Open Thread 2021-050
News & views ...
Posted by b on July 1, 2021 at 12:11 UTC | Permalink
next page »A Remarkable Silence: Media Blackout After Key Witness Against Assange Admits Lying
As we have pointed out since Media Lens began in 2001, a fundamental feature of corporate media is propaganda by omission. Over the past week, a stunning example has highlighted this core property once again.A major witness in the US case against Julian Assange has just admitted fabricating key accusations in the indictment against the Wikileaks founder.
Posted by: librul | Jul 1 2021 12:34 utc | 2
‘It’s You Against the Machine’
Fired by Bot at Amazon: ‘It’s You Against the Machine’
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fired-bot-amazon-against-machine-100013296.html
Posted by: librul | Jul 1 2021 12:43 utc | 3
On the last thread I promised something on Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) because it ties in with the theme of the rules-based world order being pushed by Queen Elizabeth: the essence of which is she makes the rules, but she is not bound by the rules.
John Cleary | Jun 29 2021 8:20 utc | 194
(actually a better reference with links intact is this https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2021/06/warmongering-british-actions-in-the-black-sea/comment-page-4/#comment-995065)
In 1977 the Callaghan* Government approved of the creation of Bank of England Nominees, in order to allow Queen Elizabeth and her friends to exempt themselves from banking regulations.
In 1979 that same government passed the Banking Act In the wake of banking scandals earlier in the decade. The preamble:
An Act to regulate the acceptance of deposits in the course
of a business; to confer functions on the Bank of
England with respect to the control of institutions carrying
on deposit-taking businesses; to give further protection
to persons who are depositors with such institutions;
............[4th April 1979]
In 1980 the Bank of England designated BCCI as a Luxembourg bank, and therefore not a bank subject to its own regulations or the Banking Act 1979. For the next eleven years BCCI operated out of offices at 100 Leadenhall Street in the City - a stone's throw from the Bank of England.
BCCI was finally shut down in 1991, amid a welter of fraud and corruption charges, with outstanding debts of $10bn.
At the time it was the biggest banking scandal in history.
The British government set up an independent inquiry, chaired by Lord Justice Bingham, in 1992**.
Lord Bingham said: "In applying this new and unfamiliar statutory regime [the 1979 Banking Act], it was necessary for the Bank, first of all, to understand what was meant by 'principal place of business'. That was a legal question.
"Those who handled this matter in the Bank had many applications to process in a very limited time, and did not recognise this as a question to be asked. So no legal advice was sought ... The question was simply never addressed."
It's a pathetic excuse for a central bank and there is abundant evidence that Bingham was lying.
As early as February 1979 Frank Hall, a senior lawyer at the Bank, wrote an internal memo to colleagues concerning the imminent Banking Act. In it he said: "I should be grateful if you could let me know whether ... there are any companies which are not registered in the UK but which have their principal place of business or place of central management or control here ... but which we should not want to recognise."Copies of the memo, which was circulated among senior department officials, show several hand-written annotations. "I can't think of any, can you?" says one, to which another official replies: "No."
But for this - BCCI?" appears in the sidelines, written in the hand of Peter Cooke, the head of banking supervision.
A string of other internal memos make clear the Bank's state of panic. In 1982 BCCI was described as "on its way to becoming the financial equivalent of the SS Titanic!".Another paper from the same year insists BCCI's status as a Luxembourg bank "has always been something of a fiction ... I believe it would be wrong for us to continue to allow a large international banking group to carry on business on a largely unsupervised basis".
The following year yet another Bank analyst wrote a report on BCCI entitled "Why action is now urgently required". It suggested the Bank was left with "two basic choices": to close BCCI down or to insist it be redesignated a UK bank, under full Bank of England supervision.
Later memos, Mr Pollock may suggest, show shades of cowardice behind the Bank's intransigence. "It is hard to see how we can to other than turn a blind eye ... since we have accepted [BCCI] up to now," wrote one Bank official as the charade of BCCI's Luxembourg status wore increasingly thin.
Armed with evidence like this the liquidator sued the Bank of England for misfeasance in public office. How could Bingham claim the matter was never considered when streams of internal memos were produced to address exactly this point?
Only in the United Kingdom.
The court case began in January 2004. Just under two years later in November 2005 the court case ended.
Did the High Court find for the plaintiff?
No, it did not.
Did the High Court find for the defendant?
No, it did not.
What happened?
Queen Elizabeth intervened.
The liquidators - accountants Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu - dropped the case after the chancellor of the high court said it was no longer in the best interests of creditors for the litigation to continue.
The Godfather called it making an offer they cannot refuse.
* The Callaghan family have been well looked-after by the British state. His daughter is Baroness Jay of Paddington.
** Bingham later became the most senior law lord in the House of Lords
Three Guardian articles form the basis of this post and have been archived:
https://archive.fo/eGLWc#selection-2265.0-2265.32
Posted by: John Cleary | Jul 1 2021 12:57 utc | 4
I've just come across this, and I think it is extremely revealing.
Let me set out the context.
It is 2006. Queen Elizabeth has recently been forced to come out of her lair. She has used her personal powers to coerce the liquidator to drop its action "In its own interests". You don't fight the Sovereign.
The court made no finding in the matter of BCCI versus the Bank of England. The court was unable to exonerate the Bank or the twenty two employees charged with misfeasance. I think that what happened was that the judge refused to allow Deloittes to submit its evidence into court. Month after month after month. And things became quite nasty.
What is written in this is a judge - Justice Stephen Tomlinson - freelancing. This document has no legal standing. It is a pure public relations puff piece and nothing more.
Of particular note were the words of Bank of England Governor Lord King (Knight of the Garter)
"The judge's words speak for themselves. It doesn't need any further comment from me."
That is the work of a wordsmith with a fine appreciation for the law of libel.
As I say, a very classy piece of propaganda which is very revealing and worthy of further analysis. I hope it's OK if I reproduce the piece here.
Judge blasts BCCI legal team
By Robert Miller
13 April 2006 • 12:01am
A senior High Court judge has issued a savage indictment of the case brought against the Bank of England by Deloitte, the liquidators to the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) which crashed in 1991 owing £5.6bn.
Mr Justice Tomlinson yesterday attacked both the case, originally brought in 2004, and the courtroom behaviour of Deloitte's leading counsel and one of Britain's highest paid barristers, Gordon Pollock QC.
"I told the Lord Chief Justice, then Lord Woolf, that the case was a farce," revealed Mr Justice Tomlinson yesterday in a written judgment he delivered to court 23 of the Royal Courts of Justice.
He also said that he had warned Lord Woolf that Deloitte's action "had the capacity to damage the reputation of our legal system".After the judgment Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, said: "The Judge's words speak for themselves. It doesn't need any further comment from me."
On Mr Pollock, Mr Justice Tomlinson said that although Deloitte's QC was "only infrequently rude" to him, it was Mr Pollock's "sustained rudeness" to his opponent, Nicholas Stadlen QC for the Bank, that "was behaviour not in the usual tradition of the Bar and it was inappropriate and distracting."
The judge continued: "I should have done more to control it, although I doubt if I should have been any more successful than evidently were Mr Pollock's colleagues whom on at any rate one occasion I invited to attempt to exercise some restraining influence."Mr Pollock, who was not in court yesterday, is head of his Essex Court Chambers and is himself a deputy High Court judge.
He is reported to have been paid at least £3m in fees even before the BCCI case came to court making him one of the highest paid briefs in British legal history.Mr Pollock's chambers declined to comment on the judgement and the personal criticisms made of his courtroom behaviour and referred calls to the Lovells, the City law firm, which also refused to comment.
The Bank is legally protected against claims of negligence so Deloitte bought an action on the grounds of 'misfeasance', as in acting dishonestly or in bad faith, against the central bank and 22 present and former members of staff.The BCCI case, in which the liquidator sought up to £1bn in damages, began in January 2004 and set several legal records.
Mr Pollock's opening remarks ran for 86 days while Mr Stadlen addressed the court for 119 days.
Deloitte finally abandoned its claim in November last year by which stage collective costs in the case had soared to more than £100m. Mr Justice Tomlinson awarded costs against the liquidator and the Bank is claiming about £81.5m, including £8m in interest payments. Deloitte is believed to have deposited more than £70m with the Bank already.In his judgment Mr Justice Tomlinson said the liqudiators had not withdrawn their allegations nor proffered "any apology" to the Bank or the "impugned officials".
He continued: "They can be compelled to do neither and they may not wish to do so."
However, the judge said this was unsatisfactory "made worse by the fact that for their own purposes the liquidators have assiduously courted publicity in respect of their claim."Deloitte retained The Maitland Consultancy for public relations advice.
The judge condemned the liquidators' publicity campaign as "a cynical and grotesque operation."He added that the selective use of documents in the briefings painted "a wholly distorted picture of the Bank's conduct."
