The US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, warned African countries last week not to purchase anything from Russia besides grain and fertilizer, or else they could face sanctions.

Thomas-Greenfield said during a visit to Uganda that countries could buy "Russian agricultural products, including fertilizer and wheat" but added that "if a country decides to engage with Russia, where there are sanctions, then they are breaking those sanctions."

"We caution countries not to break those sanctions because then ... they stand the chance of having actions taken against them," she added. Thomas-Greenfield said that purchasing Russian oil risks sanctions, even though many of the US's European allies are still buying Russian crude before a ban takes effect at the end of the year.

In a flurry of statements on Friday against the backdrop of escalating US-China tensions, five of China's biggest state-owned companies announced their intent to delist from the New York Stock Exchange — PetroChina Co Ltd, China Life Insurance Co, China Petroleum & Chemical Corp, Aluminium Corp of China and Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical Co. which represent over 300 billion dollars in market cap.

As of August 2022, the market cap of these Chinese giants are as follows: PetroChina ($132.11 billion); China Life Insurance ($94.88 billion); China Petroleum & Chemical Corp ($70.23 billion). Aluminium Corp of China ($10.29 billion) is also the world's second-largest alumina producer and third-largest primary aluminium producer; and, Sinopec Shanghai Petrochemical Co.($3.77 billion) is a subsidiary of Sinopec (market cap: $68.45 billion), and is one of the largest petrochemical enterprises in China..

At work here primarily is a greater scrutiny of Chinese companies listed in the United States that the American regulators are insisting upon since the Congress' legislation passed in 2020 during the Trump administration in this direction. The legislation followed the failure of protracted negotiations for the American regulators to gain full access to inspect the audit papers of US-listed Chinese businesses, which Beijing views as "crackdowns" on Chinese companies and as "financial decoupling."

Both in terms of the market cap of the New York Stock Exchange as a whole (which currently stands at $26.2 trillion) and in terms of American depository shares in the five Chinese companies, this development per se is not earthshaking but has implications.

Will it bring a bad name to the New York Stock Exchange? Maybe, eventually. Will it seriously impact on the Chinese companies' operations? Unlikely. (For example, American depository shares in PetroChina represented approximately 0.45 percent of the total share capital of the company.)

Nonetheless, it is a signpost that will be noted in financial markets, even as a growing number of Chinese firms are also positioning to delist from the US markets. Interestingly, the 2020 US legislation also includes a push to delist US-listed companies by changing audit rules. The US Securities and Exchange Commission has put 159 Chinese concept stock companies (companies that operate in China) on its delisting watch-list as of end-July.

• In Part One we outlined the background of the modern Deep State {Go Deep}.
• In Part Two we outlined the specifics of how President Trump was targeted by political operatives using tools created by the DC system {Go Deep}.
• In Part Three we outlined how and why President Trump was blocked from releasing documents {Go Deep}.
• Here in Part Four, we begin to assemble the specifics of what documents likely existed in Mar-a-Lago.

It is important to remember, the presidential records act -the presented pretext for the document conflict- is not a criminal statute. An FBI raid cannot be predicated on a document conflict between the National Archives and a former president.

The DOJ-NSD warrant, and the subsequent raid on Mar-a-Lago can only be related to records the U.S. government deems "classified" and material vital to national security interests. Hence, DOJ National Security Division involvement.

In prior outlines we have exhaustively covered the details of President Trump's desire to publicly release information about DOJ and FBI conduct in their targeting of him during the fabricated Trump-Russia claims. However, to understand the nature of the documents he may hold, we first review the declassification memo provided by President Trump to the DOJ upon his departure from office.

Tulsi Gabbard unleashes a torrent of facts in what most on the left in Washington would call 'conspiracy theory' and 'hate speech' pointing out the fact that everything from the IRS to the Department of Homeland Security is "blatantly being weaponized to target political opponents of those in power and anyone who dares to dissent or question or challenge their actions and policies."

