"This isn't bad policy. This is nuts."

Tucker Carlson in fine form. Quote is from his explanation yesterday that things are falling apart very quickly.  

Zuckerberg throws FBI under the bus

Zuckerberg's public admission underscores "The extraordinary connection between social media giants and agencies of the United States government." Quote from The Duran's ten-minute discussion of the bombshell news:

Zuckerberg goes on Rogan [show] and blows apart FBI, laptop, censorship narrative - YouTube

********

The Duran with Brian Berletic discuss Ukraine and China, U.S. struggle to maintain hegemony

Russia and Ukraine, China and Taiwan w/Brian Berletic from The New Atlas (Live) - YouTube

********

Dressed to kill the planet. "The textile industry is the second biggest polluter in the world after oil."

Quote is from an eye opening 40-minute report from Germany's Deutsche Welle:

Fast fashion - The shady world of cheap clothing | DW Documentary - YouTube

It's not that there are too many of us; it's just too many with disposable income, access to credit, and an insatiable desire to keep buying affordable stuff displayed on the internet. This combination creates a staggering level of waste and pollution that surprisingly extends to clothing.  

The DW report explains that the insatiable desire to keep buying is rooted in how the brain works -- a topic of crucial importance to the marketing industry and retail sellers. 

********

"Americans don't understand how bad the situation in Britain and parts of Europe has become."

That's a quote from The Duran's Alexander Mercouris today.

August inflection point (Live) w/Andrei Martyanov & Larry Johnson - YouTube

 (Andrei and Larry, both American citizens, reside in the USA.) Americans don't understand because the U.S. news media is greatly downplaying the situation and even ignoring many aspects of it. But there is no question it's becoming dire in Germany, which is Europe's powerhouse economy, and it's already dire in Britain.  

The Duran has been at the forefront in analyzing Europe's spiraling social/economic crises for as long as I've been listening to them, which was since the start of Russia's military operation in Ukraine.

It's a fair guess that the vast majority of Americans also aren't aware of how bad things are for Ukrainians and the country's regime but in this case it's because they have been blatantly and repeatedly lied to by the American government and its military spokespeople, including those at the Pentagon, by so-called academics who purport to analyze Russia and the war in Ukraine, and by virtually all mainstream media reporters on the war.  When they can't lie enough, they suppress information.

The lies go beyond war propaganda; the news media and government have created a kind of Digital Curtain, in the manner of the Soviet Iron Curtain and Maoist China's Bamboo Curtain. Western control of information about the war is just one part of the curtain that has descended on the American people. 

The Duran is an indication that there are holes in the Digital Curtain; the digital era transcends any one country and security regime's ability to impose blanket control. But not without trying.  The attempts to control every aspect of information that relates to politics, economics, and war across such large areas and populations are perhaps the most troubling aspect of this era.

Where is it all heading?  Mercouris, who is based on London, gives an indication when he discusses the growing outrage in Britain as people there wake up to the fact that there never was a Great Kherson Counteroffensive, and that they had been lied to about the actual war situation in Ukraine.  The British government has prided itself in being able to tamp down public outrage, but the war situation has combined with an economic nightmare for the British.

We'll see where it leads, as West Europeans also start to wake up. 

******** 

Pakistan's twin glacier melt/drought disasters extend far beyond the country

For more than 300 days a year the Indus River no longer reaches the Arabian Sea.  

Temperatures in parts of the country are 55C (131 F)

Very informative report from Singapore government's CNA Insider posted on August 2 of this year:

Poland buying Ukraine at bargain-basement prices

From Intel Slava Z - August 8:

The main thing from the statement of the press bureau of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service:

▪️Poland is preparing to establish control over the most promising sectors of the Ukrainian economy;
▪️Ukrainian authorities, in fact, have already begun to sell their sectors of the economy to Poland;
▪️Polish companies are buying grain from Ukraine at low prices, dooming Ukrainian enterprises to bankruptcy.

Telegram: Contact @intelslava 

"War at its most overpowering and its most terrible."