He continued: "The public relations campaign was obviously designed to put pressure on the Bank to capitulate." Maitland declined to comment on its own behalf.However, a statement issued by Maitland for Deloitte said: "The liquidators undertook and conducted this litigation in absolute good faith, in the interests of the creditors of BCCI and on the basis of legal advice.
They are therefore disappointed by the way in which the judge has characterised the conduct of the case."
https://archive.fo/TH1nF#selection-1119.0-1467.106
The lesson everybody learned? You cannot rely on the courts to control the arms of the British State.
Posted by: John Cleary | Jul 1 2021 13:06 utc | 5
Librul, that is freakin' cold and that is what makes us hate the 1% ... WEALTH TAX !!!. If only we could use bots to grade CEO's.
The Great Condo Rescue efforts
I'm not convinced that the Indispensable Country and her ally Israel are doing a good job
It's been over a week and is it polite to ask how effective it is or if more resources could have been thrown at the effort?
Here is a UN agency that does this all the time and their directory of member countries ...
https://vosocc.unocha.org/USAR_Directory/MemberCountriesOverview.asp
On paper, the U.S. has some expertise assuming USAID hasn't been totally gutted for regime change since 2002. Turkey and France look very impressive. I don't get the impression that DeSantis bothered to second guess his guys in Miami Dade. I would have. I would have asked, how much can we throw at it and gone over their heads in a heart beat. That's my view of what a governor should do. But in the U.S. their job is to run for President.
Posted by: Christian J. Chuba | Jul 1 2021 13:06 utc | 6
John Cleary @Jul1 12:57 #4: Queen Elizabeth intervened.
Off with their suits! Er ... legal suits.
Thanks for the insights into the "rules-based order".
!!
Posted by: Jackrabbit | Jul 1 2021 13:41 utc | 7
Hitler, in his last days, showed the degeneracy of the Nazi regime and its typical right-wing roots:
Hitler stole Dante's bones, but the Italians had already exchanged it with a decoy
Every right-winger is, ultimately, a mere bandit. That's what Hitler really was: a petty little thief.
There was also a plan to steal the bones of, at least: Miguel de Cervantes, William Shakespeare, Liev Tolstói, Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (Molière) e Émile Zola. We don't know if he succeeded as the Dante's story came from an eyewitness. The bones would decorate a mausoleum designed by the third most powerful Nazi, architect Albert Speer. The tip to the Italians came from the OSS and the event happened in 1944.
Canada seems to be deteriorating faster under a man that is the complete opposite of his father.
Posted by: arby | Jul 1 2021 14:00 utc | 9
RIP Mike Gravel. Here's a good interview by Katie Halper with Mike Gravel's daughter and Daniel Ellsberg. I'm only 30 min into the 2 hr piece but already loaded with good history, lots of detail, barflies would learn a bit and like it all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9Ssn2E961o
Posted by: migueljose | Jul 1 2021 14:11 utc | 10
Exercise SEA BREEZE 2021 is underway in the Black Sea! Some references:
>Jerusalem Post headline -- Massive exercise in Black Sea with US comes after Russia warning
>from a US press briefing here
>>Well, good morning. This is CAPT Cameron Chen. I’m the Commodore of Task Force 68 -- the highlight of our engagement is going to be a clearance operation where we’re going to work with the Ukrainians as well as Canadians, Poles, and Georgian divers to clear a wreck that is blocking the naval pier at Odessa. . .FACT: This wreck sank in about 2016; it was a Soviet-era yacht.
>>Yes, good morning. I am CDR Jeremy Lyon, Deputy Commander of Task Force 67, located out of Sigonella Air Base, a combined Italian-American airfield in Sicily. Task Force 67 is composed of land-based tactical aircraft that operate over the waters of the Mediterranean in submarine warfare . . .FACT: The US has one P-8 patrol aircraft participating in the exercise.
>>Hi, good morning. My name is CAPT Kyle Gantt. I’m the Deputy Commodore and the Deputy Commander of Task Force 65. Task Force 65 is headquartered in Rota, Spain, and it is the U.S. Navy’s forward-deployed destroyer squadron in Europe. As part of that, Task Force 65 executes all surface combatant ship operations in Europe and Africa. We oversee four Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, . . .FACT: A majority of the 32 ships supposedly involve in thos exercise, 24 of them, are Ukrainian and only a couple of them are warships. The US has only one ship the USS Ross destroyer participating in this exercise.
>FINAL FACT: Most of this exercise involves sailors from various countries sitting around in their whites blathering as seen in this video featuring the CO of USS Ross.
In fact Russia has done more. In April, the country's Black Sea fleet conducted an unusually large exercise in Crimea involving 10,000 troops and 40 warships. . .more on SeaBreeze here
Posted by: Don Bacon | Jul 1 2021 14:17 utc | 11
A couple of drones dropped small bombs on an Indian Air Force base in Kashmir. The Modi regime predictably used this as an excuse to crack down on drone use for ordinary citizens, even though the drones could easily have come from Pakistan, just 14 kilometres away.
Posted by: Biswapriya Purkayast | Jul 1 2021 14:21 utc | 12
@9 My impression is that Justin is popular with young 'progressives' and liberals. He is not liked by more conservative Canadians. How does that make him the opposite of his father?
Posted by: dh | Jul 1 2021 14:21 utc | 13
correction @ 8
Albert Speer was the third most powerful Nazi not counting Hitler himself. Actually, he was the fourth most powerful Nazi (behind Hitler, Göring and Goebbels).
From the last open thread:
Hasn't the material John's provided prove that the Crown remains above Parliament?
karlof1 | Jun 30 2021 21:36 utc | 287
Hello karlof1.
The question is, which crown and which parliament?
England was superseded first by the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707, and then by the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801. Your point about the Crown answerable to Parliament refers to England, which no longer exists as a political entity.
That left a blank canvas.
What happened was that the relationship between the Crown and Parliament was completely upended by the passage of the Treason Felony Act in 1848. This is the wording of that act as it stands today:
F2
3 Offences declared felonies by this Act to be punishable by transportation or imprisonment.https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Vict/11-12/12/section/3If any person whatsoever shall, within the United Kingdom or without, compass, imagine, invent, devise, or intend to deprive or depose our Most Gracious Lady the Queen, from the style, honour, or royal name of the imperial crown of the United Kingdom, or of any other of her Majesty’s dominions and countries, or to levy war against her Majesty, within any part of the United Kingdom, in order by force or constraint to compel her to change her measures or counsels, or in order to put any force or constraint upon or in order to intimidate or overawe both Houses or either House of Parliament, or to move or stir any foreigner or stranger with force to invade the United Kingdom or any other of her Majesty’s dominions or countries under the obeisance of her Majesty, and such compassings, imaginations, inventions, devices, or intentions, or any of them, shall express, utter, or declare, by publishing any printing or writing . . . . . . F1 or by any overt act or deed, every person so offending shall be guilty of felony, and being convicted thereof shall be liable . . . . . . F2 to be transported beyond the seas for the term or his or her natural life . . . . . .
This statute served to convert any disagreement with the queen into a felony. Now, if that is not sovereignty I don't know what is, and it was at some point in the second half of the nineteenth century Victoria began to refer to herself as The Sovereign.
The circumstances under which this statute was introduced are well known to you. In 1848 Ireland was in tumult following the forced starvation of the indigenous population: the Continental mainland was in a revolutionary firestorm following the work of Marx. In other words the TFA was emergency legislation, and the drafting was appalling, but the ramifications are with us to the present day.
As the century wore on, some bright spark (Disraeli?) pointed out to the Queen that the TFA could be used with much greater effect. It could be used indirectly via agents of the state, rather than directly against Irish dissidents. As time wore on, open prosecutions against rebels dried up, and the TFA became latent. Or so it seemed.
In fact the TFA was being used to control the civil service. This is where the bad drafting comes in.
"any person whatsoever" That applies to a judge, to a policeman, to a bureaucrat, to a corporation.
"any overt act or deed" That can be anything the queen does not like.
"our Most Gracious Lady the Queen" Presumably was meant for Victoria. But has been used by every queen since Alaxandra.
This law was introduced in Western Australia in 1902. Queen Victoria died in 1901.
France knew what was going on in their perfidious neighbour. They had expected it all to end when Victoria died. When they found that good old perfidious was going to continue this under a different queen they took steps to protect themselves.
In 1904 the UK and France signed the Entente Cordiale. It is a non aggression pact between the Scottish Rite and the Great Eastern. "England" could continue with its conquest of the United States and France could concern itself with its own empire.
I can go on, and I can provide some documentation as to this statute in modern times. But I'm acutely aware that I'm hogging this thread. If anybody wants more, please ask me.
