Pundita don't you dare laugh. It's not funny. NOT FUNNY. Quote is from Brian Berletic's war update today for The New Atlas:
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Friday, September 9
Thursday, September 8
Tuesday, September 6
Biden Laptop-FBI Affair: "Sometimes you gotta watch something break before you can fit it."
What's broken in this case is the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The quote is from the man who accidentally discovered damning information on Hunter Biden's laptop then alerted the FBI to the contents. For his trouble, it's barely an overstatement to say that he's lucky to be alive. What he went through is quite a saga, which he's written about in a forthcoming book.
For now, The Duran has interviewed him along with Larry Johnson, who's been on top of the laptop scandal since news of it broke. He's probably been interviewed several times by now but The Duran's Alexander Mercouris was an attorney for many years -- a courtroom attorney. He knows how to get to the heart of situation, what questions to ask that will quickly explain and clarify a very complicated issue for those who are new to it. And Larry's presence means that the issue will also be assessed from a defense intelligence point of view.
The Laptop w/John Paul Mac Isaac and Larry Johnson (Live) - YouTube
The discussion starts around the 3-minute mark after finishing with introductions.
As to whether the FBI can be fixed -- it's not just the Laptop Affair and clearly the bad actors are no longer confined to the agency's upper echelon. I keep hearing that there are many good FBI agents. But it looks to me as if the system has broken to the point where the only real fix is to create a new agency.
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Who is responsible for Ukraine's ridiculous, suicidal battle planning?
Brian Berletic at The New Atlas updates his ongoing analyses of Ukraine's disastrous 'Kherson offensive' campaign. The deconstruction is very troubling because it points to NATO/U.S. rookie miscalculations. Those people can't wargame their way out of a paper bag.
(2) Kherson: What Happens Next? - Russian Ops in Ukraine Update September 6, 2022 - YouTube
Monday, September 5
Saturday, September 3
Rising food protectionism - falling dominoes
Three video reports from Singapore's public broadcasting service:
Indonesia's Soaring Food Prices: Can Export Bans Ease Food Inflation? | Insight - YouTube and
As Countries Ban Food Exports, Is A Global Food Crisis Unfolding? | CNA Correspondent - YouTube and
an in-depth report on the unprecedented heat wave in India, which prompted the government to ban wheat exports
India’s Extreme Summer: Will 45°C Heatwaves Leave Us Out Of Wheat? | Insight - YouTube
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Friday, September 2
"Not the bridge to victory, the bridge to hell."
Ukraine Suffers Massive Losses as Kherson Offensive Stalls and Russia Counterattacks - YouTube
Quote is from The Duran's Alexander Mercouris in his report posted two hours ago.
Alexander cited an estimated seven to eight thousand Ukranian casualties over a three-day period but said although there are much higher estimates. The Ukranian troops have as much been ordered to march by the thousands toward certain death. To what end? Reportedly the Ukranian military command has washed its hands of the matter after protesting against Zelensky's orders.
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Government by secrets means death of freedom in a society, and America is no exception
American Attorney Robert Barnes began his discussion at The Duran yesterday by untangling what the Justice Department is doing to Trump. He goes on to cover a range of government actions that enforce their power against the law and Constitution through the use of secrecy.
The discussion also covers legal maneuvers against Julian Assange and James O'Keefe (Project Veritas), which are an abrogation of legal procedure. Barnes also provides an informative explanation of the abuses of polling by political interests.
Barnes does foray into his geopolitical opinions as a long-winded way of saying that sometimes governments are right about things. He should have stuck with disturbing illustrations of how the American justice system is now twisted by those who are tasked to carry out justice. But given how much valuable information he provides, it's a minor criticism, which is why I suppose The Duran hosts -- Alex Christoforou and Alexander Mercouris -- let him rattle on a bit.
'The Enemy Within' strategy w/Robert Barnes (Live) - YouTube
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Tuesday, August 30
"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.
Friday, August 26
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
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Thursday, August 25
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.
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Monday, August 22
"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.
(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.
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Friday, August 19
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:
Tuesday, August 9
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.
Saturday, August 6
"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.
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Friday, July 29
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.
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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. "
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:
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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
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