Crisis in Donbass, Kiev Officials Say Ukraine Only Capable of Limited Counteroffensive in Kherson - YouTube - Alexander Mercouris

My view is that U.S./NATO tutors gave the Ukranian military such bad training and tactical/strategic advice that it verges on a war crime.  

********

Tucker Carlson 7/25 report banned by YouTube but published at Rumble

Here is the July 25 report, which I posted ( Pundita: "Data may have been changed to better fit a hypothesis." Looming collapse of belief in medical science. UPDATED 7/27 ) but was banned by YouTube.

Tucker Carlson Tonight 7/25/22 Update - Breaking Fox News July 25, 2022 (rumble.com)

It is a great tragedy that YouTube management decided to ban this critically important report.

*******

Biden redefines recession tp explain there is no recession in the USA

 This is no longer Orwellian. We're in Clown World territory.  From Alex Christoforou's walkabout today in Athens:

Do NATO HIMARS operators in Ukraine need to get their eyesight tested?

"Last week, a Russian security source told Sputnik that HIMARS operating in Ukraine are being manned by outstaffed career NATO personnel and guarded by private military contractors, and that information regarding their operation was not being transferred to the Ukrainian side due to lack of trust. "

Kiev Complains Its US-Gifted HIMARS Rockets are ‘Shooting Blind’ - 29.07.2022, Sputnik International (sputniknews.com) 

The United States has delivered a dozen M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) to Ukraine, and promises to send at least four more. The Russian military has reported on the destruction of four HIMARS in precision strikes, and accused Kiev of using the powerful weapons to attack civilian areas instead of military targets.

The HIMARS Washington sent to Kiev are a “good first step,” but their accuracy leaves something to be desired without the sophisticated support hardware they get when used by the US military, Anton Gerashchenko, an advisor to the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs, has complained.

“Presidential advisor Mikhail Podolyak laid out [Ukraine’s military] needs last month: 2,000 troop transport vehicles, 1,000 gun-mounted vehicles, 500 tanks, 300 multiple launch rocket systems, and also the drones and communications equipment necessary to maximize the effectiveness of these systems,” Gerashchenko said in an interview with Newsweek.

“HIMARS and heavy artillery are a good first step, but if we do not have the technology to find and correct targets for artillery strikes, then we’re just shooting blind,” the official lamented.

Gerashchenko also called on Western powers and officials in Kiev to calculate “how much ammunition is available” for Ukraine’s HIMARS and other Western-provided heavy artillery, and how much would be needed “to liberate our occupied territory in the regions of Kharkov, Zaporozhye, Kherson, Donetsk and Lugansk, and then to ramp up industrial production in order to meet the need.”

The Ukrainian military showed off the extent of its effort to “liberate” Donbass territory using HIMARS on Friday, with territorial defense officials in the Donetsk People’s Republic reporting that some 53 people were killed and 75 others injured in a HIMARS strike on a detention center in Yelenovka, DPR, with the facility containing Ukrainian prisoners of war, including members of the notorious ultra-right Azov Regiment.

“Obviously, it is a deliberate shelling fueled by the desire to eliminate those representatives, in particular, Azov, who have begun to testify. There are quite a lot of testimonies, some of which became public, even more were recorded by our investigative bodies,” DPR head Denis Pushilin said. The Ukrainian General Staff denied responsibility for the attack.

Scores of civilians have been killed in HIMARS strikes on cities and settlements across the Donbass and other areas of eastern Ukraine in recent weeks.

Last week, the Lugansk People’s Republic’s Joint Center for Control and Coordination (JCCC) monitoring mission reported that two civilians were killed in shelling of the city of Alchevsk using the US-made weapons system. A week before that, seven people were killed and 40 others injured in a HIMARS strike on the city of Nova Kakhovka in the Kherson region. In early July, the DPR’s JCCC monitors reported HIMARS being used in the city of Snezhnoye in the eastern DPR.

