprehensible and is not intended to be because it serves the needs of power rather than truth.

The latest propaganda blitz is particularly remarkable given that the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group led by Mohammed al-Jolani that overthrew Syria’s Assad dictatorship in December is a proscribed terrorist group under UK law.

None of this has deterred the ‘mainstream’ cheerleaders using endless pictures of smiling Syrians, with women notably to the fore in a brazen attempt to exploit #MeToo kudos.

No surprise, then, when media reported:

‘UK could consider removing proscription of Syria’s HTS, says minister’

Economist and former politician Yanis Varoufakis captured it perfectly:

‘The Western media’s duplicity has broken all records. When jihadists entered Kabul, ousting the US regime, it was the end of the world. Now that jihadists have entered Damascus to overthrow a secular enemy of the West, it is a triumph of the human spirit.’

penelopepnortney · 2025-01-05T03:46:14+00:00

Excerpt, bold added:

The issue came to light when a security researcher, known by the alias JayeLTee, discovered an unprotected storage server linked to MyGiftCardSupply. According to TechCrunch, the server, which lacked even basic password protection, contained hundreds of thousands of government-issued IDs, including driver’s licenses and passports, as well as selfies submitted by customers. These documents are required by the company to comply with US anti-money laundering laws, which mandate identity verification for certain transactions.

Despite an attempt by JayeLTee to notify MyGiftCardSupply about the exposure, the company did not respond until TechCrunch reported the breach.

According to JayeLTee, the server, hosted on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform, contained over 600,000 images of identity documents and selfies from approximately 200,000 customers. These materials are a part of controversial KYC procedures, intended to confirm identities and prevent fraud.

This incident not only underscores the dangers of mishandled personal data but also raises broader concerns about the risks associated with escalating data collection mandates.

As governments worldwide push for stricter KYC regulations and the implementation of digital ID systems, companies are being compelled to gather and store ever-larger amounts of sensitive information. Such expansive data requirements, while aimed at curbing fraud and enhancing security, also increase the likelihood of breaches, exposing customers to significant privacy and security risks.

Separately, according to the report, JayeLTee recently uncovered another exposed cache of KYC-related data involving Roomster, a roommate-matching platform. The breach included approximately 320,000 images of passports and driver’s licenses.

penelopepnortney · 2025-01-03T02:24:26+00:00

It's as if there was a pattern somewhere in there.

In flashing neon lights.

penelopepnortney · 2025-01-02T16:26:53+00:00

On December 6th, Romania’s constitutional court made an extraordinary decision to inexplicably overturn first round results of the country’s November 24th presidential election. Conveniently, the ruling was made mere days before a runoff that, according to polls, would’ve seen upstart outsider Calin Georgescu win via landslide. In the process, citizens of all NATO member states were provided with a particularly pitiless, real-time crash course on what could now happen in their own countries, should the ‘wrong’ candidates be elected fair and square.

Georgescu’s stunning victory in the first round caught Romania’s political elite and their Western sponsors off guard, while leaving him the most popular political figure in the country. Campaigning on a traditionalist, nationalist platform, he extolled views some might consider unsavoury, but also advocated nationalisation, and state investment in local industry. Perhaps predictably, the Western media has universally smeared him as “far-right”, “pro-Putin” and a “conspiracy theorist”, among other now-familiar sobriquets commonly levelled at political dissidents.

No official reason has been given for Romania’s constitutional court voiding November’s vote, despite days earlier signing off on the results. Nonetheless, in the intervening time, Bucharest’s security apparatus released declassified reports intimating - without making direct accusations or providing any evidence whatsoever - Georgescu’s victory may have resulted from a wide-ranging, Moscow-sponsored influence campaign, delivered via TikTok.

The plot further thickened in late December, when it was revealed the TikTok campaign that purportedly boosted Georgescu was in fact financed by Romania’s National Liberal party. This backing helped propel the hitherto obscure candidate to national prominence, the objective potentially being to harm the National Liberal party’s arch nemesis Social Democrats. No evidence of Muscovite funding, let alone support, for Georgescu has ever emerged. Nonetheless, despite these disclosures, the narrative of Russian destabilisation catapulting him into power has since been invincibly minted.

Bucharest’s sprawling territory is home to multiple US missile facilities, and a giant NATO military base, scheduled to soon be greatly expanded, explicitly in service of decisively changing the region’s “balance of power” in the West’s favour. Meanwhile, Romanian presidents wield significant clout in domestic and international affairs. They dictate foreign policy, serve as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and appoint prime ministers. All of which points to a far more likely rationale for the presidential election’s abrogation than “Russian meddling”.

penelopepnortney · 2025-01-02T15:52:59+00:00

And then you have this: EU targeting of Orbán should worry other member states:

Hungary is set to lose more than €1 billion in European Union cohesion funds, the result of an ongoing conflict with Brussels over the country’s alleged violations of the rule of law.