Posted by: John Cleary | Jul 1 2021 14:39 utc | 15
@vk | Jul 1 2021 14:32 utc | 14
Albert Speer was released from prison in 1966, after serving exactly 20 years. Interestingly, the family of a friend of mine was "history inclined" and received his visit some time during the 1970s.
Another interesting detail in Wikipedia (Norwegian version) "Han døde plutselig i 1981 under et kort opphold i London, hvor han samme dag var blitt intervjuet av BBC." ("He died suddenly in 1981 during a short stay in London, where he was interviewed by BBC the same day").
Being interviewed by the BBC does not do you any good.
Posted by: Norwegian | Jul 1 2021 14:48 utc | 16
John Cleary @Jul1 14:39 #15
TFA seems like something that could never actually be used without sparking popular disgust.
How do you suppose it is used to influence officials then?
!!
Posted by: Jackrabbit | Jul 1 2021 14:54 utc | 17
From Haaretz... "Col. Sharon Asman, the new commander of a leading IDF infantry brigade, died unexpectedly at age 43 on Thursday after collapsing in a fitness session.
The IDF is investigating the circumstances of his death at the Beit Lid base near Netanya. It appears Asman collapsed due to a heart failure."
and that "On Thursday, 307 coronavirus cases were recorded in Israel as the delta variant makes further inroads in the country. However, 58 percent of the confirmed cases were unvaccinated. Israel's Health Ministry said on Thursday that the country will face 600 new coronavirus cases a day within a week, and that this figure is expected to rise to 1000 in 10 days as the delta variant continues to spread across the country."
The bets are on.
Posted by: Mina | Jul 1 2021 15:04 utc | 18
dh @ 13, IMO Trudeau's father was leader and did not kow tow to every little demand from our southern neighbor. I doubt that he would allow a bill to go through like the one mentioned in the article much less advocate for it.
Posted by: arby | Jul 1 2021 15:06 utc | 19
@14 vk
That`s not correct. One of the central features of Hitlers rule had been the various state organs beeing directly subordinated to Hitler himself ("Führerprinzip"). In practice that meant they were working next to and often enough against each other with each big brass having what essentially amounts to a personal fiefdom. (Many states are organized in a similar manner, see contemporary Iran for instance.) Because of that it`s not possible to establish a ranking of "the most powerful Nazi".
Göring and Himmler, however, did play in a different league than Goebbels and Speer since both of them had their own armed forces at their disposal. Kaltenbrunner, too, had been more powerful than Speer.
Posted by: m | Jul 1 2021 15:15 utc | 20
How about that Afghanistan forever war?
...from Long War Journal....
The Taliban has taken control of more than 80 districts in the two months since launching its offensive against the Afghan government after President Joe Biden announced the U.S. would withdraw its forces from the country by September.
In many cases, Afghan security forces have turned over district centers, abandoned military bases, surrendered to the Taliban and handed over their weapons, vehicles and other war material without a fight. The Taliban’s multi-year strategy of gaining influence in rural districts to then pressure the population centers is paying dividends. . .here
Actually (1 ) the principal US forces are being evacuated sooner and (2) not all US military forces will be removed.
Posted by: Don Bacon | Jul 1 2021 15:19 utc | 21
This is one of the most delicious articles you will ever read. imho
The war machine and their attendant slime critters tried to take out an independent blog
and subsequently to make free speech everywhere more perilous.
But the good guys won one!
MoA barflies will love this.
Long, you may want to treat yourself to this in parts.
https://thegrayzone.com/2021/06/29/lawsuit-sulome-anderson-hezbollah/
Posted by: librul | Jul 1 2021 15:21 utc | 22
@19 Yes Pierre Trudeau wasn't afraid to upset people like Nixon. That was the time of Vietnam and draft dodgers. Times have changed. Justin certainly lacks that kind of courage but he doesn't have the Vietnam issue to deal with.
I still see him as having a 'progressive' agenda when it comes to things like BLM and LGBT. But that seems to be the way things are going in the US now too. Pierre would probably approve of that. And Justin plays along with the anti-China stuff.
Posted by: dh | Jul 1 2021 15:22 utc | 23
migueljose @ 10
Mike Gravel performed the impossible. A decent human being while being a US politician. This is why his death is largely unremarked. Compare the honors in death accorded goblins and demons as John McCain or Storm Thurmond.
Posted by: oldhippie | Jul 1 2021 15:24 utc | 24
Strom Thurmond. See if spellcheck allows it this time
Posted by: Oldhippie | Jul 1 2021 15:25 utc | 25
@ oldhippie | Jul 1 2021 15:24 utc | 24:
Or, for that matter, Donald Rumsfeld.
Posted by: corvo | Jul 1 2021 15:56 utc | 26
librul, I love the Grayzone. They are an excellent website cataloguing the misdeeds of Mordor. They have a unique expertise of Latin America but also cover the M.E.
My head basically exploded when I read the article co-authored by Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton. I could never write anything as long and well researched as that and still maintained a coherent thought. I'd summarize the article as 'the people who call themselves journalists in our MSM are fools'. But they demonstrate it by showing what actual journalism looks like, side by side with their name calling. Kind of like seeing the RUAF intercept and fly around hopelessly outclassed pilots.
Posted by: Christian J. Chuba | Jul 1 2021 16:09 utc | 27
@ Posted by: m | Jul 1 2021 15:15 utc | 20
If memory doesn't fail me, Albert Speer ended up being in control of the entire German economic plan apparatus - including absolute control of all weapons production of the Third Reich - from 1943 onward. That made him the highest authority (not counting Hitler himself) of what was essentially the Nazi version of the New Deal. That definitely put him in the de facto position of the fourth most powerful Nazi at the least (Göring kept second because he was Hitler's right-hand man; Goebbels because he was responsible for the most essential service in the Nazi system: propaganda).
Besides, being the Nazi chief architect inevitably put Speer on a default high position within Nazi society, as architecture is closely linked to propaganda (which was Nazi's lifeblood). That meant that, in his worst days, Speer was at least second in command to Goebbels in what was the most important sector of the Nazi system (not counting the military, but the military is the most important sector in all societies, so it is not fair to single the Nazis out on this).
@Posted by: Christian J. Chuba | Jul 1 2021 16:09 utc | 27
Right! Everyone should have the pleasure -- "my head basically exploded" -- of reading that article.
Here is the link again.
https://thegrayzone.com/2021/06/29/lawsuit-sulome-anderson-hezbollah/
Posted by: librul | Jul 1 2021 16:22 utc | 29
Israeli-USA public relations bullshit
A building in Miami Beach collapsed about 1:30am Thursday June 24. On Sunday June 27, an Israeli military unit arrived to help. This "help" came more than 3 days after the collapse. For hours after arriving, the Israelis would be of little help as they orient themselves to the site, coordinate with other rescuers, and fight jet-lag. The possibility that IDF participation would result in finding survivors was very remote.
Israeli army specialists join search effort in Florida condo collapse
Delegation official Elad Edri said the team held out hope for a miracle.“We are here to bring hope. After the earthquake in Haiti, we rescued someone after 108 hours. So there is still a chance,” Edri said, though that timeframe has already elapsed.
No survivors were found after the arrival of the Israeli Army forces. The only real benefit from the participation of Israelis IDF was public relations. Local authorities and the US Army Core of Engineers had all they needed to search and rescue any survivors.
This Times of Israeli article makes it clear that IDF help was not needed and Israel's main concern was for about 35 Jews that lived at the condo that collapsed.
Later, speaking to Channel 12, Elbaz-Starinsky [Israel’s Consul General] conceded that Israel’s aid at this stage was “largely symbolic,” but Israel wanted to “help in any way possible.”... It appeared unlikely that the US would take up Israel’s offer to send the IDF’s search and rescue team ...“We do not have a resource problem, we have a luck problem,” said Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett on attempts to find survivors under the rubble.
Apparently, political pressure was applied to get the IDF to the site for purposes of Israeli PR. USA media tell us that Israel is helping "America" when that is clearly false. There wasn't any real help and the concern was for Jews, not Americans.
!!
Posted by: Jackrabbit | Jul 1 2021 16:37 utc | 30
Posted by: vk | Jul 1 2021 13:52 utc | 8
Probably they were after Dante's bones but the rest of the story does not sustain itself. Cervantes remains had been searched for a long time, and finally, in 2015, partially found in a Madrid church, Iglesia de las Trinitarias, within a common burial where more than sixteen deceased remains were mixed.
Lev Tolstoy's burial place is a sight to behold, and a hard lesson to all the powerful of this world. A mound on the ground with not even a cross, no marble, no fancy monument, I got to see it in winter, a plain hump covered with snow. His manor, Yasnaya Polyana, was temporarily occupied by the nazis and its many dependencies used and desecrated, Guderian himself was in Yasnaya Polyana and it would have been so easy to dig Tolstoy’s remains that it rests credibility to that list of great writers.