US Military Worried It May Run Out of HIMARS

Earlier this week, retired Marine Colonel and former Pentagon Office of Management and Budget staffer Mark Cancian warned that the US could run out of HIMARS munitions to send to Ukraine in three to four months if it provided more than 12-20 of the weapons to Kiev.

Mark Hertling, a retired Army lieutenant general and former general of US Army Europe, expressed similar concerns in a recent Twitter thread, indicating that the US has limited numbers of HIMARS available, that most of them are already attached to Army and Marine units in preparation for potential military operations. The supply of munitions for the systems is also limited, with about 9,000 of the 200 pound GPS-guided missiles manufactured per year, Hertling explained.

“Smart planning consideration of our Department of Defense (and all the nations that are supplying MLRS) is this: How much risk do we take in giving Ukraine an exceedingly large number of our smart weapons? And…What if, in the near future, we face this or another enemy in a conflict?” Hertling asked.

I’m 100 percent sure I don’t have all the considerations that went into this decision making. But I am also relatively sure those saying ‘give Ukraine everything it wants’ are also not considering several important US national security factors,” the retired commander added.

Last week, a Russian security source told Sputnik that HIMARS operating in Ukraine are being manned by outstaffed career NATO personnel and guarded by private military contractors, and that information regarding their operation was not being transferred to the Ukrainian side due to lack of trust. The source indicated that HIMARS fire is being covered by salvos from less advanced artillery, including Smerch and Uragan, to saturate Russian air defenses.

[END REPORT]

See also: 

Scoop: NATO Doesn’t Trust Ukraine With HIMARS, Operating Advanced Artillery Themselves, Source Says - 21.07.2022, Sputnik International (sputniknews.com)

 ********

Meanwhile, China is facing big economic trouble.

For an overview see India's WION report July 26:

The Full Context | Multiple crises riddle Chinese economy | Can China take the death blow? - YouTube

*******

Col. Macgregor: "Europe is going to have to find its own way forward."

Quote is from his latest Ukraine war update with Judge Napolitano. The colonel thinks Germany's present government will fall soon and that whatever replaces it will have to find some way to make peace with Russia.  They'd better make peace soon; the country is in serious trouble. 

Col Doug Macgregor - Ukraine Russia latest - YouTube

They also have a short discussion about North Korea and Taiwan. 

********

Somehow I get the feeling this video is aimed at German citizens

 Pundita don't you dare laugh it's not funny.

See also German city bans hot water in public buildings — RT World News - July 28

Say, whatever happened to Ukraine's blacklisting of 700 British firms?

On July 14 The Center for Countering Disinformation at the National Security Defense Council of Ukraine published a list of about 60 Western journalists, politicians, academics and activists it claims are “promoting narratives consonant with Russian propaganda." 

That is not quite saying they are Russian propagandists -- a hair splitting ignored by the listees, several of whom are American, who took public issue with the claim, which has somehow morphed into a blacklist among outraged critics of the list.  

Scott Ritter, who made it onto the list, even wrote his congressional representatives to point out that the American government should not be funding Ukraine's call to blacklist Americans, although he puts the term "blacklist" in quotes.  (The full text of Scott's letter was published by Consortium News.)

I don't see a call for blacklisting on the center's website, but in any case, the list set off an uproar.   

Yet if you want to know about a card-carrying blacklist issued by the Ukranian government, look at this:

Revealed: More than 700 British firms blacklisted in Ukraine for suspicious activity | openDemocracy

By David Leask and Richard Smith

May 16, 2020

openDemocracy (U.K.)

British shell companies provide high prestige with low transparency – perfect for money-laundering, popular across the former Soviet Union.

They are as common as muck in Ukraine. And often as dirty.

Foreign shell firms – ‘offshores’ in the jargon – litter the country’s politics and economy.

They are used to conceal ownership, avoid tax, make illicit payments and launder dirty money. Their abuse, say anti-corruption campaigners, help keep Ukraine poor.

Many are British, especially Scottish. Now an analysis of Ukrainian government public records by openDemocracy gives another glimpse at just how often UK corporate entities are being red-flagged in the country.