The reality is that the rule of law is, more than anything, a convenient pretext for targeting dissenting governments that resist aligning with the EU’s expanding supranational authority and broader political agenda — including on matters largely unrelated to the rule of law, such as economic and foreign policy. This is why the EU is happy to ignore rule-of-law violations when pro-Brussels governments are involved, so long as they comply with Union policy on the issues that really matter, such as Ukraine.

Poland is a textbook example: within a year of the Left-liberal, pro-EU coalition led by Donald Tusk taking power, the country has experienced an unparalleled attack on the rule of law. The new government has launched an authoritarian power grab against the media, the judiciary and its political opponents. Yet all this has been met with silence in Brussels — and even cheered on.

penelopepnortney · 2025-01-02T00:23:04+00:00

On the other hand, they may have less energy to expend on Russia as they struggle to deal with the decline in their living standards brought about by the ruling class.

penelopepnortney · 2024-12-27T23:39:00+00:00

I've heard the 1 million estimate already as far as killed and wounded to the point of not being able to return to battle. What an horrific thing to do to the Ukrainian population; it seems likely they would have overwhelmingly opposed the war had they been given a choice, not because they loved Russia but because they know who pays the real costs of war.

penelopepnortney · 2024-12-27T21:57:20+00:00

This soldier’s testimony is consistent with the losses reported in Andrei’s video — Ukraine has suffered more than 500,000 killed and wounded in 2024 alone. The numbers are horrific for the Ukrainian side, and these kind of losses are not sustainable. The curtain is coming down on Ukraine.

penelopepnortney · 2024-12-27T21:54:59+00:00

@Terrence_STR

There is nothing more Antisemitic than Ethnic Cleansing in an Apartheid State! ~ Terrence Daniels

@TorahJews:

Antisemitism nowadays is largely impacted by the false notion that Jews are represented by Israel.

It only harms American Jews when our leaders fail to divide Judaism from Zionism.

@henazo

They always get real active around times when Israel starts ramping up its genocide.

@UniversalMind99

Here's the trick. Control the narrative lead the controversy. Divide and Rule. We get Soros/Davos on one side and AIPAC/Israel on the other, while high ranking positions are filled their players. Meanwhile central banks hum along and 'sellout politicians' fleece America.

@MrHapRaker

Prostitutes should have thicker skin.

@bakerjd91

It's antisemitism to NOT accept the bribe. Only true believers will take the bribe and stay silent during, what most other countries are condemning, a genocide. I feel bad for all the humanitarian workers that were slaughtered in the process, but i guess that's antisemitism too

@JohnElkaz

In any other country lobbying as it is in the US would be classified as bribery and corruption. The US might as well advertise itself as a government for hire: Have military, will travel.

penelopepnortney · 2024-12-26T18:30:09+00:00

Done.

penelopepnortney · 2024-12-21T23:31:11+00:00

Going fine if a bit slow!

penelopepnortney · 2024-12-21T00:56:11+00:00

Disclaimer (which I resent feeling the need to make BTW): This is not intended as an endorsement or expression of support for Milei or Musk, I'm posting it because it's yet another example of the hair-on-fire reaction to WrongThink that is becoming distressingly pervasive. Excerpts, bold added:

German democracy, which has existed undeterred since 1949 but is somehow always shaken to its foundations whenever anybody sings the wrong song or holds a televised debate with the wrong person, is once again on life support.

<snip>

Elon Musk then brought down the hammer on the German democratic order, retweeting Seibt’s video and remarking that “Only the AfD can save Germany.”

Today a lot of very important and influential people got out of bed and took to their keyboards to denounce Musk’s election interference. His statement might be illegal, at any rate it is very likely fascist and certainly it is beyond the pale for an American to voice an opinion about German politics. Germans absolutely never, ever, utter the slightest word about American politics and certainly would never advance negative opinions about the American president in the middle of an election campaign. Our Foreign Office would never try to fact-check an American presidential debate! Our journalists would never depict President Donald Trump dressed as a Ku Klux Klan member or offering the Hitler salute or decapitating the Statue of Liberty! That’s just not done!

Like a great stream of green diarrhoea, the outrage is pouring fourth.

That’s right, Musk wants to make American government more efficient so that he can suspend elections and establish himself as American dictator. It takes truly perceptive journalists, like whoever wrote this unsigned Spiegel screed, to see through his clever lies.

He is like a little antidemocratic Hitler, is Elon Musk, just tweeting whatever he wants, receiving guests, influencing … things.