Here you have some pictures of the desecrated manor, now it is a museum and a beautiful place to visit just of few kms. from the city of Tula.
https://topwar.ru/87970-yasnaya-polyana-v-period-okkupacii.html
Posted by: Paco | Jul 1 2021 16:42 utc | 31
@ John Cleary (# 4, 5, 15),... thanks for the insights.
Re: BCCI, TFA, Elizabeth, ....
Sauron or Saruman are no sovereign. Similarly, one needs to ignore Elizabeth’s title. A real leader inspires and acts with integrity, intelligence, imagination,... and is impactful in a positive way. Anyone that wants to enslave or enable enslavement is evil, and their evil power shows in their malice and subjugation. It doesn’t matter what their position is in the power hierarchy. One can’t blame all wrongdoings on a single individual. The team of Sauron, Saruman, Gollum, Orcs,... are all responsible for crimes and enslavement of humanity. There are good and bad apples in every community. Is Elizabeth the rules-maker of the rules-based world order, Sauron or Saruman? There seems to be more individuals in the ring of the rules-based world order driving its shenanigans.
“The International,” movie is based on the real-life corruption at the BCCI, and the bank is referred to as “I.B.B.C” in the movie. Hollywood serves its evil masters’ deceptions, as the main character in the movie is a former Scotland Yard detective. The movie portrays the U$A and UK leading the investigation and China as the arm supplier. The international bank is located in Sweden, and plays an active role in arms deals, funding coups, and getting rid of its opponents. The bank has extensive penetration in world administrations. So real life bad guys become good guys in Hollywood’s movie? Mind programming,...
China, Russia and Asian nations aren’t on board with the West’s illusion of the hegemonic rule-based order. When does a civilization collapse?
Posted by: Max | Jul 1 2021 16:44 utc | 32
@ Posted by: Paco | Jul 1 2021 16:42 utc | 31
The only confirmed part is the Dante tomb, because the eyewitness, who exchanged Dante's bones, is still alive (he's 87 years old now, so he was just 10 when he helped do it) and told the story to be soon published by an Italian magazine. He claims (probably using the same source given by the OSS) that those other authors were also coveted by Hitler-Speer, but he says he doesn't know what happened with them (as he couldn't, since he was in Ravenna).
Remember that this happened in 1944, when the Nazi regime was in its death throes. It's perfectly possible - even sensible - that the Nazis aborted their attempts to ransack the other tombs, or most of them. Evidently that they didn't try to get to Tolstoy's tomb, because it was in the USSR, and the Cervantes' remains were in nominally neutral territory; but they could realistically get to Zola's tomb.
The Grayzone article was posted under the Iran policy story of Jun 29, here:
I guess I'll stop using the hyperlink HTML code since nobody seems to see the articles anymore unless you just drop the whole URL.
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jul 1 2021 17:07 utc | 34
Posted by: vk | Jul 1 2021 16:57 utc | 33
They also had access to Pushkin burial place in occupied Pskov region, another beautiful place to visit in what is known as Pushkin Heights, but since Pushkin was of mixed blood he would not make the nazi mark, in spite of his great poetry.
Posted by: Paco | Jul 1 2021 17:08 utc | 35
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jul 1 2021 17:07 utc | 35
Well, whattdayouknow....I actually didn't hide the link behind an < a h r e f.
Go figure, guess people just weren't looking for it yet.
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jul 1 2021 17:08 utc | 36
What are U$A’s core values? How about UK’s core values?
The world thinks the people of the U$A are violent, greedy, arrogant — and U$A'ens agree.
A poll, conducted by the Pew Research Center, found that a median of 54% of people in countries surveyed associated the negative trait of arrogance with U$A'ens. 52% percent associate greed, and 48% say U$A'ens are violent. It found that majorities of people in the UK, Canada, Spain and Australia think of U$A'ens as violent, greedy and arrogant. Interestingly, most in the U$A say U$A'ens are arrogant (55%) and greedy (57%).
Source: PEW Global Research. The report is from 2016. U$A'ens overall values haven’t changed substantially in the past few years? Overall objective is to understand our U$A'ens values.
Posted by: Max | Jul 1 2021 17:22 utc | 37
John Cleary--
Thanks for your excellent inputs into what seems to be the core issue related to liquidating Neoliberalism as its a system clearly under the aegis of the Queen. IMO, the best solution for most nations will be to cut all ties with institutions connected in any way with the Bank of England and the Federal Reserve. That also requires any institutions, like the Asian Development Bank, to return whatever those institutions invested and sever relations completely. The legal grounds for such are simple--You aren't what you declare you are, meaning you're a fraud.
@ karlof1 (#40),
Yes, one day ties to these FRAUDULENT financial entities will be severed, including IMF, WB and BIS. However, nations don’t need to return the amount they received. Nations need to unite together and demand DAMAGES from these fraudulent entities and their owners for their imperialism. What kind of tsunami of change will it create?
Remember, the Russian financial crisis of 1998. The Russian administration and the Russian central bank devalued the ruble and defaulted on its debt. Where was Vladimir Putin then?
How has the U$A defaulted on its debt in the past century? How will the U$A default next time? What will happen to “Mount Doom” (Debt & Deception)? What happened to Mount Mazama?
Posted by: Max | Jul 1 2021 17:44 utc | 39
@Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jul 1 2021 17:08 utc | 37
"Go figure, guess people just weren't looking for it yet."
So many links, so little time.
Maybe it was your understated lead-in that didn't grab some readers attention:
"The frivolous "lawfare" lawsuit against the Grayzone was dismissed."
However, MoA would get pretty messy if everyone blared their excitement over every find.
https://thegrayzone.com/2021/06/29/lawsuit-sulome-anderson-hezbollah/
How did you rate it?
Posted by: librul | Jul 1 2021 17:50 utc | 40
While we or at least I wait and worry about other things here's an interesting video (17:17 minutes) titled "The Longest-running Evolution Experiment" (that would be by number of generations, not by years) by the Veritasium YouTube channel.
The professor running the experiment describes and explains it.
It is about bacteria but the concepts are general (including for replicating viruses although the circumstances for those would be different).
One could call this "gain of function" only with bacteria. It is done to try to learn more (and they did, even after they thought they probably wouldn't).
Posted by: Sunny Runny Burger | Jul 1 2021 17:59 utc | 41
Posted by: Mina | Jul 1 2021 18:27 utc | 42
- Max Blumenthal wrote a (very) interesting article:
"Reuters, BBC, and Bellingcat participated in covert UK Foreign Office-funded programs to “weaken Russia,” leaked docs reveal"
Surprise, surprise, surprise. Regular visitors of Moon Of Alabama already knew that BellingCat was a "shady" joint funded by MI6 (MI6 ???)
Weblink:
https://thegrayzone.com/2021/02/20/reuters-bbc-uk-foreign-office-russian-media/
Dated: February 20, 2021
Posted by: Willy2 | Jul 1 2021 19:17 utc | 43
Posted by: dh | Jul 1 2021 15:22 utc | 23
Pierre understood the economic issues and was a social democrat, even socialist by temperment. He was a lawyer and had a political career before becoming PM. He had experience. Pierre would likely be a progressive today concerned more with economic issues rather than virtue signalling. That is, Pierre had a brain and knew how to use it. Justin is not very bright and generally clueless.
Of course, the parties of the sixties and seventies were all more socially orientated than the parties of the noughts and teens today. A conservative PM, Diefenbaker, with some encouragment from Tommy Douglas got the ball rolling on universal health care, which was eventually put into practice by Pearson. Without doubt conservative leaders like Diefenbaker, Stanfield and Clark had a more "left wing" approach than liberal and even New Democrats do today.
Today, it is all war mongering and neoliberal worshiping by any and all- privatize and commodify anything and everything. Then pretend to be progressive through
Justin is out of his depth. Like many "progressives", he doesn't know what "progressive" means. Apparently, even the "Progressive Conservatives" did once. For Justin, it seems to be, as we saw with his first cabinet,having 50% women and 50% men in his cabinet with a smattering of people from as many different minorities as possible. Being a "progresive" should mean getting the best qualified people in the right position irrespective, of sex, religion, ethnicity, skin colour, etc. Justin should go back to teaching English Lit or whatever in high school.
Posted by: Blue Dotterel | Jul 1 2021 19:20 utc | 44
@Librul, Will2 et all
Lauding the Grayzone is ok but please keep in mind who actually broke the stories you are linking.
The Grayzone's "UK Foreign Office-funded programs to “weaken Russia,” leaked docs reveal" ... is based on documents MoA excusivly wrote about a week earlier than the Grayzone.