The businesses are all listed on a searchable database of thousands of international corporate entities subject to special sanctions, usually because of suspicious money transfers.

Officials decreed that such enterprises – many of which appear to be shell firms registered in traditional secrecy jurisdictions such as Panama or Belize – could trade in the country only if they obtained individual licences.

[...]

Rachel Davies, head of advocacy at anti-corruption campaign group Transparency International, suggested the sheer volume of UK entities subject to Ukrainian special sanctions reflected the widespread abuse of British shell firms in that country.

She said: “The presence of so many UK companies on this list is a stark reminder of Britain’s role as a global hub for financial crime. Despite recent advances in improving corporate transparency, it is still far too easy to set up opaque firms in Britain.

“The limited checks on the individuals behind these companies means that UK entities regularly appear in major money-laundering scandals. Until there are tighter controls on company formation, their continued involvement in suspected financial crime poses a significant risk to the UK’s status as a safe and respectable place to do business.”

Ukraine introduced its blacklist at the turn of the century as it tried to stem capital flight and address irregularities in the movement of money. Its economy ministry told openDemocracy that sanctions – which range from special licensing to fines and outright bans – were imposed by officials or courts at the request of law enforcement or market regulators.

The country late in 2019 lifted its regime of special licensing but the economy ministry still publishes a searchable database of international companies which were subject to the rules. Ukrainian laws are not usually retroactive and the ministry argues that sanctions still apply to blacklisted firms, although this is under legal debate.

[...]

I skipped quite a bit to get to the last paragraphs I quoted, and the rest of the article is lengthy, as the authors take pains to outline a tangled tale -- as tangled as the era which has given rise to globalized thievery that has in effect put entire countries up for sale.

But my question at the moment is whether these blacklists have anything to do with the British government's level of intervention in the Ukraine-Russian war and Boris Johnson's fanatical support for the country's present regime. We might know if it's a factor once, if ever, the blacklisting tale gets untangled.    

********

Brian Bertelic untangles Pentagon's version of warfighting status in Ukraine

Russian Ops in Ukraine (July 28, 2022) - Ukraine's "Kherson Offensive," Battle in the Donbass (rumble.com) - video report; can also be seen at YouTube

It was a struggle in parts, but The New Atlas' Brian Bertelic manages to keep a straight face about the Pentagon's pretzel analysis. 

********

Poland prepping as NATO's next battering ram against Russia.

Brian Berletic at The New Atlas outlines the situation with emphasis on describing weapons systems being loaded into Poland. His YouTube page includes urls for print references (NEO, WSJ, Reuters, etc.) that he discusses in his report today.

Poland's Position as the Next "Ukraine" - YouTube

********

"The first thing you have to do is designate a Nitrogen Minister"

Today's handy tips from The Duran's Alex Christoforou on how to crash your nation. If you haven't heard about the land grab in the Netherlands, a relatively painless way to learn is during Alex's July 6 walkabout in a beautiful Athens marina.

Mark Rutte land grab. Elensky wants $750BN. Sunak-Javid dump Boris. Obrador, free Assange. Update 1 - YouTube  (Alex bows to calls for a ban on the letter "Z" so technically it should be "Gaprom.")  

********

With so much potential wealth, why is Ukraine so poor?

The author mentions the Russian interest in the incredible wealth of the subsoil in Donbass. The Russians can stand in line; everyone and his uncle must have been interested in developing that land -- except, it seems, the Ukrainians themselves.  What have those people been doing all these years? Very mysterious, it seems to me.     

Donbass: why is it so disputed?| ILLUMINATION | Medium

Everything depends on the riches of its subsoil

By Annalisa Vibio
April 20, 2022

The military aggression by the Kremlin goes far beyond the desire to recover the identity of the ancient Slavic people of the Rus’. Behind this political facade, in fact, there are practical and economic reasons. Putin’s goal is mainly to lift the Russian economy and solve its difficulties by targeting the mineral wealth of the Donbass.