But the gold medal for most outrageous reaction must go to Florian Harms, editor-in-chief of t-online... Harms is clearly highly opposed to platforms where anyone can just post anything. People should only be allowed to post things of which Harms approves.

If Musk were attacking AfD, of course, Harms would be totally thrilled with it.

If any of these people sincerely believe that Musk’s tweet will have any influence on the German elections in February, they are clinically insane. The only thing here that might influence something, is the unceasing hysteria of German establishment discourse, which seems intent on alienating powerful figures at the centre of empire, all for the indecent and passing thrill of a cheap moral orgasm (stealing this). Any political order that is truly threatened by a six-word remark from anybody – even should it come from the wealthiest, most antidemocratic, fascistic and powerful man in the world – is not a political order worth having.

penelopepnortney · 2024-12-16T20:20:27+00:00

It's been painful to see how far Bernie has fallen, which is why I generally avoid any posts about what he's saying anymore.

penelopepnortney · 2024-12-15T17:01:11+00:00

Just found where someone apparently archived your original post: https://archive.md/WDesr

penelopepnortney · 2024-12-10T18:01:29+00:00

Excerpt:

Here is a very strange thing. For years, western media outlets and politicians have been recklessly indifferent to the fact that Hamas is not a jihadist movement, like al-Qaeda or Islamic State, but a specifically Palestinian national resistance movement – if one underpinned by an Islamist ideology that distinguishes it from secular Palestinian national movements like Fatah.

But Hamas, unlike al-Qaeda and Islamic State, is not seeking to recreate a caliphate embracing all Muslims wherever they live, indifferent to national borders. It wants to create a Palestinian state in Palestine.

Hamas does not demand strict adherence to religious law, and it does not prioritise Islam over Palestinian national identity.

It is not, as Israel and its apologists in the West try to persuade us, part of some Islamic crusade, waging a global war against the values of a supposed Judeo-Christian “civilisation”.

Hamas does not oppress Christians (a Christian community existed quite peacefully in Gaza until Israel started bombing their churches), or force women to wear the veil.

I raise this matter not to praise Hamas (see the legal disclaimer below) but to highlight the current, outrageous hypocrisy of the entire western media corps.

We now have an al-Qaeda offshoot in Syria, rebranded as HTS. And western journalists, led as ever by the BBC, are falling over themselves to explain how the group has transformed itself overnight from head-chopping jihadism into a moderate, "diversity-friendly" Syrian national resistance movement.

The point is: the western media is quite capable of understanding the difference between jihadists and Islamic nationalists when they want to. But they only want to when the British and US national security states tell them to.

That is the behaviour of what we are told is a “free press”.

penelopepnortney · 2024-12-10T08:35:34+00:00

Sums it up nicely.

penelopepnortney · 2024-12-09T19:45:53+00:00

I think they derive greater $$$ benefit from allowing chaos to reign.

penelopepnortney · 2024-12-08T18:17:31+00:00

In his speech for the Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890, Senator John Sherman of Ohio made a number of legal points about how to understand competition. But the thrust of his argument was about law and order, for the specter of violence was hanging over a nation that had within living memory experienced a massive and traumatic civil war. And there had been significant, and violent, strikes involving railroads, sometimes nationwide.

Sherman believed America as a free people simply could not sustain the rise of immense concentrations of power in the industrial corporations he saw in his day. Congress had to act, or chaos would reign. Here’s what he said:

You must heed their appeal or be ready for the socialist, the communist, and the nihilist. Society is now disturbed by forces never felt before. The popular mind is agitated with problems that may disturb social order, and among them all none is more threatening than the inequality of condition, of wealth, and opportunity that has grown within a single generation out of the concentration of capital into vast combinations to control production and trade and to break down competition.

Just two years earlier, President Grover Cleveland, in his 1888 State of the Union, discussed that same social chaos in the wake of the rise of large corporations and the inequality they brought.

Communism is a hateful thing and a menace to peace and organized government but the communism of combined wealth and capital, the outgrowth of overweening cupidity and selfishness, which insidiously undermines the justice and integrity of free institutions, is not less dangerous than the communism of oppressed poverty and toil, which, exasperated by injustice and discontent, attacks with wild disorder the citadel of rule.

The social contract, in other words, goes both ways. It’s not just mean for a small clique to run a corrupt system, but Americans who are put upon, if given no peaceful options, will fight back violently.

...one school of political thought is that a key way to maintain social order is through legitimacy. The people had to be persuaded that corporations and government were on their side. “If we desire respect for the law,” said Louis Brandeis, “we must first make the law respectable.”