By way of example, Gabbard notes that with regard to the massive increase in the size of the IRS, the messaging from Democrats is 'this will only apply to to the wealthy'. Well, as Gabbard points out, "that's only 1-2% of all taxpayers, so why in the world do they need $80 billion and 87,000 new hires in order to go after 1-2% of taxpayers?"

Simply put, she explains, "their math absolutely does not add up," which she says "should be frightening and concerning" to all Americans, because "this means, they're coming after us - the entrepreneurs, small business owners, and the middle class hard-working Americans."

A whistleblower came forward with the name of a second FBI official who allegedly pressured agents to label cases as "domestic violent extremism" to boost case numbers, according to House Judiciary Committee Republicans.

Jill Sanborn, a now-Roku employee who worked at the FBI for more than two decades, is one of now two officials a whistleblower has identified as having "exerted pressure on agents to reclassify cases as DVE [domestic violent extremism] matters," according to a letter sent to Sanborn on Wednesday and obtained by Breitbart News.

The letter, written by Judiciary Committee ranking member Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and committee member Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA), comes on the heels of the whistleblower contacting Jordan's office in July and accusing another FBI official, Assistant Special Agent in Charge Timothy Thibault, of also seeking to inflate domestic violent extremism case numbers.

Ukraine is calling on President Joe Biden's administration to sanction all private Russian banks, Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing Kiev's envoy to Washington Oksana Markarova.

She told the media outlet that President Vladimir Zelensky's government wants the US to add a couple of banks per week to its list of sanctioned financial institutions. The ambassador noted that she's conveyed the request to the US Treasury Department.

Markarova, a former finance minister, said in the interview that adding that any Russian bank is a legitimate sanctions target.

"Sanctions are as important as weapons. As soon as one bank is sanctioned, some other private bank suddenly becomes a financier of the industry or military."

She's also pushing for the State Department to designate Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism.

Several explosions have been reported in an area of Belarus near a military airport that Ukrainian authorities say has been used by the Russian Air Force to attack Ukrainian territory.

The Belaruski Hayun and Flagshtok Telegram channels quoted witnesses on August 11 as saying at least eight blasts were heard and flashes were seen near the Zyabrauka military airport in the southeastern Homel region of Belarus overnight. The base is some 30 kilometers from the border with Ukraine.

The loss of access to coal and other reserves located in Russia-held lands leaves Kiev at an impasse, the newspaper reports

Ukraine has lost "the building blocks of its economy" and may find it difficult to exist as an industrialized nation in the aftermath of the conflict with Russia, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

The warning came in a feature article based on an analysis of the value of Ukraine's hydrocarbons and valuable minerals which have come under Russian control amid the protracted conflict.

Russia controls over $12 trillion-worth of the resources that used to be under Kiev's jurisdiction before 2014, according to SecDev, an Ottawa-based analytical firm. WaPo said coal accounts for the lions' share of the sum. Some 30 billion tons of hard coal deposits with an estimated commercial value of $11.9 trillion were identified by the Canadian researchers, the newspaper reported.

The Select Committee to Investigate January 6 has adjourned for a well-deserved summer break. Misleading the public is exhausting work.

A careful review of the official transcripts of its eight long hearings shows the committee repeatedly made connections that weren't there, took events and quotes out of context, exaggerated the violence of the Capitol rioters, and omitted key exculpatory evidence otherwise absolving former President Donald Trump of guilt. While in some cases it lied by omission, in others it lied outright. It also made a number of unsubstantiated charges based on the secondhand accounts — hearsay testimony — of a young witness with serious credibility problems.

These weren't off-the-cuff remarks. Panelists didn't misspeak. Their statements were tightly scripted and loaded into teleprompters, which they read from verbatim.

Kiev warns Russian citizens visiting Crimea could face an 'unpleasantly hot summer break'

The Ukrainian military issued a sinister threat against Russian tourists seeking to travel to Crimea this summer, insisting the region belongs to Ukraine and suggesting visitors might be killed by shelling or air strikes.

The Defense Ministry took to Twitter on Thursday with a post stating that "Unless they want an unpleasantly hot summer break, we advise our valued Russian guests not to visit Ukrainian Crimea," also appending a video set to Bananarama's 'Cruel Summer.'