MoA published a piece that bashed the dimwit Sulome Anderson in February 2018. The Grayzone published the piece it was sued over in May 2018. It was largely built on my work.
As the Grayzone writers are arrogant twits neither of their writeups mentioned MoA even though it definitely was their source.
How trustworthy is that?
@47 It would be very interesting to get Pierre's take on current Canadian affairs. How would he have handled Trump? What he would have to say about Meng Wanzhou? Things like immigration, LGBT, first nations etc.......too bad we'll never know.
Posted by: dh | Jul 1 2021 19:51 utc | 46
@Posted by: b | Jul 1 2021 19:48 utc | 48
Very interesting...and thought provoking...
Grayzone was sued and it appears they were gagged from talking about the lawsuit.
For over two years, we, the defendants, have been barred from discussing this McCarthyite assault while the heiress’ lawsuit was relentlessly promoted and cheered on by an echo chamber of regime-change operatives and corporate media hacks.
It is not clear if their own lawyers barred them as a prudent legal tactic
or whether the court itself barred them from discussing the "McCarthyite assault".
This begs the question if there were other defendants involved with "dimwit" Salami that have had to be quiet.
Posted by: librul | Jul 1 2021 20:09 utc | 47
@ b | Jul 1 2021 19:48 utc | 48 who wrote
"
As the Grayzone writers are arrogant twits neither of their writeups mentioned MoA even though it definitely was their source.
How trustworthy is that?
"
Thanks for that point of clarification for barflies that continue to flog Grayzone as other than a sheepdog site for those that consider themselves lefties in our Top/Bottom reality world.
Posted by: psychohistorian | Jul 1 2021 20:29 utc | 48
John Cleary @Jul1 14:39 #15TFA seems like something that could never actually be used without sparking popular disgust.
How do you suppose it is used to influence officials then?
!!
Posted by: Jackrabbit | Jul 1 2021 14:54 utc | 17
Hello JR.
Point one. I first commented here while it was tuned to Billmon.
When Bernhard first went solo he felt he needed support (he doesn't), so he invited me to write a piece for above the line.
Being a monomaniac I wrote, of course, about the crime factory that is Queen Elizabeth.
I got crucified. Not one person engaged with what i'd written. People just do not want to believe that the woman they have been taught to admire can be such a wicked person. I was told in no uncertain terms that no, Queen Elizabeth has no powers; she is a figurehead and nothing more. I cost b a great deal of credibility and I scurried away with my tail between my legs. So I think you are wrong when you conclude "TFA seems like something that could never actually be used without sparking popular disgust."
Point two. If you really want to know the answer I suggest you absorb these two items:
https://archive.fo/44P7i Lords halt challenge to treason law | Media | The Guardian
https://archive.fo/7gmLt Calling for abolition of monarchy is still illegal - The Guardian
Five law lords upheld an attempt by the attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, to halt the newspaper's attempt to declare section 3 of the 1848 act incompatible with the Human Rights Act 1998, on the grounds that the older legislation was an obstacle to freedom of speech.
The lords ruled the Guardian's case unnecessary, as the paper had published articles that espoused republican views, and had not been prosecuted.
You see they did the same as with BCCI. The action was "halted" as it was "unnecessary". THEY DID NOT ACTUALLY HEAR THE CASE.
Look at the comments from the judges
The attorney general made no submission on his prosecution policy. But the Lords said if he had: "It could only have been to accept that, at least since October 2 2000 when the Human Rights Act 1998 came into force, no one who advocates the abolition of the monarchy by peaceful and constitutional means has been at any risk of prosecution (other than a private prosecution) or of conviction."
So why did he not say so? Why is the court putting forward a submission on his behalf?
Remember Lord Hutton?
Lord Hutton said: "It is not the function of the courts to decide hypothetical questions which do not impact on the parties before them".
Lord Steyn said: "The part of s3 of the 1848 Act which appears to criminalise the advocacy of republicanism is a relic of a bygone age, and does not fit into the fabric of our modern legal system. The idea that s3 could survive scrutiny under the Human Rights Act is unreal."
But he warned that the courts should not be used as "an instrument ... [to] chivvy parliament into spring-cleaning the statute book."Their Lordships all agreed that the 1848 Act is "a provision whose time has long passed".
Lord Walker of Gestingthorpe said: "It is most undesirable that obsolete statutes should remain unrepealed. Quaint language and interesting historical associations are no justification for preserving obsolete statutes in a mummified state. But ... it is still the role of the legislature, rather than that of the courts, to decide whether to repeal or retain legislation."
Yet here we are, eighteen years later and the obsolete statute remains unrepealed.
(!! as you like to say.)
Now none of this makes any sense. Until you realise that she is using the Treason Felony Act to prevent the repeal of the Treason Felony Act. And contrary to what you would expect JR there were no riots in the streets.
And she does this by notifying the judges that to find for the Guardian newspaper would be an offence under the Treason Felony Act. And of course no judge could possibly knowingly break the law. And so she carries on, bringing death, misery and destruction to the world.
Posted by: John Cleary | Jul 1 2021 20:41 utc | 49
It is disquieting to learn of the arrogance of two of Grayzone's writers.
Not going to go into Cancel mode however. I will read their work with a jaundiced eye.
I initially found my way to Grayzone because of Aaron Matte
https://thegrayzone.com/author/aaron-mate/
and his articles about the Russiagate propaganda campaign.
Russiagate was not about left or right or top or bottom to me.
Posted by: librul | Jul 1 2021 20:54 utc | 50
Multi-national teams do rescue missions from collapsed buildings resulting from natural disasters
https://reliefweb.int/report/indonesia/how-rescue-people-trapped-collapsed-building
There is a protocol followed by a UN group, The International Search and Rescue Advisory Group (INSARG).
Here is a full list of all international teams, where they are located, and their capabilities.
https://vosocc.unocha.org/USAR_Directory/MemberCountriesOverview.asp
The entry for Miami Dade is pathetic, even after I got to their native website I could not find any overview of their capabilities or staff. The 'employee link' just talked about benefits.
---------------------------------------------------------------
My conclusion: DeSantis let the Miami Dade rescue drive this and they kept their turf.
DeSantis should have done what I did and reached out to other U.S. agencies and UN groups to speedup the rescue efforts. To me, it looks like Turkey has a kick ass rescue team which makes sense because they have a lot of earthquakes. I bet a lot of these groups have great rescue teams.
The UN group emphasizes getting everyone on board on day 1 to work out any language barrier problems. Yeah, getting 12 Israelis 3 days later, if anything underlines that this avenue was not seriously pursued.
I'll even ding Biden because he could have stepped in and pushed DeSantis in the right direction and gotten FEMA involved.
Posted by: Christian J. Chuba | Jul 1 2021 21:03 utc | 51
John Cleary @52--
As with the TFA, so it is with the Outlaw US Empire's Espionage Act--a product of a bygone era having no relation to today--except for those like Julian Assange.
As for the Royals--history shows them all as Terrors who killed millions of their own and those of the lands they invaded. It's a shame you got shouted down at the old bar as it proves the readership at that time to be very ignorant.
karlof1
That's a damned good point.
And thinking about it, there is an even better parallel with the TFA.
It's the one they used to target the hapless General Flynn. Framed two hundred years ago to prevent countrymen overseas from undermining the President in matters of foreign policy. Ridiculous in this century. Just like the Treason Felony Act in the UK.
And I think the difference today is the Worldwide Web.
Sixteen years of development since then.
It's a different world today.
Posted by: John Cleary | Jul 1 2021 22:14 utc | 53
A rider to a FY22 bill that would reinstate Nordstream 2 sanctions passed a House committee on a unanimous vote. The drama lives on. I imagine this will drag into threatening sanctions on German utilities.
Posted by: schmoe | Jul 1 2021 22:43 utc | 54
CIA director William Burns meets with members of [Brazilian president] Bolsonaro's cabinet
It was an official visit, and the members he met were minister of the Civil House Luiz Eduardo Ramos (most powerful minister, more or less the equivalent to the Secretary of State) and minister of National Security (the equivalent of secretary of the Homeland Security) gen. August Heleno. Burns was accompanied by American ambassador to Brazil Todd Chapman.
Evidently, the content of the meeting is confidential, but this is one of those moments in history where the secret reveals the content: the point certainly was to discuss a violent military coup against a possible large-scale revolt, anti-American reform (e.g. re-election of Lula) or even revolution in Brazil. That's the only possible topic of discussion that intersects both the Civil House and National Security in this Brazilian government.
John Cleary @56--
Thanks for your reply! I really don't see any hope in reforming either the UK or USA. As we've discussed over the past several years, both need a new OS and hardware to implement it. As schmoe @57 informs, the Outlaw US Empire's Congress will continue to violate its own and International Law without even understanding what it's doing to itself--making the entire nation utterly irrelevant as other nations will create means to bypass and then ignore its illegalities. Germany doesn't need the EU, NATO, or foreign troops based on its territory to continue to be a vibrant and innovative nation and peoples. Both the UK and USA became strong through their commercial activities and their Imperialism. The latter has died and the former is withering. They can print all the meaningless money they want, but eventually no other nation will allow its use in commercial interactions.