Early on Wednesday morning, an assassin killed UnitedHealth Care CEO Brian Thompson in Midtown Manhattan. UnitedHealth Care is the biggest health insurer in America, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, which is the largest employer of doctors, a giant pharmacy benefit manager, a technology firm, and so forth, basically a giant health care platform. (I wrote up how these types of firms formed in 2020 in a piece called How CVS Became a Health Care Tyrant).

We don’t know why the killer did it, though he scrawled “deny” “defend” and “depose” on bullet casings, indicating that he at least wants people to believe it’s a result of unjust and routine denials of care by the health insurance giant. "There had been some threats," his wife Paulette Thompson told NBC News. "Basically, I don’t know, a lack of coverage?” While I’m immediately suspicious of such a neat and clean-sounding motive, if you do take it on face value, that does sound a lot like the mob rule Jefferson, Sherman, Cleveland, and others warned about.

... almost everywhere outside of such official channels, pouring out through every seam of the internet, was a different message, a message of raw unadulterated hatred, of “this guy deserved it.” This picture, for instance, came from a Reddit channel dedicated to nursing. Yes, these are the people who heal for a living, and they are mocking this guy’s death. “My patients died while those bitches enjoyed 26 million dollars,” said one. There are endless angry comments about Thompson from people who try to stop people from dying. That’s how bad it is.

While I really dislike a lot of these people, none of us should want to live in a country where assassination becomes a method of political expression. It’s hard to see democracy surviving if elected leaders and corporate leaders feel they might be shot at any point. And that’s why we have to actually get our laws working again. I hope that men like Carl Nichols and Fortune 500 CEOs start to wake up, and see that there is deep rage outside their clubby environs that can’t be fixed with security measures but must be addressed by some measure of social obligation to the people who live here.

After all, societies that give citizens no way to control their own lives, but put the fate of their people in the hands of distant masters with no concern at all for their wellbeing, invite disaster. We’ve always known that. It’s one of the main reasons for the passage of our antitrust laws. So I hope we can get some control over our society again, before we truly do spin out of control.

penelopepnortney · 2024-12-07T18:50:44+00:00

The Empire Strikes Back, with a vengeance.

penelopepnortney · 2024-12-04T16:58:42+00:00

I think you're right. Since I posted this I've learned more details and it's obviously Erdogan at work. The idea just seemed and still seems like an insane move to me because whatever he gains is going to be offset by what he loses.

penelopepnortney · 2024-12-04T00:31:31+00:00

Alexander starts by explaining why he thinks the dollar got stronger following Trump's election: Aside from his talk of tariffs, etc., what's probably been happening is a massive outflow of funds from Europe into the US. This is because there's a political crisis in Germany with one brewing in France as the Germans have been talking about doing away with their debt brake. Germany has been the anchor for the euro so this likely has bond markets and financial investors worried about Germany's long-term financial position; by contrast, the US looks to have a more solid economy and the influx of these investments pushed the value of the dollar up relative to other currencies.

We have this discussion about the ruble every year around this time because it always weakens in late autumn and early winter; this is a structural issue. First because we're moving toward a new year and the holidays and this is the biggest shopping season in Russia as in most countries. As a result, there's usually a rush of imports into Russia that have to be paid for with foreign currencies and that causes the ruble to decline. Russians have experienced lots of wage growth so they have a lot of money to spend.

Another and more important reason is that Russian corporates tend to pay off their loans toward the end of the year. So if they've borrowed in foreign currencies, as some still do, they have to convert rubles into those foreign currencies to pay off the loan. The ruble historically strengthens in January when Russian corporates pay their first tranche of corporate taxes to the Russian government, meaning they convert any foreign currency they have to rubles.

I think the fall we've seen over the last few days is due to the sanctions put on Gazprombank because it was the only Russian bank that was still allowed to operate within the SWIFT system. It was through Gazprombank that Western buyers of Russian oil and gas products, including Turkey, settled their payments. So with Gazprombank now out of the Western financial system, there's less ability for Westerners to buy Russian oil and gas, which has put further downward pressure on the ruble. Erdogan is complaining about this, asking for an exemption.

The important thing to remember is that it doesn't matter. Russia is running a strong trade surplus: because of the fall in the price of the ruble, Russian exports have become even more competitive. Their growing trade surplus looks like it will translate into a budget surplus. Just a few weeks ago the finance minister was talking about a budget deficit of around 1% of GDP which is quite low but it looks like that might turn into a surplus.

There's very little external debt so we're not looking at this bleeding through into the banking system as we've seen with previous ruble crises like the famous one in 1998; in 1998 Russian banks had lots of liabilities in Western currencies that they couldn't meet because the ruble fell, which caused a general collapse of the banking system. There's nothing like that now, the Russian banking system is very healthy.