This region, in the east of Ukraine, can indeed be considered as the industrial heart of the country, as it is rich in mineral deposits, oil and, at the same time, famous for its coal reserves. The most exploited area extends for about 23,000 square km south of the Donets River, but the areas that have coal in the subsoil also cover several kilometers overst [sic], up to the Dnieper River.

In short, the Donbass has always been one of the most economically advantaged areas in Ukraine. Before 2014, before the self-proclaimed Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk caused the separatist conflict, the region was worth 14.5% of the nation’s GDP and produced 25% of exports. Until Frebruary, low-intensity warfare has however, then brought tragic consequences. In addition to the collapse of industrial production by 70% or the railway lines and roads destroyed, in seven years the number of victims has reached 14 thousand.

What thus is the Donbass treasure?

Gas and lithium

The Donbass or all the territories bordering the Dnieperare rich in gas fields, discovered starting from the 1950s. 90% of neon gas comes from the region, which is the basis for electronic chips. Iceblick is therefore the company, founded 32 years ago in Odessa, which produces 65% of the world’s neon. For this reason, it is Silicon Valley’s preferred supplier.

Connected to neon, Donbass is also important for lithium, a fundamental component for electric car batteries. The Australian group European Lithium, in Donetsk, in the days preceding the outbreak of the war, had just closed an extraction contract. Similarly, Chinese interests were also coming to the area as the Chengxin company had just decided to finalize a concession.

Obviously, the Kremlin’s design thwarted all efforts.

Minerals

According to the experts of the CNR of Rome, the rocks of the Donbass region are particularly valuable. In fact, lithium is not contaminated by other metals, such as zinc, lead or cadmium.

Other minerals are also present in the subsoil, as well as rare elements (cobalt, chromium, ziconium, molybdenum). These are particularly important for the production of optical fibers to catalysts. In addition, the Donbass includes 10% of the world reserves of iron, 6% of titanium and 20% of graphite. The Kiev geological service, before last February, was trying to attract 10 billion in investments.

Furthermore, Ukraine is the largest manganese reserve in Europe, with more than 2 billion tons, located mainly in the Dnipro basin. Finally, the nation ranks first on the continent for both titanium and uranium reserves. At the time of the Soviet Union, the country owned the monopoly for the production of concentrated titanium. Likewise, it is no coincidence that the main nuclear power plants have been built in these areas.

The Azovstal

The Azovstal steel factory became the symbol of the siege of Mariupol. Part of the Metinvest group, it was founded in 1837 and then relaunched in 1933. Strategically located in the heart of Europe, the industrial complex, now bombed and besieged, was technologically advanced and particularly efficient. Not surprisingly, at the time of the USSR, it supplied 50% of the steel produced in the Soviet Union. Its great strength was its proximity to the energy and raw materials supply funds, alongside the commercial port.

Thanks to its efficiency, tensions and low-intensity warfare have never hurt the turnover, which reached 2.7 billion euros last year, beating the other large Kryvorizhstal complex near Kiev. This was recently bought by ArcelorMittal.

Sources I was inspired by to write this article:

• Ucraina: acciaio e miniere, ecco il tesoro del Donbass che fa gola a Putin, published by La Repubblica
• Donbass, perché la Russia lo vuole e l’Ucraina non lo molla, Dataroom by Milena Gabanelli, published by Il corriere della sera
• Terre rare, carbone e metalli: perché il Donbass è così prezioso, published by Il corriere della sera

I am an Italian student who tries every day to improve her English. I really like writing and studying in this language, also to be able to reach more people. However, I still often run into mistakes. So, if while reading my article you have found some, do not hesitate to contact me, either through a comment or private note!

[END]

"Data may have been changed to better fit a hypothesis." Looming collapse of belief in medical science. UPDATED 7/27

UPDATE

Fox also posts Tucker's reports at Rumble.  Here is the report that YouTube banned:

Tucker Carlson Tonight 7/25/22 Update - Breaking Fox News July 25, 2022 (rumble.com)

 END UPDATE

Tucker goes through a list- - bing bing bing -- of how pharmaceutical companies abused scientific research in the most horrific ways.