There seems to be a rather big need for a new Enlightenment for most of what's known as the First World, for that world is about to be upended.
Posted by: librul | Jul 1 2021 17:50 utc | 42 and b | Jul 1 2021 19:48 utc | 48
librul,
I only shared the link here because I rated it very important. I'm happy for more people to share that particular link and it's all very incriminating information with respect to the way that accurate war zone reporting (and other geopolitics/foreign policy) is done in the USA. I agree with your and others' take.
b,
Thanks for that reminder. I read MoA every day that I can and I must have missed that one. Very interesting that there was no attribution considering you were on top of it before those guys. That said, I still think it's important information, especially about the way the lawsuit was conducted and then summarily dismissed. Lawfare is but one of many tools that the establishment and those "journalists" that are accepted by the establishment go about silencing critics or just alternative views from more informed voices even if some of the Grayzone reportage was actually stolen from MoA. Anywho, keep up the good work!
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jul 1 2021 23:23 utc | 57
I know it was discussed, and that links were probably shared, but as with the Sulome Anderson comments section dustup, it's a good thing multiple commenters provided the links.
In memoriam to Mike Gravel, who passed away and in addition to migueljose @ #10, I'd like to drop the following links as well:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBcMUZAXMW4 (The rest of the Democratic field laughs as he rightly calls them out on the Iraq war)
And @caitoz provided this in response to the differing ways that Gravel's death and Rumsfeld, McCain, etc. differed in the Western media.
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Jul 1 2021 23:27 utc | 58
I seldom disagree with Russia's MFA spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, but her estimation that Iran and the Outlaw US Empire will return to the JCPOA on 14 July I find sadly mistaken because there's one major actor the negotiators have no control over--the Outlaw US Empire's Congress which legislated many of the illegal sanctions placed on Iran and can only be undone by its actions. And that would mean plenty of Congressional hearings and lobbying by Biden for that process to begin, and there's no sign of the whatsoever. Iranian policy is simple and very clear--Actions resulting in removal of ALL sanctions must occur first prior to Iran acting--and it was just reiterated by president elect Raisi.
Too Funny!! Brits dependent on Russia for space access:
"A Soyuz-2.1b carrier rocket with the Fregat booster and 36 British OneWeb communications satellites blasted off from the Vostochny spaceport in Russia’s Far East on Thursday."
I very much doubt BoJo has any clue about that sort of UK-Russia commercial interaction. Perhaps he's the UK's version of Yeltsin!
John Cleary @Jul1 20:41 #52
Thanks for that explanation. It seems to me that the pressure applied by TFA is both implicit and stronger than it appears.
The pressure is simply this: the Queen's wishes can not be resisted and anyone doing so in any real way (ie. not joking) must be a traitor. There is no sympathy for such a person because any "loyal subject" immediately realizes that such sympathy is also traitorous.
So the Queens wishes are followed without invoking the act.
!!
Posted by: Jackrabbit | Jul 2 2021 0:07 utc | 61
Trying to glance through an awful lot of comments I noticed one in particular on what seems like robust UK/NHS plans for what amounts to "triage by euthanasia" in case things got really bad.
I want to point out that in the correct circumstances (when death is absolutely certain within a short time frame) this is not the least scandalous but considered "mercy killing", it is also the historical starting point for such things as the International Red Cross and the Geneva conventions (during the Napoleonic wars triage was by gunshot).
Posted by: Sunny Runny Burger | Jul 2 2021 0:08 utc | 62
Another response.
"Those sort of papers would be very traceable."Less so if:
1. Printed on an inkjet printer (looks like they were).
2. Doused with copious amount of water so they get all blurry (looks like they were).
Then they should be less traceable from the ordinary universal printer fingerprinting (but perhaps not enough) and one should still take care due to the possibility of other measures being embedded (like textual ones, unique font manipulation, offsets and anything similar —these things are being used) which might still be relatively easy and effortlessly identifiable despite runny colors (easy compared to massively parallel statistical analysis of chemical values to identify likely coloration fingerprints from out of a blurry soup).
Not everyone will be aware of this sort of thing.
The above does not make any argument against or in favor of whether or not it was a genuine leak (my bias is that I think it wasn't). These things can happen by accident for someone who didn't know and they can be done deliberately when planting information rather than leaking.
Sorry if it's stating the obvious :)
Posted by: Sunny Runny Burger | Jul 2 2021 0:31 utc | 63
When does a civilization collapse?
by: Max | Jul 1 2021 16:44 utc | 32
Just after eating all its hoarded toilet paper but before the neighbors have run out of kids.
Posted by: David G Horsman | Jul 2 2021 0:43 utc | 64
vk # #14
Albert Speer was the third most powerful Nazi not counting Hitler himself.
Actually, he was the fourth most powerful Nazi (behind Hitler, Göring and Goebbels).
vk is essentially correct, but...... to think that he survived the war in good health and all, and was sentenced to ONLY 20 years in prison/Spandau for his war crimes.
any of the major architects of the illegal and murderous Iraq war like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, Tenet, Wolfowitz, Bremer, et. al. should surely be punished by 25-50 years in prison, if not a lifetime without [parole, or by the death penalty.
oh, and the devil himself now has Rumsfeld in Hell..... the devil take them all
Posted by: michaelj72 | Jul 2 2021 1:16 utc | 65
@ David (#67), nope. The reality reveals & civilization’s end begins...
All modern states are based on four things: myths, laws, ethics and hidden truths.
The first three - myths, laws and ethics - are taught to everybody and driven through social institutions that condition individuals to be good members of the collective.
The fourth - hidden truths - are not for general consumption because they render the first three false. Once these hidden truths are understood by the masses, the myths, laws and ethics they were taught can no longer control them.
Civilizations "collapse" because elites who know the hidden truth ultimately cannot help themselves. The ethics created to bind the masses do not control the Rulers, and this fact ultimately leaks out as the true Rulers & powerful elites become brazen in their hubris and begin openly breaking the laws.
Once the masses realize that the laws and ethics of society only bind them and not those who truly rule, the masses begin to question their myths.
“The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”
- John F. Kennedy
Posted by: Max | Jul 2 2021 1:19 utc | 66
the unforgivable war
https://twitter.com/nashwakay/status/1410417007070171138
1 in every 5 Iraqis has someone in their family who died because of the invasion of Iraq.
More than half of all babies born in Fallujah between 2007 and 2010 were born with a birth defect.
The average lifespan in Iraq is 70.
Rumsfeld died at 88 peacefully in his sleep.
Posted by: michaelj72 | Jul 2 2021 1:32 utc | 67
Posted by: vk | Jul 1 2021 22:44 utc | 58
Re Brazil, Thanks vk. Here's another link I mistakenly placed under the China post, my apologies....
Brazilwire has a quick read on CIA head William J. Burns meeting with Bolsonaro's aids, kindof funny since they announced the meeting and then said they can't talk about it--- seems like the State Dept/CIA is stuck in the puberty stage: raging mood swings, no focus, lots of lies that are sooo obvious. (I'm a retired teacher and counselor and tend to recognize that developmental phase)
Recent history: W. Bush took his eye off Latin America during the beginning of the Iraq disaster and Lula emerged along with the pink tide, Chavez, Correa, Evo. Obama let blowhard Biden spearhead a weak return of the imperial mafias as they pushed out Dilma, imprisoned Lula, propped up Lenin Moreno in Ecuador, juiced up Colombia's psychopaths, etc. Trump and Pompeo followed suit with no original ideas beyond creating a fake president Guaidó for Venezuela richies. Now Brazil's people are poised to depose Bolsonaro and Biden's brain trust is confused, some want to support and "turn" Lula (LOL) and others want to support and prettify Bolsonaro. CIA appears to be in the "prettify Bolsonaro" camp. The whole Biden team appears to be stuttering and stammering in Latin America while the Street is mad and appears to be organizing.
https://www.brasilwire.com/cia-director-makes-secret-visit/
Posted by: migueljose | Jul 1 2021 23:49 utc | 23
Posted by: migueljose | Jul 2 2021 2:17 utc | 68
Mina #45
Thank you for a good link. What a fascinating, confused tale of self delusion from a statistician. An editor might have been useful to convey whatever message is within this paragraph:-
The PHE report also reveals that nearly a third of deaths from the Delta variant are of unvaccinated people over 50, which may be surprising given high vaccine coverage; for example, OpenSAFELY estimates more than 93% among the 65-69s. But there are lower rates in deprived areas and for some ethnicities and communities with limited coverage will continue to experience more than their fair share of loss.
and no, I have not lifted this out of context.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Jul 2 2021 2:25 utc | 69
More on ivermectin, summarizes what many barflies have already read but adds some detail from Mexico, India and Peru along with a few comments from Americans.
bottom line, ivermectin looks like it has made a difference. This piece is about 3 weeks old.
https://principia-scientific.com/covid-deaths-plunge-after-mexico-city-introduces-ivermectin/
Posted by: migueljose | Jul 2 2021 2:37 utc | 70
Posted by Librul @ 2
Thanks for pointing out the Julian Assange development. Here is some more from well known Australian lawyer Greg Barnes:
https://johnmenadue.com/key-assange-accuser-backs-away-from-what-he-told-us-prosecutors/
The contrast between the malicious prosecution of Assange and offical studied ignorance of Rupert Murdoch's history of well documented intercontinental criminal hacking operations is stark.