This is not going to have a big effect on Russia's external trade. 82% of their exports and 78% of their imports are paid in currencies other than the dollar like RMB, the ruble, etc. So it's not going to have a significant effect on the Russian economy overall; it will cause inflation to be a little higher which does concern the central bank.

As we've discussed in previous programs, Russia does have a problem of their economy overheating. The central bank has raised rates to counter this but data shows it's still growing faster than they would like because it leads to inflation. Right now their inflation rate is 8-9% of GDP which is not that high historically, but if it starts inching into the double digits the central bank and the government as a whole will take more radical action.

Russian inflation figures are very accurate - even the Financial Times admitted in years past that they're the most advanced collectors of inflation statistics in the world. You can't say the same about the West. Here it's widely acknowledged even among mainstream economists and commentators that inflation is being consistently understated.

The Gazprombank sanctions in the short-term will provide a talking point for the Biden administration but in the medium- to long-term it's going to cause increasing problems in the West.

Gazprombank was previously exempted from the sanctions and allowed to continue in the SWIFT system because the US wanted a mechanism of control over the international energy markets, something that was very important to the Biden administration before the election. Now that Trump has won, it will be his problem.

The sanctions also make it difficult for Europe to continue buying Russian LNG; they've been buying more LNG from Russia than from the US because it's cheaper so this will add to the rising prices that Europe is paying for energy. Eventually Russian LNG will probably start displacing LNG from the US and Qatar, etc. in places like China and India. The market will find some kind of stability but at higher cost because every sanction of this kind increases the complexity of the general trade in energy and leaves the price of energy structurally higher than it would otherwise be.

The ones getting crushed by all this are the Europeans and you're not hearing a squeak from their leaders.

penelopepnortney · 2024-12-03T01:02:31+00:00

The video discussion between Larry Johnson and Pepe Escobar is excellent. Still only half-way through but it does not disappoint.

penelopepnortney · 2024-12-03T00:15:20+00:00

Trump's Operation Warp Speed was a success.

That one stands out like a sore thumb.

penelopepnortney · 2024-11-30T08:51:06+00:00

Update: Well, hell. Mark Sleboda and Rybar unequivocally disagree with me about these jihadists not being backed by Turkey.

(about 38:05) Mark: These jihadists are now a combination of two forces because the initial push from the West was these forces of Hayat Tahir Al-Sham and the Turkistan Islamic Party out of Id Lib. But now there's also a push from the north by the so-called Turkish-Syrian National Army...

Rybar: Hayat Tahir Al-Sham is controlled by Turkish special forces and (unintelligible) as well. So it's no longer a project directed by Western agencies, it's a project directed by Turkey. We know that Turkey is directed by MI6 from Britain, projects in the Middle East are all about Britain.

Interesting bit of trivia that I didn't know: Rybar was an interpreter with the Russian military contingent that liberated Aleppo (if I'm understanding him correctly) in 2016.

penelopepnortney · 2024-11-30T06:14:44+00:00

I get the part about wanting to send the Syrians back to Syria but don't see how having jihadists basically reactivate the civil war there is the way to stabilize things.

penelopepnortney · 2024-11-29T17:00:31+00:00

No doubt, NATO is very concerned about the emergent situation but still won’t accept a Russian victory. Hotheads in the West are once again talking about the deployment of troops by NATO countries to Ukraine for combat operations, which was originally mooted by French President Emmanuel Macron in February.

But plainly put, unless the US is willing to put boots on the ground, the rest of NATO simply run around like a headless chicken. The UK with a 80000-strong army has very few combat units; the 175,000-strong German army has forgotten how to fight; and France is in deep political and economic crisis. As for the US, the public opinion opposes wars and president-elect Donald Trump cannot ignore it.

However, petrified that Trump may turn his back on the war, there is a school of thought in Europe that they could offer something interesting to incentivise him other than the carrot of Ukraine’s vast stores of critical minerals that Americans lack — eg., more trading incentives for America; greater spending on NATO; more pressure on Iran; “peacekeeping boots on the ground” inside Ukraine; help in Trump’s upcoming economic skirmishes with China and so on. Meanwhile, much brainstorming is going on in the US too as to how to save NATO from Trump’s scalpel.

A Guardian columnist wrote, “If the EU and UK seize the $300bn of Russian state assets sitting in Euroclear, money Putin has long written off, we can bring serious funding to the table. Trump does not need to spend any more money on Ukraine – we can buy the weapons. America can even make a profit while securing peace in Europe. Trump would be able to show how he got those parasitic Europeans to cough up, prove his detractors wrong by rebooting America’s most traditional alliances – all while putting “America first”.”

All this testifies to the angst in the European mind that Oreshnik has forced a paradigm shift in the Ukraine war. The triumphalist betting that Russia would be bluffing on nuclear deterrence has given way to fear, since Russia now may not need nuclear weapons to retaliate against attacks on its territory. Oreshnik is a non-nuclear weapon, it is by no means a weapon of mass destruction but is a high-precision weapon of immense destructive power that annihilates its targets — and Europeans have no means to defend against it.

Indeed, the only logical explanation for Biden’s brinkmanship in collusion with the Atlanticists in Europe in the lame duck phase of his presidency is that Oreshnik has upstaged his best-laid plans. Saner voices in Europe are speaking up. In a hugely symbolic act of defiance, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico disclosed on Wednesday that he has accepted an official invitation from Putin to the events in Moscow in May commemorating the 80th anniversary of Victory in World War II. Slovakia is a member country of both EU and NATO.

Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer in a telephone conversation with Trump, reaffirmed Austria’s readiness to serve as a platform for international peace talks on Ukraine. During the conversation, Trump reportedly evinced interest in Nehammer’s previous exchanges with Putin on Ukraine.

As for the Guardian columnist's wishful thinking, no amount of money in the world will pay for weapons that don't exist and that cannot be produced fast enough to head off Ukraine's inevitable defeat. That's simple reality and it's obscene when armchair warriors sitting thousands of miles from the battleground glibly throw out suggestions like this that would only result in more needless deaths of Ukrainian soldiers.

penelopepnortney · 2024-11-25T23:09:33+00:00

I think being eternal victims is necessary to them, the sycophantic West treats it like a "get out of jail free" card for them to do whatever they want with impunity.

penelopepnortney · 2024-11-17T16:19:34+00:00

Fans should boycott any game involving Israeli teams and should consider boycotting the competitions totally - why is an Israeli team participating in a European competition anyway? Political leaders don't give a rip about the people but maybe the Daddy Warbucks-types who own these franchises and see a hit to their bottom line will raise enough hell to get things to change.

penelopepnortney · 2024-11-14T19:41:43+00:00

I don't disagree with you but must point out that for any reconciliation to occur, both sides have to want it and be committed to it. It isn't fair to continually expect one side of a conflict to "be the better person", something we've seen with the calls for amnesty for those who were promoting the most egregious acts against opponents of Covid mandates, including vaccination. The Truth and Reconciliation Commissions succeeded because the wrongdoers admitted to their wrongdoing.

As for what the overlords will do, they'll do it anyway because they always find and try to exploit the fault lines. I'm as concerned about the polarization as you are but the answer IMO is fully airing the grievances, lancing the boil so to speak so that healing can begin; otherwise the resentments will just stay buried and will fester. The grievances don't have to be one-sided, the anti-Dem, anti-Kamala cohort had some bad actors as well because we don't teach people how to disagree civilly and respectfully and we've been conditioned over decades to have hair triggers that lead to impulsive, emotional responses when rationality, perspective and reasonableness are what's needed.

penelopepnortney · 2024-11-09T19:01:44+00:00

What you say about the divisiveness being harmful and being media-driven is right but you can only have reconciliation if both sides are willing to own up to the role they played. I'm perfectly willing to concede that we have been openly critical of and hostile to Democratic Party loyalists but our criticisms never reached the level of vitriolic abuse they've hurled at us since 2016. Their recognition of that fact has to be the starting point.

penelopepnortney · 2024-11-09T16:41:51+00:00

Damn, that was brilliant.

penelopepnortney · 2024-11-07T02:58:11+00:00

Excellent rant, totally spot-on.

penelopepnortney · 2024-11-06T01:09:34+00:00

Glad it got fixed!

penelopepnortney · 2024-11-05T18:51:43+00:00

Full tweet:

This is quite something: Takashi Kawakami, the principal foreign policy advisor to the Japanese PM, says that if Trump wins the presidential election it will be an opportunity for Japan to "finally become independent". https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/PM-Ishiba-adviser-s-revolution-comment-on-Jan.-6-attack-stuns-U.S

He said that given Trump's "America First" mantra, he will have little interest in U.S.-Japan or U.S.-South Korea relations and that as a result "Japan will have to conduct its own foreign policy [and] find a skillful way to manage the power balance with China, Russia and North Korea... This should be a golden opportunity for Japan. We can take back the initiative and become a truly independent country."

Kawakami also expressed frustration that 85% of Japan's skies are, in effect, "America's skies" (a large portion of the airspace has been reserved for the exclusive use of American forces since the end of World War II) and that "U.S. military bases account for a substantial acreage of land, too" - a status quo he called "abnormal."