I have no doubt which one should be rotting in prison.
I recommend the mind boggling book 'Murdoch's Pirates' by award winning journalist Neil Chenoweth. Search for a review of this hard to get book. I also recommend Booktopia.
It is also interesting that newly minted deputy PM, Barnaby Joyce, is an Assange supporter. He has risen in my estimation.
It's time for the Australian government to protect Assange. Both parties are also silent.
https://bananasfk.wordpress.com/2013/04/02/murdochs-pirates-neil-chenoweth/
Posted by: Paul | Jul 2 2021 2:46 utc | 71
karlof1 #62
I seldom disagree with Russia's MFA spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, but her estimation that Iran and the Outlaw US Empire will return to the JCPOA on 14 July I find sadly mistaken because there's one major actor the negotiators have no control over--the Outlaw US Empire's Congress which legislated many of the illegal sanctions placed on Iran and can only be undone by its actions. And that would mean plenty of Congressional hearings and lobbying by Biden for that process to begin, and there's no sign of the whatsoever. Iranian policy is simple and very clear--Actions resulting in removal of ALL sanctions must occur first prior to Iran acting--and it was just reiterated by president elect Raisi.
Thank you karlof1 and as Maria Zakharova is an excellent communicator, I assume she was setting the context for the Biden fail as he surely can only get Congressional agreement by crawling over broken glass and doling out vast treasures to buy each vote. Can you imagine any President surviving the charge of being 'soft on Iran and its mullahs'?
So what is she doing and what links might exist to the Putin meeting with the little sniffer? I can only imagine that she is setting up a contrast to accuse Biden of failure, being incapable of carrying out agreements and weaken him further.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Jul 2 2021 2:58 utc | 72
Assange vs the NGO outlet in HK
I have not even bothered to look into the MSM wailing about the news office shut down in HK, especially after hearing it was connected to Bannon's expat, regime change buddy. How can I take CNN, FOX, and the rest seriously when they applaud the death incarceration of Assange and fake deathwatch of Navalny?
I am moderately curious, what office was shut down in HK?
Posted by: Christian J. Chuba | Jul 2 2021 3:07 utc | 73
@Posted by: michaelj72 | Jul 2 2021 1:32 utc | 70
If karma is for real I shudder at the thought of what
is due to fall upon the US for it's crimes.
Posted by: librul | Jul 2 2021 3:41 utc | 74
Continuing from Jul2 0:07 #64
Thinking on this further, it seems to me (an American) that the Queen's power is derived from those that believe that privilege should be maintained. The Queen is just a figurehead, and loyalty to the Queen is a litmus test.
Furthermore, BCCI was apparently a spook plaything and senior civil servants would not be made to pay for State crimes (who knows what secrets they might reveal if pressed). Nor would UK government make own up to what BCCI really was or attempt to bring the spooks to justice. So something sly and underhanded was called for.
If the Queen lifted the rug for the embarrassments to be swept under, she was likely pressured/blackmailed or convinced that it was necessary. I'm not convinced that she has the power to formulate policy or a devious nature. She can barely control her own family.
Disclaimer: As I'm not British, I may not be acquainted with all the facts.
!!
Posted by: Jackrabbit | Jul 2 2021 3:57 utc | 75
Sleazy hustler with criminal sexual interests, recruited by FBI to build a case against Assange admits to lies. "Responsible media" is silent. Can we say: human scum can be compared to total scum. I hesitate to stick "human" in the description of "responsible media", because "total human scum" may suggests that they are totally human, while some studies suggest strong genetic presence of wetland species, a.k.a. swamp creatures.
Posted by: Piotr Berman | Jul 2 2021 4:37 utc | 76
News item. Overseas arrivals to Australia halved. Tens of thousands Australians who have expressed an interest to return are, apparently, 'stranded' overseas.
Posted by: Paul | Jul 2 2021 5:12 utc | 77
@b:
- Send the Grayzone a bill for the copyrights of the story !!!!
- I must confess that in the last say 6 months I didn't visit Moon Of Alabama too much. Too much other things going on.
Posted by: willy2 | Jul 2 2021 5:39 utc | 78
Librul if I've understood it and the concept is real (bias: a reasonable general idea that seems overwhelmingly likely to me) then like everyone else they are already paying the price although most just won't realize it (and some will be more innocent than others; it compounds and self-interacts and is not at all simple and not obvious to many).
Yes there will be much more too; according to christianity the individual "long tails" is seven generations (probably nothing but a wild guess to illustrate how serious and long-lasting the effects are) and in addition as the muslims say everyone will go to and maybe through hell. Those ideas also don't seem unreasonable if given some assumptions or at least workarounds: the moment of death might feel like an eternity to some, humans experience similar state of mind "time compression/dilution" during dreams which last only minutes but are experienced as hours, or for that matter during periods of active focused attention or boredom.
Dying might be the single most important thing any individual goes through with all of life its preparation.
The "died quietly" trope is superficial boilerplate at its worst:
1. It says nothing at all about what might be happening inside. Nor does the opposite of a violent thrashing about.
2. Unless you were there you wouldn't know.
3. Death/dying can be incredibly subtle but even when peaceful in my experience (seeing family die a natural death) it has a noticeable inertia or momentum.
4. All dead people shit themselves, often just a little because there isn't much to expunge.
Somehow (at least to my knowledge) none of the world cultures have yet managed to make point number 4 into something "holy", "sacral" or another superficial bullshit boiler-plate trope meaning "this was a good human, we're being honest" :D
As for the US a lot of us here have been saying it. The writing isn't simply on the wall, it is prowling the streets and lives of everyone.
Posted by: Sunny Runny Burger | Jul 2 2021 6:04 utc | 79
Further to my comment @: Paul @ 80
Now Australians need 'permission' from the para military Border Force to leave Australia.
No doubt this process is a bureaucratic on line nightmare with always one more bit of paper required and no end to additional requirements in sight, as usual.
Posted by: Paul | Jul 2 2021 6:05 utc | 80
Putin, in regard to his meeting with Biden, said US new they were going down, or that China Russia were taking the lead, something along those lines, and he said US would try to prevent this at all costs.
In his anual Q&A session, answering in relation to the black sea incident, said US will not attack Russia even if they had sunk the ship? Not sticking it to the yanks much...
New weapons systems rolling out like nobodies business.
I remember Putin saying some time ago something along the lines of 'getting so strong no one will attack us.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Jul 2 2021 6:34 utc | 82
Jackrabbit 78
My take is the monarch is ceremonial. Signs off on decisions already made. So for four of the five-eyes, they are ruled by those close to the monarch. For elected politicians, a little autonomy in domestic stuff. For the three colonies, foreign policy is made in that royal circle or in Washington. Interesting to watch at times when the royal circle and Washington are in disagreement. For our dear leaders in the colonies, it is like having two bosses.
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Jul 2 2021 6:47 utc | 83
Posted by: karlof1 | Jul 1 2021 23:33 utc | 62
An interesting article by Lavrov in the business site Kommersant has raised the latest polemic amongst Russian liberals, instead of focusing in the heart of the matter, law, rules and rights with an in depth explanation even on linguistic terms, the libs went for one of their usual weapons, LGTB rights. I wonder sometimes if that minority will not regret in the future having allowed to be used as a geopolitical cudgel. The libs claim that Lavorv based his criticism on a simple TikTok clip, so Zakharova explained in her Telegram channel that some school in Scotland organized a pride event in which Jesus was portrayed as a transgender. With all the problems the world is facing and the west using the indisputable rights of a minority as the main problem the world is facing, that minority is being used and it might come to regret the blow back.
https://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/-/asset_publisher/cKNonkJE02Bw/content/id/4801890
Posted by: Paco | Jul 2 2021 6:55 utc | 84
agreed, with Tracey..... and with Caitlan J.
https://twitter.com/mtracey/status/1410322923575992326
Michael Tracey @mtracey
Few have ever personified the total depravity that the US government is capable of more vividly than Donald Rumsfeld
".....This despite the fact that it’s been public knowledge for years that Rumsfeld began orchestrating the unforgivable invasion of Iraq within hours of the 9/11 attacks and told numerous lies in order to set that invasion in motion. He also oversaw the intervention in Afghanistan which he and his Bush administration cohorts had been planning before 9/11, beginning a decades-long occupation about which the public has been pervasively lied to from the very beginning by US officials in general and by Rumsfeld in particular...".