I've myself argued the exact same point for Europe since the very first Trump administration: when Trump was threatening to exit NATO, Europe should immediately have taken him at his word and jumped on this amazing opportunity to take over NATO and thereby remove the stranglehold that the US has over the continent. By the same occasion, they might have been able to prevent the Ukraine war by throwing the Americans out and stop it being the "CIA theme park" described by journalist John Pilger (https://theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/13/ukraine-us-war-russia-john-pilger).

Unfortunately it looks like Europeans are a bit (even a lot) slower to understand geopolitics than the rest of the world... Everyone else around the world sees them as clueless vassals being sacrificed on the altar of the American empire but they themselves are largely oblivious to it. Heck ask most EU politicians and they're immensely worried at the notion that they might one day be independent, it's something they largely want to prevent, which is terrifyingly depressing...

penelopepnortney · 2024-11-05T18:40:25+00:00

Tweet continued:

What is paraliberalism? It's right there in the word: false liberalism.

Wikipedia defines liberalism as, "A political and moral philosophy based on the rights of the individual, liberty, consent of the governed, political equality, right to private property and equality before the law." Paraliberalism is thus an ideology that seeks to invert liberalism in the guise of furthering its goals. And this definition neatly encompasses the excesses of "woke culture." Let us address these in order.

A liberal believes in inalienable rights belonging to individuals. A paraliberal believes that individual rights must bow to the collective interests of favored groups and society at large.

A liberal believes in, well, liberty. Freedom of expression, association, action and transaction. A paraliberal believes this is very dangerous and that people should be censored and cancelled (or worse, sometimes far worse) if they do not censor themselves.

A liberal believes in governance by consent of the governed. A paraliberal views electoral victory as a mandate for tyranny for (at least) the remainder of the prescribed term - and an invitation to put a finger on the democratic scales going forward.

A liberal believes in political equality - one person, one vote. A paraliberal believes in political equity - an apportionment of power among interest groups.

A liberal believes in private property, and with it market capitalism - risk and reward in equal measure, benefiting those who dare, innovate, and succeed. A paraliberal believes in crony capitalism - the extraction of wealth from captured institutions into favored private hands.

A liberal seeks equal justice - the same punishment for the same crimes. A paraliberal seeks equitable justice - the same total amount of punishment apportioned among favored and disfavored groups.

Thus "woke" paraliberals seek to undo everything that Western liberalism has accomplished under the guise of being the progressive vanguard of that very ideology. As I'm sure you have gathered by now, it is not a belief system that I particularly care for.

penelopepnortney · 2024-10-29T20:16:08+00:00

Willfully clueless.

penelopepnortney · 2024-10-24T00:50:37+00:00

I can't even listen to him speak anymore, it's just so cringe.

penelopepnortney · 2024-10-24T00:48:35+00:00

That and the guy he's probably talking about (featured in another war-criminal-as-victim story in NYT or WaPo) was said to be traumatized but he wasn't the least bit remorseful about what he'd done, still basically saying all Palestinians including children were terrorists.

penelopepnortney · 2024-10-22T17:21:15+00:00

The jury is still out per Larry Johnson on whether these documents are legit. But the comments on his post as usual are interesting:

Honzo

I doubt anyone in Iran is feeling complacent. However, the underlying math still holds- any serious attack on Iran by Israel means the destruction of Israel. If the US participates, it means the closing of the strait of Hormuz and the destruction of US bases and assets in the ME and possibly elsewhere, along with the oil infrastructure of the gulf monarchies.

It’s hard to see how the IAF can conduct a meaningful strike against Iran without US refueling planes, so is the US willing to take the hit? I doubt it.

Reply to Honzo from Walter Wirlo (broken up into more digestible paragraphs):

The ruling class are a bunch of aparatchiks working for the real owner of the US, Israel. You make the few extremely wealthy and they will help you subjugate their own people for you.

It’s the old English empire trick. Israel owns the US and owns US foreign policy, those in charge in the state department are nothing more than biased zionist agents working not for the greater good of the US but for the good of project greater Israel no matter how criminal, barbaric and genocidal that satanic cult happens to be. The US military is Israel’s shabbat goy army, the US congress is Israel’s shabbat goy congress and he US president is Israel’s shabbat goy in chief.

As we can see, both candidates for US president are trying their hardest to show Netanyahu they are far better at kissing Israel’s tuchus and with greater aplomb than the other candidate. That is the most important and only required qualification of a US presidential candidate, no matter how ignorant that candidate may be. In fact, the dumber the better, makes it easier to manage the fool. As the former Israeli PM Sharon stated in public decades ago “the US does what we tell it to do.”