"...In reality, exactly zero percent of the world’s worst people are in prison, but some of the best people are. The fact that Donald Rumsfeld lived a long life of freedom while Julian Assange wastes away in Belmarsh Prison proves the world doesn’t work the way we were taught in school. The very worst bad guys are not put in prison by the good guys who run things, because the very worst bad guys are the ones who run things......"
Posted by: michaelj72 | Jul 2 2021 6:58 utc | 85
librul @ #77
"If karma is for real I shudder at the thought of what is due to fall upon the US for it's crimes."
perhaps much! to come....
my impression/idea is that individuals would suffer the karmic effects of the evil that they have done... I mean the american people don't make foreign policy, the Political, Military and Economic Elites do. though certainly enough working class and lower class people have gone/been sent to war in the name of the US Empire - and they too have done ill and perhaps wicked things while in Vietnam or Iraq, just to name two examples, and my impression again would be that what we now broadly call post-traumatic stress or syndrome, and all the other psychological difficulties and illnesses which many of these soldiers/people have come back home with or suffered afterword, are indeed to me a form of karma. Also, alas, much of the suicides in the military and ex-military is of note.
The elites don't seem or appear to suffer much bad karma from all their wars and war-mongering and evil starvation sanctions etc, though perhaps their vices of greed, hatred (particularly nowadays directed at Russia, China and Iran), lying, ambition, mendacity, pride and imperial hubris, etc etc are already a form of punishment! (of course I could be wrong about the Elites.)
The American Elites certainly impress me, as a class, in being very vain and inhumane. Punishments in themselves.
.
Posted by: michaelj72 | Jul 2 2021 7:19 utc | 86
Tungsten 72 about the Guardian link, what is more interesting even is that the paper uses what seems to be a technical term, 'imperfect vaccine' which is explained here
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/tthis-chicken-vaccine-makes-virus-dangerous
Posted by: Mina | Jul 2 2021 7:20 utc | 87
Peter AU1 | Jul 2 2021 6:47 utc | 86
Hello Peter
You consider the Queen to be "ceremonial". Fair enough, I think I know what you mean by that.
So can I ask you a question about Australia partaking in the invasion of Iraq?
There was no Security Council resolution at the UN.
As you know, there was no vote by parliament in Canberra.
So please tell me: what was the legal basis upon which John Howard committed Australia to a war on the other side of the world?
Posted by: John Cleary | Jul 2 2021 8:01 utc | 88
John Cleary
The deputy sheriff
https://www.theage.com.au/national/bushs-sheriff-comment-causes-a-stir-20031017-gdwk74.html
Posted by: Peter AU1 | Jul 2 2021 8:26 utc | 90
@Christian J. Chuba (no. 76)
The only news of an HK news office being shut down I've heard of is one about a particular Apple Daily. Does it answer your question? Or are you thinking of something else?
Posted by: joey_n | Jul 2 2021 8:42 utc | 91
Peter AU1 | Jul 2 2021 8:26 utc | 93
Peter, that's very interesting.
I'll repeat my question:
what was the legal basis upon which John Howard committed Australia to a war on the other side of the world?
Posted by: John Cleary | Jul 2 2021 9:03 utc | 92
Hmm. Canadians are waking up, even if Australians are not.
Queen Elizabeth II statue toppled in Canada
https://www.rt.com/news/528161-canada-day-protest-statues/
Posted by: John Cleary | Jul 2 2021 9:27 utc | 93
I´m waiting for the claim that the downfall and dissolution of the Eastern Bloc 1989-1991 had been a color revolution. Instigated by Nazis.
Posted by: m | Jul 2 2021 9:46 utc | 94
Given the Grayzone is getting a serious ribbing I might just mention The Young Turks or perhaps I should call them Erdoghans nutjobs. Anyway the good Richard Medhurst gave TYT a mighty hard and well deserved backhander a week or so ago. See here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVnYWV4sHZo
Richard sets the intertubes on fire for 2 minutes of rage against TYT and its clown cart.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Jul 2 2021 10:15 utc | 95
John Cleary #95
what was the legal basis upon which John Howard committed Australia to a war on the other side of the world?
Thank you for that question and it might interest you to know that there was no legal basis for Howard's decision. Every soldier sent was a war criminal.
Equally Howard breached the international maritime covenants when he stranded a Dutch vessel that had picked up migrating people from various Asian countries via Indonesia. Howard was a queenie sycophant and a USAian stooge of the first order and there was little organised opposition. He relied on people's well nurtured fear/terror/antipathy to 'other' and he got away with it and cemented his parliamentary majority.
poor fellow my country
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Jul 2 2021 10:23 utc | 96
On Rumsfeld
Richard Medhurst has a short burst at this address: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jFZD569UJYI
I am unable to download it, yet every other RM piece downloads fine. I guess he is not complimenting the man and his expletives have congested the utoob censors.
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Jul 2 2021 10:29 utc | 97
@ m | Jul 2 2021 9:46 utc | 97 (nazi instigation)
Yes, I understand the meaning, one absurd claim after another.
But if we say "nazi" with a broad class understanding we may see that the people who designed to ruin USSR were generally from the same sort that Dulles was, the sort that tried to overthrow FDR, and then they them selves were "saved" from jail by his very convenient death, which then led to the demonstrations of nuclear incineration, to intimidate USSR and take back the deal at Yalta.
Jail? Collaborating with the enemy...clear as can be.
I'd say that in a real sense the "nazi" mind was at work and gleeful in '89-91... The US had and has plenty of nazis... cryptonazis.
But of course the regalia and uniforms were not German, mostly.
Nazi is as nazi does. I recall that the KGB wrote a report of the Kennedy affair, and concluded that "far-right" elements in the US elite did it... I'd be blunt. Nazis did it. American nazis.
Posted by: Walter | Jul 2 2021 10:32 utc | 98
Mina #90
'imperfect vaccine' which is explained here
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/tthis-chicken-vaccine-makes-virus-dangerous
Thank you, that makes the entire report most alarming PLUS it possibly explains the (to my mind) confused information in the grauniad piece. Now I understand the the implications of this text:
It could sound worrying that the majority of people dying in England with the now-dominant Delta (B.1.617.2) variant have been vaccinated. Does this mean the vaccines are ineffective? Far from it, it’s what we would expect from an effective but imperfect vaccine, a risk profile that varies hugely by age and the way the vaccines have been rolled out.Consider the hypothetical world where absolutely everyone had received a less than perfect vaccine. Although the death rate would be low, everyone who died would have been fully vaccinated.
After reading the chicken Marek vaccine report I can see that one immediate implication is that the process of dispensing 'imperfect vaccine' for covid-19 is to let loose an army of carriers. One precaution I am taking is to increase my prophylactic practice and diligence as more and more acquaintances are getting their imperfect vaccines.
I guess there will be a rush to see which of the world's vaccines fall into each category. I can see why vaccines are never rushed into distribution in a normal world.
Mina, do you know of any bio-accumulation reports on the current experimental vaccines on the market?
Posted by: uncle tungsten | Jul 2 2021 10:48 utc | 99
I have no science background at all. I try to make my way in the links ppl post here.
We can now observe live whether Sputnik works fine or not: check the numbers of Hungary and San Marin and compare with other EU countries. The coming weeks are going to be revealing because of the supporters who travelled for the Euro-UEFA championship. Russia is out because few ppl were vaccinated and no real population density.
As a prophylaxy, try essential oils Ravintsara and Niaouli (I put a few drops on the throat, externally, since it is where it first replicates if I understood correctly) when you meet people or take public transports. They are good antivirals.
Then clean guts is also a must, since it hides there too: thyme, garlic, onion, acidophilus or good yogurt.
Posted by: Mina | Jul 2 2021 11:26 utc | 100
The comments to this entry are closed.
Compare "JFK PRESS CONFERENCE #1 (JANUARY 25, 1961)" on youtube to the fine job VVP just did...different, yet quite similar...bright, engaged, in charge, serious and easy...real leadership. These are expressions of real leadership.
Then, after an affray in Dallas...
Actors. Fakes.
US persons watching the sleepyguy and VVP and JFK can tell a hawk from a handsaw, and see what's been stole.
Posted by: Walter | Jul 1 2021 12:18 utc | 1