The ruling class, US oligarchs, will not take a hit, all their ill gotten blood money lies in Swiss banks. You are rather naive to think otherwise, it is the regular hard working US taxpaying citizen, the greatest and the real benefactors to the world’s largest welfare and belligerent state know as Israel who will take the hit. How ironic. .

jimmywalter (abridged)

Mr Johnson and other reliable sources have said that Russia has supplied Iran with great numbers of their S400 air defense system, the best in the world, which some say is capable of bringing down F35’s and F16’s.

The Israeli fighters will have to fly 1000 miles to attack Iran, each way, and MAY have to be refueled in the air, Israel Says they do not... Israel has been practicing refueling which is an indication that they will have to be refueled, at least on one leg.

The refueling planes are not stealth and will have to refuel the fighters at high altitude, easily seen by radar and satellites, therefore vulnerable. And, it is a bombs or fuel question, the more fuel carried, the fewer bombs carried.

Wolf69 (abridged)

Air launched ballistic missiles? Failing being nuclear tipped? That would be another nothing burger. Realistically, how many could Israel launch? I believe Israel has 39 F35’s. Positing a 50% readiness rate of this aircraft (charitable), you are looking at +/- 20. Not counting their aging F16’s of course, and I have no idea if they are weapon compatible. And I do not believe the US would aid in “offensive” actions right now.

That ain’t Dresden carpet fire bombing. If Israel does strike soon, it will be a “nothing burger”. If Israel is going to go mad dog, they go during the height of election season and legal paralysis when the US is effectively politically frozen.

Honzo Reply to Wolf69

It seems unlikely that the US would aid Israel in attacking Iran, which raises the question of what Israel can attack Iran with without in-flight refueling. I think it’s also worth considering the possibility that Russia/Iran are capable of tracking and shooting down the F35.

And let us not forget that Iran has promised to bomb anybody that lets Israel overfly their country to attack Iran.

penelopepnortney · 2024-10-15T15:20:19+00:00

The apologists in that thread, guess it's not surprising: "But Hamas...", "But the hostages...", "Russia bombs hospitals all the time..."

penelopepnortney · 2024-10-14T15:26:49+00:00

Excerpt:

The CIA has sent additional agents to Lebanon and has increased its communications with Lebanese military, security, and political officials in an effort to obtain information about Hezbollah, and may have played a role in Israel’s recent attempt to assassinate a Hezbollah political leader, Al-Akhbar reported on 14 October.

Three senior officials in the official security services acknowledged that Western parties, primarily the US, have initiated intensive daily communication with all Lebanese military and security forces since the outbreak of the open war between Lebanon and Israel, Al-Akhbar editor Ibrahim al-Amin wrote.

The same official revealed that a security team of 15 CIA officers arrived at Beirut airport last Thursday, 10 October, and moved in a convoy of armored cars without license plates to the headquarters of the American embassy in Awkar.

The official said he knew of “five working visits by Lebanese officers of various levels to the United States, who held meetings with American intelligence officials at their headquarters in Langley.”

In this context, Amin reports that these contacts between the CIA and Lebanese security officials may have played a role in Israel’s recent attempt to assassinate a Hezbollah political leader, Wafiq Safa.

The official stated that the US wanted to kill Safa, who has no military role in Hezbollah, as part of a campaign launched by the US Ambassador to Beirut, Lisa Johnson, who recently “called on Lebanese political and non-political forces to begin working to establish the stage of “post-Hezbollah Lebanon.”

penelopepnortney · 2024-10-12T15:45:37+00:00

i suspect they simply have no idea how bad this is or how it's going to play and every time they get a bad response, they assume that it's because they did not add enough cringe last time.

watch BO scolding “black men” like some sort of school marm. can he seriously think this is going to work and that “the brothers” are going to ignore the content of her character (and her brain pan) to focus only upon the color of her skin? is this “you ain’t black if you don’t vote donkey”?

the smug entitlement is galling.

the taking for granted is pure chafe.

they are used to being the only ones speaking. they are used to being the only ones who know stuff. others getting to speak and knowing stuff too seems like wild horror and incredible slant to them as they mistake a return to “equal” from “massively biased” for “biased toward the other side.”

cancel culture has lost its ability to intimidate and drive self-censorship.

and the resultant atmosphere is glorious.

penelopepnortney · 2024-10-09T00:34:26+00:00

Israel rolled out its new phase of propaganda at its own United Nations Mission in November 2023... the speeches were complemented by protests outside the UN Headquarters featuring literal crisis actors, women impersonating rape victims, dramatizing events for which no concrete evidence existed in order to pressure feminist organizations into more vocally supporting Israel's murderous assault on Gaza. As usual the Western mainstream press reverted to its role as Tel Aviv's obedient stenographer.